RAND PAUL ON HIS FERGUSON POLICE OP-ED: 'IT'S NOT A PURPOSEFUL RACISM'
by MATTHEW BOYLE
21 Aug 2014, 6:48 PM PDT
SALAMA, Guatemala — Just before departing for the rural town here where he performed charity eye surgeries over several days, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) caused a stir with an op-ed in Time about the violence in Ferguson, Missouri, calling for the police to be “demilitarized” and saying race skews the application of criminal justice in the U.S.
In an interview, he elaborated on his article and responded to critics on the right whom he said had misconstrued what he wrote.
“If you look at crime statistics, many people look at the crime statistics and say that blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately incarcerated with regard to what percentage of time they’re in for,” Paul said. “With drug statistics, they say blacks and whites use drugs at about the same rate, but the prisons are three out of four people are black or brown. So it’s not on purpose. It’s not a purposeful racism. It’s an inadvertent racial sort of outcome is what it is.”
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