In a new video from Prager University radio host Larry Elder explains that despite what President Barack Obama says, racism is not in America’s “DNA.”
Elder cited the following statistics showing that America has changed:
- 60 percent of Americans said in 1960 they would not vote for a black president. Obama, the country’s first black president, was elected president to two terms.
- In 1958, only 4 percent of Americans approved of marriage between blacks and whites. That number has increased to 87 percent in 2016.
- In 1960, only 1.6 percent of marriages were between blacks and whites. That number is now 12 percent in 2016 and rising.
Elder also dispels the notion that law enforcement is plagued by “systemic racism.”
“You cannot have an honest discussion about police conduct without having an honest discussion of black crime,” Elder said. “Though blacks are 13 percent of the population, they commit 50 percent of the nation’s homicides, and almost always the victim is another black person, just as most white homicides are against other whites.”
Elder cited statistics from the Center for Disease Control showing that in 2012, police killed 123 blacks—less than half the amount of whites killed by police. That same year, blacks killed over 6,000 people, most of which were other blacks.
On the idea that police are more harsh on blacks in traffic stops than whites, Elder cites a 2013 report from the National Institute for Justice that found that 3 out of 4 blacks surveyed believed they were stopped for a “legitimate reason.” The NIJ report concluded that the discrepancies in the amount of blacks pulled over for traffic stops were due to “differences in offending.” The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported similar results, that blacks simply violated traffic laws at higher rates than whites.
Elder concludes the video by quoting Harvard University’s Orlando Patterson, an African American, who said, “America is now the least racist white majority society in the world, has a better record of legal protection of minorities than any other society, white or black, offers more opportunities to a greater number of black persons than any other society, including all of those of Africa.”