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This is a bullshit response. Did you not read the article? It offers a fair share of proven optimism.
Can you point specifically to the cases of "proven optimism"?
I agree with your other comment, though. There are many unaddressed questions regarding policy and its implementation. In my head, we would see progress as a society if we taught empathy and unconscious bias from a young age. Police academies would likely benefit from similar courses (it is my understanding that some program do indeed integrate this training).
Thanks for responding, and I'm sorry for being inflammatory. These are ideas I am passionate about.
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The reason those are all bad ideas is that they're all attempting to treat the symptom rather than the problem. If the problem is that people are dumping alkali waste into the reservoir, your suggestion is to ignore that and then dump in acid to even it out. Making the pH neutral isn't the same thing as making the water clean. We have to solve the underlying problem.
Solve the underlying problem? Babies exhibit racial bias. We're going to need some serious genetic engineering applied to the brain to solve the underlying problem. I don't think that's happening any time soon. Your solution is to ignore this and instead offer a platitude so you don't have to think about an actual solution. I'm not saying I know the perfect solution, but I'm pretty sure it's not a platitude.
Fixing the cause rather than the symptom doesn't mean you have to go study evolutionary biology. "Babies exhibit racial bias" doesn't inherently lead to mass incarceration and murder. There is a whole system of causes between one and the other.
And as for an actual solution, the top voted comment has already provided it. You can't have bias in drug cases or police shootings if there are no drug cases or police shootings. End the war on drugs and mandatory minimum sentences. Demilitarize the police.
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Solve the underlying problem? Babies exhibit racial bias. We're going to need some serious genetic engineering applied to the brain to solve the underlying problem. I don't think that's happening any time soon. Your solution is to ignore this and instead offer a platitude so you don't have to think about an actual solution. I'm not saying I know the perfect solution, but I'm pretty sure it's not a platitude.
If you ask "why" up the chain enough times you eventually end up at some immutable law of nature. But that's completely missing the point. Fixing the cause rather than the symptom doesn't mean you have to go study evolutionary biology. "Babies exhibit racial bias" doesn't inherently lead to mass incarceration and murder. There is a whole system of causes between one and the other. And as for an actual solution, the t…
Getting rid of drug crimes does nothing to solve that, because you see the same pattern in basically every type of crime. Legalizing drugs would reduce the number of crimes, but not the racial bias.
You could just as easily "solve" the problem of racial bias by getting rid of any class of crimes. Like, let's legalize speeding because more blacks are pulled over for speeding than whites. Great. But the fundamental problem of inequality still remains in every other area of the criminal justice system.
Also, how do mandatory minimum sentences lead to more bias? Wouldn't that lead to less bias, since it removes biaased human judgement from part of the process? Otherwise you'd probably see whites getting more lenient sentences than they already do.
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If you ask "why" up the chain enough times you eventually end up at some immutable law of nature. But that's completely missing the point. Fixing the cause rather than the symptom doesn't mean you have to go study evolutionary biology. "Babies exhibit racial bias" doesn't inherently lead to mass incarceration and murder. There is a whole system of causes between one and the other. And as for an actual solution, the t…
The problem we're discussing isn't that there are too many minorities imprisoned for drug crimes. The problem is systemic disparate impact throughout the entire criminal justice system. Getting rid of drug crimes does nothing to solve that, because you see the same pattern in basically every type of crime. Legalizing drugs would reduce the number of crimes, but not the racial bias. You could just as easily "solve" th…
No you don't. There is no epidemic of black men being convicted of insider trading or wire fraud.
> Like, let's legalize speeding because more blacks are pulled over for speeding than whites.
You're saying that like it's a completely ridiculous suggestion, but there is truth in it. Most traffic engineering manuals recommend that speed limits normally be set at the 85th percentile traffic speed but most speed limits in the US are set around 10MPH below that speed, resulting in widespread lawbreaking. Having laws that most people violate but only some people are punished for is not the rule of law and is exactly what facilitates racially biased selective enforcement.
> Also, how do mandatory minimum sentences lead to more bias? Wouldn't that lead to less bias, since it removes biaased human judgement from part of the process?
Mandatory minimum sentences amplify the biases in who is arrested, charged and convicted by increasing the average penalties. They also don't eliminate bias in sentencing because a biased decision maker can still give black defendants more than the mandatory minimum.
The only extent to which they could be said to reduce bias is in reducing the possible range of penalties imposed, but the same range reduction could be achieved by lowering the maximum rather than raising the minimum.
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If you ask "why" up the chain enough times you eventually end up at some immutable law of nature. But that's completely missing the point. Fixing the cause rather than the symptom doesn't mean you have to go study evolutionary biology. "Babies exhibit racial bias" doesn't inherently lead to mass incarceration and murder. There is a whole system of causes between one and the other. And as for an actual solution, the t…
The problem we're discussing isn't that there are too many minorities imprisoned for drug crimes. The problem is systemic disparate impact throughout the entire criminal justice system. Getting rid of drug crimes does nothing to solve that, because you see the same pattern in basically every type of crime. Legalizing drugs would reduce the number of crimes, but not the racial bias. You could just as easily "solve" th…
That's true, but since drug crime is used as a tool by the people who discriminate it's still useful to remove that tool of discrimination.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem we're discussing isn't that there are too many minorities imprisoned for drug crimes. The problem is systemic disparate impact throughout the entire criminal justice system. Getting rid of drug crimes does nothing to solve that, because you see the same pattern in basically every type of crime. Legalizing drugs would reduce the number of crimes, but not the racial bias. You could just as easily "solve" th…
> Getting rid of drug crimes does nothing to solve that, because you see the same pattern in basically every type of crime. No you don't. There is no epidemic of black men being convicted of insider trading or wire fraud. > Like, let's legalize speeding because more blacks are pulled over for speeding than whites. You're saying that like it's a completely ridiculous suggestion, but there is truth in it. Most traffic…
I'm willing to bet that the few black men that are caught for this type of crime are more likely to face court and have more severe punishment imposed.
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> Getting rid of drug crimes does nothing to solve that, because you see the same pattern in basically every type of crime. No you don't. There is no epidemic of black men being convicted of insider trading or wire fraud. > Like, let's legalize speeding because more blacks are pulled over for speeding than whites. You're saying that like it's a completely ridiculous suggestion, but there is truth in it. Most traffic…
> There is no epidemic of black men being convicted of insider trading or wire fraud. I'm willing to bet that the few black men that are caught for this type of crime are more likely to face court and have more severe punishment imposed.
Even if that were true, constricting the scope of the problem to that sort of rare case would be a thousand fold improvement from the status quo.
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Can you point specifically to the cases of "proven optimism"?
The two studies: the first stating that you can reduce amygdala activity through systematic humanization, and the second suggesting that there seems to be nothing in the police training programs that makes officers more biased than the average citizen. These offer hope to the idea that biased behavior can be targeted and modified. I agree with your other comment, though. There are many unaddressed questions regarding…
I thought that observation about systematic humanization was fucking awesome. That would appear to be a concrete way to normalize interactions between strangers. For the record, I really don't like the police as an institution... but I recognize that that is a bias I maintain.
Maybe cops should have a monthly pot luck get together. Watching the citizenry eat and play might foster a bit of that empathy.