11 Facts About Racial Discrimination


1. African-Americans comprise 13 percent of the U.S. population and 14 percent of the monthly drug users, but 37 percent of the people arrested for drug-related offenses in America.

2. Studies show that police are much more likely to pull over and frisk blacks or Latinos than whites. In New York City, 80 percent of the stops made by the NYPD were blacks and Latinos, and 85 percent of those people were frisked, compared to a mere 8 percent of the white people stopped.

3. After being arrested, blacks are 33 percent more likely than whites to be detained while facing a felony trial in New York.

4. In 2010, the U.S. Sentencing Commission reported that blacks receive 10 percent longer sentences than whites through the federal system for the same crimes.

5. African-Americans are 21 percent more likely than whites to receive mandatory minimum sentences and 20 percent more likely to be sentenced to prison than white drug defendants.

6. In a 2009 report, two-thirds of the criminals receiving life sentences were non-whites. In New York, it is 83 percent.

7. Blacks make up 57 percent of the people in state prisons for drug offenses.

8. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics concluded that a black male born in 2001 had a 32 percent chance of going to jail in his lifetime, while a Latino male has a 17 percent chance, and a white male only 6 percent.

9. In 2012, 51 percent of Americans expressed anti-black sentiments in a poll; a 3 percent increase from 2008.

10. A survey in 2011 revealed that 52 percent of non-Hispanic whites expressed anti-Hispanic attitudes.

11. Reports show that nearly 50 percent of Americans under 18 are minorities, but 80 percent of retirees are white. The trend projects a reversal in the population where by 2030, the majority of under 18s will be of color, and by 2042 nonwhites will be the majority of the U.S. population.

Know discrimination when you see it.