POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AND IOWA RACISM

There was once a theory in the social sciences that traditional
morality is held by the middle class. The rich could be sexually
promiscuous and the poor could be promiscuous, but the middle class
would find that unacceptable. If we assume this to be true, and if we
assume that the rich are thieves as the left typically affirms, should
we not then see the poor as thieves as well?

No, because political correctness does not allow that conclusion,
irrespective of any findings that it may be true or false.

This makes it easy to punish anyone who happens to disagree with a
particular point of view. It is most effective when correctness is
used as a weapon against others who are already correct.

There was an interesting example of this recently in the news. It has
been reported that Iowa has one of the most racist penal systems in
the United States.

Blacks in the United States are imprisoned at more than five times the
rate of whites, and Hispanics are locked up at nearly double the white
rate, but in Iowa the white/black ratio is much higher.

Specifically, a report by the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based
think tank, found that Iowa had the largest black-to-white disparity
of incarceration in the nation, imprisoning blacks at more than 13
times the rate of whites.

For every 100,000 people of each race, Iowa incarcerates 309 whites
and 4,200 blacks. Does this mean that Iowa's criminal justice system
is racist?

For the U.S. as a whole, we find that 412 whites and 2,290 blacks per
100,000 are incarcerated. This would be evidence of extreme bias if
there were no differences in crime rates by race, type of crime, and
by area of the country.

In reality, members of different races do not commit crime at the same
rate. They also do not commit the same types of crime at the same rates.

There are also differences by area that are unrelated to race. For
example, the Iowa white incarceration rate is 75 percent of the
national average. Washington State is 95 percent of the average, while
the neighboring state of Oregon is 122 percent.

According to FBI and the Bureau of Justices statistics, a black person
in the U.S. is 7 times more likely to kill someone than a white
person. Almost all of those victims are black. Fourteen percent of
white victims were murdered by persons of other races, while only 6
percent of black murders are interracial.

It also matters how or why a person is murdered. For example, a black
person is 9 times more likely to commit a felony murder, 12 times more
likely to commit a drug related murder, but only 2 times more likely
to commit a murder in the workplace.

For murder then, we would expect that if 412 whites per 100,000 were
in prison, we would find about 2,800 blacks per 100,000 incarcerated.
Again, the actual number in the U.S. for all crimes is 2,290.

The Iowa figures are still out of proportion, but consider the
following. Suppose that in the future, DNA readings could predict who
had a greater chance of growing up to be a criminal. These children
would then be sent to an isolated penal state. The law would be
applied to this state without any bias. Would the proportion of people
per 100,000 arrested there be normal?

The gambling state of Nevada has over twice as many whites per 100,000
in jail than does Iowa. Does this mean the Nevada justice system is
biased against whites, or does it simply mean that the white
population of Nevada is not the same as the white population of Iowa
in relationship to committing crimes deemed important by the state?

Now if a state criminalizes a behavior characteristic of racial
genetic differences, then a disproportional arrest rate would be
evidence of discrimination. But note here that the bias is in the law,
not in the police force.

The data released by the Sentencing Project offers no evidence at all
that there is any racial discrimination in the Iowa justice system.
Other data is necessary to make such a determination.

The problem with political correctness, however, is that the other
data cannot be looked at. Consequently, those who worship diversity in
the Iowa government cannot defend themselves against charges made by
their own ideological brothers and sisters without becoming
politically incorrect.