History doesn't matter when it comes to racism. Racism is Racism. Saying asians are smart or good at math because they are asian is a for of racism. You are treating them different because of their race. Any other white person been called a "cracker"? I know I have. That is racism. People assuming I am racist because I am white... thats racism too.

My ancestors were kicked out of their home and forced into america. They were white but so what? People treated the Irish horrible in America back when they first settled here. Thats racism too. Don't think just because we are white we are all the same race. Would you say that Chinese, Japanese, Thai, etc are all the same race because they are asian?

Your posts are some of the most racist I have seen on this forum. All of you saying that white people are the most racist are BEING racist by making that accusation! LOL!
By saying WHITE people are the most racist is a racist remark.
You people crack me up. LOL

TRUTH!!!!!

Part I of this article appeared in the May 5, 2005 issue of BC.

"It's the crime stupid!"

Thus read the first line of an e-mail I received a few weeks ago.

This particular love note came from someone who had run across an old article of mine in which I had discussed racism in the criminal justice system: specifically the racially disparate rates of incarceration for persons of color, over and above the rates for whites.

In this one sentence, all the weight of white America's racial anxiety and hostility was poured out into my web browser, the implication being that there was no racism in the justice system, but rather, that the position of African Americans within that system was merely a function of disproportionate criminality. If blacks would just straighten up, everything would be fine.

As with white America's denial of racism in labor markets, the refusal to believe that bias plays a role in policing, prosecution or incarceration is commonplace. Although white Americans are more willing to accept the possibility of discrimination in the justice system than in other areas – such as education, housing or employment – still, two-thirds according to one poll insist that blacks and Latinos are treated equally in terms of law enforcement in their communities.

Would that the evidence supported such optimism. Fact is, from the earliest stages of policing to the point of being jailed, evidence of racial bias is clear and overwhelming.

According to a Justice Department report from February 2001, police are more than twice as likely to search vehicles driven by blacks after pulling them over, even though whites, when searched, are more than twice as likely to be in possession of illegal items, such as narcotics. Latino drivers were between 2 and 2.26 times more likely to be personally searched or to have their cars searched by police, even though they are less likely than whites to use drugs and thus possess them at any given moment.

In New York City, stop-and-frisk searches by police highlight the unfair treatment to which people of color are subjected. Even after controlling for differential crime rates and the population demographics of a given neighborhood, black and Latino residents of New York are far more likely to be stopped by police than whites.

In mostly white parts of town, blacks are 2.25 times more likely to be stopped and searched on suspicion of weapons possession and three times more likely on suspicion of having committed a violent crime, relative to their arrest rates for those crimes. In other words, the fact that blacks have higher rates of offending in those categories does not explain the higher stoppage rates. The above-mentioned disproportions reflect the level of unequal treatment that remains after factoring in all the non-racial reasons that could explain searches.

In heavily black parts of town, one would obviously expect most persons stopped by police to be black, as this would merely reflect local population demographics and probable crime rates in the area. But once again, even after controlling for those factors, blacks in mostly African American neighborhoods are still more than twice as likely as whites to be stopped by police on suspicion of weapons possession or the commission of a violent crime.

Perhaps most telling, police appear more likely to stop innocent blacks than whites. For every 4.6 whites stopped in 1997-1998, for example, police were able to make one arrest, meaning that roughly 22 percent of the time their suspicions were justified. Even this is not a very impressive percentage but it is far better than that for blacks. Police had to stop 7.3 blacks before making a single arrest, meaning that only 14 percent of the time was their suspicion justified. In all, whites stopped were more likely to actually be guilty of having committed a crime and yet the NYPD continued to disproportionately stop people of color.

Bias hardly ends at the point of police arrest or harassment, however. Black incarceration has exploded several times over, even while black crime has plummeted in the past twenty years. (And no, this is not because the incarceration itself has caused the black crime rate to plummet: crime has dropped just as much if not more in states with less punitive anti-crime tendencies).

Interestingly, while black and Latino crime, as a share of all crime is hardly different than in 1964, the share of persons incarcerated who are persons of color has risen from one-third to two-thirds in that period, while the share who are white has been cut in half.

Comparing crime data from the FBI (which includes only those crimes reported to law enforcement), with Justice Department data on criminal victimization (culled from victim reports, and which include crimes not reported to police), makes clear that black crime rates cannot explain the overrepresentation of African Americans in the justice system.

Although black crime rates are higher than those for whites (for reasons that studies indicate are due to socioeconomic conditions disproportionately faced by blacks, like crowded housing, extreme poverty, and community disintegration), there is still evidence that blacks are arrested more often, and whites less often, than would be expected based on rates of offending.

In 2001, for example, for all violent crimes, including simple assault, blacks committed twenty-eight percent of the total, according to the Justice Department. Yet, African Americans comprised thirty-four percent of all persons arrested for those crimes that year, meaning that blacks were arrested at a rate that was twenty percent above their rate of offending. Indeed, if blacks and whites had been arrested for these violent crimes at a
rate that was equal to their rate of committing them, tens of thousands fewer blacks, and tens of thousands more whites would have been arrested for violent crime in 2001.

Comparing racial arrest data with racial offending data for 2001 reveals that for every 100 violent crimes committed by blacks, roughly thirty were arrested, while for every 100 violent crimes committed by whites, about 26 were arrested, meaning that white offenders were about fifteen percent more likely to get away with their offenses than black offenders.

In addition to black arrest rates being higher than black offending rates would justify, there is also racial disparity in terms of who gets imprisoned and who doesn't. In New York State, according to one recent study, if blacks arrested were treated the same as whites for the same crimes, with the same priors, in the same jurisdictions, one-third of all blacks in the state sent to jail or prison annually would have been spared such a sentence. This amounts to nearly 4500 blacks sent to jail or prison each year in New York who would not have been incarcerated had they merely been white. In Pennsylvania, even when prior records and severity of a given crime are the same, white male offenders between the ages of 18-29 are thirty-eight percent less likely to be imprisoned than similar black males.

Not only are blacks more likely to be arrested and imprisoned than their crime rates would justify, but whites are much less likely to wind up in prison despite their share of serious crime. More than half of all violent crimes are committed by non-Hispanic whites, but only a quarter of today's prison population is white, according to the Justice Department. Blacks, on the other hand, commit a little more than one-fourth of all violent crime (according to victim recollections), but comprise nearly half the jail and prison population.

Racial bias seems especially evident in the case of juvenile offenders. One study in Florida, for example, found that even when prior records and severity of offense were taken into consideration, equally criminal black and Latino youth were twice as likely to be confined in a juvenile facility or transferred to adult court for more serious disposition. Nationally, black youth are forty-eight times more likely than whites to be incarcerated for a first-time drug offense, even when all factors surrounding the crime are the same.

Bias is especially evident with regard to non-violent, drug related offenses. African Americans, though only thirteen percent of drug users and sixteen percent of dealers, according to federal data, comprise more than a third of all drug arrests, and when convicted of low-level drug dealing, are considerably more likely to be sent to prison and for longer sentences than comparable whites.

Although blacks and Latinos are ninety percent of persons incarcerated nationally for drugs, they represent only twenty-three percent of drug users, according to the most recent federal data. Meanwhile, whites, who are between seventy percent and three-fourths of users, comprise less than ten percent of those incarcerated for drugs.

In all, black drug users are nearly twenty times more likely than anyone else to spend time in prison for their use, and in fifteen states, the rate of black incarceration for drug offenses is anywhere from 20-57 times greater than for whites, despite equal or greater rates of drug law violations by whites. Amazingly, when all other factors surrounding an arrest are the same, black cocaine offenders are twice as likely to be sent to prison and will serve, on average, forty months more than white offenders.

The unequal prosecution and sentencing of drug offenders has been so severe that as many as a half-million blacks may have been imprisoned since the late 1980s, above and beyond the numbers one could have expected based on their rates of drug offenses.

Likewise, whites receive racial privilege in this process, since our own criminality is less likely to result in punishment, or even detection. Examining the magnitude of these privileges, just with regard to the war on drugs is instructive.

In 2000, there were roughly 750,000 arrests for drug possession in the U.S. If arrest rates had mirrored drug usage rates for that year, roughly seventy-six percent of those busted would have been non-Hispanic whites, while 13.5 percent would have been black. This would have translated into roughly 570,000 whites and 100,000 blacks arrested for drug possession that year.

But in truth, the numbers looked nothing like this at all. In 2000, approximately 260,000 African Americans were busted for possession: 2.6 times more than the number of blacks who would have been arrested had arrest rates followed usage rates. Although data indicates that whites were a little over 64 percent of all persons arrested for drugs in 2000, this figure obscures the fact that those whom the government classifies as "Hispanic" are rolled in with whites for the purpose of state level drug arrest figures, meaning that the arrest rate for persons typically viewed as "white" (at least by other whites) is far lower.

Once Hispanic whites are excluded from drug arrest figures for whites as a whole, even using a conservative methodology, there were no more than 325,000 possession arrests for whites in 2000: this represents a quarter-million fewer whites arrested than would have been the case had arrest rates mirrored usage rates.

That's a quarter-million whites able to blaze up or snort coke in their suburban homes, office suites, dorm rooms or fraternity houses, safe and secure in the knowledge that the drug warriors will not likely be dropping by for a visit.

Interestingly, even if whites do get busted, and go to jail for a drug offense, their future prospects will remain far brighter than those for the average black man in America. As one recent study in Milwaukee discovered, when equally qualified white and black men are sent out to look for jobs, and half of each group claim to have served eighteen months in prison for possession of drugs with intent to distribute (while the other half of each group claim to have no criminal record), those whites who claim to have done time are slightly more likely to get a callback for an interview than blacks who claim to be crime-free.

And thus the cycle perpetuates itself, with worse job prospects only increasing the likelihood of criminal behavior, which will then be used to" justify" harsher criminal justice treatment.

While it's true that the left has often made a mess of the case for racism in the justice system - for example, by fuming that blacks are only twelve percent of the population, and yet represent roughly half of all persons incarcerated (a point that means nothing, since incarceration would logically mirror crime rates, not population demographics) - the fact remains that even with regard to actual offending rates, especially for drugs, blacks are over-arrested, over-prosecuted and over-incarcerated.

In other words, it isn't the crime stupid; it's the color.

Tim Wise is the author of two new books: White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (Soft Skull Press, 2005), and Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White (Routledge, 2005). Footnotes for this article can be obtained from the author, at timjwise@msn.com. His website is www.timwise.org.

The sad thing is that racism towards whites is not only ignored but accepted. Some white people even believe they deserve it, due to what our race did to African Americans in the past LOL!

Yea I get what it's like to be hated based of skin color and NO ONE care. NOT EVEN MY OWN RACE.

If I had the money I would sue him for everything he is worth for making that remark.What's worse is all the white people who continue to listen to the guy. Where is your sense of self dignity and respect when you support the man who makes his living hating you?

http://www.colorofcrime.com/colorofcrime2005.pdf

Are Police Biased?
For someone to go to prison, four things have to
happen. The police must arrest him for a felony,
charges must be filed, he must plead or be found
guilty, and a judge must sentence him to prison.
Racial bias could enter at any stage.
Blacks are certainly more likely to be arrested
than other groups. According to the Uniform Crime
Reports (UCR), blacks accounted for 27 percent of
arrests in 2002, even though they were only 13 percent
of the population, whereas whites and Hispanics
(W&H) accounted for 71 percent of arrests, but
were 81 percent of the population. This means that
when all crime categories are added together, blacks
were more than twice as likely to be arrested as
W&H. Blacks were four times more likely to be arrested
for violent crimes, and no fewer than eight
times more likely to be arrested for robbery.4
Many people believe blacks are arrested so often
because police target them unfairly. Brian Nichols,
the Atlanta gunman, seems to think police are arresting
blacks en masse whether they are guilty or
not. Many local authorities have passed laws to correct
what they believe to be police bias.5 Police argue
that they are targeting criminals, not non-whites,
and that they arrest large numbers of minorities only
because minorities are committing a large number
of crimes.6
The best test of police bias is to compare an independent
and objective count of the percentage of
criminals who are black with the percentage of arrested
suspects who are black. If they are about the
same—if, for example, we can determine that half
the robbers are black, and we find that about half
the robbers the police arrest are black—it is good
evidence police are not targeting blacks unfairly.
But what information do we have about the race
of criminals other than arrest reports? The best independent
source is the National Crime Victimization
Survey (NCVS). For the most recent report, the
government surveyed 149,040 people about crimes
of which they had been victims during 2003. They
described the crimes in detail, including the race of
the perpetrator, and whether they reported the crimes
to the police. The survey sample, which is massive
by polling standards, was carefully chosen to be representative
of the entire US population. By comparing
information about races of perpetrators with racial
percentages in arrest data from the Uniform
Crime Reports (UCR) we can determine if the proportion
of criminals the police arrest who are black
is equivalent to the proportion of criminals the victims
say were black.
UCR and NCVS reports for the years 2001
through 2003 offer the most recent data on crimes
suffered by victims, and arrests for those crimes.
Needless to say, many crimes are not reported to the
police, and the number of arrests the police make is
smaller still. An extrapolation from NCVS data gives
a good approximation of the actual number of crimes
committed in the United States every year. The
NCVS tells us that between 2001 and 2003, there
were an estimated 1.8 million robberies, for example,
of which 1.1 million were reported to the
police. The UCR tell us that in the same period police
made 229,000 arrests for robbery. Police cannot
make an arrest if no one tells them about a crime,
so the best way to see if police are biased is to compare
the share of offenders who are black in crimes
reported to the police, and the share of those arrested
who are black.
Figure 1 compares offender information to arrest
information for all the crimes included in the
NCVS. For example, 55 percent of offenders in all
robberies were black, 55.4 percent of robbers in robberies
reported to police were black, and 54.1 percent
of arrested robbers were black.
For most crimes, police are arresting fewer blacks
than would be expected from the percentage of
criminals the victims tell us are black (rape/sexual
assault is the only exception). In the most extreme
case, burglary, victims tell police that 45 percent of
the perpetrators were black, but only 28 percent of
the people arrested for that crime were black. If all the NCVS crimes are taken together, blacks who
committed crimes that were reported to the police
were 26 percent less likely to be arrested than people
of other races who committed the same crimes. 7
These figures lend no support to the charge that
police arrest innocent blacks, or at least pursue them
with excessive zeal. In fact, they suggest the opposite,
that police are more determined to arrest non black
rather than black criminals. 8
Five of the NCVS crimes in Figure 1 are violent:
rape, sexual assault (threat of rape and assault short
of rape), robbery, simple assault, and aggravated
assault (assault with a weapon or that causes severe
injury). Ninety-six percent of the time, the victim
had a good enough look at the criminal to determine
his race, so the data on the percentage of violent
offenders who are black are very reliable.
What about property crimes? Victims usually do
not see thieves, so survey participants could identify
race only seven percent of the time. The percentages
in Figure 1 for burglary, car theft, and larceny
are therefore based on the assumption that victims
would be no more or less likely to know the
race of a thief if he were black than if he were of
any other race.
It would be useful to be able to make offender/
arrest comparisons for criminals of all races, but the
way the government collects data makes this impossible.
As we noted previously, the UCR do not
distinguish between arrests of Hispanics and whites.
The NCVS asks crime victims to describe perpetrators
only as black, white or “other.” Some victims
put Hispanics in the “other” category, 9 along with
Asians, and Indians. Blacks are therefore the only
group the UCR and NCVS treat consistently.
Figure 1 also shows that the black share of crimes
reported to the police is larger than the black share
of all crimes, reported or not (rape/sexual assault is
again the only exception). In other words, more
crime victims report crimes to police when the criminal
is black than when he is of another race. Why?
NCVS victims are more likely to call the police
about more serious crimes within the same category—
for example, if a robber had a gun or a knife.
According to NCVS victims, blacks are nearly three
times more likely than criminals of other races to
use a gun and more than twice as likely to use a
knife. Therefore, even within the same crime categories,
blacks are committing more serious offenses—
which makes it even more striking that
police are less likely to arrest them than criminals
who are not black.
Finally, Figure 1 indirectly shows something else:
how much more likely blacks are than people of
other races to commit certain crimes. Although
blacks are 13 percent of the population, they commit
a far larger percentage of every crime included
in the NCVS. They are eight times more likely than people of other races to rob someone, for example,
and 5.5 times more likely to steal a car.
The National Incident-Based Reporting System
(NIBRS) is a different collection of data that can be
used to compare the races of criminals reported to
the police to the races of suspects the police arrest.
In 2002, the most recent year for NIBRS data, 4,726
police agencies in 23 states reported all crimes
known to the police, the race of the offender if
known, and the races of all people arrested. These
data represented 19 percent of the US population,
and 15 percent of US crime. Like the previous reports,
NIBRS does not distinguish between whites
and Hispanics.
Figure 2 compares the percentage of criminals
victims and witnesses say were black with the percentage
of arrested suspects who were black. More
often than not, blacks made up a higher percentage
of offenders than those arrested, and overall, black
offenders were nine percent less likely to be arrested
than white and Hispanic (W&H) offenders who
committed crimes in the same categories. Once
again, this is the opposite of what we would expect
if police are unfairly targeting blacks.
Other racial comparisons show that Asians/Pacific
Islanders were just as likely as W&H to be arrested,
but Indians were 20 percent more likely to
be arrested than W&H.10 The data on Indians are
intriguing but there is such a small number of Indian
offenders in NIBRS that it may be risky to draw
conclusions about police bias.

/makes a note for future references/

I know why certain people here can say whatever hateful stuff they want to say.

No white person in these here United States has a grasp on discrimination and being on the receiving end of hatred in the same context as non whites in this country.

No matter how much hatred they spew out of their mouth to try to make others believe they do have that kind of understanding.

America has always favored whites over everyone else and we are not at equality yet.

I disagree. I'd say that in many ways, in many places, America favors wealthy blacks over poor whites.

Money whores probably could care less about race.

As far as police and crimes, I don't understand why people are treating this like its an all or nothing thing.

I mean, come on...isn't it self evident that on the whole (not individual cops) police have a racial bias? Isn't it also obvious that the judicial system favors the wealthy, and that black suspects are more likely to be poor (therefore more likely to go to jail)? Isn't it also obvious that we have large populations of poor inner city blacks? And that these are high crime areas, where young black people learn to commit crimes from other young black people?

I don't trust statistics whose basis I haven't very carefully examined (which takes time and energy....) but I would not be at all surprised if black people perform a disproportionate amount of the robberies...I would be surprised if it were otherwise. This is not racism. Its something that is either true, or isn't. We should fight racism, but should we also deny reality?

If it is true, it is not genetic. If its true, then it is not really a matter of race, it would be a matter of culture and economics.

Is there anyone you don't hate other than the abused African Americans?

Is there a term for judging people based of their wealth?

Is Oprah a money whore too? What about all the other rich black people? Are they money whores too? Or is it just the rich whites?

You don't even understand what I write.

What the hell are you talking about?

A money whore is someone who places money above even god in life. They live to be in the money, around money, etc...

Sometimes it is such a waste of good typing.

Whose reality? A black person's or a white persons'? There is a big difference in this country.

You are right in economics having an effect along with racial discrimination and each personal experience.

While we may not have certain words censored right now, they are still against the forum rules. Please remember this.

I tried that one already. These people are convinced that its a white versus black world. To be honest i had no idea people still thought about things this was still with all of the advantages minorities have OVER whites when it comes to access to social services and federal funding. You can show them the truth in black and white and they won't even read it. All you have to do is be poor and live around crime to see the facts are true.

There is so much more than racism, there is nationalism/xenophobia, religious bias, disability bias, economic or social bias, and sexual orientation bias, to say otherwise is to have your head in the sand. People fear and judge those who are different than themselves.

well that's what happens when people have freedom thay can do say and be whatever the hell to who ever thay want but you should not judge a single race based on the actions of the ones that committed such racist acts against you because look im white and i can it's my honest opinion that all races discriminate against each other to a point so really the best possible solution is working on trying to get past the only real difference witch is the color of our skin