The New Jim Crow, a block-buster NY Times bestseller, kicked off the Biden-Clinton crime bill myth. Authored by Michelle Alexander, with an introduction by Cornel West (Sanders’ #1 surrogate) and edited by Maya Harris (Kamala’s sister and campaign chair), the myth hurt Hillary Clinton and is now targetting Joe Biden.
The core of the myth claims that although Republican’s did a little damage, the main cause of the current high rate of black incarceration is the 1994 crime bill with Joe Biden a lead author and signed by Bill Clinton. Furthermore, the myth claims their intention was to gain racist white votes by, in effect, restoring the Jim Crow laws overturned by the civil rights movement.
In fact,
- The growth in incarceration started in 1973, 20 years before the Biden bill was enacted.
- The growth in black imprisonment slowed dramatically the next year and stopped after five years.
- The growth in the white imprisonment rate continued for approximately 15 years after the black rate began falling.
This does not prove that the Biden-Clinton bill caused the turn-around, but the bill surely did not make the situation noticeably worse, and most likely did make some contribution to the slowing and then the falling rate of black imprisonment.
The fact that the black rate began to fall while the white rate continued to rise is a sure sign the bill was not racist.
Ripped Apart
