O'Reilly: You Always Hear Cops Are Picking on African Americans But Whites Are Arrested "Way Higher"

[Amerigo Vespucci]

O'Reilly: You Always Hear Cops Are Picking on African Americans But Whites Are Arrested Way Higher



http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/oreilly-you-always-hear-cops-are-picking-a

By Heather Monday Mar 15, 2010 6:00am

You can always count on Bill O'Reilly to take up for the poor downtrodden white man and this is no exception. During a discussion with Geraldo Rivera about the changing racial demographics of the population of the United States and what it's going to mean for our country he throws this tidbit out there.

O'Reilly: Alright let me throw some stats at you and see how this is going to play out okay? Crime... this is an amazing stat, 28% of those incarcerated are black but... arrested, arrested I should say are black, 69% are white. So whites dominate the arrest sheets far more than their population. You always hear the cops are picking on African-Americans, but whites are arrested way higher than African-Americans.

First of all, I believe O'Reilly is reading from this table from the FBI which does not separate white Hispanics or any other race from whites. I've got to wonder how different those statistics would look if they did. And second, what he completely ignores that if you're going to have any sort of serious discussion about crime and punishment in the United States (which I don't expect from O'Reilly, believe me) you cannot just talk about arrest rates and ignore incarceration statistics.

Here's the big elephant in the room O'Reilly is ignoring during this discussion: Crime: Prison Population: Prison Population by Race (larger chart available there).

[rfranklin]

1. His statistics prove is that whites are getting preferential treatment...

or is he trying to say that all those whites who are not imprisoned were falsely arrested?

Hard to tell what this idiot is claiming.

[ProfessorGAC]

2. There's No Claim At All

Just bluster. He never has a point, and he doesn't have to. His disciples don't care. His disciples aren't smart enough to understand a point, anyway.
GAC

[Winterblues]

3. I thought blacks make up fourteen percent of the population

When did it become 28%?

[stopbush]

4. People pick on terrorists for the deaths they caused in the USA,

but whites who drive cars kill far more people.

Just applying O'Leilly's "logic."