5 ms·

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 m

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 that aside. This is like saying that people who've had DUIs can't work at bars. The guy in the article had possession charges. That means he had nothing to do with selling the stuff, he was just a fan. That's a big difference from being an accountant convicted of fraud or a bookie trying to work at a casino.

fiatmoney 11y ago
"This is like saying that people who've had DUIs can't work at bars" In fact, people with alcohol-related felonies have a really tough time getting liquor licenses.
- kennywinker 11y ago
  Yes, but this guy wanted to work at the front desk, not own the license. And society hasn't recently taken major steps towards legalizing DUIs.
  - mc32 11y ago
    But this is more like someone owning a liquor store selling to underage kids, thus breaking the law losing his license then getting denied a job at distillery for prior lapse of judgement.
    - kennywinker 11y ago
      It doesn't sound like that at all to me. In fact, it sounds a lot more like getting caught drinking underage, and then getting denied a job at a distillery. If we're being precise, it sounds like getting caught drinking when you're 20, then a few years later the drinking age is lowered to 19 but you still get denied a job at a distillery.
      - mc32 11y ago
        More apt would be getting caught making moonshine and getting denied a job at a distillery. The point is the same. Prior bad judgement may result in diminished future outlook.
        kennywinker 11y ago
        The person in the article wasn't growing pot. They had a joint on them and were stopped by the cops. You're trying to escalate it but the point is they did something that we now consider not wrong, served their time, but are still being punished for it.
ikeboy 11y ago
This is just bad statistics. http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/25/race-and-justice-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/ 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 be caught by the cops. 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. Further, blacks are more likely to live in the cities, where there is a heavy police shadow, and whites in the suburbs or country, where there is a lower one. ... >Finally, all of this is based on self-reported data about drug use. Remember from a couple paragraphs ago how studies showed that black people were twice as likely to fail to self-report their drug use? And you notice here that black people are twice as likely to be arrested for drug use as their self-reports suggest? That’s certainly an interesting coincidence.
- imgabe 11y ago
  > 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 This raises a question about why drugs that whites are more likely to use are penalized less severely than drugs that blacks are more likely to use.
  - ikeboy 11y ago
    He discusses this in the summary. >It would be nice to say that this shows the criminal justice system is not disproportionately harming blacks, but unfortunately it doesn’t come anywhere close to showing anything of the sort. There are still many ways it can indirectly harm blacks without being explicitly racist. Anatole France famously said that “the law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich as well as poor people from begging for bread and sleeping under bridges”, and in the same way that the laws France cites, be they enforced ever so fairly, would still disproportionately target poor people, so other laws can, even when fairly enforced, target black people. The classic example of this is crack cocaine – a predominantly black drug – carrying a higher sentence than other whiter drugs. Even if the police are scrupulously fair in giving the same sentence to black and white cokeheads, the law will still have a disproportionate effect. But note that this supports very different conclusions from what you'd think only knowing that blacks have higher penalty rates. Is it racist laws, or racist policemen? The response to each is going to be different; e.g. giving policemen "diversity training" or something only helps if they were the problem.
LordKano 11y ago
I am a black person in America and I think you're half right. White people and black people use illegal drugs at approximately the same rate. Black people, despite being a population only 1/4 the size of the white population, are arrested for drug crimes in both greater numbers and in greater proportion. Into my mid-to-late 30s, when I would get pulled over by the police, roughly half of the time, the officer would ask me if I had any drugs in my car. My response was usually "No more than you do, officer". The police profile and harass us. There are even rogue officers who plant evidence to manufacture crimes. We all know this. As a result, many of us are more staunchly against even casual drug use in our personal lives. It's not fair. It's not right. It's just the way it is. I have a friend whom I have known since childhood who is currently serving 20 years in a federal prison for marijuana related offenses. He made a choice and it turned out poorly for him. I'll save my outrage for the people who were falsely convicted. I'll save my outrage for the victims of planted evidence and corrupt cops. If someone is actually guilty of the crime, their case is far less sympathetic.
tzs 11y ago
> 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. It is true that black people are more likely to be arrested than white people for drug crimes. 57% of arrestees are white, 37% black. That's about 3x the percentage that you'd expect if you just go by the racial distribution of drug users. However, that's not actually really relevant here because most drug users, white or black, do not get caught at all. There are about 1.2 million drug arrests per year, so roughly 680k whites and 444k blacks. We've got about 320 million people. Let's be generous and knock out people 0-14 (20%) because they are probably too young to have gotten into drugs, and also knock out 55+ (26%) because older people don't seem to get arrested much for casual drug use (perhaps if you are old and a regular drug user you've figured out how to not get caught...). So that leaves us 173 million people who are similar demographically to the people getting arrested for drugs. That would be about 22 million blacks, 109 million whites. So...we've got about 680k whites arrested for drugs per year out of 109 million, which means 108.6 million out of 109 million whites are NOT arrested. In percentages, 99.4% of whites are not arrested for drugs in any given year. For blacks, we've got 444k arrested for drugs out of 22 million, which means 21.6 million out of 22 million blacks are NOT arrested. In percentages, 98.0% of blacks are not arrested for drugs in any given year. 98.0% is lower than 99.4%, and that is something that should be investigated--I'm not trying to argue that there is no bias. I'm just saying that by focusing on those arrested rather than those not arrested, you get a misleading picture. This kind of mistake is common when people assess risks, and so people tend to overreact when something increases a very low probability risk. For instance, we read that some particular food might increase our chances of getting some particular disease from 1/10^6 over our lifetime to 3/10^6, and we think we need to immediately cut that food even if we like it and it does plenty of good things for us, because it increases our risk 3x and that sounds huge. Oddly, we don't seem to do this with transportation. Someone trying to decide whether to drive or fly from Los Angeles to San Francisco will probably decide based on cost, time, convenience, things on the driving route they might want to visit, whether they want their car with them in San Francisco, and similar factors. For most people I don't think that the fact that flying (at least on a major airline) is safer than driving would be a factor. They recognize that the chances of dying in an automobile accident on a drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco are so low as to not be worth considering, and so that some other mode of transportation would have even lower chances is not relevant.

fiatmoney 11y ago

"This is like saying that people who've had DUIs can't work at bars" In fact, people with alcohol-related felonies have a really tough time getting liquor licenses.

kennywinker 11y ago
Yes, but this guy wanted to work at the front desk, not own the license. And society hasn't recently taken major steps towards legalizing DUIs.
- mc32 11y ago
  But this is more like someone owning a liquor store selling to underage kids, thus breaking the law losing his license then getting denied a job at distillery for prior lapse of judgement.
  - kennywinker 11y ago
    It doesn't sound like that at all to me. In fact, it sounds a lot more like getting caught drinking underage, and then getting denied a job at a distillery. If we're being precise, it sounds like getting caught drinking when you're 20, then a few years later the drinking age is lowered to 19 but you still get denied a job at a distillery.
    - mc32 11y ago
      More apt would be getting caught making moonshine and getting denied a job at a distillery. The point is the same. Prior bad judgement may result in diminished future outlook.
      - kennywinker 11y ago
        The person in the article wasn't growing pot. They had a joint on them and were stopped by the cops. You're trying to escalate it but the point is they did something that we now consider not wrong, served their time, but are still being punished for it.

ikeboy 11y ago

This is just bad statistics. http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/25/race-and-justice-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/ 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 be caught by the cops. 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. Further, blacks are more likely to live in the cities, where there is a heavy police shadow, and whites in the suburbs or country, where there is a lower one. ... >Finally, all of this is based on self-reported data about drug use. Remember from a couple paragraphs ago how studies showed that black people were twice as likely to fail to self-report their drug use? And you notice here that black people are twice as likely to be arrested for drug use as their self-reports suggest? That’s certainly an interesting coincidence.

imgabe 11y ago
> 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 This raises a question about why drugs that whites are more likely to use are penalized less severely than drugs that blacks are more likely to use.
- ikeboy 11y ago
  He discusses this in the summary. >It would be nice to say that this shows the criminal justice system is not disproportionately harming blacks, but unfortunately it doesn’t come anywhere close to showing anything of the sort. There are still many ways it can indirectly harm blacks without being explicitly racist. Anatole France famously said that “the law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich as well as poor people from begging for bread and sleeping under bridges”, and in the same way that the laws France cites, be they enforced ever so fairly, would still disproportionately target poor people, so other laws can, even when fairly enforced, target black people. The classic example of this is crack cocaine – a predominantly black drug – carrying a higher sentence than other whiter drugs. Even if the police are scrupulously fair in giving the same sentence to black and white cokeheads, the law will still have a disproportionate effect. But note that this supports very different conclusions from what you'd think only knowing that blacks have higher penalty rates. Is it racist laws, or racist policemen? The response to each is going to be different; e.g. giving policemen "diversity training" or something only helps if they were the problem.

LordKano 11y ago

I am a black person in America and I think you're half right. White people and black people use illegal drugs at approximately the same rate. Black people, despite being a population only 1/4 the size of the white population, are arrested for drug crimes in both greater numbers and in greater proportion. Into my mid-to-late 30s, when I would get pulled over by the police, roughly half of the time, the officer would ask me if I had any drugs in my car. My response was usually "No more than you do, officer". The police profile and harass us. There are even rogue officers who plant evidence to manufacture crimes. We all know this. As a result, many of us are more staunchly against even casual drug use in our personal lives. It's not fair. It's not right. It's just the way it is. I have a friend whom I have known since childhood who is currently serving 20 years in a federal prison for marijuana related offenses. He made a choice and it turned out poorly for him. I'll save my outrage for the people who were falsely convicted. I'll save my outrage for the victims of planted evidence and corrupt cops. If someone is actually guilty of the crime, their case is far less sympathetic.

tzs 11y ago

> 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. It is true that black people are more likely to be arrested than white people for drug crimes. 57% of arrestees are white, 37% black. That's about 3x the percentage that you'd expect if you just go by the racial distribution of drug users. However, that's not actually really relevant here because most drug users, white or black, do not get caught at all. There are about 1.2 million drug arrests per year, so roughly 680k whites and 444k blacks. We've got about 320 million people. Let's be generous and knock out people 0-14 (20%) because they are probably too young to have gotten into drugs, and also knock out 55+ (26%) because older people don't seem to get arrested much for casual drug use (perhaps if you are old and a regular drug user you've figured out how to not get caught...). So that leaves us 173 million people who are similar demographically to the people getting arrested for drugs. That would be about 22 million blacks, 109 million whites. So...we've got about 680k whites arrested for drugs per year out of 109 million, which means 108.6 million out of 109 million whites are NOT arrested. In percentages, 99.4% of whites are not arrested for drugs in any given year. For blacks, we've got 444k arrested for drugs out of 22 million, which means 21.6 million out of 22 million blacks are NOT arrested. In percentages, 98.0% of blacks are not arrested for drugs in any given year. 98.0% is lower than 99.4%, and that is something that should be investigated--I'm not trying to argue that there is no bias. I'm just saying that by focusing on those arrested rather than those not arrested, you get a misleading picture. This kind of mistake is common when people assess risks, and so people tend to overreact when something increases a very low probability risk. For instance, we read that some particular food might increase our chances of getting some particular disease from 1/10^6 over our lifetime to 3/10^6, and we think we need to immediately cut that food even if we like it and it does plenty of good things for us, because it increases our risk 3x and that sounds huge. Oddly, we don't seem to do this with transportation. Someone trying to decide whether to drive or fly from Los Angeles to San Francisco will probably decide based on cost, time, convenience, things on the driving route they might want to visit, whether they want their car with them in San Francisco, and similar factors. For most people I don't think that the fact that flying (at least on a major airline) is safer than driving would be a factor. They recognize that the chances of dying in an automobile accident on a drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco are so low as to not be worth considering, and so that some other mode of transportation would have even lower chances is not relevant.