I am saying that racial injustice is not a major cause of black disadvantage in the US. I’m sure it was in 1965, or 1900, or 1865. It isn’t now.
Now black disadvantage is caused by factors under the control of blacks - single parents, educational under-achievement, disproportionate crime rates, things like that.
‘I got three years for armed robbery and a white guy would only have gotten two!’ Boo hoo - how about not being an armed robber and you won’t have to worry about it. ‘I’m poor and my life sucks for me and my two children.’ Here’s a thought - how about if you graduate from high school and keep your legs together until you can support your children on your own?
But they can’t do that. Because structural racism.
This is the kind of slander that’s really frustrating. Of course “they” can do that – many do. For some reason you’re failing to do something incredibly easy – specify who it is that you’re saying an incredibly negative thing about.
No one says “they can’t do that”. We are saying that it is harder to do that (“that” being to stay in school and get good grades, avoid pregnancy, avoid being convicted of a crime, avoid being brutalized by police, etc.) when so many parts of society are tilted against you in so many ways. An example: if a black kid gets hassled by cops (or teachers) X times more often than a white kid who behaves the same way, criminally (or disciplinarily) speaking, then that black kid will quite reasonably have a more negative view of law enforcement (or the education system) than the white kid. That will lead to a greater chance of behaviors that could have negative consequences, because those kids are human. Extrapoloate that to the dozens or hundreds or thousands of other ways that black kids are more likely to endure injustice than white kids, and there will be some significant differences in behavior and results, just because they’re human.
You’re not just asking for black kids to “be good” or act the same as white kids – when these kinds of obstacles are present, you’re insisting that they be significantly better. That’s not realistic for huge groups of humans. Some of them will act better, but most of them are just regular people, and will just respond as regular humans do.
Even if we were to posit that “structural racism” has largely been eliminated, there is still quite a bit of “just plain ol’ racism in society” that gets in the way of giving blacks equal opportunity. The question is more about whether the government ought to attempt to mitigate that, or if the government can even if we want it to.
You are leaving out the fact that many black defendants are completely railroaded because a police sweep happens to pick them up and a witness says “sure, that black guy looks close enough.” Particularly in certain states like Louisiana.
So fight away! Just don’t dis a class of people for characteristics they were born with and cannot change. Don’t insist that white people, the majority of the country, stop being protagonists in TV shows or movies. And push back on people who pull these moves. Make white guys feel welcome in the party, and not just in a subordinate role. Remember that, again, non-Hispanic white male voters outnumber black and Hispanic voters, male and female combined, and that Hillary got as many votes from white men as she did from black women and Latina voters combined–but without careful tending, there’s no guarantee of keeping those voters.
Well, I’m glad they’re no huge deal, which they clearly aren’t in the cases of Asians, who are better off on average financially than even whites. Who are better educated than even whites. Who have better test scores than even whites. Who have more family stabilty than even whites. Who are so underrepresented in incarceration it’s hard to find any solid data about them.
I’d say affirmative action is a far bigger deal to Asians, who are finding it increasingly necessary to hide their ethnic background when applying to college, lest their skin color invalidate their superior SAT scores. Now me, as white guy, that doesn’t really affect me that much. But I can imagine that pissing me off a bit if I were Asian. Even more so if I started getting lectured about “Asian privilege.”
Uh, how many black kids are going to see that? In 2017, 304 black people got killed by police. Of those, how of many of them were innocent grad students? How many of those had a little brother? I’d say a kid probably has a better chance of seeing his big brother be struck by lightning.
And if every state in the union decriminalized the use of marijuana, which we’re heading towards at rapid pace (almost half of 'em now), how about then?
I am rather astonished that you’re willing to publicly admit that racially based sentences rates a mocking “Boo hoo” from you. Like an extra year in prison doesn’t effect someone’s chance of getting their life on track. Like the solution is for the black community to simply choose to be crime free.
Right – that’s a year longer that a kid goes without a father, a family without another income, a community without a contributor, etc. And multiply that by all the sentences, and that’s a whole lot of absent fathers, single incomes, broken communities, that can solely be blamed on racism that even Shodan admits exists, even if he doesn’t care. To be clear, I’m not saying that all absent fathers, single incomes, etc. are to blame from justice system racism, but I’m saying that if sentencing disparities mean that, say, 1000 fathers in a community are sentenced to an average of 1 year longer than white convicts for the same crime, then that community is losing 1000 father-years solely due to racism in the justice system that even Shodan uses in his examples.
And that’s just a single aspect of systemic racism.
Looks like you guys are again picking the wrong target for sympathy. If someone commits armed robbery and is legitimately guilty, the sentencing disparity is pretty low on my list of concerns. It’s the people who get completely railroaded, as I said upthread, and the ones who are convicted of nonviolent drug offenses, that are the real injustice.
I would add that the remedy to make those equal should not involve getting black armed robbers back to their families sooner, but rather putting white armed robbers behind bars for longer.
There are many, many injustices in our society. If the fact that black people get longer sentences for the same crimes doesn’t strike you as “real injustice”, then your injustice-meter is way out of whack.
Being convicted of nonviolent drug crimes is the exact same issue. A cop just throwing away a white kid’s pot while charging the black kid is the exact same issue as what you’re saying is the wrong focus. If armed robbery sentences aren’t high on your priority list it’s because you re taking a very myopic view.
Before you pat yourself on the back too much about your “side’s” superior “fish catching strategy”, let’s not forget what actually happens to the fish.
I get no credit at all for the other things I said about race and the justice system? I’m just in the same category as Shodan? If so, it’s your meter that is way out of whack–and this illustrates the problem that is the subject of this thread, which is funny because I thought we were way off on a tangent.
In any case, no one should have the expectation of a nice consistent, even and predictable outcome if they choose to engage in armed robbery. They might get away with the loot. They might get shot and maybe killed. Their accomplice may unexpectedly shoot someone and get them on the hook for felony murder. Or even if they are solo, they could still face felony murder charges if someone runs away and falls down the stairs and breaks their neck.
Shodan, for more than a decade you’ve been posting here about how discrimination against black people is a thing of the past. In these hundreds of threads, various people have suggested you educate yourself about things like neighborhood segregation or the effect of inheritance on household wealth. In all that time, have you ever read a book on those subjects?
I doubt that it does. Two years in prison vs. three for armed robbery is not going to make much difference, compared with not going to prison at all. Which is what I recommend. It’s hard for an ex-con to get a job, no doubt. That it’s significantly harder if he spent three years instead of two - I have seen no reason to believe it to be true.
They aren’t losing that many “father-years”. Most black children grow up without their fathers anyway, even when the fathers aren’t in prison. And a huge proportion of criminals are raised by single parents.
And “a community without a contributor”? By which you mean an armed robber? Oh yeah - I bet those guys are real pillars of their community, and that extra year they spend making license plates is going to hurt.
It’s not my injustice-meter. It’s my bullshit-excuse-detector, and that’s working just fine.
You make a lot of great points, but can you explain how society being tilted against you makes it harder to avoid pregnancy? All of the things you mentioned have external factors that can be, and are, affected by racism. However, avoiding pregnancy seems to me to have little or nothing to do with systemic racism, or a racist society.
I don’t think it’s all or nothing. I don’t have sympathy for the armed robber. But I have a great deal of sympathy for the children who through no fault of their own were born to an environment that makes or made success more difficult. Not only minority children, but any child who is born in an environment that makes success more difficult earns my sympathy. But given the history of racial injustice in this country, it’s not a stretch to me to think that minorities experience a significant impact in their lives.
If you say that racial injustice is not a major cause of black disadvantage now, but it was in 1965, then the obvious follow up is when do you think that changed, and if it changed, was it a bright line change, or something over time? Did different people among racial minority groups experience that change simultaneously, or could some members experience it faster or slower? I thought this excerpt of John Roberts’ commencement speech was particularly illustrative:
The bolded part especially is a message I teach my kids. They are young, they have every opportunity if they would choose to take them. As young children, they didn’t do anything to earn those opportunities, they don’t deserve them any more than a kid that is borne to poverty. But they have them, and others do not. It’s important for them to realize that, to appreciate that, to not squander it, and to be humble knowing that the successes in their life are a product of both their hard work, and an element of luck that others less fortunate did not get. It certainly does not mean that they or I owe anything to anyone, but it’s an acknowledgment that things aren’t always fair.