Unamusement Park

Ignorance and misinformation about race and crime run deep in our society. People who have never read an article on the subject will declare, with a conviction normally reserved for religious fundamentalists, that blacks are not more criminal than whites; that this is an illusion created by racially biased news media; and that any evidence to the contrary is a product of police or jury discrimination.

Over the next few days, I will debunk these myths in the form of three laws of race and crime. First law: there is no bias against blacks in the justice system.

In his article “Race, Crime, and Violence” in the July 1999 issue of American Renaissance, editor Jared Taylor explains how the First Law is proved. (If you’d rather listen than read, check out this video, part one of four.)

Government statistics are essentially of three kinds: survey data, statistics on crimes reported to the police, and arrest figures. The annual Department of Justice survey [the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)] is important because it gathers information on crimes that victims don’t report to the police. Even more important, every few years it gathers information on the race of both victims and perpetrators of violent crimes. It is therefore the only information about interracial crime collected at the national level. The survey is about as accurate a picture as it is possible to get of crimes Americans say they have suffered. [Note: the NCVS asks the victims, not the police.]

The Department of Justice also collects data on the number of crimes reported to the police and the number of arrests made — and racial data are included on most people who are arrested. …

It is significant that the racial proportions for perpetrators as found in the survey data and the racial proportions for arrests are remarkably similar. Americans report in the survey that close to 60 percent of all robberies are committed by blacks and, indeed, 57 percent of arrests for robberies in 1997 were of blacks. The proportions are close for other violent crimes as well, which means that the police are arresting people of different races at essentially the same rates at which the public is being victimized by them.

The myth of racial bias in the justice system persists for two reasons. The first is simply that whites are too scared of appearing — or rather, being branded — racist, to talk about race and crime. Hopefully they’ll start to wake up as more and more drug dealers go free because the judge or jury bought into the discrimination fairy tale.

The second reason is anti-white propaganda (how else can you describe it?), often but not always promulgated by blacks. Leonard Pitts Jr., for example — winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for commentary — reports five undocumented and statistically insignificant episodes he characterizes as police bias (by whites, of course). He wants to manipulate his readers into believing that white racism is epidemic in America, but the statistics say it isn’t so.

Oh, he has statistics of his own.

A 2000 Justice Department study finds the justice system to be racially biased.

That’s it. That’s all he has to say about it. Now, a Justice Department study in 2000 did indeed claim a racial bias in federal death sentences. One year later, this racial bias disappeared on review. How could that be?

Well, what kind of evidence did the 2000 study come up with in the first place?

Since 1995, 80 percent of 682 defendants facing capital charges have been members of minorities. The Justice Department recommended that the death penalty be pursued with 183 defendants, of whom 74 percent were members of racial minorities. Ultimately of 20 defendants sentenced to death, 80 percent were members of minorities. African-Americans accounted for the majority of those facing the death penalty.

We are never told what percentage of people committing capital crimes are minorities. (Hint: it’s high. Very high. You’ll have to wait until the third law, though.) If, for example, it’s 75 to 85 percent, then the study found evidence of a lack of racial bias. If it’s more than 85 percent, then the study found evidence of racial bias against whites. Without that second figure, the given statistics are meaningless. A year later, someone caught on.

Suppose the police were racially biased against blacks. What would we expect to see? From “Police Bias? Says Who?” in the same issue of American Renaissance (emphasis mine):

The police have a lot of discretion over whether to make an arrest in the case of non-violent crimes, such as violation of liquor laws. Unlike murder or rape, there is not a great deal of public pressure to make arrests, and the police can walk away from crime if they want to. Presumably, a “racist” officer would see a drunk on the street and make an arrest only if the drunk were black. In fact, drunk driving and other liquor offenses — in which police can make arrests or not largely as they choose — are the very crimes for which the black multiple of the white arrest rate is the smallest (see previous page). If “racist” cops are picking on blacks they are not doing a good job.

Finally, if the police are “racist,” why are Asians arrested at consistently lower rates than whites? Wouldn’t “racist” cops think of some way to snare Asians?

What about drug crimes, like the aforementioned Hispanic cocaine-dealer victim of racial bias — or rather, “a statistical pattern suggesting racial bias”? Some say that police are going after black drug dealers in the “bad” (read: black) parts of town, while ignoring the middle- and upper-class white dealers. What does the data say?

From the same article:

It is often argued that the large number of blacks arrested for drugs — particularly crack cocaine — is evidence of police bias. However, there is a completely independent indicator of who is using illegal drugs, which suggests that the police are arresting the very people they should. The Department of Health and Human Services keeps statistics on people admitted to emergency rooms because of drug overdoses. Blacks are admitted at 6.67 times the white rate for heroin and morphine, and no less than 10.5 times the white rate for cocaine (Hispanics are admitted at two to three times the white rate). What better evidence could there be that people of different races are using drugs at markedly different rates, and that the police are simply doing their job?

The truth is, statistically speaking, there is no bias against blacks inherent in the justice system. All the anecdotal evidence in the world won’t change that.

Next time I’ll cover the second law of race and crime: the news media are biased in favor of blacks.