Bill O'Reilly, host of "The O'Reilly Factor" on Fox News, used his nightly Talking Points Memo segment to completely shred the idea that blacks are more frequently jailed than whites because of a racist justice system.
He said, Breitbart noted: "According to FBI data from 1976 to 1995, black Americans were identified by police as committing more than half of the homicides in the USA. African-Americans make up 13 percent of the population. In addition, a national crime victims survey reported that blacks committed robberies at a rate of 60 percent. Again, the black community is just 13 percent of the population. So what's the beef if black Americans are committing crimes out-of-proportion to other ethnic groups, why is there a racial component to their presence in prison? Why?"
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He made the remarks in context of discussing the recent Bill Clinton public dress-down of Black Lives Matter movement protesters, and the backlash that followed. Specifically, he addressed criticisms against Clinton's 1990-era crime legislation that some say unfairly targeted blacks.
O'Reilly also spoke of the widely discussed argument that blacks are committing crimes due in large part to the high incidence of drug use in their communities, saying it's not use that's driving the jail time, but sales.
Bluntly, he said: "Forget about the drug myth. Right now in federal penitentiaries, 99.5 percent of drug-convicted inmates are traffickers, not users. Ninety-nine-point-five percent. So the question becomes, why is the Democratic Party caving into propaganda put out by radical groups like Black Lives Matter? It is clear that tough sentencing reform spearheaded by both parties in the 90s and signed by Bill Clinton saved perhaps millions of American lives. Yet the entire criminal justice system is now being branded as racist and oppressive. Disgraceful."