[lit-ideas] Blacks in prison
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2008 15:54:54 -0700
Lawrence quotes Christinna Corbin on Reverend Wright's pronouncements:
“Fact number one: We’ve got more black men in prison than there are in
college.
I can see why someone would say this. It may be a careless reading of
census data or it may be deliberate fudging; I see it as the former—it
doesn't seem like a dangerous whacko remark to me. Lawrence doesn't
challenge it on any grounds; he may have thought it was so obviously
false as to go without saying. Hard to tell.
What the census data show is that there are more blacks living in prison
than there are blacks living in college dormitories. When students who
commute or live off campus but nearby are counted it turns out that
there are more black students than black prisoners in the US. This
doesn't seem to me to be cause for celebration.
Blacks still make up a disproportionate number of the US prison population.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm
The distinction between blacks in college and blacks in college dorms is
made at (and elsewhere)
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=3657852
Robert Paul
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