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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