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> 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 y

by 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
      > "Implicitly racist" is completely subjective. "Implicitly racist" is far from being completely subjective. A law banning US citizens whose ancestors lived in Africa 500 years ago from voting isn't explicitly racist: one could argue that it's based purely on geography and that ancestry and geography are only incidentally linked. It's implicitly racist given an understanding of the context in which it is applied. Taken out of context, the War on Drugs can presented as race-neutral. You can describe the laws as they are written and stop there. This is not an honest discussion of the War on Drugs. We're not just talking about laws, we're talking about enforcement. Look at the data. Look at the statistics. I'm not just saying that. http://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/NSDUHresultsPDFWHTML2013/Web/NSDUHresults2013.pdf http://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/NSDUHresultsP... 2013 Drug usage rates, by race https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/tables/table-43 https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/... 2014 Drug abuse violation rates, by race https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/persons-arrested/main https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/... 2014 Drug abuse violations, by category http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-02.pdf http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-02.pdf 2010 US Census, by race This tells me that the ratio of Whites to Blacks in the U.S. is roughly ~6:1. The ratio of drug use between Whites and Blacks is ~1:1. The ratio of drug abuse violations between Whites and Blacks is ~2:1. Do you agree that these figures are correct? If so, how do you explain the discrepancy between usage vs violations between Whites and Blacks? Looking for an honest analysis. My conclusion was that the laws and policies which constitute the War on Drugs have disproportionately affected Blacks. CMV.

by fnovd 11y ago

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
    > "Implicitly racist" is completely subjective. "Implicitly racist" is far from being completely subjective. A law banning US citizens whose ancestors lived in Africa 500 years ago from voting isn't explicitly racist: one could argue that it's based purely on geography and that ancestry and geography are only incidentally linked. It's implicitly racist given an understanding of the context in which it is applied. Taken out of context, the War on Drugs can presented as race-neutral. You can describe the laws as they are written and stop there. This is not an honest discussion of the War on Drugs. We're not just talking about laws, we're talking about enforcement. Look at the data. Look at the statistics. I'm not just saying that. http://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/NSDUHresultsPDFWHTML2013/Web/NSDUHresults2013.pdf http://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/NSDUHresultsP... 2013 Drug usage rates, by race https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/tables/table-43 https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/... 2014 Drug abuse violation rates, by race https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/persons-arrested/main https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/... 2014 Drug abuse violations, by category http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-02.pdf http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-02.pdf 2010 US Census, by race This tells me that the ratio of Whites to Blacks in the U.S. is roughly ~6:1. The ratio of drug use between Whites and Blacks is ~1:1. The ratio of drug abuse violations between Whites and Blacks is ~2:1. Do you agree that these figures are correct? If so, how do you explain the discrepancy between usage vs violations between Whites and Blacks? Looking for an honest analysis. My conclusion was that the laws and policies which constitute the War on Drugs have disproportionately affected Blacks. CMV.