Professor stupidmonkey wrote:
And 1 million of the 2.3 million inmates are African Americans
link out of 38.9 million people who identified as AA.
link So that looks like 37 million non-felon African Americans.
No one said otherwise. But the disenfranchisement for conviction rate is 1-in-13 for African Americans and 1-in-56 for non-blacks (disenfranchisement, of course, often continues after release so the rate is higher than just that of current prisoners which includes minor non-felony incarceration). You don't need every African American to be a felon for this to be an important point of advocacy among black populations or for a rejection of voting rights to sound tone-deaf when courting black voters. Which is what CNN was saying regardless of how other people took it.
I'll say, sure, CNN maybe should have picked different phrasing based on how some people are responding to it but that's more of a "CYA against knee-jerk reactions" than "You've let on your secret bias!"
Edited, Aug 22nd 2016 2:25pm by Jophiel