When I listen to a fivethirtyeight podcast, I expect factual accuracy, especially accuracy refuting common beliefs not reflective of reality. I guess fivethirtyeight.com's senior writer, Farai Chideya doesn't have the same expectation. In the final installment of her three part series, "The Voters" Chideya discusses the presidential candidate preferences of the African-American Millenials and says the following: "Other ones [African-American Millenials] just generally question her[Hillary Clinton] trustworthiness and even whether she was implicated in the incarceration of African-Americans by being married to Bill Clinton who signed the 1994 Crime Act that, you know, sort of hyper-incarcerated African-Americans." Huh? The 1994 crime bill, of which she speaks, did not lead to any "hyper-incarceration" of African-Americans. This claim was debunked by factcheck.org in their 12 Apr 2016 analysis. In it, Robert Farley wrote, "The law is blamed by some for rising incarceration rates, though as we will explain later, that trend actually began in the 1970s." Facts matter and there are facts to show Chideya is wrong. Ta-Nehisi Coates October 2015 piece, "The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration" pointed out that, "From the mid-1970s to the mid-’80s, America’s incarceration rate doubled, from about 150 people per 100,000 to about 300 per 100,000. From the mid-’80s to the mid-’90s, it doubled again.” So, over a twenty year span, the overall incarceration rate went from, "about 150 people per 100,000," to move than six hundred. In looking at the 2014 National Research Council's report, "The Growth of Incarceration in the United States," data from that same period, the number of African-Americans sentenced to prison tripled. All before the 1994 crime bill was signed into law. After the legislation was codified, imprisonment continued to rise another about twenty percent higher and since that time, has fallen back to the pre-crime bill rate. Does that mean there isn't a problem? No. Does that mean the BlackLivesMatter movement is lying? No. Does that mean we really don't have racism in our justice system? No. All of the aforementioned are issues that this nation must address. However, the way this is done is by factually showing what has been going on, for how long, and by whom. Chideya's reinforcement of the Bill Clinton crime bill being the genesis of African-American incarceration doesn't tell us what is really going on, doesn't provide a solid foundation upon which refutation of the All Lives Matter crowd can be constructed, and does nothing to address the root causes of racial injustice in our legal system. What it does do, however, is perpetuate a myth negatively impacting a voting block's perception of Hillary Clinton, setting up the justification to either not vote, not select a presidential candidate on their ballot, or vote third party, all of which helps a unapologetic fascist in his quest to take over this country and give rise to culturally destructive white nationalism. We already have enough misrepresentations from the likes of redstate.com, breitbart.com and The Drudge Report. It would be nice if Farai Chideya was relying on facts.
