Presidential candidate John Edwards took part in the MTV/MySpace debate on Thursday, September 27, and was asked a question about what he would do to help keep inner city kids from taking part in violence to which he gave a curious response:

“We start with the president of the United States saying to America, ‘we cannot build enough prisons to solve this problem. And the idea that we can keep incarcerating and keep incarcerating — pretty soon we’re not going to have a young African-American male population in America. They’re all going to be in prison or dead. One of the two.”

Edwards seems to present an “if you build it they will come” attitude. He seems to think African-American men have just two choices: prison or death. Is he naive? Ill-informed? Patronizing? Beholden to contractors who build prisons and graveyards?

Jim Geraghty of The Campaign Spot points out that often cited statistics about more African-Americans being in prison than in college are incorrect, according to U.S. Census data:

Hyperbole much? Despite popular misperception and those who find it a convenient talking point to illustrate inescapable racism, there are more young African-American men in college than in prison. In 2005, according to the Census Bureau, there were 864,000 black men in college. According to Justice Department statistics, there were 802,000 in federal and state prisons and jails; between the ages of 18 and 24, however, black men in college outnumber those incarcerated by 4 to 1.

 

UPDATE: Some readers are finding the numbers above confusing. The first set of numbers (comparing 864,000 to 802,000) refers to all black men of all ages. The 4 to 1 ratio is among black men between the ages of 18 to 24. In other words, a large percentage of that 802,000 are black men above the age of 24.

 

Given those statistics, maybe John Edwards should help build more colleges.