That Kerry Boy Lied!!!!!!!!!!!
John Kerry:
"We've got more African Americans in jail than we do in college. That's unacceptable," he added.
In fact, it seems that there are more than twice as many African Americans in college than in jail.
U.S. Census Bureau (2000): African Americans in college: 2,224,181
U.S. DoJ Office of Justice Programs: "Prison and Jail Inmates at MidYear 2003" (p.11): "Table 13. Number of inmates in state or federal prisons or local jails" -- Black Americans in jail: 899,200.
Those nearly 900,000 incarcerated African Americans still represent a tragic waste of lives and potential. But fortunately, things are not nearly as gloomy as John Kerry wants to believe they are.
It's possible that Kerry is basing his claims on other data, but it would be interesting to learn what his sources are.
UPDATE: As a commenter notes below, this Kerry howler was already debunked a month ago. But then why is Kerry still making the same claim today? What kind of an echo chamber is his campaign that none of the staff read Kerry's sharpest critics? Not a good sign for those who look to Kerry to improve intelligence capabilities or cure government agencies of their dysfunctional groupthink culture.
FOLLOW-UP: A deeper examination of census data reveals the surprising (for me, at least) observation that blacks are proportionately better represented in college than whites are.
FOLLOW-UP 2: Jesse Jackson is also repeating the canard that "there are more African Americans in jail than in college"
FOLLOW-UP 3: Even the qualified claim that "there are more African American men in jail than in college" doesn't seem to hold water either.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at July 12, 2004 08:18 PM
Comments
I've never understood people bringing up college and prison together, in any context. Usually, it's "college is so much cheaper," as if to suggest we could solve the crime problem by sending convicts to college.
Posted by: Xrlq on July 12, 2004 08:50 PM
This is a repeat of the same idiocy spewed some months ago by JFKerry(D) himself.
How convenient for JFKerry(D) to have so much confidence in the NewsMedia's compliance with his propaganda?
opinionjournal.com
For TBOTW's take |
