{"id":68142,"date":"2015-04-28T14:54:55","date_gmt":"2015-04-28T22:54:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=68142"},"modified":"2023-09-12T04:36:18","modified_gmt":"2023-09-12T12:36:18","slug":"driving-while-black","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=68142","title":{"rendered":"Driving While Black"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A HREF=\"http:\/\/nypost.com\/2015\/03\/09\/ferguson-fake-out-justice-departments-bogus-report\/\">Economist John Lott writes for the New York Post March 9, 2015<\/a>: Addressing the nation from Selma, Ala., on Saturday, President Obama said that while racism may be \u201cno longer endemic,\u201d as it was 50 years ago, his Justice Department\u2019s report on Ferguson shows that the \u201cnation\u2019s racial history still casts its long shadow upon us.\u201d<br \/>\nSorry: The Justice report doesn\u2019t prove disparate treatment, let alone discrimination.<br \/>\nIn fact, it looks more like something ginned up to distract from the embarrassing fact that Justice (in another report released the same day) wound up fully validating the findings of the Ferguson grand jury.<br \/>\nRacism is serious, and those engaging in it should be shamed \u2014 but we should have real evidence before accusing others of it. And every one of the Justice report\u2019s main claims of evidence of discrimination falls short.<br \/>\nStarting with the primary numerical claim. The report notes on Page 4: \u201cFerguson\u2019s law-enforcement practices overwhelmingly impact African-Americans.<br \/>\n\u201cData collected by the Ferguson Police Department from 2012 to 2014 shows that African-Americans account for 85 percent of vehicle stops, 90 percent of citations, and 93 percent of arrests made by FPD officers, despite comprising only 67 percent of Ferguson\u2019s population.\u201d<br \/>\nThose statistics don\u2019t prove racism, because blacks don\u2019t commit traffic offenses at the same rate as other population groups.<br \/>\nThe Bureau of Justice Statistics\u2019 2011 Police-Public Contact Survey indicates that, nationwide, blacks were 31 percent more likely than whites to be pulled over for a traffic stop.<br \/>\nFerguson is a black-majority town. If its blacks were pulled over at the same rate as blacks nationally, they\u2019d account for 87.5 percent of traffic stops.<br \/>\nIn other words, the numbers actually suggest that Ferguson police may be slightly less likely to pull over black drivers than are their national counterparts. They certainly don\u2019t show that Ferguson is a hotbed of racism.<br \/>\nCritics may assert that that \u201c31 percent more likely\u201d figure simply shows that racism is endemic to police forces nationwide.<br \/>\nHmm: The survey also reveals that men are 42 percent more likely than women to be pulled over for traffic stops. Should we conclude that police are biased against men, or that men drive more recklessly?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Economist John Lott writes for the New York Post March 9, 2015: Addressing the nation from Selma, Ala., on Saturday, President Obama said that while racism may be \u201cno longer endemic,\u201d as it was 50 years ago, his Justice Department\u2019s &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=68142\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blacks"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68142"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":151755,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68142\/revisions\/151755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}