From the Washington Post in 2016:

Poor white kids are less likely to go to prison than rich black kids

By Max Ehrenfreund
March 23, 2016 at 1:28 p.m. EDT

It’s a fact that people of color are worse off than white Americans in all kinds of ways, but there is little agreement on why. Some see those disparities as a consequence of racial discrimination in schools, the courts and the workplace, both in the past and present. Others argue that economic inequalities are really the cause, and that public policy should help the poor no matter their race or ethnicity. When it comes to affirmative action in college admissions, for example, many say that children from poor, white families should receive preferential treatment, as well.

In some ways, though, discrimination against people of color is more complicated and fundamental than economic inequality. A stark new finding epitomizes that reality: In recent decades, rich black kids have been more likely to go to prison than poor white kids.

“Race trumps class, at least when it comes to incarceration,” said Darrick Hamilton of the New School, one of the researchers who produced the study.

He and his colleagues, Khaing Zaw and William Darity of Duke University, examined data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a national study that began in 1979 and followed a group of young people into adulthood and middle age.

This is the main crimethink study that The Bell Curve was based on.

The participants were asked about their assets and debts, and interviewers also noted their type of residence, including whether they were in a jail or prison.

The researchers grouped participants in the survey by their race and their household wealth as of 1985 and then looked back through the data to see how many people in each group ultimately went to prison. …

About 2.7 percent of the poorest white young people — those whose household wealth was in the poorest 10th of the distribution in 1985, when they were between 20 and 28 years old — ultimately went to prison….

About 10 percent of affluent black youths in 1985 would eventually go to prison. Only the very wealthiest black youth — those whose household wealth in 1985 exceeded $69,000 in 2012 dollars — had a better chance of avoiding prison than the poorest white youth. Among black young people in this group, 2.4 percent were incarcerated.

Hispanic participants who were less affluent in 1985 were more likely to be eventually incarcerated than their white peers with similar wealth, but less likely than black participants.

Wow, who could ever imagine that Hispanics would be in-between whites and blacks on some social metric? That’s just crazy, man.

By Max Ehrenfreund

You kind of blew it, Max.

Max Ehrenfreund wrote for Wonkblog and compiled Wonkbook, a daily policy newsletter. He left The Washington Post in July 2017.

Sure, you are brilliant enough to now be a Harvard Ph.D. candidate in history writing a dissertation about Weber, von Mises, Schumpeter, and Polyani.

But you weren’t clever enough to blame racism and only RACISM like the NYT did when they reported Raj Chetty’s 2018 finding that young adult black males raised at the 99th percentile of overall income were imprisoned at the same rate as white males raised at the 34th percentile of national income:

Extensive Data Shows Punishing Reach of Racism for Black Boys

Now that’s smart thinking, Max!

Do you think Jennifer Rubin got her WaPo column by ignoring what subscribers want to hear?

Ya coulda been a contendah!

Have a nice life teaching history at frigid Bowdoin or remote Whitman.