In a new piece for the factually illiterate Washington Post, four academics from Dartmouth College, Claremont Graduate University and the University of Florida attempt to dissect why “Nearly 4 million black voters are missing.” Unfortunately for gullible readers, the authors present an extremely shortsighted analysis that misses key points.

The quartet writes, “Black people, on average, die in higher proportions than whites at all ages before their age of life expectancy. Early deaths of blacks not only prevent many blacks from voting in the election immediately after death, but in subsequent elections as well. The point here is the effect of early mortality on political disadvantage is cumulative, increasingly diluting the political voice of blacks compared with whites.”

What the authors don’t mention is that there isn’t an ethnicity in America that has a higher abortion rate than that of blacks. Roughly 1,000 black babies are terminated daily. This has an extreme side effect on black culture that manifests itself in various forms of self-demeaning behavior. Yet there’s no mention of the word “abortion” anywhere in this piece. And abortion is the most prolific cause of early death. Which is a good segue into the section on incarceration.

According to the authors, “Blacks not only die at much younger ages than their white counterparts, but they are also incarcerated at much higher rates. For instance, research has shown that, despite similar rates of illicit drug usage, black people are more than 13 times more likely than white people to be jailed on drug charges. Overall, incarceration rates for blacks are six times higher than that of whites.”

As previously stated, the culture that abortion breeds — which is aggravated by a severe dependence on the state — means that blacks are often predisposed to engage in bad behavior. In some circles, this is a racist view, but why else do inner cities suffer so badly from black-on-black crime, for instance? It’s not white-on-black oppression or murder. Gang-related homicides are a blight on America that show no signs of abating. The authors pick just one form of illicit behavior — drug use — while wholly ignoring inner city murders, which naturally increases law enforcement suspicion and raises the odds of being flagged.

The authors conclude: “Excess mortality and incarceration could have shifted the outcome of 11 gubernatorial and seven Senate elections between 1970 and 2004, according to our research. That is because black people overwhelmingly vote Democratic; they do not split their tickets. The large numbers of missing black voters in congressional and state legislative districts influence state policies, the balance of power between political parties and local electoral representation — meaning, who gets elected.” In that one paragraph, the authors revealed their hand.

Columnist Walter Williams puts this whole charade in context: “The challenge for blacks is to better position themselves to take advantage of existing opportunities, and that involves addressing the anti-social, self-defeating behaviors and habits and attitudes endemic to the black underclass.” Moreover, Jason Riley says for Prager University, electing more blacks doesn’t empower blacks — for the aforementioned reasons.

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