Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Black People Are Being Shut Out of America's Weed Boom

buzzfeed.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 109 posts

Re: How Black People Are Being Shut Out of America's Weed Boom

#51

Post by savanaly »

kbutler wrote: post #43
mc32 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Word choice is fine. Vanilla means plain, unremarkable, blends in well. To become an unremarkable part of the economy. Taking an altogether different meaning not fitting the context says more about your interpretive frame of reference.

Word choice is problematic: "vanillify" (exceedingly rare, new jargon "to make bland" doesn't even show up in google ngrams) is too similar to "vilify" (to demonize) to use in a context of "to un-demonize". https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=vanillify&case... "face of" or "poster boy for", rather than the mixed-up "poster face for". https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=poster+boy%2Cp... But then,…

I read it twice and then saw what he meant. I think he's alluding to how since the flavor vanilla is associated with whiteness, "vanillify" has a cheeky double meaning: make more respectable and make more white skinned.

Re: How Black People Are Being Shut Out of America's Weed Boom

#52

Post by [deleted] »

kennywinker wrote: post #29
fiatmoney wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And? If Italians are much more likely to be arrested for illegal bookmaking & racketeering due to targeted efforts to take them down, does that mean it's a great idea to let Fat Tony with a felony conviction, a ball-peen hammer and a shitload of shady friends he has unclear relationships with open a casino?

A teenager with a weed possession conviction is not a mobster.

[deleted]

Re: How Black People Are Being Shut Out of America's Weed Boom

#53

Post by knughit »

greenisland wrote: post #44
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree with you about this guy in particular. He is a felon, with a conviction relating to the industry he wants to work in. Don't let fraudsters become accountants, don't let illegal dealers become legal ones. But the problem is that there are a lot of white people who are guilty of the same offenses, who are currently operating businesses he isn't allowed to operate, but who were never convicted of those c…

What you say is likely very true, but has no bearing on this one man's case. This one man was found guilty and is now paying the price. Some will call foul. Some won't. I don't argue the fact that race relations in the US haven't been pretty and that many people were unfairly treated or even falsely convicted, but this particular man was found guilty of a crime he did commit and is now paying for his crimes. It doesn…

If your only baromrter for morality is "caught and convicted o a crime", your pronouncements on how to build a society (including how crimes are defined, investigated, and prosecuted) aren't very interesting.

Re: How Black People Are Being Shut Out of America's Weed Boom

#54

Post by ikeboy »

pflats wrote: post #48
ikeboy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just bad statistics. http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/25/race-and-justice-much-m... >For example, all of these “equally likely to have used drugs” claims turn out to be that blacks and whites are equally likely to have “used drugs in the past year”, but blacks are far more likely to have used drugs in the past week – that is, more whites are only occasional users. That gives blacks many more opportunities to…

> Likewise, whites are more likely to use low-penalty drugs like hallucinogens, and blacks are more likely to use high-penalty drugs like crack cocaine. Why is it, then, that crack cocaine is a high-penalty drug, and hallucinogens are low-penalty drugs? (I leave this as an exercise to the reader.)

He mentions this in the summary. Note that this still doesn't support kennywinker's claim that "profiling and racist policing directly leads to economic exclusion". If anything, higher usage, combined with several other factors, possibly including racist laws (but not racist enforcement of those laws), led to this.

Re: How Black People Are Being Shut Out of America's Weed Boom

#55

Post by WesternStar »

ikeboy wrote: post #34
kennywinker wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything you say is entirely logical, but omits the reality that as a black person in america you are vastly more likely to be arrested for drug crimes. Not more likely to DO drug crimes, just more likely to get caught. This means profiling and racist policing directly leads to economic exclusion. If the american dream is upward mobility, that means black people get a smaller shot at the american dream. But all tha…

This is just bad statistics. http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/25/race-and-justice-much-m... >For example, all of these “equally likely to have used drugs” claims turn out to be that blacks and whites are equally likely to have “used drugs in the past year”, but blacks are far more likely to have used drugs in the past week – that is, more whites are only occasional users. That gives blacks many more opportunities to…

In this article they attempt to list area stopped and income as factors unrelated to race that should be controlled for. Do you think that's reasonable? Do those things have nothing to do with race in your world?

Re: How Black People Are Being Shut Out of America's Weed Boom

#56

Post by jccc »

fiatmoney wrote: post #13
RodericDay wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even though research shows people of all races are about equally likely to have broken the law by growing, smoking, or selling marijuana, black people are much more likely to have been arrested for it.

And? If Italians are much more likely to be arrested for illegal bookmaking & racketeering due to targeted efforts to take them down, does that mean it's a great idea to let Fat Tony with a felony conviction, a ball-peen hammer and a shitload of shady friends he has unclear relationships with open a casino?

Your analogy requires:

A. the person to have convictions for dealing, not just possession, and

B. mobster-era Italians to be just about as likely to engage in illegal bookmaking and racketeering as the general population, and

C. a history of hundreds of years of imposing underclass status on Italians (like that imposed on African Americans), with modern-day policing skewed very heavily against them.

Re: How Black People Are Being Shut Out of America's Weed Boom

#57

Post by treerunner »

Black underemployment is not an issue specific to the weed industry, it's a problem in all industry. Duh.

Also, legal weed is supposed to deal with racial inequalities. Legal weed means less people being caught and jailed. This is good.

Though, to be perfectly honest, I am not into the idea of states using Marijuana as a profit vehicle. It's about as cynical and without class as state run gambling. Hopefully more people will grow their own and once the rest of the US legalizes, weed will be about as profitable, no more or less, than a tomato.

Re: How Black People Are Being Shut Out of America's Weed Boom

#58

Post by lsaferite »

knughit wrote: post #49
traviswingo wrote: post #20

> But it can’t be someone who got caught. Which for the most part means it can’t be someone who is black. It's thinking like this that pisses me off. Henderson wasn't hired because of a record. Yes, racism still unfortunately exists, but in order to move towards an equal future we need to stop bringing it up and searching for problems where there are none. Fucking Buzzfeed and Huffington post are constantly using the…

Ignoring up problems won't fix them.

But how does demonizing the legal weed industry by accusing it of being racists accomplish anything useful?

They are clearly NOT being racist and just following the legal requirements for their industry. The fact that the ones being excluded are mainly black is not some conscious decision to exclude blacks but the result of the current laws and enforcement saddling them with felony drug convictions. The author's time would be better spent addressing the real problem of the disproportionate number of black males with drug felonies for simple possession.

Re: How Black People Are Being Shut Out of America's Weed Boom

#59

Post by ikeboy »

WesternStar wrote: post #55
ikeboy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just bad statistics. http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/25/race-and-justice-much-m... >For example, all of these “equally likely to have used drugs” claims turn out to be that blacks and whites are equally likely to have “used drugs in the past year”, but blacks are far more likely to have used drugs in the past week – that is, more whites are only occasional users. That gives blacks many more opportunities to…

In this article they attempt to list area stopped and income as factors unrelated to race that should be controlled for. Do you think that's reasonable? Do those things have nothing to do with race in your world?

The paragraph immediately after discusses whether they should be controlled for, and provides further evidence.
Post reply on HN