Greenwald points out that that our incarceration rate is 5 times that of the rest of the world. A little further along he throws out another set of statistics: "African-Americans are about 12% of our population; contrary to a lot of thought and rhetoric, their drug use rate in terms of frequent drug use rate is about the same as all other elements of our society, about 14%. But they end up being 37% of those arrested on drug charges, 59% of those convicted, and 74% of those sentenced to prison."

What that means: blacks are 16 times more likely to be incarcerated on drug charges than other members of society.

This is an issue that the media resolutely ignores. They are much, much happier repeating the story of Americans electing a black man as president- as if that was the real measure of our "progress" in defeating racial prejudice and discrimination.