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> There's substantial evidence for both of these though, which you're not going to address. You seem very sure about what I will and won't address. Why don't w

> There's substantial evidence for both of these though, which you're not going to address. You seem very sure about what I will and won't address. Why don't we find out? What is this evidence? > And minorities were kept down by force of law until at least the 1960s; have the systems put in place to do so been fully dismantled? I'd say yes. The right to vote is firmly protected (as for voter ID laws, I think they're very reasonable). Racial-based government policy making is prohibited. This prohibition is enforced except for in cases where the discrimination helps minorities. Private discrimination is a serious legal issue, sometimes pursued to the point of absurdity. The current shakedown of the car loan industry over racial discrimination is a good example, and many other cases pursued under the doctrine of "disparate impact". We don't hose down peaceful protesters anymore either, and even in the 60s that was appalling to people outside of the South. The contrast between Birmingham in 1963 and Ferguson in 2014 is instructive. The War on Drugs is disproportionately hurting minorities, and I think it's a terrible policy on many counts, but I don't think you can frame it as the machinery of minority oppression. The welfare state is definitely hurting minorities, but again, I think it's just bad policy-making, not intentional subjugation. EDIT: Responding to fnovd here, because Hacker News is throttling me: I happen to think that people should be free to put whatever they want into their bodies. This philosophical debate is not a racial issue. So let's assume that we decide to ban drugs, like we've banned stealing cars. If minorities are more likely to steal cars, and more likely to end up in jail because they were stealing cars, or more likely to be poor because their dad was in jail for stealing cars, or more likely to sucked into stealing cars because it's an easy source of profit in a poor neighborhood, that doesn't make banning stealing cars a racist policy.

fnovd 11y ago
> The War on Drugs is disproportionately hurting minorities Agreed. > I don't think you can frame it as the machinery of minority oppression. Erm, what? So you're saying that, while the War on Drugs disproportionately hurts minorities, it's not a machine of minority oppression? I can't wrap my head around that. Any discussion I hear about race always takes me back to the old Atwater quote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater#Atwater_on_the_Southern_Strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater#Atwater_on_the_Sou...
- AnthonyMouse 11y ago
  The form of your argument seems to be that if a policy has a race/sex disparity in impact then it's inherently racist/sexist. Let's go for the reductio ad absurdum. We have a choice between two policies. The first says if you're accused of being a child's parent and you can prove with a genetic test that you aren't then you don't have to pay child support. The second says if you're accused of being a child's parent then you have to pay child support even if you can prove you're not. Suppose we know that there is a sex disparity in impact for this policy. The people falsely accused of being a child's parent are disproportionately men and single parents with custody are disproportionately women. If we let the accused parent prove the facts then it will benefit men to the detriment of women. Therefore, by your logic, it is a sexist policy to not force people who can prove they aren't a child's parent to pay child support anyway. Which is absurd.
  - fnovd 11y ago
    > The form of your argument seems to be that if a policy has a race/sex disparity in impact then it's inherently racist/sexist. No, the form of my argument is that a policy can be implicitly racist without being explicitly racist. A law banning rap music from the radio won't appear racist if your only criteria for a racist policy is explicitly mentioning race. This is why I included the Atwater quote.
    - AnthonyMouse 11y ago
      > the form of my argument is that a policy can be implicitly racist without being explicitly racist. An explicit policy like officially-segregated schools is objectively racist. "Implicitly racist" is completely subjective. The Atwater quote kind of makes the point. Is lowering taxes a racist policy? Nothing about the policy is different just because you can find some racist who supports it specifically because they know it will have a disparate impact. So you are implying that any policy with a disparate impact is "implicitly" racist, because a racist might support it for only that reason. But that makes the definition of "racist" so broad that it loses all meaning. It makes the law against marijuana racist but also the law against speeding and the law against felons possessing a handgun.

fnovd 11y ago

> The War on Drugs is disproportionately hurting minorities Agreed. > I don't think you can frame it as the machinery of minority oppression. Erm, what? So you're saying that, while the War on Drugs disproportionately hurts minorities, it's not a machine of minority oppression? I can't wrap my head around that. Any discussion I hear about race always takes me back to the old Atwater quote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater#Atwater_on_the_Southern_Strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater#Atwater_on_the_Sou...

AnthonyMouse 11y ago
The form of your argument seems to be that if a policy has a race/sex disparity in impact then it's inherently racist/sexist. Let's go for the reductio ad absurdum. We have a choice between two policies. The first says if you're accused of being a child's parent and you can prove with a genetic test that you aren't then you don't have to pay child support. The second says if you're accused of being a child's parent then you have to pay child support even if you can prove you're not. Suppose we know that there is a sex disparity in impact for this policy. The people falsely accused of being a child's parent are disproportionately men and single parents with custody are disproportionately women. If we let the accused parent prove the facts then it will benefit men to the detriment of women. Therefore, by your logic, it is a sexist policy to not force people who can prove they aren't a child's parent to pay child support anyway. Which is absurd.
- fnovd 11y ago
  > The form of your argument seems to be that if a policy has a race/sex disparity in impact then it's inherently racist/sexist. No, the form of my argument is that a policy can be implicitly racist without being explicitly racist. A law banning rap music from the radio won't appear racist if your only criteria for a racist policy is explicitly mentioning race. This is why I included the Atwater quote.
  - AnthonyMouse 11y ago
    > the form of my argument is that a policy can be implicitly racist without being explicitly racist. An explicit policy like officially-segregated schools is objectively racist. "Implicitly racist" is completely subjective. The Atwater quote kind of makes the point. Is lowering taxes a racist policy? Nothing about the policy is different just because you can find some racist who supports it specifically because they know it will have a disparate impact. So you are implying that any policy with a disparate impact is "implicitly" racist, because a racist might support it for only that reason. But that makes the definition of "racist" so broad that it loses all meaning. It makes the law against marijuana racist but also the law against speeding and the law against felons possessing a handgun.