Via Colin
Black people and white people smoke the same amount of pot. But black people are arrested four times more often.
Everybody knows that. Too bad it’s not true.
This Holy Grail of Critical Race Theory was trotted out in June by the
Washington Post (with nine charts!), the
New York Times, the ACLU and tons of others as proof positive of Institutional Racism.
Critical Race Theory says racism is everywhere. And permanent. And
White Supremacy is responsible for the differences among races in
education, incarceration, income, health and everything else.
They teach it in more than 200 school districts across the country.
They repeat it on talk radio and MSNBC. Colleges devote entire semesters
to it.
The message is clear, says one commentator at the
Washington Post
web site: “When you see the crime report next time, you know WHY the
stats are black. Crime occurs at the same or higher rates in other
communities, but the policing and prosecution is higher in the black
communities.”
As I write this, a white Critical Race Theory professor from LaSalle
University is saying the same thing on the black Philadelphia radio
station, WURD. The host, Nick Taliafero, is rolling in it like catnip
and congratulating the professor for his superior insight into white
racism.
But before we open the prison doors, let’s ask two questions:
How do the professors and big city newspapers know that blacks and
whites smoke pot at the same rate? A federal agency told them.
How do they know?
They ask. They do not test, just ask. And they assemble their answers
every year in a report called the National Household Survey on Drug
Abuse and Health.
The buzz word for this kind of research is “self-reporting.” And as
you might guess, this research is itself the subject of a lot of
research. And a lot of scientists have found that self-reporting on drug
use is not reliable. Especially for one particular group of people:
African Americans.
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