Insight: Mississippi pardons benefited whites by big margin

What do people expect? Haley Barbour, Republican Governor of the State of Mississippi? The only thing that surprises ME about this is that he pardoned any blacks at all.

Way to go Reuters get that race card in play just like all the DemocRATS and Obummer !!!!!

Q’elle surprise.

It has to come down to race Reuters?

Macv: Would you rather keep your head in the sand and pretend you don’t see?

It concerns me that the comment I posted yesterday is still not showing up.

Tbis study doesn’t make sense. You cannot compare apples with oranges. As per this article, about 500 applications were submitted and only 250 were eligible to be considered and out of them about 222 actually received the pardon. A more accurate analysis would compare those who applied against those who were finally pardoned. Since the rest of the prison population either didn’t apply or weren’t eligible, they cannot be included in the study. You can argue racism if he had a choice from all the prisoners and he chose those 222. Whoever is guilty of any wrong-doing, let’s find true reasons.

I am so tired of the half-baked studies that are written about in the media these days. Half of them have conclusions we already knew 10 years ago, and the rest have shaky legs like this one. Unfortunately the media doesn’t realize they are hurting their own credibility.

Mississippi, like most southern states, is home to some of the most racist bigots you can find in the USA. Using the ‘N’ word to a black man is common place in the small towns of Miss.

The state has the highest rate of illiteracy in the US, over 22% which also goes with the highest poverty rate in the country. Afro-Americans are nearly 40% of the state population, yet Republicans (the racist party of the south) control all the important seats: senators, governors, house, etc. THe tax structure is very regressive: low real estate and income taxes, high sales tax. Federal farm subsidies go to large industrial farms (all white owned) and practically nothing to the small rural farms (mostly black).

Driving through Mississippi today you wonder if the north really won the Civil War.

JaneQ, I hear you, but you must remember it is much more advantageous for some, to turn everything into a racial issue.

Even me suggesting that the facts you present should be considered, will label me a racist in some of these people’s eyes. There’s no one so blind as he who will not see.

Ever wonder why Mississippi is a bottom feeder in America?

The US has always been in denial that racism still is alive and well. Its just better hidden. Same goes for equal hiring laws or any other kind of law that was meant to equal the rights of all. It just does not happen all the time. You will always have people with prejudice against others.
I actually think sometimes reverse racism takes place as anytime a Black person is over looked its always a racism issue not a skills issue. Its too easy for the race card to be played. I don’t know the specifics in Miss. and neither does the media. All the media is relying on for a conclusion is history.

100 pardons total.

50 were white.
50 were black.

Governor is white which makes the 50/50 split not fair because more blacks should have been pardoned.

Governor is black which makes the 50/50 split not fair because more whites should have been pardoned.

This example shows that even if it was “fair” on how pardons were issued, the race card will be played either way. Face it people: It’s a no-win situation regardless of how fair you try to be in life.

Indignation is premature, the severity of the crime is the most important determination of parole percentage of the race in the prison population. So not statistical assertion is valid unless it accounts for the severity of the crime. Arguing race first implies all sentences and crimes in the entire population are equal and that defies common sense.

The more important point is why do governors (or presidents) have the power to override the court system in the first place?

Isn’t that what we have a judicial system for, to decide who is guilty and what their punishment should be?

Why should politicians have the ability to override that system?

Racism and discrimination are still practised widely in America today – and that is a fact. The system is gamed to favour the incumbents whites.

I’m sorry to tell you, but race is not a card! It’s a reality.

This is an extremely interesting story that misses the point. It is a wonder any blacks were pardoned, unless one thinks about what really happened here.

The black pardons, the Scott sisters, the number of pardons granted, the timing, was straw to hide the needle of the whole dirty transaction. Nobody has looked beyond the surface, which is obviously racist, along with everything else Barbour has ever done.

Why no story about the last two U.S. Attorneys for the Northern District, both Republican stalwarts, each having at least one client in the mix. One of them, a former federal agent now a felon. This delightful fellow while on probation for felony DUI was involved in an accident wherein a woman was killed. Of course he was drunk.

Barbour has done the citizenry, black and white, the favor of unleashing this killer to do it again. That’s politics in the Magnolia State. Whatever loathsome description you might come up with to describe this dung beetle does not come even close.

I have always wanted to ask a white person who complains about the so called race card. I mean haven’t white people been using that same card for three hundred years in this country?

The numbers and data being used in the study are not correctly correlated. I’m saying the analysis is poor. I’m not saying there is no racism at work here.
Let’s say there are x prisoners. As per the article, 500 applied, 250 were eligible and finally 222 were pardoned. since 2 out of 3 are white, that means 148 were white and 74 were black.
The real racial bias is shown by comparing the racial composition of those who were eligible with the racial composition of those who were finally pardoned. We need to know how many of the 250 were black and how many were white.
We know atleast 148 have to be white. so the minimum ratio is 148/250 which is about 60%. This number is actually not far from the 2 of 3 ratio for those that were pardoned. One has to also consider nature of crime as that is already skewing the data by influencing the eligibility. If you are not eligible it does not matter whether you are black or white.
If it is found that there were people pardoned that were not eligible then that is a different thing.

@ JaneQ.
Maybe you should make sure you understand the study before you start calling it “half-baked.” Of the governor’s 221 pardons, only 185 came from the parole board. The remaining 36 were chosen by someone else, presumably the governor. Furthermore, this article does not say the governor is racist. In fact, most of the article is devoted to how there are likely many reasons besides simple racism for such a racial disparity in a supposedly “color blind” process. The article presents FACTS that shows, once again, how the judicial system in the south seems to work differently for blacks than whites.

Racism at Obama’s old Trinity Church. Racism at the NAACP. Racism in La Raza. Racism in the congressional Black caucus. Black Power racism. Black Panther racism. AG Eric Holder’s racism in the application of the law.

Leftist bigots who think “conservative” means selfish and mean.

Thousands of convicted Black muggers and rapists who target White victims and almost never get charged with hate crimes.

Bigotry is bad no matter who does it.

This study stinks of political adventurism by leftist ideologues pretending to be journalists.

@ RexMax46
What you are saying has got nothing to do with what I am saying. I am not talking about the politics or motive of this article. I am showing by simple calculation that the study is flawed. The conclusions drawn by the authors of the study cannot be proved by the data provided in the article. By all means, if I am wrong about the numbers, please correct me.
Honestly speaking, if the point of this article was not to present the angle that Barbour’s Pardons (as the graph in the beginning is titled – you will note it is not called the parole board’s pardons, which it should have, by your reasoning) are racist, then the authors of the article would not have written “Overlooked in the controversy has been the racial composition of the list of inmates and ex-convicts Barbour pardoned.”
But now that you pointed it out, I realize that not only is the study flawed, but the article is also poorly edited: the focus is unclear.

“Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics.”

Crunch the numbers and present them to fit your agenda. Done by the Right, the Left…everybody.

Nothing new to see here…move along.