Obama has tough-love message for African-Americans

[NearL]

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Blaming the quality of the schools only works if the schools fail to educate the majority, but among all black kids who attend crappy schools, a relatively small percentage choose to be criminals. The same is true for white kids, hispanic kids, mixed race kids, etc.

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<p>I think it’s fair to blame the crappy schools that a lot of poor black men are forced to attend. Consider than it 2001, 10% of all black men ages 25-29 was in jail. Now also consider that those inmates are disproportionately poor (as are all prisoners). Would you like to guess what percentage of poor, black men from underperforming schools are incarcerated? I can’t find any, but I’m willing to guess it’s over 10%. It may be as high as 20%.</p>

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The VAST majority of people in prison are white, so your “Joe the cop” is arresting more people who share his skin color than people of other colors.

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<p>The majority of prisoners are black: [In</a> fact in 2006, Black males made up 38 percent of all male inmates, while White males made up 34 percent and Hispanic inmates made up 21 percent.](<a href=“http://www.ocjs.state.oh.us/research/prisoners%20in%202006.pdf]In”>http://www.ocjs.state.oh.us/research/prisoners%20in%202006.pdf)</p>

<p>The majority of inmates are in for nonviolent crimes. [The</a> estimate is around 70%.](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisons_in_the_United_States]The”>Incarceration in the United States - Wikipedia)</p>

<p>The majority of of the 249,400 state prison inmates serving time for drug offenses at yearend 2004, 112,500 (45.1%) were black, 51,800 (20.8%) were Hispanic, and 65,900 (26.4%) were white.</p>

<p>Source: Sabol, William J., PhD, Couture, Heather, and Harrison, Paige M., Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 2006 (Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, December 2007), NCJ219416, p. 24, Appendix Table 9.</p>

<p>There’s something wrong with the system when 13% of the population comprises the nearly half of inmates serving time for drug offenses – [especially</a> when the majority is more likely to use drugs.](<a href=“http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P2-1051223.html]especially”>http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P2-1051223.html)</p>

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Also, the percentage of black officers in large cities is on average 20% of the total number of officers, yet blacks only account for on average 12.7% of the population. A disproportionate percentage of black criminals are incarcerated, but a disproportionate number of black police officers arrested them.

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<p>That looks like a good statistic until you realize that the majority of large cities has a black population that is much higher than 20%. There are over 30 cities with black populations of at least 30% or higher. Half of those cities are over 50% black. There are also 60 metropolitan areas with black populations over 30%. America’s black population is concentrated in urban areas.</p>

<p>[List</a> of U.S. cities with large African American populations - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_large_African_American_populations]List”>List of U.S. cities with large Black populations - Wikipedia)</p>