(mirror.co.uk) TORY MP Bob Spink was last night at the centre of a race row after insisting the majority of criminals are black.
Mr Spink made his claim in an exchange of emails with a constituent.
He was asked: “Are you saying that a lot more criminals are black than white - or that there are more black people in jail than white because they are stopped more often?”
The MP replied: “The former and that’s what people don’t seem to like. But I didn’t enter a beauty contest when I became an MP!!!!”
Mr Spink 58, MP for Castle Point, Essex, went on to say the problem was being ignored because of “political correctness”.
Yesterday, Mr Spink strenuously denied he was a racist. He added: “Ministers have told the Commons that pro rata more young black people are known to the criminal justice system than white people. It is a fact.
“The main parties have to address where the crime is coming from and stop that crime for everybody’s sake, particularly the black community. It is about telling the truth. I completely deplore racism of any kind but we need to identify the sources of crime.” (more…)
I pulled the following from the AIDS Rights Project of the U.K. website:
Over three-quarters of the foreign national prison population are from a BME group. The number of Black prisoners has risen by almost 60% since 1997 and the imprisonment rate of Black men is almost ten times as high as white men. In 2000, the population of white prisoners represented 188 per 100,000 in the general population and 1,615 per 100,000 for Black prisoners with Black
Africans incarcerated at a rate of 1,704 per 100,000. (source)
Now admittedly I do not have access to the full e-mails that are in question in the article, but if critics are running with the quotes that are provided, their shallowness on this issue is very evident. If Spink would have stuck to the “PC” code book and said that most Blacks are V-I-C-T-I-M-S of the criminal justice system, he would have been safe. Because he didn’t follow the rules, he will be known as a racist for a long time.
