Ron Paul and America's Alleged Racism

Ron Paul and America's Alleged Racism
By Dennis Prager
1/17/2012

In the Republican presidential candidates’ debate on January 7, Congressman Ron Paul said: “I’m the only one up here . . . that understands true racism in this country is in the judicial system.”

He said this racism has to do with “enforcing the drug laws,”and then added: “They [blacks] get the death penalty way disproportionately.”

Two groups immediately defended Paul – his supporters, and commentators on the Left. The former support anything Paul says; and the Left supports anything that Paul says that portrays America as ugly (see, for example, the defense of Paul by Left-wing USAToday columnist Dwayne Wickham, whose columns are regularly devoted to how much blacks suffer from American racism).

Just last month,Paul was asked by a representative of an organization (WeAreChange) that holds the government responsible for 9-11, “Why won’t you come out about the truth about 9/11?”

Paul’s response: “Because I can’t handle the controversy: I have the IMF, the Federal Reserve to deal with, the IRS to deal with.Because I just have more-too many things on my plate. Because I just have too much to do.” It is readily available on YouTube.

Whatever the implication of his cryptic response, when Paul is confronted by the mainstream media he denies that he believes the American government was involved in the 9-11 attacks. But what is undeniable is that Paul, like much of the Left, holds America largely responsible for 9-11 because of its foreign policy: its “occupying” countries all over the world, the sanctions on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq which Paul and the Left claim killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, the injustices against Palestinians that America has supported (through its support of Israel), etc.

He mocks the idea that the primary reason for 9-11 was that people of great evil attacked a very good country – because this is what the evil do, just as they did on the December 7, 1941 when the Japanese regime attacked Pearl Harbor.

It does seem that the Texas congressman’s description of the American justice system as racist is part of Paul’s generally dark view of America.

The claim that America disproportionately executes blacks is a falsehood, disseminated on virtually every Left-wing website from the ACLU to all the anti-death penalty sites. The only way it can be regarded as true is if the disproportion is in relation to the entire population of the country: Blacks make up about 12% of the population and since 1976 have been about 35% of those executed for murder. But this is a statistic that tells no truth because it is meaningless in terms of determining alleged racial bias.

This is very easy to prove. Males make up about 50% of the American population but make up about 99% of those executed. Is the American justice system wildly anti-male?

Of course, not.The statistic that matters in assessing bias in executions is the proportion of murderers of a given group that is executed, not the group’s proportion of the entire population.

And, here, it is clear that blacks are actually under-represented in executions.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, an anti-death penalty organization, between 1976 and January 2012, 441 blacks (35% of the total) and 717 whites (55% of the total) were executed. Given that blacks committed more than half the murders during that time (52% vs. 46% by whites), if we are to assess racial bias based on proportionality of murderers executed, the system is biased against whites, not blacks.

Because this fact is both obvious and irrefutable, virtually none of the anti-death penalty sites note it. Instead they focus on the race of murder victims and even the race of prosecutors – in other words, the race of just about everyone except those convicted of murder.

It was bad enough for America and for moral clarity when Ron Paul’s views on American imperialism and systemic racism were confined to the Left. That about twenty percent of Republicans believe such things about America makes one anxious about the future of this country, not to mention about the eternal battle against evil.
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To read another article by Dennis Prager, click here.
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To read another article about Ron Paul, click here.