The political tricks are getting nasty with the Democrat primary race a toss-up and the very real possibility of no single candidate having enough delegates to win the nomination outright when the DNC meets in Milwaukee this July. The Nevada Caucuses are next week, the South Carolina primary a week after that and Super Tuesday is looming just around the corner on March 3rd. As an aside, the primary in my home state of Indiana isn’t until May 5th which always makes it pretty much a non-event. Sad face from a former resident of New Hampshire. Anyway, the polls are all over the place and rather than firming up the race, the first two contests just made things worse. With the “front-runner” a doddering, demented little girl groper and the second place guy an ancient, millionaire Jewish socialist, the DNC is panicking and the knives are coming out.
Just a few days ago I wrote about Michael Bloomberg getting “caught” on tape defending practices like stop-and-frisk and pointing out, completely accurately, that violent crime in New York City is close to 100% committed by minorities. Turns out the that telling the truth hurts you in an election. Then a story ran about Joe Biden, who inexplicably has huge support in the critical black voting block in the South, saying something naughty about blacks in front of an audience of black mayors.
Now call me crazy but it seems to me that having parents who can’t read or write is a problem wherever it happens but if you mention illiteracy in front of blacks in the context of the black community, it becomes “racist”. I doubt his comment really “shocked” anyone in the audience, low levels of literacy are absolutely linked to poverty. I know plenty of literate people who are poor but you won’t find a ton of illiterate people that are hugely successful. That wasn’t what was interesting to me as much as this fascinating little blurb in the heading:
That doesn’t sound right. I went to the report linked in the story to see if that was true.
Spoiler alert: it isn’t.
Here is the chart the story references.
Does that chart prove that white people are more likely to be illiterate than blacks? No. No it does not. Let’s break it on down.
About 20% of adults in America are functionally illiterate. Of those 20% of the population, 35% are white, 23% are black and 34% are Hispanic.
More white people than black people are illiterate in terms of total numbers. There is a reason for this and it isn’t the exceptional literacy prowess in the black community. Here is the reason:
There are around five times as many white people as black people in America.
So if 13% of the population (blacks) makes up 23% of the illiterate population and 62% of the population (whites) makes up 35% of the illiterate population, that means that white people are far less likely to be illiterate than black people. This is the same basic math that people don’t get when it comes to violent crime. Blacks commit over half of the murders in this country but are only 13% of the population, so a black person is more likely than a white person or an Asian to be a murderer. Per capita is really hard for some people to understand.
As an aside, Hispanics are 34% of the total population that is illiterate but only around 18% of the population but the fact that many are first generation immigrants or illegal aliens skews the numbers because we have no way of knowing how many people that are illiterate in English are reasonably literate in Spanish. This is reflected in the columns with hashmarks. Also, anyone who is honest will confirm that English illiteracy in the mestizo community is a huge barrier to success.
However, even thought it is quite clear from story that blacks are drastically over-represented in the population that is illiterate, the writer of the story, one Grace Panetta, either doesn’t understand a basic concept like per capita, is herself illiterate or is just lying. I am assuming it is the latter although it is quite possible that she slapped together this story, Googled the literacy report and flat out misread it.
No one who is mildly serious and has spent any time in the real world would really think that blacks are less likely to be illiterate than whites. No one. But people read stuff like this, consume what is presented and just absorb it as gospel truth. The media knows this and that is why they continue to lie to us. It works.