What, me worry about the facts?
Posted on 02/27/2008 6:47:55 PM PST by kristinn
We have more work to do when more young black men languish in prison than attend colleges and universities across America."
--Barack Obama, NAACP forum, July 12, 2007
The Washington Post has reported repeatedly about Barack Hussein Obama falsely stating that more young black men are in prison than in college. Obama has ignored the facts when presented to his campaign by The Post.
The Post reported on August 4, 2007:
In 2005, according to the Census Bureau, there were 864,000 black men in college. According to Justice Department statistics, there were 802,000 in federal and state prisons and jails...
Between the ages of 18 and 24, however, black men in college outnumber those incarcerated by 4 to 1.
While the number of black men behind bars is high, it does not exceed those in higher learning, especially among the 18-24 age group.
Obama cynically plays the race card with this myth, smearing young black men as both victims of a racist society and more prone to commit crimes than earn an education.
The Post is to be applauded for their lonely fight in trying to set the record straight.
The Post first went after Obama on this falsehood on October 3, 2007 in their Fact Checker blog:
According to 2005 Census Bureau statistics, the male African-American population of the United States aged between 18 and 24 numbered 1,896,000. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 106,000 African-Americans in this age group were in federal or state prisons at the end of 2005. See table 10 of this report. If you add the numbers in local jail (measured in mid-2006), you arrive at a grand total of 193,000 incarcerated young Black males, or slightly over 10 percent.
According to the same census data, 530,000 of these African-American males, or twenty eight percent, were enrolled in colleges or universities (including two-year-colleges) in 2005. That is five times the number of young black men in federal and state prisons and two and a half times the total number incarcerated. If you expanded the age group to include African-American males up to thirty or thirty five, the college attendees would still outnumber the prisoners.
Michael Dobbs of The Post wrote on December 14, 2007 in the print edition of his being rebuffed by the Obama campaign on his efforts to get them to correct the record:
WHAT HE GOT WRONG: "I don't want to wake up four years from now and discover that we still have more young black men in prison than in college."
-- Barack Obama, rally in Harlem, Nov. 29
Obama has repeated this false claim to predominantly African American audiences, even after The Washington Post pointed out the mistake to his campaign. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 106,000 African American men ages 18 to 24 were in federal or state prisons at the end of 2005. An additional 87,000 were temporarily held in local jails in mid-2006. According to 2005 census data, 530,000 African American men in this age group were in college.
The Post's Richard Cohen wrote about this in a column published January 1, 2008 entitled The Mendacity of Hope:
Yet it is something Barack Obama said that bothers me most of all because Obama is a new kind of politician. He is supposed to be coolly authentic.
What concerns me is the lie or fib or misstatement -- call it what you want -- involved in Obama's assertion that more young black men are in prison than in college. It is a shocking statistic -- and it is wrong. But when The Post's lonesome but formidable truth squad, Michael Dobbs, brought this to the attention of the Obama campaign, he not only got the brushoff but the assertion was later repeated.
Obama repeated the lie in Prince George's County, Maryland on February 11, 2008. From The Washington Post:
"We are at a defining moment in our history," Obama said, with 47 million people without healthcare, students going into life-long debt to pay for college, black men going to prison in greater numbers than going to college, young people unable to compete in the international economy and Americans losing hope in the their dreams.
"We cannot afford to wait," he said to the cheering crowd.
The Post's syndicated columnist Eugene Robinson softly noted in his column published February 25, 2008 that Obama is not telling the truth about this matter:
We in the media spend a lot of time and energy covering African-American dysfunction, and with good reason. Far too many young black men are in prison (although Obama is wrong when he says more are in jail than college).
What does it say about a man that he would smear his own race to obtain the presidency? Perhaps it's not so surprising since Barack Hussein Obama has been smearing his own country to obtain the presidency.
Not enough popcorn in the whole world for this.
Is this a headline or an opinion? Shouldn’t we distinguish between the two, I mean, that is, if the “new media” is to be any different than the “old media?”
Some people see the glass half empty instead of half full. The productive of society never get the attention that the losers do. Plus productive bruthas don’t need Obamarama and Hellary so why would they talk about them!
But apparently, they don’t mind it.
bump
http://www.freedomsenemies.com/_more/obama.htm
Barak Obama is 50% Caucasian, 43.75% Arab, and only 6.25% Negro-African. He doesn't have the lawful 12.5% Negro-African to legally claim to be African-American. Barak Obama is ARAB-AMERICAN.
http://www.masnet.org/prof_personality.asp?id=1508 http://www.bufford.politicalgateway.com/main/columns/read.html?col=737 http://www.themidnightsun.org/?p=1613 http://biz.yahoo.com/ibd/080115/issues.html?.v=1 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/08/wkenya308.xml http://kennethelamb.blogspot.com/2008/02/barak-obama-questions-about-ethnic.html http://www.amconmag.com/2007/2007_03_12/feature.html http://www.newswithviews.com/Ryter/jon212.htm http://barackobamacandidate.org/ http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2007/3/28/142319.shtml
From an email from someone who returned to the States on Feb 11 this year: “We were asked everywhere about the Presidential race in America. There was great interest. The Jews came up to us and asked us many questions. They said they do not want the Clintons again. They warned us that Obama is a Muslim, not a Christian. In Egypt, the Arabs said the same thing to us; they said Obama is Muslim and they are amazed that Americans would consider electing a Muslim President of America!!
I would hazard a guess that virtually all the black men (and white men, and all the other colors of the rainbow) are in jail because they deserve to either be dead but are in a state with no death penalty, or because they deserve to be in jail. There is a small percentage of folks that are framed and in jail, or are the wrong person. But a very small percentage, IMO.
And from stats I recently read, crimes committed against blacks is 92% of the time from another black person, not a white person. Black on black crime is an extremely huge problem that nobody talks about. It’s not white people shooting up black people. It’s other blacks. If Obama is complaining about so many blacks in jail, he ought to start pleading with his fellow black brothers and sisters to stop killing each other.
Good post, Kristinn. Haven’t ‘seen’ you in a while, good to know you’re still here!
Perhaps you should send Bill O’Reilly a copy of this info. Seems O’Reilly doesn’t think it’s a big deal that Farrakhan ‘sort of ‘ endorsed Obama. Wonder what O’Reilly would think if Pres Bush was endorsed by the Aryan Nation or belonged to a Church that had a White Value system?
Maybe Osama is an Islamic Arab that’s why.
Barak [CENSORED] Obama gets a free ride when he is light on the details.
Why didn’t Tim Russert ask him about this?
You can be an Arab without being a Muslim.
I disagree.
They're crooks due to lack of morals.
Educate them and they'll be smart crooks.
Ping.
Thanks. O’Reilly’s a boob.
‘..O’Reilly’s a boob...’
lol. ..and a pompous one, at that. Mr. no spin often blows with the wind.
DID YOU HEAR SOMETHING? I thought so, crickets!
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