But in the United States, black people are incarcerated at six times the rate of white people—often because of historical biases in policing, from racial profiling to the dramatically more severe penalties for possession of crack compared with possession of cocaine (the same drug) throughout the 1980s and 1990s.3 So if you’re black—no matter how lawfully you act and how careful you are—you’re simply a lot more likely to know people who’ve been arrested. They’re your neighbor, your classmate, your dad.
