Did Ron Paul actually say this:

" I’m the only one up here and the only one in the Democratic Party "

Did he actually say that he's in the Democratic Party???

Yes.

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**For the Paul bots I kept the entire context of the answer...so you can accuse this "neo-con" e.g. conservative AMERICAN Jew (in this case who is Pro-Life) from misquoting the doctor.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Congressman Paul, while -- while we’re on the subject, the speaker said that you’ve had a history of inaccurate statements. There has been quite a bit controversy over this newsletter that went out under your name, a number of comments that were perceived as racist, as inaccurate. You’ve said that even though they were written under your name, that you’re not necessarily -- that you didn’t necessarily know they were written, you don’t necessarily stand by them. Can you really take the time now and explain to everybody what happened there, how it was possible that those kind of comments went out under your name without you knowing about it?

PAUL: Well, it’s been explained many times, and everything’s written 20 years ago, approximately, that I did not write. So concentrating on something that was written 20 years ago that I didn’t write, you know, is diverting the attention from most of the important issues.

But the inference is obvious that -- and you even bring up the word racial overtones. More importantly, you ought to ask me what my relationship is for racial relationships. And one of my heroes is Martin Luther King because he practiced the libertarian principle of peaceful resistance and peaceful civil disobedience, as did Rosa Parks did.

But, also, I’m the only one up here and the only one in the Democratic Party that understands true racism in this country is in the judicial system. And it has to do with enforcing the drug laws.

Look at the percentages. The percentage of people who use drugs are about the same with blacks and whites. And yet the blacks are arrested way disproportionately. They’re -- they’re prosecuted and imprisoned way disproportionately. They get -- they get the death penalty way disproportionately.

How many times have you seen a white rich person get the electric chair or get, you know, execution?

But poor minorities have an injustice. And they have an injustice in war, as well, because minorities suffer more. Even with a draft -- with a draft, they suffered definitely more. And without a draft, they’re suffering disproportionately.

If we truly want to be concerned about racism, you ought to look at a few of those issues and look at the drug laws, which are being so unfairly enforced.

'Rand Paul says his father is most electable Republican because he can attract independents'

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'Election 101: Ron Paul sets sights on 2012. Ten things to know about him.'

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“I believe there are literally millions of more people now concerned about the very things I talked about four years ago.... The excessive spending, the entitlement system, the foreign policy, as well as the monetary system,” he said in Iowa, after announcing formation of his exploratory committee.

The data you are presenting are: 1. outdated and 2. not from the NIH. The data are actually from a publication indexed in Medline/PubMed by the NIH. Choosing to use data from 2003 compared to 2010 data AND choosing data pulled from a study conducted on college students automatically means that you are comparing the proverbial "apples to oranges" If you would like more updated information, the 2010 NDSDUH is available from the SAMHSA website at: External Link )

The preeminent Monitoring the Future study, alongside other criminological and criminal justice research, has shown for years that black drug use is at or below the level of whites. The same researchers have consistently found that rates of violence are higher among blacks. They aren't blowing smoke. They aren't denying racial differences. And this isn't flimsy evidence. Study after study after study -- different methodologies, different sites, different researchers -- supports the same finding. Blacks are not using drugs at higher rates. Moreover, research on the criminal justice system is arguably much less liberal as some other social sciences, in part because much of it is funded directly by state and federal CJ systems.

Now, just because blacks and whites are involved in drugs at the same rates, does that mean that the criminal justice system is *racist*? Not necessarily. Police patrols, for example, could be heavily influenced by levels of violence (which would make sense and would skew toward black communities). Drug users would then be picked up more due to higher patrol rates. Dealers might be disproportionately black. Even though we do arrest plenty of users, police are most interested in suppliers. Plenty of people convicted of possession were actually committing the crime of dealing, whether due to plea bargains or weak evidence.

So: just because there is a racial disparity in arrests, that does not mean that there is racial discrimination in the system. Correlation, causation. This is a complicated topic. The truth lies somewhere between Paul's "true racism in this country is in the judicial system" and Mac Donald's "How the War Against Police Harms Black Americans." Those are clearly hyperbolic, political positions.

Rational drug and criminal justice policies do require attention to scientific evidence, even if some around here regard that phrase as an oxymoron.

But remember, Paul wants end it at the federal level and let states decide, not force every state to legalize drugs.

It's a federalism issue, not a libertarian one.

I think two issues are being confused here: "drug USE" and "drug ACTIVITY."

As I recall, the U-Mich study routinely shows whites USE drugs somewhat MORE frequently than minorities do. However, minorities are more likely to be involved in "drug ACTIVITY" -- meaning street dealing and all the gang stuff that goes with it. (A trend which is tied to larger issues of economic opportunity: drug dealing is some people's solution to unemployment, therefore always more prevalent where there are fewer job opportunities.)

So the racial discrepancy needs to unpacked further: what are the incarceration rates for USE aside from "activity"? Again, I think minorities do disproportionately wind up serving time for use charges: often parole/probation violations from failing a mandatory drug test lead to mandatory time (which again ties in to larger questions about who tends to wind up on parole or probation in the first place.)

Also, I've always suspected (but have no proof) that "white suburban" drug dealers are more likely to get away with their crimes. I don't think most of those white drug users are actually buying their drugs in "the ghetto." A more upscale clientele attracts far less police attention.

So I do agree that the results of drug laws have disproportionate impact, but mostly due to larger economic issues. It's a bit like that old joke "world to end tomorrow, women and minorities hardest hit." Of course the poor always suffer more because they have fewer resources -- poverty is really the "root cause" not drugs or racism or whatever. (Of course that leads to the question of what perpetuates poverty -- another topic!!)

PS - I'm sure Ron Paul was originally a southern Democrat, wasn't he? In the old segregation days . . . a classic Freudian slip on someone's part! (Did Paul really say it or Deb misquote?)

"That’s a pretty serious slander on our criminal-justice systems. Do the Paul people have stats to back it up?"

These stats may prove helpful (w/ links to actual studies):

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(2011 - race & prison - imprisonment for marijuana offenses)
"Compared to Non-blacks, California’s African-American population are 4 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana, 12 times more likely to be imprisoned for a marijuana felony arrest, and 3 times more likely to be imprisoned per marijuana possession arrest. Overall, as Figure 3 illustrates, these disparities accumulate to 10 times’ greater odds of an African-American being imprisoned for marijuana than other racial/ethnic groups."
Source:
Males, Mike, "Misdemeanor marijuana arrests are skyrocketing and other California marijuana enforcement disparities," Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (San Francisco, CA: November 2011), p. 6.
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(1999 - civil rights - racial disparities in state prison)
"Our research shows that blacks comprise 62.7 percent and whites 36.7 percent of all drug offenders admitted to state prison, even though federal surveys and other data detailed in this report show clearly that this racial disparity bears scant relation to racial differences in drug offending. There are, for example, five times more white drug users than black. Relative to population, black men are admitted to state prison on drug charges at a rate that is 13.4 times greater than that of white men. In large part because of the extraordinary racial disparities in incarceration for drug offenses, blacks are incarcerated for all offenses at 8.2 times the rate of whites. One in every 20 black men over the age of 18 in the United States is in state or federal prison, compared to one in 180 white men."
Source:
Human Rights Watch, "Racial Disparities in the War on Drugs" (Washington, DC: Human Rights Watch, 2000).
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It's not a bad thing to disproportionately target and convict black people. Independently of the question of drug legalization,DWB ( driving while black) men tend to have outstanding warrants, registration violations, contraband of all types, no insurance etc etc etc and are generally-- if they are males between the ages 13- 30 years old-- a good collar because they literally are walking crime statistics.

Well over 50% of crime in the US is commited by black teens and young adult men.

There's no Hitherto overlooked mysterious population of white boys to arrest and charge if the cops would just look a little more thoroughly. The cops for the most part be wasting resources patroling the white burbs.