John Hinderaker:
In May 2020, the world was turned upside down when a massively-overdosed George Floyd died on a Minneapolis street while waiting for an ambulance that could have saved his life. The narrative that Minnesota’s criminal justice system was biased against blacks immediately took hold, encouraged by Minnesota’s own state and local officials.
In response to that narrative, states and local jurisdictions across America, and even around the world, enacted “reforms” that handcuffed law enforcement and favored criminals. “Defund the police” became a mantra, and Black Lives Matter, the source of many claims of law enforcement’s discrimination against blacks, raked in tens of millions from corporate donors.
But was the narrative of racial discrimination true? Liberals supported it by comparing the percentage of blacks in the general population of states like Minnesota against the percentage who are caught up in the criminal justice system through arrest, prosecution, conviction and ultimately incarceration. The fact that blacks are over-represented in the system—indisputably true—was taken as irrefutable evidence that our criminal justice system is racist.
There is, of course, another obvious possibility—that blacks are over-represented as criminal defendants and prison inmates precisely because they are over-represented as perpetrators of serious crimes. Over the years, Heather Mac Donald has been especially prominent in pointing out this inconvenient truth.
# posted by Ranger @ 7:40 PM
