When it comes to race, average Americans absolutely are the problem. We live in a democracy, as our average population goes, we go as a nation. It's the founding principle and single greatest aspect of this country. However, on both sides of the aisle, we choose to turn our heads away from the reality of what is happening. In schools, we teach children that slavery ended in 1863 and racism ended with Martin Luther King Jr. In the south, we glamorize confederate leaders (literal traitors who fought for the right to own slaves). We turn a blind eye to the everyday realities of racism that plague our black and brown communities. We ignore the systemic racism that has corrupted every aspect of our criminal justice system. As long as we, as a society, continue to ignore the root cause, and instead focus on the symptoms, we're going to be stuck where we're at today.
Someone, who has a rather tenuous relationship with them, mentioned facts. So let's talk a bit more about facts, and start with one in particular "Black people commit more crimes".
Firstly, it's true that black people are
charged with more crimes than white people (at a rather alarming rate) but this does not necessarily mean that they commit more crimes. A good example is arrests and convictions for marijuana possession. White people use marijuana at about the same rate, actually slightly higher, compared to black people. In this case, we have an even playing field in terms of those who commit crimes. Now, if our criminal justice system was fair and equal, what we would expect to see is an equal (per-capita) rate of arrests and convictions between white and black people for pot. What do we see? On average in the USA, black people are 4x more likely to be busted for pot. In the most unequal states, such as Wisconsin, MN, IA, IL, etc, the rates are more like 8x. I'll say it again, 8 times more likely to be busted for a crime committed at roughly the same rate.
https://www.aclu.org/report/report-war-marijuana-black-and-white?redirect=criminal-law-reform/war-marijuana-black-and-white - for anyone who wants to fact check this, you can find sources on page 30 of this report. Spoiler: most if not all sources are from official government reports.
Even if, for the sake of argument, we were to agree that black people commit crimes at a somewhat higher rate, it wouldn't come close to accounting for 8x the arrests.
So what does this tell us? Black people are just really bad at hiding their drug use? Not so much. A big reason for this is that police activity is often centralized around poor, black neighborhoods. It's not rocket science, if the majority of cops are policing a minority group (black people), you're going to see much higher arrest and conviction rates of said group.
If you look into other types of crimes, you'll find similarly disproportion rates of arrests, convictions, etc. For those of you who enjoy reading, the underlying reasons for this are outlined in great detail in Michelle Alexander's book:
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness .
Michelle does an excellent job of explaining how the criminal justice system, and it's disproportionate response to black crime, prolongs the cycle of poverty in black communities. Once you've been arrested, especially for a felony, it's much more difficult to get a job, to own property, to go to college, to dig yourself out of poverty.
https://www.prisonerhealth.org/educational-resources/factsheets-2/race-and-incarceration/ - which has further links to additional reports with cited data.
Here's some additional facts:
The USA incarcerates more people than any other nation, and it's not even close. We put about 50% more people in prison than Russia. Yes, Russia. Of our Nato allies, we lock up an absurd percentage of our population.
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/global/2018.html Here's a quote from
Wikipedia : "While the United States represents about 4.4 percent of the world's population, it houses around 22 percent of the world's prisoners." - Almost 1/4 of prisoners in
the entire world reside in the USA.
Another factoid for you fact-fans: Since the 1980's (when the War on Drugs ramped up) we've been imprisoning our population at an extremely alarming rate. It's so extreme than an entire cottage industry has popped up around it (see: privatized prisons, a topic I don't have the energy to get into).
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._incarceration_rates_1925_onwards.png Despite the fact that violent crime has gone down during this time period. The majority of arrests and incarcerations are for non-violent crimes, most commonly, minor drug offenses, which as we've already covered, black people are charged with at a ridiculously disproportionate level.
Whether you think race plays a major role or not, our criminal justice system is majorly fucked.