Thanks, Woody.
Serbia wrote:So the evidence this is taking place, is from 1989. Cool story bro.
Have a quick read from the link above. Lots of numbers there, most of them from 2010.
BigBallinStalin wrote:Obviously, that isn't always, and this isn't occurring in all nonwhite neighborhoods, so your claim is incorrect. You're confirming your bias; you're finding small-scale facts to fit your overreaching conclusion.
realistic enforcement efforts almost always take place only in nonwhite neighbourhoods"realistic"? All enforcement is real. How about "signficant"? Then, what does that mean?
If you want to scale down from "always," then you'll need the evidence which supports it. Some percentage would help.
Mea culpa. I'm one of those people who's always going past the mark and using words like "always" when a milder modifier like "often" would be more appropriate.
Okay, so backing off of "always" we still get a clear pattern. Go to the ACLU link that Woody posted and check around for some figures. Granted, it only talks about marijuana, not other drugs, but it's a start.
Let's skip ahead to Figure 9 on Page 47. This shows the comparison of the black arrest rate versus the white arrest rate. Bottom line: "The Black arrest rate is 716 per 100,000; the white arrest rate is 192 per 100,000 (the national arrest rate is 256 per 100,000). " The next 20 or so pages show the same figure broken down by state, major metropolitan area, etc.
Okay, so blacks are arrested for marijuana possession 3.7 times as often as whites. This would make sense if blacks
used marijuana 3.7 times as often as whites. So we skip ahead to Figure 21 on Page 66 of the document. Here we see that in the year 2010 (the same as the year for the arrest data) 12.4% of blacks and 11.7% of whites used marijuana. This is according to the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse and Health. You can look at it in the references and see if you trust their methodology or not, but I'm willing to assume that the ACLU cited a reasonably reputable source unless proven otherwise.
So blacks did use marijuana slightly more often (1.05 times as often) as whites, but nothing remotely close to a 3.7 times multiplier. An even more extreme picture emerges if you compare the 18-to-24 age group which is arrested most often. This is referenced in Figure 22 on Page 67, and in this critical age group white potheads actually outpaced their black counterparts by 33.4% to 27.6%. We could go on, but the picture is, I hope, quite clear: blacks using marijuana are arrested for it a lot more often than whites who use marijuana, not a little more often but
vastly more often.
It would be nice if we had a similar nice document for other drugs, but I don't see any reason to assume why it would show a different picture than this one.
Even if things like sampling error creep in (and where do they not?) it's not believable that any kind of error would give a false read on numbers this blatant.
BigBallinStalin wrote:Sure, and I agree about your problems with the drug war, but in order to demonstrate that racism is occurring, we'd have to control for the other relevant variables (e.g. cuz there's more crime in X neighborhoods, cuz people in X neighborhoods on average have greater crime records, etc.).
I understand your point. Racism might not be the motive; it could just be that these people live in shitty neighbourhoods, which would be targeted regardless of who lived in them. I find it really hard to imagine a factor, however, which is potent enough to explain that 3.7X differential without involving race. Even if we could mitigate the effects of these numbers, there are aggravating numbers showing racism. For instance, even though blacks are arrested only at four times the rate of whites (lol, seems funny to see "only" in that sentence, does it not?) they remain in jail at seven times the rate. This shows that even when arrested for the exact same offense, blacks are more likely to draw a harsh sentence and/or to be denied parole later.
I'm not some political correctness nabob who sees a racist behind every tree. But when it comes to the War on Drugs, the charge of racism is, I think, well proven.