Can we at least learn basic math? Soledad O'Brien tweet about Sanders was deleted because of this

[Exotica]

The MIC article she got it from used the word "proportionally" which O'Brien left out as well

And NO, this is not an OP in support of Sanders at all. I do NOT want him to run in 2020 for POTUS (I want Kamala Harris), and I wish a real, actual Democratic candidate would take the 2nd VT Senate seat he now holds.

I am writing this because I simply cannot believe the basic error and all the assumptions that came from people just buying into it were made.

Vermont has a HORRID racial disparity in terms in black v white incarceration rates, BUT, there are NOT 10 times as many blacks locked up in VT as there are walking the streets.



here is the link to the tweet (now deleted)

Link to tweet

this is

what it was, before she deleted it.



So

The current population of Vermonst is estimated at 623,960 in 2018

Using the MIC article own numbers

Black Vermonters make up just 1.2% of the state's general population

That means there are are 7488 African Americans living in Vermont.

As of 2017, the Vermont inmate population was 1722, TOTAL, for all races (and going down rapidly since 2008).

http://www.leg.state.vt.us/jfo/appropriations/fy_2018/FY2018%20Department%20Budgets/FY2018%20Department%20of%20Corrections%20Budget%20Presentation.pdf

The black incarceration rate in Vermont (per the MIC article O'Brien used), is 10.7%, which yields 184 African American inmates.

Even if you double that number (for African Americans in local jails temporarily)

368 is a FAR cry from the over 70 THOUSAND it would need to be to make Soledad's Tweet true, which is why she deleted it.

[ProudLib72]

1. Quit mathin' me. Just tell me the damn answer

How many apples does Bernie have left?

[Exotica]

6. it's in his tax returns, so who knows

[Hortensis]

14. :) You're very right. But Sanders himself used phony

claims arising from or through the very same source, The Sentencing Project, when he was running for president and he felt they'd work for him. And, yes, the subject was this one he's now claiming he was bizarrely unaware of as he attempts a reset of his image with POC.

In 2015 Sanders earned 2 Pinocchios from the WaPo for using an old, commonly quoted popular culture claim about national black incarceration that hadn't been valid for almost a decade. The "one in three black males ‘born today’ will end up in jail" one.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/06/16/the-stale-statistic-that-one-in-three-black-males-has-a-chance-of-ending-up-in-jail/?utm_term=.cd9d84a56316

It was an out of date prediction of what would happen if 2001 incarceration rates continued. They did not; 2001 was a high point and they'd declined every year since. (Needless to say, that quote was not helpful to POC and used against them a lot by right-wing politicians).

This was likely just a talking point supplied before the interview by a similarly ignorant and sloppy staffer. But Sanders has been a public servant for 37 years, 27+ in congress, and to this day still cannot speak accurately, knowledgeably or it seems even honestly on the subject of this ongoing atrocity.

[ucrdem]

64. +1. The devil is in the details every time.

Every damn time.

[Hoyt]

2. Her point is still valid.

[Exotica]

5. yes to a point, but a huge blunder like that doesn't help make the case, and makes it ripe for

discrediting and muddying the waters, not to mention hurting her credibility. Perception and response is key to all in the rapid-fire social media realm.

[EffieBlack]

38. She doesn't need to "make the case." Bernie Sanders said something really stupid that demonstrated

his ignorance about an issue of great concern to African Americans. No case needs to be made. And the focus on Soledad is an effort to shift attention away from the huuuuge foot stuck in Bernie's mouth.

[Exotica]

41. Soledad's blunder isnt helping keep Bernies feet to the fire

Any cock up is going to end up being used by the opposition to deflect and diffuse. She was really sloppy. It's on her.

[EffieBlack]

42. No, it's NOT on her. She's a journalist who sent out a tweet. That has NOTHING to do with what

Bernie said and what it means. It's a distraction.

But it's not going to work. Bernie's stupid but very revealing comment - quoted by one of his biggest fans - is going to remain out there for everyone to see long after everyone has forgotten what a reporter tweeted about it.

This isn't about "holding Bernie's feet to the fire," by the way. He said what he said. Period.

[Exotica]

43. You miss the forest for the trees. O'Brien's clumsy attack on a legit

meme (ie Bernie is shit on PoC issues) gave his forces yet another arrow in their quiver to dodge with. Social media is unforgiving and now the Bros have been given a toy to play with. Look downthread on your OP. Prima facie her Tweet was a built-in self-sabotage that distracted from the original issue.

[EffieBlack]

44. Actually YOU'RE missing the forest for the trees

You’re obsessing over someone’s response to something Bernie said as if that somehow corrects or justifies his comment in any way.

It really doesn’t matter WHAT anyone’s response is - he said what he said and that comment is pretty glaring. And it can’t be easily explained away so people are focusing on Soledad’s response to it as as an excuse to draw attention away from what Bernie himself said.

But that’s not going away.

[Exotica]

46. Methinks you doth protest too much. But we will just have to agree

to disagree on this one occasion.

Cheers

[pnwmom]

11. Not really. Not when she's literally saying there are 10 X more Black people in jail in Vermont

than free on the streets.

That was just nonsense.

[Hoyt]

17. Her point is Vermont is a very white state -- which it is -- with a high proportion of incarcerated

from the small percentage of Blacks that live there.


From the article in the OP:


"But with a population that's almost entirely white — 95.2%, according to 2014 Census estimates — and consists of just over 626,000 people, the brand of sequestered, small-scale liberalism that Vermont represents has rarely been tested by the strains of racial diversity. As such, a question arises: How does the state's progressivism apply across racial lines?

"One possible answer lies in the numbers: According to data from Vermont's Department of Corrections, this liberal enclave has one of the most disproportionate rates of black incarceration in the country. Black Vermonters make up just 1.2% of the state's general population, but 10.7% of its incarcerated population. This means that, proportionally, there are nearly 10 times more black people locked up in Vermont's jails and prisons on a given day than there are walking its streets.

"Few criminal justice scholars or workers in Vermont seem able to explain how this happened. The black incarceration rate grew faster here than in any other in the state between 1993 and 2007, before it leveled out and stayed relatively constant. But shortly before its peak, the Sentencing Project reported that Vermont had the second-highest black-to-white incarceration rate in America — topped only by Iowa, another state with a small black population."
________________


I think her point is valid, even if the math is a bit wrong or not stated as correctly as a peer reviewed article might require. It's a tweet, not much different from conversation. While I don't always do it, I try looking for the point in the tweet or even a brief statement, while not getting hung up on whether every word/phrase is absolutely correct.

Her comment -- whether the math is correct or not -- is supported by the article and this comment: "[There's] a major consistency: Black people are treated very differently than white people in Vermont." — Allen Gilbert, executive director of the ACLU of Vermont

[pnwmom]

18. That's not what her TWEET said. And my point is Math Matters.

Even in a tweet. When you're off by as much as she was, it just confuses the issue.

[Exotica]

48. Thank you!

Math matters indeed. It hurt a legitimate point being made.

[Tom Rinaldo]

21. Her math was not "a bit wrong". It was off by more than 20 thousand percent.

I don't deny that there is a genuine point to be made, but when one (no doubt innocently) makes an error of that magnitude, that error wildly distorts any real discussion. We see ample evidence of that elsewhere on this board. In this case her simple human fuck up (of a type I am quite capable of making myself) did not take a peer review process to unearth. She was correct to delete her tweet. And anyone who took her false figures and ran with them elsewhere on this board should dutifully, and prominently, acknowledge the error

The source you refer to here offers a valid basis for real discussion..

[Hoyt]

23. Then leave it at: "Black people are treated very differently than white people in Vermont."

[Tom Rinaldo]

26. That is a fair (and important) statement. Though it isn't only true for Vermont. n/t

[mythology]

20. No it really isn't

Her point was that there were 10 times as many black inmates as there were non-incarcerated blacks in Vermont and so Sanders had no basis to comment on the subject. That point is laughably incorrect. You can't cite an invalid statistic as the entirety of the argument, be wrong and then claim well the statistic didn't matter.

[Hoyt]

24. Her point was -- "Black people are treated very differently than white people in Vermont."

[elleng]

3. Thanks.

I didn't follow the first (fiasco,) and am glad to see FACTS have entered the realm.

[mr_lebowski]

4. Well, to be fair, how many of the 1700-ish are actually walking down the street at any given moment?

Couldn't be more than, 18 of 'em, right?

I mean, who walks around these days.

[mr_lebowski]

7. So, try to DO SOMETHING BOUT IT THEN, Bernie ... now that you finally know and all

FFS, John Oliver did an episode about this TRAVESTY YEARS AGO.

He's done at least one follow-up as well ...

* that'd have been my response

[CentralMass]

8. But but but...

[Hassin Bin Sober]

9. What's laughable is that tweet was held up as a "schooling" LOL

[Squinch]

60. What's tragic is that you consider the underlying message trivial enough to be laughable.

[phleshdef]

10. I'm pretty god damn sure Bernie was being sarcastic.

[Squinch]

27. Because of all those civil rights bona fides he earned at that sit-in fifty years ago?

[phleshdef]

32. No, because its painfully fucking obvious to anyone with an average or better IQ.

[Squinch]

33. Nope. He wasnt being sarcastic.

[EffieBlack]

39. This is sarcasm?

Please.

Backstage, I met privately with Sanders, and was immediately struck by his vastly improved mastery of core issues around criminal justice reform. But it wasn’t just his newfound fluency on these issues that surprised me — it was his emotion.

“It’s disgusting, Shaun, that our country is basically criminalizing poverty. I’ll be honest with you. I really didn’t know this was happening. I had no idea hundreds of thousands of Americans, particularly African-Americans, were being held in jail, for months or years, even though they’ve never been convicted of a crime, simply because they can’t afford bail,” Sanders told me in a tiny dressing room backstage before the event.

“I’ve learned a lot,” he continued. “I see the racial disparities clearer than ever. I want to help – just tell me how I can best help and we’ll do it.” I was touched. He wasn’t reading from a script. He was admitting to me, as he soon would from the stage, in front of thousands of people, that he hasn’t always gotten this quite right.

https://theintercept.com/2018/06/14/bernie-sanders-criminal-justice-reform/

[Squinch]

54. It absolutely is not. And if you can't argue without ad homimem

attacks you know you have nothing.

[NCTraveler]

50. Projections about IQ.

Solid. Cornerstone of many “successful” arguments.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

34. Narrator: He wasn't.

[kamalafan]

12. Yes and Bri schooled Soledad on Twitter over her tweet

And I can't help but wonder if Bri's response is why Soledad delete her tweet.

[Squinch]

31. So basically this is saying there is a disparity in which 10x as many blacks as whites by

proportionality are in Vermont prisons. Then suggests that, because this is lower than the national average, which by the way includes places like Alabama and Mississippi where racial discrimination is coded into law, it's no big deal.

Then it throws up a straw man that suggests that ANYONE said that BS had control over state law enforcement.

NO ONE ever did. What people DID say was that BS should not have been totally shocked that black people constitute about 1% of the Vermont population and about 10% of the Vermont prison population.

And after decades in the Senate, he should certainly not be so ignorant as to be able to make a statement like this: "I had no idea that hundreds of thousands of Americans, particularly African Americans, were being held in jail for months or years, even though they have never been convicted of a crime." The correct answer to that statement is this: "Why the fuck didn't you know that, Senator? It is your job to know that."

And frankly, from this exchange, I don't believe that Bri is who her photo suggests she is. Das vidanya, kids.

[OilemFirchen]

58. Briahna Gray is a fucking moron.

So far this year, 480 black people have been shot and killed by police. There are more than 40 million black people in the United States. So, if the rate of police shootings goes up, say, a thousand percent, we're only talking about 5,280 black people being killed by police. That's only .013% of the black population. Is it really worth all the fuss?

It's pretty special to use this series of tweets in an attempt to diminish Ms. O'Brien's misstated, but very salient observation.

[spooky3]

13. Thank you. I posted this yesterday:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=10733760

The numbers made no sense to me. But your info sets it all out—glad I’m not going crazy!

[Exotica]

15. your reply was one of a couple that inspired me to post this OP

[spooky3]

30. Thanks!

[Vinca]

16. I don't know much about the numbers, but I'm in Vermont on an almost daily basis.

There probably are a larger-than-normal number of black people in jail in Vermont and that's because of the opioid epidemic. Interstate 91, aka the "Heroin Highway," runs right up through the state. People from cities to the south traffic drugs and many of them are black. Pick up the local paper on any week day and there's probably a story of a bust on or near the Interstate. That said, from my experience, people of color are warmly accepted in the towns in southern Vermont I frequent. Just yesterday a shop I sell antiques through hired a new employee who happens to be a black guy. My gynecologist is a black woman. I never really think about it until I read posts like this. People are people. Underneath we're all pink.

[Squinch]

28. People from cities traffic drugs and many of them are white. So WTF?

And you vaguely know two black people, so the disproportionate number of black people in Vermont prisons isn't anything to worry about?

Really?

[Vinca]

36. Your twisting my post, but whatever . . .

[Squinch]

55. No, really I'm not.

[Vinca]

56. Apparently you want a long list of every person I know who is not white, plus a tally of all

the nonwhite people on the streets of the small Vermont town I frequent. Come to think of it, that sounds pretty much like the veiled racism you seem to be accusing me of.

[Squinch]

59. You're the one who needed to give the tally of those two black people you know slightly or know of.

And your suggestion the high black incarceration rates is because of all that drug trafficking, ie, implying that the traffickers are black, came out of your pen, not mine.

[Vinca]

61. You're not worth responding to, but I'm sure you're a "last worder," so have at it.

[Tom Rinaldo]

19. I appreciate your sense of fairness and the importance of reliable informaton

Just like I respect you choosing not to support Sanders for President. None of us should be eager to embrace unsupported facts because they line up with our political preferences.

[mountain grammy]

63. Ditto

[uponit7771]

22. Semantics, wrong about Vermont right about Sanders obtuseness regarding minority jailing ....

... which is the more important point.

[Hoyt]

25. Exactly.

[JCanete]

52. if every other senator is so familiar, that is not exactly a badge of honor,

given how little attention it has been given by our politicians over the decades that got us here.

[EffieBlack]

57. Exactly

Which is why they want to focus attention on the semantics, as if they somehow obviate the cluelessness Sanders's gaffe exposed.

[kcr]

29. Yes, but pouncing on technical errors like that that don't actually change the argument is silly

Especially since she deleted it when she realized the error she made. Bernie was still wrong. The problem she's acknowledging that Bernie was unaware of still exists. It was the kind of math error that's easy to make. I guarantee a good chunk of people laughing at Solidad and claiming a victory for Bernie aren't whizzes at math either and have made plenty of similar errors in the past. It's embarrassing and makes you feel foolish when it happens. But those who pounce on it as an opportunity to declare victory look like weak bullies. It's like people who nitpick typos because they can't make an actual argument.

[EffieBlack]

40. It's deflection

They have no defense of the ignorance and cluelessness demonstrated by Mr. Civil Rights, so they attack Soledad.

The key is that Soledad wasn't presenting numbers to debunk anything that Bernie said, so it doesn't matter whether her numbers were off. She was pointing out how completely tone-deaf Sanders is for never noticing that blacks are being treated this way by the criminal justice system. And he is, regardless of the numbers.

Sanders was caught with his drawers exposed. His acolyte - apparently just as clueless as his hero - seemed to believe that anyone reading the quote is as delusionally in love as he is and would see it, not as an admission of gobsmacking ignorance completely inappropriate for a U.S. senator, much less one who wants to be president of the United States, but as further proof of just how wonderful and dreamy Bernie is. Instead, he put his guy out on Front Street where everyone can see his drawers and it's not a pretty sight. So, instead of dealing with what he actually said and what it reveals about him, they attack Soledad because she got a number wrong when she responded to him. But all they're doing is showing just how disingenuous the whole "Bernie can do no wrong" approach is.

[EffieBlack]

37. Nice try at deflection. But it doesn't matter that Soledad misquoted a response to Bernie's quote.

And whining and obsessing over whether her reference to a response to Bernie's quote does NOT detract from the fact that Bernie said something very revealing about himself. BERNIE'S quote is what matters, no matter how much you want to argue about whether more black Vermonters are in jail than walking the street. Arguing about that is ridiculous, although I understand why Bernie's supporter want to shift attention to that so that people won't talk about what Bernie himself actually said - that until 2015 he "had no idea" that so many African Americans were being held in jail without bail, a shocking admission of ignorance and cluelessness from a man held up as a civil rights champion.

[Exotica]

45. I was NOT whinging on about anything. I was pointing out a

major error in a tweet that has now given a self-inflicted wound to people who are legitimately questioning Sanders ability to deal with and understand us PoC at a taproot level. Nothing more, nothing less.

[EffieBlack]

47. How is Soledad's tweet a "self-inflicted wound to people who are legitimately questioning Sanders?"

[Exotica]

49. Simple as Simon

Go to your OP.
Click on Tweet link.
Read responses to her self-delete.
Multiply that by all the related discussions on this net-wide.
Finally, future-forward project when this is brought up by a Bernie supporter to obfuscate and cast aspersions on people bringing it (Bernie's lack of racial awareness) up again.

[EffieBlack]

51. Bernie supporters using something one person - who has absolutely no connection to people trying to

hold Bernie accountable - said is NOT "a self-inflicted wound." It's an excuse. And if Soledad had never said anything at all, they'd find a different excuse. And if THAT excuse wasn't available, they'd find a different excuse.

The problem isn't with what Soledad tweeted. It's with the people who think Bernie Sanders has not, cannot and will not ever do anything wrong. They are going to always make excuses for him, just as in this case. Sanders comment was pretty pathetic. It's pathetic no matter anyone else says about it after the fact. And anyone who tries to dismiss it because of something Soledad O'Brien said about it after he said it should never try to sneak up on anyone because you can hear them coming a mile away from the loud swooshing sound of the Kool-Aid sloshing around in their bellies.

[Exotica]

53. At this point I have no idea what you are trying to accomplish with me

I am a LGBTQ woman of colour who has never supported Sanders, find him to be ignorant of the race/class dynamics paradigm, do not want him to run for POTUS, and want him to STFU with his attacks on our Party.

I also absolutely stand by my breakdown of the O'Brien tweet and will not bend or yield on what I perceive to be a correct reading of the situation. You appear to be trying to force-feed your take down my throat.

No thanks.

[ucrdem]

62. I think her point is pretty clear. nt

[Exotica]

65. As is mine