Quoth Kerry:
“We’ve got more African Americans in jail than we do in college. That’s unacceptable,” he added.
Stefan Sharkansky at SharkBlog fact-checked Kerry’s French ass, and found it sadly lacking:
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.
James Taranto at Best of the Web also busted Kerry on this whopper, nearly a month ago. But Kerry was still repeating the “more in prison” line in a speech on Monday–and the quote was repeated without challenge by (wait for it), Reuters.
Is there a print or television media outlet in this country (BOTW is, of course, Internet-only) willing to challenge Kerry’s ugly and dishonest race-baiting?
Not yet, apparenlty.
(Nearly forgot–via Pejmanesque.)
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