Earlier quoted context omitted.
White males are [X percent of the world population], but like 99% of the world's billionaires. Success and punishment aren't evenly distributed due to innate corruption/advantages built into The System. How do we fix inequality? Companies run american prisons now, companies control elected officials, and voters are manipulated by basic psychological tricks to keep voting against their own interests (vote GOD, not bas…
OK I feel compelled to tell you that the 99% white billionare thing is incorrect. USA does have the most billionares but they are not all white and also China is currently in the #2 spot with India in #4. Also if you are referring to the proplem of private prisons I do agree it's probably not a good thing but since less than 1/5 of prisons are privately run I don't think it is the main cause of the problem.
Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers
271–280 of 326 posts
Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that we should end the drug war but you are oversimplifying.
Not really. Much like "end apartheid" or "US out of Vietnam" we are occasionally presented with government policies so clearly unethical or ineffective that they defy oversimplification. The drug war is one such obvious failure.
Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
African-American males are 0.25% of the world's population, but 10% of the world's prisoners.
Black men also commit violent crimes at much higher rates than the rest of the population. Most people are in jail for a good reason. I suggest reading a recent essay "The Smart Way to Keep People Out of Prison" by Megan McArdle.
[0]: http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case...
Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers
#274In the US, back in 2007, I met some dutch guys, aged 20 and 21, the 20 y/o just spend a night in jail because he was drinking in a bar. He didn't even realize, back home he was drinking legally for over 4 years (and for drinking before the age of 16 there was no real punishment). We had a good laugh, "they must have a lot of jails here" we said. Lately the government is becoming more firm here (the Netherlands) as we…
In the US if you go to the hospital for alcohol related symptoms and you are under 21, you are essentially guaranteed to get an arrest ticket for underage drinking. Yes this is inhibiting for seeking help. [edit] See replies, this isn't universally true.
Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
The money has to come from somewhere. Taxing innumeracy seems a good start.
> Taxing innumeracy seems a good start. Taxing based on wealth instead of intelligence just seems more....civilized? "The measure of a civilization is how it treats its weakest members."
Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll agree that the drug war is out of control and as a "cure" it's worse than the disease. But people are not being locked up just because they are black, or poor. They are committing crimes, and pleading or being found guilty. The problem I have with pieces like the original article are that they are making it sound like we are engaging in a Gestapo-like rounding up of large numbers of minorities for no reason and…
Are you aware the US criminal justice system is oriented towards profiteering on incarceration and hardly or not at all oriented toward rehabilitation? The percent of GDP that the criminal justice system takes up compared to other OECD nations is the smoking gun. Its modern "American-style" slavery.
Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
To push it farther, I'm saying the war on drugs is a symptom, not a cause - it's rooted in racism. So it's not about drugs... it's about race.
Yes, the war on drugs is an effect, and racism is the cause. If that's what you're saying then we agree. But on a practical level, the war on drugs is the means by which institutional racism is most likely to be prosecuted in this country. So to some extent many racist acts are the effect of the racist war on drugs. Perhaps a distinction without a difference. Clearly our drug policy and racism are deeply intertwined.…
Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sounds like you have a bone to pick with black men. Try reading some recent data: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/20/upshot/missing...
It's a structural issue and is very hard to fix. Men, everywhere, do what is needed to get sex. If women and the institutions of society do not require a commitment from the man in order to have children, then men will not give such a commitment. Why would they? But traditionally it is the father who restricts access to his daughter, or trains his daughter not to open up so easily. So fatherlessness begets fatherless…
Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is that? Is it because of externally imposed social structure issues (the consequences of racism), or is it because of internal nature (blacks are less intelligent and moral than whites)? Hypothesis #1: Blacks are the pawns in an ongoing civil war between the Red Tribe and the Blue Tribe of American whites. The blue tribe, the left, talks a big game about helping black people, but if you look at what they do, the…
Never evolved an indigenous culture? You've heard rap music, haven't you? Of course it's an indigenous culture... one that the mainstream cultures of the "blue and red tribes" finds alienating and strange. The indigenous culture of the African-American community has, among other things, created the basis of American music for over a century. To argue that what culture they have is simply handed to them by the "blue t…
I will not deny the charges of being condescending and privileged, though personally I would describe myself as being in advantaged position and having a sense of Noblesse Oblige. I do not appreciate the name calling on your part.
I will not admit to being ignorant, as I am both well-read on this issue and have considerable personal experience. To think is to generalize; to think is to take the raw data from the world and frame it in patterns that make sense. There will always be imprecision in so doing. There will be mistakes around the edges, or places where the point was not phrased perfectly correctly. If you start calling me names every time I make an imperfect generalization, while I am trying in good faith to explain the core dynamics the best that I can, then we cannot have a productive conservation and this will be my last comment.
"Never evolved an indigenous culture? You've heard rap music, haven't you?"
Well, you are underestimating the role of white (liberal voting) producers and merchants of cool in the creation of hip-hop culture, but that is beside the point. Music is only one tiny part of culture.
More important aspects of culture include: messaging about what makes a good life, norms, mores, institutions, messaging and narratives about how to be successful, narratives explaining the way things are and how to deal with problems, etc, are the important part that I am talking about. And yes, there is some indigenous norms that have arisen, and hip-hop culture is more than music. But this culture is very, very recent, and it takes a long time for a culture to evolve to be pro-social and pro-civilization. Hip-hop culture is similar in some way to the honor culture and feuding culture of the old Scotch-Irish, medieval Europe, Homeric Greece, or many other primitive cultures. But the culture messaging and narratives coming down from blue tribe controlled schools and from ministers are very, very real and give a very flawed view of how the world actually works. And that messaging matters a lot when there is the absence of positive role models in the form of people building their own businesses and making it on their own.
I am quite aware of the history of segregation, red-lining, etc. But these do not explain what is going on. Every ethnic group is segregated. That is the definition of an ethnic group. Segregation doesn't explain why black ghettos have so much more crime than the Jewish or Chinese ghettos of old.
"The theft of wealth accumulation via property values and rent is far greater than the petty crimes of burglary and mugging that justify the police state."
You are going to explain yourself, because this is quite backwards.
There were indeed attempts by the WASP's in charge of the American cities to do slum clearance and move blacks out of their existing neighborhoods into the neighborhoods of working class ethnic poles, Irish, and Jews, who did not have the political clout to defend their turf. This has been written about extensively in books like "The Slaughter of the Cities" or "Canarsie".
However, the WASP's plans did not work out at all like intended. In some cases, blacks were pushed out of great real estate to slightly worse real estate. For instance, in Boston, some blacks who lived where the Prudential now is were pushed out toward Roxbury and Dorchester. But the bulk of the action was in blacks moving up from the south, who pushed out working class whites in neighborhoods like Roxbury and Dorchester. If you look at most cities, blacks live in great real estate from a location point of view - it is an easy commute to the central city, often near parks like Fairmount park in Philadelphia or Franklin Park in Boston. I don't know by what metric you can blacks in the Philadelphia area have the worst real estate. Now, the property values are very low. But that is because of the crime. By definition, any real estate occupied by a high-crime tribe is going to have low values, since people don't want to live near crime. This hardly constitutes left by white people.
Your formulation of blue tribe welfare-for-votes versus red tribe police state is entertaining to read, but it is simplistic to the point of being seriously wrong. Look at the deeper issues.
I have read dozens of books and hundreds of articles on the subject, ranging from the very liberal like the "New Jim Crow" or "When Work Disappears" to the more reactionary like "Slaughter of the City." I have spent years living near ghetto neighborhoods, and doing on-and-off volunteering in these neighborhoods. To think is to simplify, thinking is the act of condensing the raw data of the world into patterns and models that we can use. If you have a better model of what is happening, or can make improvements to my model, then make the argument. But I once believed the conventional segregation/red lining/de-industrialization caused all the problems hypothesis, and I now believe that hypothesis to be seriously wrong.
Lack of basic financial literacy is endemic among the poor, and contributes to the ongoing poverty. It's also endemic among black entrepreneurs. He is also working on a side business as a financial advisor and investment counselor for wealthy black individuals. They often invest very poorly, because they distrust the white-dominated financial industry - and for good reason, given the century-long tradition of outright theft and victimization.
While I wish your friend luck, this goes back to the question of intelligence. The deep problem is that someone of 130IQ will always be able to steal from the person of 80IQ. The stealing can take many forms - unfair financial contracts, convincing that buying Nike shoes will make them awesome at basketball, convincing them to vote for politician X, where politician X then funnels money to his own cronies. I'm not sure what can be done about this. It is a very hard problem. I don't know if history has an example of systematic, long-standing, altruism between ethnic groups.
Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
America and Americans (myself included) are full of inconsistencies and contradictions, but then I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a country that couldn't be described similarly to some degree. My point is that I take issue with Americans being painted with a big, wide brush of "compassionless" when there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. Is there perhaps less compassion or concern (in general) directed towa…
In the context of the justice system, I think we tend to lack compassion. Most of the Americans I know (family, etc) seem more intent on __retribution__ and punishing Bad People, rather than compassion. Once someone is a Bad Person (criminal, poor, or even just someone they don't like), compassion seems to go out the window.