I hold the old notion that it is better to free ten guilty men than to incarcerate one innocent man. I also hold the notion that a man is entitled to punishment for his crimes.

It is wrong to assume a man is guilty due to the color of his skin. It is also wrong to assume a man is innocent due to the color of his skin. The color of a man’s skin shouldn’t matter at all.

But I have a question.

If there were no such thing as racial profiling. If there were no such thing as unequal treatment under the law. Would the percentage of incarcerated black men equal their percentage of the general population? In other words, if black people make up, say 15% of the population, would they make up 15% of the prisons’ populations if whites weren’t guilty of racist behaviors? I would ask the same about Hispanics.

Is white racism the overwhelming reason for such large racial disparities in prison populations or might there be racial disparity in criminal behavior going on?

What would the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.  think of my question? What would his answer be? We’ll never know.

I wonder about things like that.