Ferguson: Painful Data

In the United States, a black man has six times more probability of being imprisoned than a white one.

After the jury verdict this week that exonerated Darren Wilson – the white policeman who, this past August, killed black teenager Michael Brown with six gunshots – it is being asked in the United States how the police can be supervised in a country that is the most heavily patrolled and monitored in the world.

The U.S. is a country in which the racial problem has made a comeback, despite having a black president and black attorney general for the past six years. Fifty years since the protests demanding a stop to segregation and since the “I Have A Dream” speech by Martin Luther King, Americans still face the cruel reality of prevailing race issues.

Today a black man between 15 and 19 years of age is more likely to die from police gunshots than a white one. In the United States, as of 2012, black detainees composed 28 percent of all those detained, despite being 13 percent of the population, according to data from the FBI.

A black male is six times more likely to be imprisoned than a white one. In 2013, three percent of black males were behind bars. The proportion of whites is much less: only five percent. In 2011, one out of every 15 blacks had a family member in prison, contrasted with one out of every 111 whites, according to data published by the newspaper El País.

As for Ferguson, Missouri, blacks are 67 percent of the population but only six percent of the police force. The most important political, judicial and educational positions are also held by whites. The pattern in Ferguson can be seen in almost all cities in the United States, where the proportion of white police officers averages 88 percent. The consensus is that if there were more black police officers the situation would be more equal.

Thus, while we are troubled by the collusion of the police with organized crime in Mexico, today’s debate on police repression in the United States is about whether or not it is directed more toward blacks than toward other racial groups.

Note: in this space we have pointed out on numerous occasions the uselessness of special committees. In the United States, President Lyndon Johnson created the Special Kerner Commission more than an 45 years ago to try to eliminate racial differences between blacks and whites: differences that, evidently, this commission has not been able to resolve.