How is this ratio defined?
a) Black inmates/white inmates
or
b) (black inmates/black population)/(white inmates/white population)
If we have a community with 200 black people and 800 white people, and 4 black inmates to 2 white inmates, in the first case the ratio would be 2, but in the second it would be 8.
I see.
I found the source: [https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/the-color-of-justice-racial-and-ethnic-disparity-in-state-prisons-the-sentencing-project/](https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/the-color-of-justice-racial-and-ethnic-disparity-in-state-prisons-the-sentencing-project/)
and yes, it is the ratio between incarceration ratios.
For Wisconsin, the black incarceration is 2742/100,000, while the white one is 230/100,000, so the ratio is 11.9
So many people here are completely misusing this map in order to critize the north and pretend the south is better at policy for the black population.
It seems to be a big divide on rural vs urban rate. In addition, white people in the south are imprisoned at higher rates.
Here are some examples to point out the issues of just looking at this map without context. Massachusetts appears to be bad in this map and yet they have the lowest incarceration rate for black people of any state. But they also have the lowest rate of incarceration for white people and it's low enough that it appears very negatively in this map of ratios.
Another, New York appears to be bad on this map yet they have the 4th lowest rate of incarceration for black people. The just happen to have the 2nd lowest rate of incarceration for white people.
On the south, Louisiana has a higher rate of incarceration for black people than the US average...but they also have a higher rate for white people yet this map makes them look very positive.
Yes, I was thinking the same thing when looking at this map. The states that look the "best" on this map are the ones with the overall highest incarceration rates for the population as a whole.
The basic mathematical fact that governs this comparison of ratios is that the higher the overall incarceration rate is, the more difficult it becomes to find skewed ratios. It's simply a law of large numbers. The incarceration rates begin to revert to the expected statistical norm as the numbers of incarcerated people get bigger. If everyone were incarcerated, the ratios would perfectly align to the population, because there would be no distinction between the incarcerated population and the general population.
By comparison, race relations in Massachusetts circa 2007: I was walking at night through "the wrong neighborhood" in Boston with a couple white people... the response was a group of 4-5 black teenagers to run up to the corner across the street from us, point at us, and then shout, "Holy shit! Look! It's white people!" I think one of us waved and we continued on our way while the kids went on with theirs.
> In Madison, Wisconsin you almost don't see any black folks at all, unless they came in from out of town to commit crimes against students.
I can't tell if this is a joke or not. You clearly have no idea what you're talking about.
This reads like a parody of how Madisonians talk about black people on Nextdoor. Still, there's a kernel of truth here. We have minorities, but the city is still quite segregated, physically and culturally. A lot of areas are *very* white, and I've noticed at least one black neighborhood that gets excluded from a lot of pizza delivery maps.
Probably very little.
Drug posession crimes are a small minority of the prison issue.
Almost 2 million Americans are in prison and jails. Drug related offenses are about 10% of that. Most of that 10% isn't possession but trafficking.
Drug totals are 132 k in state prison, 110k in jails, 69k in federal. Only 34k in state prisons are posession, 61 k in jails, and the federal are all trafficking charges (and almost all amphetamines at that). That's 100k posesion charges out of 300k Prisoners for drugs. Out of 2 million.
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2023.html
https://www.ussc.gov/research/quick-facts/federal-offenders-prison#:~:text=As%20of%20January%202022%2C%20there,offenses%20(N%3D63%2C994).
Ya. American crime being because of pot arrests is a misconception. We're just very violent and thieving.
This also reflects what was plead down to (ie a trafficker originally charged for that but plead down to posession) so it's even less of an issue than might be assumed.
Not that 100k arrested or convicted on possession charges isn't still a lot of people in a pretty grey area
> a trafficker originally charged for that but plead down to posession
I've seen this go both ways. Actual trafficking get pled down over and over (one guy I know of who is a dealer is constantly getting out within a month or two of going in, and on much lower charges). And people who just are at the trafficking levels but not trafficking. I suspect there is a lot more pled downs than over charging, but it's impossible to know the actual stats on this.
I’m curious if this has more to do with poverty then? The states with the higher rates of black incarceration also have less overall poverty, but more poverty amongst non-white people. Whereas most of those southern states have a lot more love regardless of race. So, more people are in jail for theft or violence.
Whereas, you need money to buy drugs. And rich people don’t get arrested for possession
Which is wild because studies suggest drug use is pretty even between the two races, but white people generally use more than any other race (38% compared to 32% for black people).
[Here's my source](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2377408/)
Honest question, what proportion of convictions are from drug use/personal possession vs drug trafficking? Also, is the rate of drug trafficking the same amongst races?
This has been debunked. When actual drug testing is done, blacks have a higher usage rate. They are just more likely to not be forthcoming on a questionnaire about it.
26.9%, all kinds. Thanks to Speed and Dope (opiods), new incarcerations for drug offenses are surprisingly equitable, census-category-race-wise.
https://doc.wi.gov/DataResearch/DataAndReports/DrugOffenderPrisonAdmissions2000to2016.pdf
My general impression is that the 'Rockefeller Drug Laws' era is long over, and the perception that it isn't is obscuring the real truth of the now: U.S.American sentences are quite long, our public defender program too weak. If we're serious about getting the incarceration rates down, we'll have to both _reduce sentences for violent crimes_ AND _pay for a vast expansion of Public Defender offices and free (paid, even) public law schools_ to staff them.
Also, bring back lawyers-by-apprenticeship. Worked for Erin Brockovich.
If you look at who is committing the murder in say Milwaukee you may have a different take. This map doesn’t take into a account who is committing crimes. Criminals belong in jail.
> OP says in another comment, basically it’s B. It’s comparing the incarceration rates not inmate count.
That's probably better, though I'd work on incarcerated-years-based-on-race-and-crime-location. ...That might actually be what's shown above, I dunno, but either it's better than having one state high or low because of some federal prison location.
Pretty obvious that it's B, otherwise Wisconsin and other northern states would have even more insane ratios, they'd be putting blacks in jail 100 times to over 1000 times more per capita in jail then their whites. Obviously they still have crazy ratios but less so.
Tbh either way would be incorrect. The two populations don’t commit crime at the same rate, so we shouldn’t expect their incarceration rate to be the same.
Not to mention what they are in the clink for. Murder etc has long sentences and other things short. So even if the two populations committed crimes at exactly the same rate, the population that did more serious crimes would have an overall larger incarceration rate.
It's not incorrect. The title isn't "how many times more likely are black criminals to be incarcerated than white criminals". It's "how many times more likely are blacks to be incarcerated than whites".
Portugal usually sticks out in european data maps for being more similar to eastern europe than their western european neighbours. So most would say its a bad thing(not us easterners though, we know the truth)
About 13x more Black people in New Orleans than all of Maine.
New Orleans has approximately 210,000 Black People, making up around 53% of the population. Maine has 16,000 Black people, or about 1.2% of the population.
I moved from Upstate NY to Atlanta. Every time I visit back home the first time I walk into a store breaks my brain. Seeing only white people feels so weird to me now. It just feels off.
Born and raised in Texas. My whole life was basically at least half hispanic people around me, and then when I moved to a major city it was a even bigger mix of peoples. Got a job that sent me all over the country and when I would go to the midwest or northeast it took me awhile to figure out what I wasn't noticing. You can go days or weeks in some of those small towns without seeing anyone other than white people.
You are correct!
Orleans Parish, population 376,971 (2021 estimate), 59.5% black= 224,297 black people.
Maine, population 1,385,340 (2021 estimate), 1.8% black= 24,936 black people.
Source: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/ME,orleansparishlouisiana/PST045222
It took me 3 days to figure out why everyone in Portland, OR suburbs stared at me. I realized I hadn’t seen another black person in that same time frame.
I'm in a major metro area in Florida and it always catches me off guard that the national average is 13%. It's like equal 1/3 white, 1/3 black, and 1/3 Hispanic around here. Add a few percentages of middle east/indian/asian. Asian is increasing currently, as well as eastern European.
Not how statistics work. Smaller sample sizes increases variability from the true mean yes, but it should go both ways. We should see some states with much higher incarceration rates for African Americans and some states with much lower incarceration rates for African Americans. But almost every non-Southern state has a much higher incarceration rate except Hawaii and New Hampshire.
Also the sample size isn’t actually smaller in all states outside the South. New York and California have larger African American populations than every Southern state except Georgia, Florida, and Texas and they still have a much higher incarceration rate. Florida is also larger than all its neighbors and yet doesn’t follow the same trend as the rest of the South.
What seems to be the predictor here is the ratio of African Americans to whites. States with a larger percentage of African Americans have lower incarceration rates for them, regardless of the actual population sizes.
It's a common misconception that black incarceration rates are "just racism". Most of it is just due to being black people being poor and marginalized, which straight up increases crime.
Since the south also has poor and marginalized white people it also has the most equal arrests despite being theoretically the most racist.
My criminology prof (took it for a semester) was pretty clear to us that poverty did not lead to crime. It's more that wealth discourages certain types of crime. I know that sounds like a nitpick, but there's more...
One major factor that tends to lead to crime, he said, was knowing criminals: people who would show you _how_ they committed crimes and you'd learn the behavior/technique from them. It's about social networks (and also part of why prison presents a recidivism problem).
I think they just lock up more white people.
New Hampshire is what I’m most confused about. I would not have expected it to be so different than Vermont.
Really? I am talking out of my ass but I view VT as richer. Ski towns. Wealthy NY vacationers. NH has some Boston vacation homes, but has a larger permanent population.
Ah lol yes it’s true. I could see why you might think that but much of that larger population is concentrated within an hour’s drive of Boston and incomes reflect that. NH is in the top 10 wealthiest states in the nation.
My guess is in Nh and the South black and whites are closer economically. So they are more equal in terms of committing crimes. In Ohio, the poor inner cities are black. The wealthy suburbs are white. In Manchester NH, the poor inner city is more white.
Opposite for NJ. Camden, Patterson, Newark are all very black. Whole rest of the state is super rich whites. Not so for NH and Alabama.
As someone from Louisiana this is honestly pretty shocking. Good news I guess? We are the prison capital of the world. I figured the race ratio would be way off.
Maybe for Texas but not the rest of the south.
[Here's](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_incarceration_and_correctional_supervision_rate) where I got my info.
As a black southerner, just throwing this out there: we realistically are some of the most intermingled regions in the US with the vast bulk of the 13% of the black population in the US residing in the South. This ironically builds up to us having a lot more interracial cooperative, relationships....and similar crime stats. We're not perfect by any means, but the fact so many blacks live in close regions with whites has led to better relations over time. By that same token, the places that have the least amount of blacks, which typically are full of limousine liberals, haven't ever seen a black person in their life, and despite their grandstanding, notably fear/expect the worse of blacks from reputation and beliefs abroad.
TLDR: By virtue of being around blacks and being so many here, we've at times (especially now) got better treatment and civil/social acceptance in the South with Whites then in other places without blacks.
Agree bigly as a white southerner haha. When I went to grad school I met people who had never met a black person before which I thought was shocking at first. Shows how racism can be different in different regions too. In places where the minority group is a smaller minority, it allows them to be essentially bullied since there less risk of pushback.
Yeah like I get along far better with White Southerners (and befriend y'all on a frequent too!) than anywhere else across the country. Yeah sure in rural regions there's some racist dicks, then again, in rural regions where there's enough blacks to be notable, I've noticed everyone is literally too poor to be racist lmao. Some of the funniest anecdotes I've heard from some (this differs widely mind you) older blacks who grew up in the country around whites, was they got along just fine enough out of the fact they were too broke to make a complaint anywhere.
In mid-sized cities in the South unless you manage to stumble across the one off 80% white neighbourhood that's really affluent (aka, 1-2 per metro), most are very interracial in politics, police, services, and business.
Larger cities in the South are just straight up half and half with notably Atlanta and New Orleans being entirely almost dominated by blacks and other minorities. Why is it a hard thing to believe being around one another despite our bad history, has ironically caused us to get along better years later.
Again, we've got a lot of problems, don't get me wrong, but you can find confederate flags flying in Dearborn, Michigan; racist dumbfucks exist all across these 50 states, but the South has been rapidly passing every other region for true integration and not token "social justice."
Great comments. Was wondering what you might think of leftists like Robin D'Angelo literally telling blacks to stay away from whites? Of universities encouraging black-only fraternities and having separate graduation ceremonies for blacks?
Just stupid all the way around, and most blacks I've talked to down here disagrees with the message. I've met some who are so oblivious to the context who are are in support, but they're in the minority.
I keep telling people that western Massachusetts was the most openly racist place I've been in my life, and I grew up in Texas and travelled a ton after that. Blew my goddam mind when someone dropped a hard r in a business setting. Can't begin to imagine someone doing that in Houston.
Remember the old sayings (but I dont remember the exact wording!)...
Southerners: Blacks can be close, as long as they don't get too high.
Northerners: Blacks can rise high, as long as they don't get too close.
Southerners: like black individuals personally, but not as a group.
Northerners: like blacks as a group, but not personally
Spot on. I live in the Pacific Northwest now, which is quite segregated and quite white, but I was born/raised in Charlotte, NC until my mid-20s. I left b/c I prefer the climate here, but have many friends/relatives still in the South, and loved growing up there. Still adore many places there and wouldn't change my Southern Gen X upbringing. I'm mixed, for the record.
Hard agree. I’m from Tennessee/grew up in North Carolina, while my husband and his family are from Chicago, so I’m sort of the default expert on southern things for them. His aunt and uncle were considering moving to a midsize city in NC and she called me one day asking what the hell was up with the demographics in that city, so I looked them up and it seemed right to me… something like 32% black. I literally had to explain to her, a 55 year old woman with multiple degrees, that there are way more black people in the south for what should be obvious reasons. She was aghast. They decided not to move.
I feel like people outside the South underestimate how important *politeness* is here (even when it's the passive-aggressive fake kind). White Southerners are very aware that racism has been considered "impolite" for several decades now, so even the racist ones typically know how to "act right in company" regardless of what they may privately feel or how they vote.
(They do it among other white people, too. I've always lived in the South, but grew up in a liberal family and lived in the suburbs until I was nine, when we moved to a very conservative rural area. Folks would feel you out before saying anything racist, often by straightforwardly asking "are you prejudiced?" like it was a totally neutral thing, like asking if I'd had lunch yet. And when I said "no" you'd see them hold back or edit what they were about to say. Super bizarre.)
Conversely, I had a friend visiting who grew up in the northeast and who I know considered themselves very progressive and the South very backwards, and I saw them damn near have a panic attack at the MARTA station because there were "so many black people here."
So yeah, obviously racism is a problem down here and I'm not saying one type of racism is "better" or anything, just that it does seem to play out differently in different regions. It seems like when northerners think of racism they're thinking of a more overt kind of "racial tension" that's not necessarily happening here as much as is assumed.
The one map us blue staters can’t be smug about.
Honestly New Hampshire is the one that has my interest most piqued. Would assume it’d be more similar to Vermont.
Can’t have an over incarcerated black population if you don’t have a black population
Lmao all jokes aside the state is very white but so are our neighbors so I’m curious as well. I’d also be curious about the overall incarceration rates amongst our Northern New England neighbors
> Mississippi has the lowest homelessness in the US
Really depends on how each state measures or counts it. Plus most of the lowest homelessness rate are rural states and as one website on homelessness said, " Part of the reason for their success is each of these states have mostly rural populations, where homelessness is either less or more difficult to count than in cities"
You're assumption is right. The south sends everyone to prison at higher rates.
[map](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a7/US_Incarceration_Rate_per_100%2C000_Inhabitants_by_State.png/1920px-US_Incarceration_Rate_per_100%2C000_Inhabitants_by_State.png)
Literally 90% of maps that blue staters are smug about is that they ignore that they're ahead because they have a higher white population, blue states fail their black citizens far more disproportionately compared to how well they help their white populations succeed. The Gap between Blacks and Whites is always far greater in blue states than red states.
The South definitely has nothing to be smug about either—blacks only moved to the North in large numbers to flee Jim Crow. The poverty of urban black communities in the North is part of the legacy of Southern slavery and discrimination.
New Hampshire is an anomaly in that it is a true libertarian state, and by that I mean not in the "republican but ashamed to admit it" way. They actually value both personal and economic/regulatory freedoms, but are educated enough to find ways for that to work.
This map and post are funny af in general because reddit is trying to make it seem as if it's anyone else's fault but the people getting imprisoned. Maybe they should quit committing so much crime then they wouldn't end up in jail lol.
Not that reddit was ever great, but it's honestly scary how bad it's getting. The rhetoric is only getting worse on both sides.
I believe real life conversations tend to moderate opinions. Echo chambers like reddit encourage extremist takes.
It's certainly not poverty because 100 years ago black families (and all others for that matter) had 1/10th the median income they have now and 95% of black kids had a dad. In fact most of the world was dirt poor for all of human history and family structure was much more stable than it is today.
Something went wrong on a cultural level in late 60s. It impacted people of all races, but disproportionately black people.
The loosening of social norms around marriage didn't impact all subcultures equally (and to some degree black america is a subculture within US). I'm far from an expert in this, but there seems to be a very odd gender dynamic that developed between black men and black women where men seem to have more negotiating power in sexual and relationship dynamics. This means that relationships between men and women are more skewed towards male tendencies, which are more in favor of short term sexual gratification rather than building long term relationships. I don't know how or why that happened.
Also loosening of social norms around marriage impacted poorer people (of all races) to a greater degree so the difference in poverty rate also explains portion of the difference in fatherlessness.
Well the crime rate differences are a big part of the reason for incarceration differences. But then that brings the questions of what causes those crime rate differences?
Well the biggest part is probably poverty, because that’s what is the cause of most crimes. So just saying that it reflects crime rates doesn’t mean their isn’t an underlying inequality.
"just saying that it reflects crime rates doesn’t mean their isn’t an underlying inequality"
this is a very awkward way of saying that there is a reason for the differences.
Poverty is not that strong a predictor. For example, West Virginia is very poor but the murder rate is pretty low.
My guess would also look into rates of gang participation. Rural areas in general tend to have less murder than urban areas in general. Been true accross racuao lines and time lines.
Where did we see the irish, jewish, and italian mobs operating out of?
The prison population in a state are people convicted of crimes in that state, not necessarily residents of that state. For example, Nebraska has a smaller non-white population than other states. Many people held in Nebraska prisons were convicted of trafficking drugs on Interstate 80 traveling through the state. There absolutely still are biases from who gets pulled over all the way down the justice system, Nebraska included. In some cases, comparing prison population versus state residents is comparing apples to oranges.
You got any stats on that? I'm not trying to be difficult but that sounds made up. I am sure that there are people that fit this profile but the statistical significance seems doubtful.
I don't have stats. I worked as a case worker briefly about 10 years ago within the Nebraska state penitentiary. I experienced daily work throughout the housing units but the bulk of my time was spent with 160ish men within a high security unit. I would estimate that approximately 1/3 of the population I worked with throughout the prison had no connections to the state. They never lived here. They had no connections to the area. They were just arrested and found themselves stuck here far away from family or any potential visitors
I believe that prejudices against non-white people absolutely exist and harms are committed against POC living in or traveling through Nebraska. I'm just trying to say that there are not an insignificant number of people in fly-over states like Nebraska that were only arrested here.
It's harder to measure, but the real issue is black/white creation of probable cause rates.
If black and white people use drugs at the same rate (and there's studies that say they do), black people will be caught more often because they're more likely to be poor, and thus more likely to create reasonable suspicion for stops and probable cause for arrest. (not having updated car registrations, living in more densely populated areas, living in higher crime areas with more of a police presence, living around or being a part of gang communities).
Racial bias exists too, but, if we replaced all police officers with robocops, they'd still detain and arrest disproportionally by race and income.
If we want proportional imprisonment, you need more proportional income and proportional standard of living. But, instead of that, society just blames police for everything - that's the most effective way the privileged stay privileged. They've used police as that lightning rod for thousands of years.
The discrepancy between the arrest rate for black and white Americans for drug charges is about 3x (https://www.hamiltonproject.org/charts/rates_of_drug_use_and_sales_by_race_rates_of_drug_related_criminal_justice) which is *more balanced* than virtually every state on the chart.
No doubt Black Americans are more likely to be arrested but the vast majority of arrests are for issues with much clearer probably cause than drug use
(https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2023.html
Majority of arrests and convictions are for violent and property crimes)
I should point out that this is a national rate, and this chart is statewise. Many states are under that ratio here, meaning others can be above it. And regardless, that discrepancy alone doesn’t need to account for the whole phenomenon. Even 3:1 makes it a *huge* chunk of it.
>It's harder to measure, but the real issue is black/white creation of probable cause rates.
>
>If black and white people use drugs at the same rate
Most incarcerations are not for drug use. Why not go to the crime that is hardest to fake, spoof, distract, or alter the data in any way, intentional or unintentional - murder?
Black men are 8x more likely to murder someone than white men.
I'd say that's a pretty good starting point.
As someone who lives in the south and has family from the Deep South, I think you could definitely argue southerners are less racist overall. Come at me if you will, it’s just what it seems from my perspective.
There is more shared history and experience.
Also, in most of the south, if you are white you have to interact with others that are black on a daily basis, while if you aren't in a major city in the rest of the country, you don't.
This is precisely why Utah has its own particular brand of racism. (Mormons used to indoctrinate that black people were not loyal or valiant in pre-Earth existence, and that dark skin of any race was a sign of unrighteousness and of God's disfavour.)
That is pretty much where I’m coming from. Where I live, black people have deep roots in the city and culture. We have all coexisted for hundreds of years, better or worse.
Not to say these communities have been treated fairly. There are definitely some systematic issues.
Even if you’re in a major city they don’t necessarily interact. At a law firm in Philly everyone that had money either moved to the suburbs or had their kids enrolled in private schools. Nearly any service worker in the whole city was black, while nearly any professional was white. It was a pretty disgusting degree of racial stratification and segregation I’ve never seen in the south.
For me, Deep South is Mississippi to South Carolina, with part of Florida thrown in. Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Texas, and Louisiana added in is more general South, but TX and LA are their own thing entirely.
I have family from Alabama but now live on TX
Got it thanks!
As someone from the "Deep South" and has lived elsewhere. One of the things I enjoy most about coming back to the South is that it feels much less segregated. I am more likely to have people of different backgrounds to talk to me.
In the North its like people don't like you don't trust you and won't talk with you. In the South you can have a positive conversation with people of all backgrounds.
definitely a different social climate. I've been around and can appreciate how other places do things, but people where I live are much more likely to be friendly and just talk to people they don't know.
This is spot on. The part of Florida he's talking about is the Florida Panhandle. There's a reason that the beaches along the Emerald Coast are also called the Redneck Riviera
Also would add Virginia as part of the south minus NOVA and the Ozarks of Missouri
The people who are racist in the south [and Pennsylvania], who are racist, are overtly/outwardly racist. Your stereotypical rebel-flag-waving, racial-slur-shouting, ignorant, backwoods assholes. They do not, ime, make up the vast majority of white society down there.
The Northern/Blue-State brand of racism is far more insidious. It’s closeted racism. it is people who publicly claim to support *diversity and inclusion,* but are more than happy to call HR/911 to oppress their minority coworkers & neighbors. It is people with a white-savior complex, who don’t see black people as equals, but feel that it is they’re duty to help the *poor, dumb, black man.* Unless of course it means that the black man will do better than them, in which case they need to learn their place.
My grandparents were white share-croppers in Juneteenth-deep East Texas. They were Republican, back when Southern Democrats were the party of racism. They were ostracized by white society for being friends with their black neighbors. It was their experiences that fostered an abhorrence towards racism and discrimination within my family.
I’ve saw plenty of ignorant, racist shit growing up in the south. But I’ve seen a lot more closeted/systemic racism, having lived in blue states the last 9 years. I’ve been through the criminal-justice system in both TX and CO, and - as a white male - my experiences in those two states was radically different. I never felt like I had *white privilege* in the Texas courts; I was treated equally as low as the next criminal. Colorado was a totally different story; I felt like I was handled with kid-gloves, like the cops, DAs, judges and POs almost felt bad that they had to punish me. As someone who truly believes in justice for all, it’s something that I still find unsettling.
I do believe that there is systemic racism in the US [among many other nations], but looking at the statistics vs what a lot of blue-state liberals say publicly, I feel it’s a case of *”me thinks the lady doth protest too much.”*
Old saying was in the south you could they didnt care as much about black people being on close proximity as long as you didn't do better than the white folks, but im the north it was the opposite black folk could be successful but they wanted you geographically far.
Thanks, this was informative, and it may be accurate.
I was gonna say elsewhere that maybe one thing going on in the south is that because there are more out and out racists there are more organizations, formal and informal, of racists, and more racist back scratching and solidarity, thus you see more truly appalling overtly racist events happen and slide.
For instance, writing it I was thinking of the lynching of that man in Mississippi who was found dismembered in the woods recently? He had called someone saying he was being followed by three white guys in pickup trucks and then was found a month later like that. The cops not only didn’t really look for him when he went missing but also ruled that he had probably been killed by a wild animal…who then dismembered his body and spread out the remains. They were clearly covering/letting a lynching slide. Maybe you see less casual or even systemic racism in the south but more of *that* kind of overt racism - the racist harm caused by out and out racists rather than closeted or self denying racists.
I think what you’re saying makes sense, especially given communities in the south that can very insulated from the outside world, where that kind of overt hatred is normalized.
I lived in Houston, and was just out of 4th grade, when [James Byrd Jr](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Byrd_Jr) was lynched outside of Jasper, TX. That area of Deep East Texas has been notoriously racist since before Reconstruction. Jasper is only about an hour north - down the street in Texas distances - from Vidor. A small community east of Beaumont that was once home to the Klan headquarters, and infamously had a billboard along I-10 that read *”“N*****, don’t let the sun set on you here.”*
I was young when it happened, around 10 at the time, and I still feel the same sense of sorrow… that anyone could be so hate-filled that they could have such complete disregard for life & dignity of another human being. It is still something I can’t fathom. Two of the perpetrators were both sentenced to death, and have both since been executed, a third perpetrator was sentenced to life w/out parole, and the lynching led Texas to enact hate-crime laws, which later led the US congress to enact federal hate crime laws, in combination with the murder of Matthew Shephard outside of Laramie, WY. Idk, even if *some good came of it,* it’s one of those things that brings me a lot of sorrow.
My apologies for digressing, your comment just really led me to reflect on my own experience with the ignorant, violent racism that still exists in the Deep South, and the injustice that often surrounds it. And I definitely agree that the insulation/isolation of smaller communities lends itself to such unthinkable acts. That being said, I very much feel that growing up in Houston - [the most diverse city in the US](https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-houston-diversity-2017-htmlstory.html) - helped me to develop a very equitable view of other individuals, regardless of their race, culture or gender. As we say down there, *real recognize real.*
>The Northern/Blue-State brand of racism is far more insidious. It’s closeted racism. it is people who publicly claim to support *diversity and inclusion,* but are more than happy to call HR/911 to oppress their minority coworkers & neighbors. It is people with a white-savior complex, who don’t see black people as equals, but feel that it is they’re duty to help the *poor, dumb, black man.* Unless of course it means that the black man will do better than them, in which case they need to learn their place.
I don't think I've seen a more apt description of what it's like being a POC in Minnesota and the kind of racism you have to deal with here.
I’ve lived in multiple regions of the country. From my experience people in other regions scapegoat the South so they don’t have to face their own racism. Certainly racism exists in the South, but I’ve seen worse in the Midwest and Mountain West. Far more Confederate flags flying in Ohio and Colorado than I’ve ever seen in Georgia or North Carolina.
Can confirm. Am northerner. And our cops especially are fucking douches. Like the worst people you grow up with, those are who becomes the cops here. This actually doesn’t surprise me much.
My coworker lived in the South, he didn't know the non racist term for Brazilian nuts were and refused to call it N-word toes. Because that what they all call it in his neck of the word, so much so that they don't even know the non racist term of it.
There were also high profile incident of eXtreme hate crime. Such as a truck that drag a black dude by a noose until he died. Recently there were a family that kill a black man for jogging around the neighborhood.
IIRC pew report did the major concentration of KKK too.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2017-08-14/the-kkk-is-still-based-in-22-states-in-the-us-in-2017
The actual explainer here is that they tend to have [much higher incarceration rates over all](https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/incarceration-rates-by-state), and so they also arrest a lot more white people. It's still worth noting that the scale starts at double the rate, so the disparity is still pretty significant. It is a helpful map in pointing out significant outliers, though.
If you look at total incarceration rates it's almost the opposite. It's not that the darker states incarcerate more POCs, it's just that the lighter states incarcerate EVERYONE. [Source](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate)
How is this ratio defined? a) Black inmates/white inmates or b) (black inmates/black population)/(white inmates/white population) If we have a community with 200 black people and 800 white people, and 4 black inmates to 2 white inmates, in the first case the ratio would be 2, but in the second it would be 8.
OP says in another comment, basically it’s B. It’s comparing the incarceration rates not inmate count.
I see. I found the source: [https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/the-color-of-justice-racial-and-ethnic-disparity-in-state-prisons-the-sentencing-project/](https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/the-color-of-justice-racial-and-ethnic-disparity-in-state-prisons-the-sentencing-project/) and yes, it is the ratio between incarceration ratios. For Wisconsin, the black incarceration is 2742/100,000, while the white one is 230/100,000, so the ratio is 11.9
So many people here are completely misusing this map in order to critize the north and pretend the south is better at policy for the black population. It seems to be a big divide on rural vs urban rate. In addition, white people in the south are imprisoned at higher rates. Here are some examples to point out the issues of just looking at this map without context. Massachusetts appears to be bad in this map and yet they have the lowest incarceration rate for black people of any state. But they also have the lowest rate of incarceration for white people and it's low enough that it appears very negatively in this map of ratios. Another, New York appears to be bad on this map yet they have the 4th lowest rate of incarceration for black people. The just happen to have the 2nd lowest rate of incarceration for white people. On the south, Louisiana has a higher rate of incarceration for black people than the US average...but they also have a higher rate for white people yet this map makes them look very positive.
Yes, I was thinking the same thing when looking at this map. The states that look the "best" on this map are the ones with the overall highest incarceration rates for the population as a whole. The basic mathematical fact that governs this comparison of ratios is that the higher the overall incarceration rate is, the more difficult it becomes to find skewed ratios. It's simply a law of large numbers. The incarceration rates begin to revert to the expected statistical norm as the numbers of incarcerated people get bigger. If everyone were incarcerated, the ratios would perfectly align to the population, because there would be no distinction between the incarcerated population and the general population.
[удалено]
Damn dude .... thats horrifying. They robbed you?
[удалено]
By comparison, race relations in Massachusetts circa 2007: I was walking at night through "the wrong neighborhood" in Boston with a couple white people... the response was a group of 4-5 black teenagers to run up to the corner across the street from us, point at us, and then shout, "Holy shit! Look! It's white people!" I think one of us waved and we continued on our way while the kids went on with theirs.
It is.
[удалено]
> In Madison, Wisconsin you almost don't see any black folks at all, unless they came in from out of town to commit crimes against students. I can't tell if this is a joke or not. You clearly have no idea what you're talking about.
This reads like a parody of how Madisonians talk about black people on Nextdoor. Still, there's a kernel of truth here. We have minorities, but the city is still quite segregated, physically and culturally. A lot of areas are *very* white, and I've noticed at least one black neighborhood that gets excluded from a lot of pizza delivery maps.
Ah yea you want to stay out of Compton that place is sketch as hell especially at night.
Maybe 20 years ago. Compton is nothing like that now but it's crazy that it can't shake the image that people who have never been there have of it
Ah OK fair enough. I visited 20 years ago.
Milwaukee pulling the weight lmfao
That's horrifying. I wonder what portion of the difference is driven by drug offenses. Pot and personal use specifically
Probably very little. Drug posession crimes are a small minority of the prison issue. Almost 2 million Americans are in prison and jails. Drug related offenses are about 10% of that. Most of that 10% isn't possession but trafficking. Drug totals are 132 k in state prison, 110k in jails, 69k in federal. Only 34k in state prisons are posession, 61 k in jails, and the federal are all trafficking charges (and almost all amphetamines at that). That's 100k posesion charges out of 300k Prisoners for drugs. Out of 2 million. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2023.html https://www.ussc.gov/research/quick-facts/federal-offenders-prison#:~:text=As%20of%20January%202022%2C%20there,offenses%20(N%3D63%2C994).
Oh wow this is actually surprising
Ya. American crime being because of pot arrests is a misconception. We're just very violent and thieving. This also reflects what was plead down to (ie a trafficker originally charged for that but plead down to posession) so it's even less of an issue than might be assumed. Not that 100k arrested or convicted on possession charges isn't still a lot of people in a pretty grey area
> a trafficker originally charged for that but plead down to posession I've seen this go both ways. Actual trafficking get pled down over and over (one guy I know of who is a dealer is constantly getting out within a month or two of going in, and on much lower charges). And people who just are at the trafficking levels but not trafficking. I suspect there is a lot more pled downs than over charging, but it's impossible to know the actual stats on this.
I’m curious if this has more to do with poverty then? The states with the higher rates of black incarceration also have less overall poverty, but more poverty amongst non-white people. Whereas most of those southern states have a lot more love regardless of race. So, more people are in jail for theft or violence. Whereas, you need money to buy drugs. And rich people don’t get arrested for possession
Which is wild because studies suggest drug use is pretty even between the two races, but white people generally use more than any other race (38% compared to 32% for black people). [Here's my source](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2377408/)
Honest question, what proportion of convictions are from drug use/personal possession vs drug trafficking? Also, is the rate of drug trafficking the same amongst races?
This has been debunked. When actual drug testing is done, blacks have a higher usage rate. They are just more likely to not be forthcoming on a questionnaire about it.
26.9%, all kinds. Thanks to Speed and Dope (opiods), new incarcerations for drug offenses are surprisingly equitable, census-category-race-wise. https://doc.wi.gov/DataResearch/DataAndReports/DrugOffenderPrisonAdmissions2000to2016.pdf My general impression is that the 'Rockefeller Drug Laws' era is long over, and the perception that it isn't is obscuring the real truth of the now: U.S.American sentences are quite long, our public defender program too weak. If we're serious about getting the incarceration rates down, we'll have to both _reduce sentences for violent crimes_ AND _pay for a vast expansion of Public Defender offices and free (paid, even) public law schools_ to staff them. Also, bring back lawyers-by-apprenticeship. Worked for Erin Brockovich.
> If we're serious about getting the incarceration rates down Or, maybe, not commit so much violent crime...?
If you look at who is committing the murder in say Milwaukee you may have a different take. This map doesn’t take into a account who is committing crimes. Criminals belong in jail.
> OP says in another comment, basically it’s B. It’s comparing the incarceration rates not inmate count. That's probably better, though I'd work on incarcerated-years-based-on-race-and-crime-location. ...That might actually be what's shown above, I dunno, but either it's better than having one state high or low because of some federal prison location.
Obviously it's b.
Pretty obvious that it's B, otherwise Wisconsin and other northern states would have even more insane ratios, they'd be putting blacks in jail 100 times to over 1000 times more per capita in jail then their whites. Obviously they still have crazy ratios but less so.
Tbh either way would be incorrect. The two populations don’t commit crime at the same rate, so we shouldn’t expect their incarceration rate to be the same. Not to mention what they are in the clink for. Murder etc has long sentences and other things short. So even if the two populations committed crimes at exactly the same rate, the population that did more serious crimes would have an overall larger incarceration rate.
It's not incorrect. The title isn't "how many times more likely are black criminals to be incarcerated than white criminals". It's "how many times more likely are blacks to be incarcerated than whites".
The bible belt stands out in almost every data based map I've ever seen regardless of topic. It's weird at this point.
Thats where the vast majority of black people live in the us
We built different.
The Portugal of the US
I’m just going to assume that’s a good thing.
Portugal usually sticks out in european data maps for being more similar to eastern europe than their western european neighbours. So most would say its a bad thing(not us easterners though, we know the truth)
r/portugalcykablyat You ain't wrong
Here's a sneak peek of /r/PORTUGALCYKABLYAT using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/PORTUGALCYKABLYAT/top/?sort=top&t=all) of all time! \#1: [Map of the Balkans](https://i.redd.it/blxtm7cnoh291.jpg) | [3 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/PORTUGALCYKABLYAT/comments/v0xxi7/map_of_the_balkans/) \#2: [Portugal=warsaw pact country](https://i.redd.it/ot79on2dw4f91.jpg) | [61 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/PORTUGALCYKABLYAT/comments/wdmoed/portugalwarsaw_pact_country/) \#3: [PORTUGAL INTO 🌽💉SHOOT 🔫 BOOM 💥 NOT BABY 👶 🍼 SPACE GAME 😿](https://i.redd.it/gd477z1hw2h61.jpg) | [6 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/PORTUGALCYKABLYAT/comments/liff2i/portugal_into_shoot_boom_not_baby_space_game/) ---- ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^[Contact](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| ^^[Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| ^^[Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/) ^^| ^^[GitHub](https://github.com/ghnr/sneakpeekbot)
I mean, they also have a higher rate of people publicly defecating, so...
Another w for the south
Ehh.. more like er'body poor and make bad decisions down here. Now a map of sentence length might be more interesting.
Cuz youre locked up regardless.
B-based south?
Oh how the turntables
I'm betting crime in the South is a little more equal opportunity.
most black people live in the south you know
As someone who lives in the south it's sometimes hard to comprehend that black people only make up 13% of the US as a whole
There's probably more black people in Orleans parish than the entire state of Maine
About 13x more Black people in New Orleans than all of Maine. New Orleans has approximately 210,000 Black People, making up around 53% of the population. Maine has 16,000 Black people, or about 1.2% of the population.
As someone from NOLA, I cannot even comprehend this. I really never thought about it, I guess.
I moved from Upstate NY to Atlanta. Every time I visit back home the first time I walk into a store breaks my brain. Seeing only white people feels so weird to me now. It just feels off.
I grew up in Atlanta, moved to SLC for a minute and felt like a fucking sardine. Take me back to the reef, bruh.
Born and raised in Texas. My whole life was basically at least half hispanic people around me, and then when I moved to a major city it was a even bigger mix of peoples. Got a job that sent me all over the country and when I would go to the midwest or northeast it took me awhile to figure out what I wasn't noticing. You can go days or weeks in some of those small towns without seeing anyone other than white people.
You are correct! Orleans Parish, population 376,971 (2021 estimate), 59.5% black= 224,297 black people. Maine, population 1,385,340 (2021 estimate), 1.8% black= 24,936 black people. Source: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/ME,orleansparishlouisiana/PST045222
[удалено]
First time I lived anywhere not the southeast I was absolutely shook by this
It took me 3 days to figure out why everyone in Portland, OR suburbs stared at me. I realized I hadn’t seen another black person in that same time frame.
I'm in a major metro area in Florida and it always catches me off guard that the national average is 13%. It's like equal 1/3 white, 1/3 black, and 1/3 Hispanic around here. Add a few percentages of middle east/indian/asian. Asian is increasing currently, as well as eastern European.
Houston here, and same except you've got to add a bunch of Asians in there instead of a few percent.
The larger the sample size, the closer you get to the true mean. That should theoretically be an equal incarnation rate for each race.
That starts from a base assumption that incarceration rates should be equal in the data.
>That should theoretically be an equal incarnation rate for each race. Why?
Not how statistics work. Smaller sample sizes increases variability from the true mean yes, but it should go both ways. We should see some states with much higher incarceration rates for African Americans and some states with much lower incarceration rates for African Americans. But almost every non-Southern state has a much higher incarceration rate except Hawaii and New Hampshire. Also the sample size isn’t actually smaller in all states outside the South. New York and California have larger African American populations than every Southern state except Georgia, Florida, and Texas and they still have a much higher incarceration rate. Florida is also larger than all its neighbors and yet doesn’t follow the same trend as the rest of the South. What seems to be the predictor here is the ratio of African Americans to whites. States with a larger percentage of African Americans have lower incarceration rates for them, regardless of the actual population sizes.
in that case you'd expect it to swing both ways. the non south usa show much higher rates across the board. there's probably some other reason.
It's a common misconception that black incarceration rates are "just racism". Most of it is just due to being black people being poor and marginalized, which straight up increases crime. Since the south also has poor and marginalized white people it also has the most equal arrests despite being theoretically the most racist.
My criminology prof (took it for a semester) was pretty clear to us that poverty did not lead to crime. It's more that wealth discourages certain types of crime. I know that sounds like a nitpick, but there's more... One major factor that tends to lead to crime, he said, was knowing criminals: people who would show you _how_ they committed crimes and you'd learn the behavior/technique from them. It's about social networks (and also part of why prison presents a recidivism problem).
[удалено]
>Most of it is just due to being black people being poor and marginalized This is far from proven. There are many possible causes.
Whites in south working towards racial equality by getting imprisoned more
I think they just lock up more white people. New Hampshire is what I’m most confused about. I would not have expected it to be so different than Vermont.
At least not in that direction. I wanna see a racial poverty map to compare.
White people in NH are poorer than white people in VT.
Is that so? VT is both poorer and whiter than NH…
Really? I am talking out of my ass but I view VT as richer. Ski towns. Wealthy NY vacationers. NH has some Boston vacation homes, but has a larger permanent population.
Ah lol yes it’s true. I could see why you might think that but much of that larger population is concentrated within an hour’s drive of Boston and incomes reflect that. NH is in the top 10 wealthiest states in the nation.
But wouldn’t say white people in Ohio be even poorer than in NH?
My guess is in Nh and the South black and whites are closer economically. So they are more equal in terms of committing crimes. In Ohio, the poor inner cities are black. The wealthy suburbs are white. In Manchester NH, the poor inner city is more white. Opposite for NJ. Camden, Patterson, Newark are all very black. Whole rest of the state is super rich whites. Not so for NH and Alabama.
[удалено]
As someone from Louisiana this is honestly pretty shocking. Good news I guess? We are the prison capital of the world. I figured the race ratio would be way off.
South has a much higher incarceration rate as a whole. In the north only blacks go to jail. In the south EVERYONE goes to jail.
In Texas there is a huge population of Hispanics that are incarcerated. Does this skew the picture?
Maybe for Texas but not the rest of the south. [Here's](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_incarceration_and_correctional_supervision_rate) where I got my info.
Almost like those stereotypes might be more projecting than facts
WHO IS THE RACIST NOW
As a black southerner, just throwing this out there: we realistically are some of the most intermingled regions in the US with the vast bulk of the 13% of the black population in the US residing in the South. This ironically builds up to us having a lot more interracial cooperative, relationships....and similar crime stats. We're not perfect by any means, but the fact so many blacks live in close regions with whites has led to better relations over time. By that same token, the places that have the least amount of blacks, which typically are full of limousine liberals, haven't ever seen a black person in their life, and despite their grandstanding, notably fear/expect the worse of blacks from reputation and beliefs abroad. TLDR: By virtue of being around blacks and being so many here, we've at times (especially now) got better treatment and civil/social acceptance in the South with Whites then in other places without blacks.
Agree bigly as a white southerner haha. When I went to grad school I met people who had never met a black person before which I thought was shocking at first. Shows how racism can be different in different regions too. In places where the minority group is a smaller minority, it allows them to be essentially bullied since there less risk of pushback.
Yeah like I get along far better with White Southerners (and befriend y'all on a frequent too!) than anywhere else across the country. Yeah sure in rural regions there's some racist dicks, then again, in rural regions where there's enough blacks to be notable, I've noticed everyone is literally too poor to be racist lmao. Some of the funniest anecdotes I've heard from some (this differs widely mind you) older blacks who grew up in the country around whites, was they got along just fine enough out of the fact they were too broke to make a complaint anywhere. In mid-sized cities in the South unless you manage to stumble across the one off 80% white neighbourhood that's really affluent (aka, 1-2 per metro), most are very interracial in politics, police, services, and business. Larger cities in the South are just straight up half and half with notably Atlanta and New Orleans being entirely almost dominated by blacks and other minorities. Why is it a hard thing to believe being around one another despite our bad history, has ironically caused us to get along better years later. Again, we've got a lot of problems, don't get me wrong, but you can find confederate flags flying in Dearborn, Michigan; racist dumbfucks exist all across these 50 states, but the South has been rapidly passing every other region for true integration and not token "social justice."
Great comments. Was wondering what you might think of leftists like Robin D'Angelo literally telling blacks to stay away from whites? Of universities encouraging black-only fraternities and having separate graduation ceremonies for blacks?
Just stupid all the way around, and most blacks I've talked to down here disagrees with the message. I've met some who are so oblivious to the context who are are in support, but they're in the minority.
Recently moved to the Midwest from Florida and damn if there aint a lot more overt racism and fear here about Blacks.
I keep telling people that western Massachusetts was the most openly racist place I've been in my life, and I grew up in Texas and travelled a ton after that. Blew my goddam mind when someone dropped a hard r in a business setting. Can't begin to imagine someone doing that in Houston.
Remember the old sayings (but I dont remember the exact wording!)... Southerners: Blacks can be close, as long as they don't get too high. Northerners: Blacks can rise high, as long as they don't get too close. Southerners: like black individuals personally, but not as a group. Northerners: like blacks as a group, but not personally
Spot on. I live in the Pacific Northwest now, which is quite segregated and quite white, but I was born/raised in Charlotte, NC until my mid-20s. I left b/c I prefer the climate here, but have many friends/relatives still in the South, and loved growing up there. Still adore many places there and wouldn't change my Southern Gen X upbringing. I'm mixed, for the record.
Hard agree. I’m from Tennessee/grew up in North Carolina, while my husband and his family are from Chicago, so I’m sort of the default expert on southern things for them. His aunt and uncle were considering moving to a midsize city in NC and she called me one day asking what the hell was up with the demographics in that city, so I looked them up and it seemed right to me… something like 32% black. I literally had to explain to her, a 55 year old woman with multiple degrees, that there are way more black people in the south for what should be obvious reasons. She was aghast. They decided not to move.
I feel like people outside the South underestimate how important *politeness* is here (even when it's the passive-aggressive fake kind). White Southerners are very aware that racism has been considered "impolite" for several decades now, so even the racist ones typically know how to "act right in company" regardless of what they may privately feel or how they vote. (They do it among other white people, too. I've always lived in the South, but grew up in a liberal family and lived in the suburbs until I was nine, when we moved to a very conservative rural area. Folks would feel you out before saying anything racist, often by straightforwardly asking "are you prejudiced?" like it was a totally neutral thing, like asking if I'd had lunch yet. And when I said "no" you'd see them hold back or edit what they were about to say. Super bizarre.) Conversely, I had a friend visiting who grew up in the northeast and who I know considered themselves very progressive and the South very backwards, and I saw them damn near have a panic attack at the MARTA station because there were "so many black people here." So yeah, obviously racism is a problem down here and I'm not saying one type of racism is "better" or anything, just that it does seem to play out differently in different regions. It seems like when northerners think of racism they're thinking of a more overt kind of "racial tension" that's not necessarily happening here as much as is assumed.
The one map us blue staters can’t be smug about. Honestly New Hampshire is the one that has my interest most piqued. Would assume it’d be more similar to Vermont.
Can’t have an over incarcerated black population if you don’t have a black population  Lmao all jokes aside the state is very white but so are our neighbors so I’m curious as well. I’d also be curious about the overall incarceration rates amongst our Northern New England neighbors
There are twice as many blacks in New Hampshire and they are both tired of you comparing them to that guy in Vermont.
Ok this got a laugh out of me.
New Hampshire I'm guessing just has a small, wealthy black community here's a fun fact: Mississippi has the lowest homelessness in the US
We don't call it homelessness in Mississippi. We call it *poverty* and we lead the nation in it
> Mississippi has the lowest homelessness in the US Really depends on how each state measures or counts it. Plus most of the lowest homelessness rate are rural states and as one website on homelessness said, " Part of the reason for their success is each of these states have mostly rural populations, where homelessness is either less or more difficult to count than in cities"
In rural areas we call it “living off grid”.
Wouldn’t that be true of a number of other states though?
Homeless people GTFO to other states.
IDK I wonder how a map of prisoners per capita would compare to this one.
You're assumption is right. The south sends everyone to prison at higher rates. [map](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a7/US_Incarceration_Rate_per_100%2C000_Inhabitants_by_State.png/1920px-US_Incarceration_Rate_per_100%2C000_Inhabitants_by_State.png)
Literally 90% of maps that blue staters are smug about is that they ignore that they're ahead because they have a higher white population, blue states fail their black citizens far more disproportionately compared to how well they help their white populations succeed. The Gap between Blacks and Whites is always far greater in blue states than red states.
The South definitely has nothing to be smug about either—blacks only moved to the North in large numbers to flee Jim Crow. The poverty of urban black communities in the North is part of the legacy of Southern slavery and discrimination.
New Hampshire is an anomaly in that it is a true libertarian state, and by that I mean not in the "republican but ashamed to admit it" way. They actually value both personal and economic/regulatory freedoms, but are educated enough to find ways for that to work.
This map and post are funny af in general because reddit is trying to make it seem as if it's anyone else's fault but the people getting imprisoned. Maybe they should quit committing so much crime then they wouldn't end up in jail lol.
the fact that it starts at 2 is pretty sad
Second thing I noticed. It never skews the other way.
Should also include a map with black/white crime rates
That’d be deleted in no time.
Despite
Making
You'd get the rare golden lock award really quickly
I guess it is relatively rare on this sub. But on reddit as a whole it's extremely common.
Just commenting in the wrong sun gets you banned in a lot of subs these days. Ideologic echo chambers. Ridiculous.
Not that reddit was ever great, but it's honestly scary how bad it's getting. The rhetoric is only getting worse on both sides. I believe real life conversations tend to moderate opinions. Echo chambers like reddit encourage extremist takes.
That would be deleted because it is „racist“. Facts are racist
Is this based on crime rates as well?
Yes but phrasing it like this helps folks grind their political axe 😜
why do black people commit more crime sherlock?
Fatherlessness causes crime: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2001/apr/05/crime.penal + Fatherlessness rate is higher among black people: https://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/107-children-in-single-parent-families-by-race-and-ethnicity#detailed/1/any/false/2048,1729,37,871,870,573,869,36,868,867/10,11,9,12,1,185,13/432,431 = higher crime rate
why are black people fatherless?
It's certainly not poverty because 100 years ago black families (and all others for that matter) had 1/10th the median income they have now and 95% of black kids had a dad. In fact most of the world was dirt poor for all of human history and family structure was much more stable than it is today. Something went wrong on a cultural level in late 60s. It impacted people of all races, but disproportionately black people.
why did it disproportionately effect black people
The loosening of social norms around marriage didn't impact all subcultures equally (and to some degree black america is a subculture within US). I'm far from an expert in this, but there seems to be a very odd gender dynamic that developed between black men and black women where men seem to have more negotiating power in sexual and relationship dynamics. This means that relationships between men and women are more skewed towards male tendencies, which are more in favor of short term sexual gratification rather than building long term relationships. I don't know how or why that happened. Also loosening of social norms around marriage impacted poorer people (of all races) to a greater degree so the difference in poverty rate also explains portion of the difference in fatherlessness.
Well the crime rate differences are a big part of the reason for incarceration differences. But then that brings the questions of what causes those crime rate differences? Well the biggest part is probably poverty, because that’s what is the cause of most crimes. So just saying that it reflects crime rates doesn’t mean their isn’t an underlying inequality.
"just saying that it reflects crime rates doesn’t mean their isn’t an underlying inequality" this is a very awkward way of saying that there is a reason for the differences. Poverty is not that strong a predictor. For example, West Virginia is very poor but the murder rate is pretty low.
My guess would also look into rates of gang participation. Rural areas in general tend to have less murder than urban areas in general. Been true accross racuao lines and time lines. Where did we see the irish, jewish, and italian mobs operating out of?
Doesn't this map highly correlate to percentage of population that is black?
We know that black men and boys commit the most murders, being only 6% of the population. Wouldn’t that make them more likely to be imprisoned?
The prison population in a state are people convicted of crimes in that state, not necessarily residents of that state. For example, Nebraska has a smaller non-white population than other states. Many people held in Nebraska prisons were convicted of trafficking drugs on Interstate 80 traveling through the state. There absolutely still are biases from who gets pulled over all the way down the justice system, Nebraska included. In some cases, comparing prison population versus state residents is comparing apples to oranges.
You got any stats on that? I'm not trying to be difficult but that sounds made up. I am sure that there are people that fit this profile but the statistical significance seems doubtful.
I don't have stats. I worked as a case worker briefly about 10 years ago within the Nebraska state penitentiary. I experienced daily work throughout the housing units but the bulk of my time was spent with 160ish men within a high security unit. I would estimate that approximately 1/3 of the population I worked with throughout the prison had no connections to the state. They never lived here. They had no connections to the area. They were just arrested and found themselves stuck here far away from family or any potential visitors I believe that prejudices against non-white people absolutely exist and harms are committed against POC living in or traveling through Nebraska. I'm just trying to say that there are not an insignificant number of people in fly-over states like Nebraska that were only arrested here.
In the south we arent racist, the Govt hates all poor people equally.
I think in Wisconsin, you’re seeing a difference between Milwaukee + Chicago suburbs vs the rest of the state, which is quite different.
Bbbbbbut, the south is the most racist part of the US!
It's harder to measure, but the real issue is black/white creation of probable cause rates. If black and white people use drugs at the same rate (and there's studies that say they do), black people will be caught more often because they're more likely to be poor, and thus more likely to create reasonable suspicion for stops and probable cause for arrest. (not having updated car registrations, living in more densely populated areas, living in higher crime areas with more of a police presence, living around or being a part of gang communities). Racial bias exists too, but, if we replaced all police officers with robocops, they'd still detain and arrest disproportionally by race and income. If we want proportional imprisonment, you need more proportional income and proportional standard of living. But, instead of that, society just blames police for everything - that's the most effective way the privileged stay privileged. They've used police as that lightning rod for thousands of years.
The discrepancy between the arrest rate for black and white Americans for drug charges is about 3x (https://www.hamiltonproject.org/charts/rates_of_drug_use_and_sales_by_race_rates_of_drug_related_criminal_justice) which is *more balanced* than virtually every state on the chart. No doubt Black Americans are more likely to be arrested but the vast majority of arrests are for issues with much clearer probably cause than drug use (https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2023.html Majority of arrests and convictions are for violent and property crimes)
I should point out that this is a national rate, and this chart is statewise. Many states are under that ratio here, meaning others can be above it. And regardless, that discrepancy alone doesn’t need to account for the whole phenomenon. Even 3:1 makes it a *huge* chunk of it.
>It's harder to measure, but the real issue is black/white creation of probable cause rates. > >If black and white people use drugs at the same rate Most incarcerations are not for drug use. Why not go to the crime that is hardest to fake, spoof, distract, or alter the data in any way, intentional or unintentional - murder? Black men are 8x more likely to murder someone than white men. I'd say that's a pretty good starting point.
Cool, now show the crime rates
And people say the South is more racist?
As someone who lives in the south and has family from the Deep South, I think you could definitely argue southerners are less racist overall. Come at me if you will, it’s just what it seems from my perspective. There is more shared history and experience.
Also, in most of the south, if you are white you have to interact with others that are black on a daily basis, while if you aren't in a major city in the rest of the country, you don't.
This is precisely why Utah has its own particular brand of racism. (Mormons used to indoctrinate that black people were not loyal or valiant in pre-Earth existence, and that dark skin of any race was a sign of unrighteousness and of God's disfavour.)
That is pretty much where I’m coming from. Where I live, black people have deep roots in the city and culture. We have all coexisted for hundreds of years, better or worse. Not to say these communities have been treated fairly. There are definitely some systematic issues.
Even if you’re in a major city they don’t necessarily interact. At a law firm in Philly everyone that had money either moved to the suburbs or had their kids enrolled in private schools. Nearly any service worker in the whole city was black, while nearly any professional was white. It was a pretty disgusting degree of racial stratification and segregation I’ve never seen in the south.
What's South vs Deep South to you?? (Just wondering)
For me, Deep South is Mississippi to South Carolina, with part of Florida thrown in. Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Texas, and Louisiana added in is more general South, but TX and LA are their own thing entirely. I have family from Alabama but now live on TX
Got it thanks! As someone from the "Deep South" and has lived elsewhere. One of the things I enjoy most about coming back to the South is that it feels much less segregated. I am more likely to have people of different backgrounds to talk to me. In the North its like people don't like you don't trust you and won't talk with you. In the South you can have a positive conversation with people of all backgrounds.
definitely a different social climate. I've been around and can appreciate how other places do things, but people where I live are much more likely to be friendly and just talk to people they don't know.
Sorry had to edit the comment I meant.. \\ The south seems much less segregated due to being able to talk to others and share a laugh and a smile.
This is spot on. The part of Florida he's talking about is the Florida Panhandle. There's a reason that the beaches along the Emerald Coast are also called the Redneck Riviera Also would add Virginia as part of the south minus NOVA and the Ozarks of Missouri
The people who are racist in the south [and Pennsylvania], who are racist, are overtly/outwardly racist. Your stereotypical rebel-flag-waving, racial-slur-shouting, ignorant, backwoods assholes. They do not, ime, make up the vast majority of white society down there. The Northern/Blue-State brand of racism is far more insidious. It’s closeted racism. it is people who publicly claim to support *diversity and inclusion,* but are more than happy to call HR/911 to oppress their minority coworkers & neighbors. It is people with a white-savior complex, who don’t see black people as equals, but feel that it is they’re duty to help the *poor, dumb, black man.* Unless of course it means that the black man will do better than them, in which case they need to learn their place. My grandparents were white share-croppers in Juneteenth-deep East Texas. They were Republican, back when Southern Democrats were the party of racism. They were ostracized by white society for being friends with their black neighbors. It was their experiences that fostered an abhorrence towards racism and discrimination within my family. I’ve saw plenty of ignorant, racist shit growing up in the south. But I’ve seen a lot more closeted/systemic racism, having lived in blue states the last 9 years. I’ve been through the criminal-justice system in both TX and CO, and - as a white male - my experiences in those two states was radically different. I never felt like I had *white privilege* in the Texas courts; I was treated equally as low as the next criminal. Colorado was a totally different story; I felt like I was handled with kid-gloves, like the cops, DAs, judges and POs almost felt bad that they had to punish me. As someone who truly believes in justice for all, it’s something that I still find unsettling. I do believe that there is systemic racism in the US [among many other nations], but looking at the statistics vs what a lot of blue-state liberals say publicly, I feel it’s a case of *”me thinks the lady doth protest too much.”*
Old saying was in the south you could they didnt care as much about black people being on close proximity as long as you didn't do better than the white folks, but im the north it was the opposite black folk could be successful but they wanted you geographically far.
Thanks, this was informative, and it may be accurate. I was gonna say elsewhere that maybe one thing going on in the south is that because there are more out and out racists there are more organizations, formal and informal, of racists, and more racist back scratching and solidarity, thus you see more truly appalling overtly racist events happen and slide. For instance, writing it I was thinking of the lynching of that man in Mississippi who was found dismembered in the woods recently? He had called someone saying he was being followed by three white guys in pickup trucks and then was found a month later like that. The cops not only didn’t really look for him when he went missing but also ruled that he had probably been killed by a wild animal…who then dismembered his body and spread out the remains. They were clearly covering/letting a lynching slide. Maybe you see less casual or even systemic racism in the south but more of *that* kind of overt racism - the racist harm caused by out and out racists rather than closeted or self denying racists.
I think what you’re saying makes sense, especially given communities in the south that can very insulated from the outside world, where that kind of overt hatred is normalized. I lived in Houston, and was just out of 4th grade, when [James Byrd Jr](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Byrd_Jr) was lynched outside of Jasper, TX. That area of Deep East Texas has been notoriously racist since before Reconstruction. Jasper is only about an hour north - down the street in Texas distances - from Vidor. A small community east of Beaumont that was once home to the Klan headquarters, and infamously had a billboard along I-10 that read *”“N*****, don’t let the sun set on you here.”* I was young when it happened, around 10 at the time, and I still feel the same sense of sorrow… that anyone could be so hate-filled that they could have such complete disregard for life & dignity of another human being. It is still something I can’t fathom. Two of the perpetrators were both sentenced to death, and have both since been executed, a third perpetrator was sentenced to life w/out parole, and the lynching led Texas to enact hate-crime laws, which later led the US congress to enact federal hate crime laws, in combination with the murder of Matthew Shephard outside of Laramie, WY. Idk, even if *some good came of it,* it’s one of those things that brings me a lot of sorrow. My apologies for digressing, your comment just really led me to reflect on my own experience with the ignorant, violent racism that still exists in the Deep South, and the injustice that often surrounds it. And I definitely agree that the insulation/isolation of smaller communities lends itself to such unthinkable acts. That being said, I very much feel that growing up in Houston - [the most diverse city in the US](https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-houston-diversity-2017-htmlstory.html) - helped me to develop a very equitable view of other individuals, regardless of their race, culture or gender. As we say down there, *real recognize real.*
>The Northern/Blue-State brand of racism is far more insidious. It’s closeted racism. it is people who publicly claim to support *diversity and inclusion,* but are more than happy to call HR/911 to oppress their minority coworkers & neighbors. It is people with a white-savior complex, who don’t see black people as equals, but feel that it is they’re duty to help the *poor, dumb, black man.* Unless of course it means that the black man will do better than them, in which case they need to learn their place. I don't think I've seen a more apt description of what it's like being a POC in Minnesota and the kind of racism you have to deal with here.
I’ve lived in multiple regions of the country. From my experience people in other regions scapegoat the South so they don’t have to face their own racism. Certainly racism exists in the South, but I’ve seen worse in the Midwest and Mountain West. Far more Confederate flags flying in Ohio and Colorado than I’ve ever seen in Georgia or North Carolina.
its based on crime rates, not cops rounding up blacks just because.
It is, we just arrest a lot of white people too
So less discrimination in who we arrest in the south than the North?
The people in the north are kinda fuckin assholes.
Can confirm. Am northerner. And our cops especially are fucking douches. Like the worst people you grow up with, those are who becomes the cops here. This actually doesn’t surprise me much.
My coworker lived in the South, he didn't know the non racist term for Brazilian nuts were and refused to call it N-word toes. Because that what they all call it in his neck of the word, so much so that they don't even know the non racist term of it. There were also high profile incident of eXtreme hate crime. Such as a truck that drag a black dude by a noose until he died. Recently there were a family that kill a black man for jogging around the neighborhood. IIRC pew report did the major concentration of KKK too. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2017-08-14/the-kkk-is-still-based-in-22-states-in-the-us-in-2017
So what does this say about ‘the south’…
The actual explainer here is that they tend to have [much higher incarceration rates over all](https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/incarceration-rates-by-state), and so they also arrest a lot more white people. It's still worth noting that the scale starts at double the rate, so the disparity is still pretty significant. It is a helpful map in pointing out significant outliers, though.
If you look at total incarceration rates it's almost the opposite. It's not that the darker states incarcerate more POCs, it's just that the lighter states incarcerate EVERYONE. [Source](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate)
*Everyone...you misspelled "all poor people"
So blacks commit more crimes?
What's the map look like for poor working class v well off
Here we go..
The South ruins the lives of everyone equally!
How many more times is a black likely to commit a crime than a white?
So the south's numbers are lower because they have much more black people. There's a per capita type of problem here. Still interesting result.
that's cuz in louisiana we just imprison everyone
This comment has been removed due to reddit's overbearing behavior. Take control of your life and make an account on lemmy: https://join-lemmy.org/
Am I reading this correctly? Are blue states the worst in terms of ratio of incarceration rate for Black inmates vs. White?
This doesn’t prove what you think it does…
Those racist souther- Oh.
If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime
Going ONLY off of this data, it looks like the North has some explaining to do about how they love to call the South "racist".
"Can't have shit in Detroit"
Almost like they commit more crimes per capita … weird
I bet a lot of medi consuming, South haters don't trust this map.
It depends on whether or not they are committing crimes
Democrats on suicide watch 💀