Ezra,

Would you consider tossing this over to Bainbridge and ask him to instruct all us Vulgar Unwashed Lefties again about "rule of law", "equality before justice" and why Obama is the Fifth Horseman of the Judicial Apocolypse?

Go ahead, you're young, smart and scrappy - me, I'm over 40 and mostly just get sick nowadays.

Thanks.

http://www.stephenbainbridge.com/punditry/comments/obama_judicial_selection_and_the_rule_of_law/

This is an astonishing statistic. The results of a failed policy of retribution will be an issue for this generation. Failed? Crime has gone down in some centers. But there has been no effort at rehabilitation and the two million plus people doing hard time are eventually going to be released. This is the worst case of American exceptionalism.

I'd like to see what the figures are broken down by income, as well. I'd imagine that if you control the black men 20-34 group for income that those in the low-income brackets must be up somewhere around 1 in 3 or so, nearly to the point where being a poor black male de facto makes you a criminal. Crazy.

Actually, I think I've seen some estimates over the years that for youngish urban black men, something like 1 in 3 are either already dead or in prison.

The statistic was mentioned at the very bottom of a long and detailed NYT story on why the marriage rate for youngish urban black women is so low...

This sort of statistic is pretty remarkable considering that the only about 1/3 of Europe's population was wiped out by the Bubonic Plague, considered a catastrophe of world-historic proportions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/20/national/20blackmen.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
a 2006 study by Georgetown Economist Harry J. Holzer found:

¶The share of young black men without jobs has climbed relentlessly, with only a slight pause during the economic peak of the late 1990's. In 2000, 65 percent of black male high school dropouts in their 20's were jobless — that is, unable to find work, not seeking it or incarcerated. By 2004, the share had grown to 72 percent, compared with 34 percent of white and 19 percent of Hispanic dropouts. Even when high school graduates were included, half of black men in their 20's were jobless in 2004, up from 46 percent in 2000.

¶Incarceration rates climbed in the 1990's and reached historic highs in the past few years. In 1995, 16 percent of black men in their 20's who did not attend college were in jail or prison; by 2004, 21 percent were incarcerated. By their mid-30's, 6 in 10 black men who had dropped out of school had spent time in prison.

¶In the inner cities, more than half of all black men do not finish high school.

All of this points to a pretty fundamental social pathology that systematically excludes black men from full participation in society.

Ezra, you and your race-obsessed fellow lefties piss me off something terrible. There is a fact here. Not a definite fact but about as close as we can get to one within a science that's forced to conduct its arithmetic in the dark. That god-damn-close-to-a-fact is that there is such a thing as average racial differences in intelligence. If you would only accept this you would stop barking up bullshit trees in your supposed attempts to alleviate the suffering of people whose suffering you claim to be interested in alleviating.

There is some small amount of genuine racism out there. There are some few people who seriously dislike folk on account of their having different skin colors than they themselves do. BUT the vast majority of the racial ills that plague black america appear to be rooted in the fact that - as a community - they are less intelligent than other communities. This in no way accounts for ALL of their ills but MOST of their ills have their genesis in this fact. And I have no fucking idea why it's considered so evil to acknowledge it.

You know who commits more crimes than you and your family members? Poor people, that's fuckin who. You know who needs affirmative action to help get into universities? Children of poor people as well as less-than-terribly-intelligent people.

The fact that black people are a recognizable community of less-than-terribly-intelligent people (at their average) means that they stick out as people who need help in the cut-throat capitalism at whose altars we all worship. But they need it no more and no less than anyone else in the same predicament.

Lemme ask you a question. Michelle Obama seems to be a damn smart gal. Why then was she the recipient of affirmative action benefits (which does appear to be the case) - because she's fuckin black? She didn't need affirmative action and didn't deserve it. She was born with good brains and should have had to float through life gaining what those gifts could get her. why the hell should she be given a leg up over some trailer trash dumbass white kid?

You wanna see stats for who's in prison? Look at prisoners by income or by intelligence and you'll find the same insane disproportionates that you looked at with regards to blacks. But seriously now Ezra, you don't give a fuck about disadvantaged people, now do you? You have some liberal disease relating to color. Its causes are pretty simple to describe but I'm not interested in digging through the goo.

If you really cared for black people (the less intelligent ones who make up the majority that is, not the brilliant ones who breeze through life like some weightless jet) you would recognize that there is such a thing as intelligence and that people born with less of it (or with Aspergers, ADD or other psychological peculiarities) will flail and drown in the Nazistic (survival of the strongest) capitalistic system. They will suffer and suffer and SUFFER and commit crimes out of desperation and will die at a far earlier age than you will. If you cared for people less fortunate than yourself you would recognize this and cease pretending that the color of people's skin is the operative part of the equation. And when you did recognize this (assuming of course that you actually want to be good rather than just look good you would grab a pitchfork and march on the mansions.

Or at least work single-mindedly to refashion the US into the sort of society that Gandhi, Wells, Orwell and Einstein all pleaded for and were certain would exist worldwide by now.

Again, Ezra. Endless patter about 'racism' being the cause of blacks' difficulties rather than (at its root) an average strongly-lower intelligence (which afflicts a large percentage of whites too) that makes competition in the capitalistic system quite the fool's errand - is a red herring. It keeps the moneyed and empowered on their thrones, it moves black people but an inch forward and that inch is at the expense of poor and unintelligent non-black folk whose lives are made even more worthless.

I've said my piece.

mnuez
www.mnuez.blogspot.com

The above comment pretty much refutes itself, so I don't know that this is necessary... but....

You take a naive view towards the criminal justice system. People are in prison because they're criminals and the demographic make up of people in prison reflects the demographic make up of people who commit crimes in a relatively unproblematic way.

There's a really big problem with that argument (beyond the insane racist nonsense with which you prop it up). There are statistics available on the demographic break down of drug users. And somehow the demographic make up of the drug using population is not directly reflected in the population of people being arrested for using drugs.

Go figure.

Look at prisoners by income or by intelligence and you'll find the same insane disproportionates that you looked at with regards to blacks.

OK, I'll bite. Find me a income or intelligence grouping where 1/15 of all adult white males in that grouping are in prison.

mnuez raises the spectre of government sanctioned and promoted racism, something that no one here wishes to discuss. It's ugly and it's pervasive. So pervasive that the left has attempted to redefine racism to exclude this favored group to practice what is railed against by all in other groups.
I believe that the simple fact that Obama can, and does, get whites to vote for him will weaken the argument for the left that racism is as pervasive as ever.

It isn't, except for the black community who have jumped ship and stepped all over the Clintons to vote skin color.
Many here will stroke their chins and 'understand' this vote. Would they also understand if whites overtly did the same thing?

I think mnuez and El Viajero can go fuck themselves with iron sticks. I would rather spend a lifetime in prison with incarcerated blacks than one second with the pair of you racist fools.

Wowee. Isn't this place supposed to be a haven for latte-drinking netroots liberals?

"Post-racial" my big, brown ass.

I think mnuez and El Viajero can go fuck themselves...

LTR's statement attacking the messenger instead of the message clearly demonstrates that certain questions are not to be asked...that discussion of racism should be limited only to one group in their eyes, as if it doesn't exist in any other group.
The sad fact is that racism exists in all groups and the left's willingness to ignore this dynamic underscores their utter dishonesty.

Unless, of course, one believes that racism truly is a phenomenon of the white race only. Is LTR willing to make that assertion?

Are youto me this going to take down the racist post above????
Seems Ezra Klein favours hate racist mail on his blog.

EV,

If you're going to be going trolling around the internets spouting racist nonsense looking for people to engage your ideas on their merits, you're probably going to be disappointed.

You argue that the fact that blacks reflexively back Obama means that they are racist, but the fact that whites are willing to vote for him in large numbers means that there is no significant white racism anymore.

Obama did not have the support of the majority of African Americans when he started his campaign, he earned the support he does have in that community the way in which any politician does. By campaigning - doing outreach, addressing their concerns, etc. A look at the polling trends shows pretty clearly that they did not reflexively give him their support from the start because of his skin color.

Anyone who thinks liberals think today's America is just as racist as back when Thurmond was running as a Dixiecrat is an idiot who has never engaged a liberal in a thoughtful discussion of race in his life. The right seems obsessed with defining racism as something only black people do. Look at the obsession over Sharpton's role in accusing that firefighter of rape. He might have acted as he should have, but that is small potatoes compared to the War on Drugs and tens of thousands of black Floridians being falsely labeled convicts and not being able to vote in 2000.

The table shows that 1 in 36 hispanic men aged 18 or older are incarcerated. I wonder why the new Public Policy Institute of California study going around about low hispanic immigrant and mexican immigrant incarceration rates didn't mention that to give some context. The "1 in 36" statistic really gives the lie to the claim in the PPIC study that hispanic/mexican immigration lowers incarceration rates, since those immigrants will eventually have children (at far above replacement rates, no less) who are incarcerated at the extraordinarily high rate.

Here is a link to the PPIC study:
"Immigration: No Correlation With Crime"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20080227/us_time/immigrationnocorrelationwithcrime

Also, don't extraordinarily lower hispanic and black immigrant incarceration rates as compared with the latter generations give the lie to racial profiling claims as a cause of high incarceration rates? If all disparities are the fault of "the system" then "the system" is clearly biased against the native born of all races, and biased for immigrants of all races. The system even favors immigrant hispanics over native born whites, if incarceration rates are any guide.

If you think it's all the systems fault, then I await your denunciation of our immigrant supremicist system that discriminates with bated breath.

Here's novel idea:

If anyone is incarcerated that is innocent, work to release them

If they did the crime, they should do the time and let the chips fall where they may.