5 ms·

I'm not American, so I don't really know what it's like there, but is it a race issue, or a class issue? Would a well known/well off black person who can hire

I'm not American, so I don't really know what it's like there, but is it a race issue, or a class issue? Would a well known/well off black person who can hire good lawyers be able to whittle down 2 counts of felony assault to a year of probation? Here in New Zealand, the son of the Maori King (a purely ceremonial and symbolic role for our native people), who was something like 3rd in line for the throne, got off a theft and drink driving conviction because he would be ineligible to hold the throne if convicted. He was eventually convicted after public outcry.

miller_joe 10y ago
OJ Simpson
porpoisemonkey 10y ago
There are two separate issues. One is the disproportionate attention minority races get from the police. It's not hard evidence but here's a CNN report discussing the profiling that wealthy blacks receive in the United States. http://money.cnn.com/2016/07/14/news/economy/wealthy-blacks-racial-profiling/ http://money.cnn.com/2016/07/14/news/economy/wealthy-blacks-... The second is the disproportionate sentencing for similar or identical crimes. Again without any hard data this seems to be mostly a class based issue. One commonly cited example of this is the differences in mandatory minimum sentences between crack cocaine and regular cocaine. Crack cocaine is often associated with lower classes due to being cheaper to acquire than powdered cocaine. Additionally there are significant differences between the legal representation that can be afforded at different levels of income. Coupled with issue 1 this creates a disparity in how the US justice system treats minorities. http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2010/08/03/data-show-racial-disparity-in-crack-sentencing http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2010/08/03/data-show-rac...
- rblatz 10y ago
  The typical ingestion method between crack and powder cocaine are drastically different. The way the body absorbs both drugs is different and the impact the drug has on its users and society is much different. Just because things are chemically similar doesn't mean they are the same, nor should they bet treated the same. But I do agree that on the whole white people get cut breaks where minorities would not. I just don't think the crack/coke example is a very strong one.
  - ryanlol 10y ago
    >the impact the drug has on its users and society is much different. Would you like to expand on those? I don't see why crack would be any worse than normal coke. In fact, considering the effects are significantly shorter it seems much more suitable for a productive lifestyle.
    - brokenmachine 10y ago
      Lol, crack is much more suitable for a productive lifestyle!! I was under the impression (maybe untrue) that it was more intense/addictive, but maybe that's just media bias working on me.
      - ryanlol 10y ago
        It's a more intense high with a much shorter duration so one would have much higher control over when they're high and not high. I don't believe it's significantly more addictive though, it's just more affordable to the most vulnerable demographics due to the smaller dosages.
    - nickff 10y ago
      Crack has a much more intense, shorter high, and is much more closely associated with negative life outcomes than powder cocaine. Powder cocaine users tend to be much more high functioning than crack users. Many of the laws tough on crack cocaine were brought in during the 80s and 90s when crack was thought (perhaps accurately) to be tearing African American communities apart, and many of the campaigners for the tough laws were African American community leaders.
      - John23832 10y ago
        > and is much more closely associated with negative life outcomes than powder cocaine. Says who? You? And even still, couldn't you say that the harsher sentencing guidelines around crack are to blame for that?
  - abricot 10y ago
stcredzero 10y ago
is it a race issue, or a class issue? It's the unfortunate historical circumstance of race having become a fairly reliable marker for class. This is in turn a holdover from race having become a fairly reliable marker of slave status. I've come to think of many of the stickiest problems of the 21st century as holdovers from a past world that had the morality of Game of Thrones.
- dalore 10y ago
  In Westeros slavery is outlawed but widespread in the East. Slavery is also a major topic in the book.
internaut 10y ago
It's a class issue. Americans confuse a former iconography (civil rights era) with existing circumstances. Today they have a class divide, not a racial one. That many POCs are in one class and not another is misdirecting idealism. The plight of urban blacks is so well documented that it is a television trope, but the poverty that exists in the countryside and even entire cities stagnating and evidence of decay is more or less ignored e.g. Note how the Tiny House movement is an attempt for 'middle class' poor mostly to differentiate themselves from 'those people' living in trailer parks (who in turn would be appalled if they were conflated with those living in section 9). Presiding over it all is of course the spread of the gated communities. This is all an emergent class structure similar to the one that developed in Europe centuries ago. In my country, any time we hear of Southerners, the implication is immediately that they are red necks, racists, ignorant jesus freaks. We don't get that from our television or radio. We get it from your movies, television and radio. Many europeans don't realize they are inadvertently being drawn into (one side of) a culture war on a different Continent e.g. see BLM protests in London.
- porpoisemonkey 10y ago
  I don't think the conclusion that it's solely, or even mostly, class based is correct. Up until the 1965 there was open discrimination towards minorities enshrined in law. That's a mere 51 years ago from today - well within the lifespan of Americans living now. The United States also has a well-documented history of active disenfranchisement of different races. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Chinese_legislation_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Chinese_legislation_in_th... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America... Just about every crime statistic you'll come across also shows higher incarceration rates for minorities however the number of impoverished Americans of caucasian ancestry dwarfs any other minority group. http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p13.pdf http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p13.pdf https://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acsbr11-17.pdf https://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acsbr11-17.pdf My own personal experience growing up in the American Midwest is that racism is alive and well in those areas. I vividly remember open and profane discussions about blacks amongst the local population being spouted by both adolescents and adults. This included the gratuitous use of what is colloquially referred to as the N-word (in the offensive fashion).
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

miller_joe 10y ago

OJ Simpson

porpoisemonkey 10y ago

There are two separate issues. One is the disproportionate attention minority races get from the police. It's not hard evidence but here's a CNN report discussing the profiling that wealthy blacks receive in the United States. http://money.cnn.com/2016/07/14/news/economy/wealthy-blacks-racial-profiling/ http://money.cnn.com/2016/07/14/news/economy/wealthy-blacks-... The second is the disproportionate sentencing for similar or identical crimes. Again without any hard data this seems to be mostly a class based issue. One commonly cited example of this is the differences in mandatory minimum sentences between crack cocaine and regular cocaine. Crack cocaine is often associated with lower classes due to being cheaper to acquire than powdered cocaine. Additionally there are significant differences between the legal representation that can be afforded at different levels of income. Coupled with issue 1 this creates a disparity in how the US justice system treats minorities. http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2010/08/03/data-show-racial-disparity-in-crack-sentencing http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2010/08/03/data-show-rac...

rblatz 10y ago
The typical ingestion method between crack and powder cocaine are drastically different. The way the body absorbs both drugs is different and the impact the drug has on its users and society is much different. Just because things are chemically similar doesn't mean they are the same, nor should they bet treated the same. But I do agree that on the whole white people get cut breaks where minorities would not. I just don't think the crack/coke example is a very strong one.
- ryanlol 10y ago
  >the impact the drug has on its users and society is much different. Would you like to expand on those? I don't see why crack would be any worse than normal coke. In fact, considering the effects are significantly shorter it seems much more suitable for a productive lifestyle.
  - brokenmachine 10y ago
    Lol, crack is much more suitable for a productive lifestyle!! I was under the impression (maybe untrue) that it was more intense/addictive, but maybe that's just media bias working on me.
    - ryanlol 10y ago
      It's a more intense high with a much shorter duration so one would have much higher control over when they're high and not high. I don't believe it's significantly more addictive though, it's just more affordable to the most vulnerable demographics due to the smaller dosages.
  - nickff 10y ago
    Crack has a much more intense, shorter high, and is much more closely associated with negative life outcomes than powder cocaine. Powder cocaine users tend to be much more high functioning than crack users. Many of the laws tough on crack cocaine were brought in during the 80s and 90s when crack was thought (perhaps accurately) to be tearing African American communities apart, and many of the campaigners for the tough laws were African American community leaders.
    - John23832 10y ago
      > and is much more closely associated with negative life outcomes than powder cocaine. Says who? You? And even still, couldn't you say that the harsher sentencing guidelines around crack are to blame for that?
- abricot 10y ago

stcredzero 10y ago

is it a race issue, or a class issue? It's the unfortunate historical circumstance of race having become a fairly reliable marker for class. This is in turn a holdover from race having become a fairly reliable marker of slave status. I've come to think of many of the stickiest problems of the 21st century as holdovers from a past world that had the morality of Game of Thrones.

dalore 10y ago
In Westeros slavery is outlawed but widespread in the East. Slavery is also a major topic in the book.

internaut 10y ago

It's a class issue. Americans confuse a former iconography (civil rights era) with existing circumstances. Today they have a class divide, not a racial one. That many POCs are in one class and not another is misdirecting idealism. The plight of urban blacks is so well documented that it is a television trope, but the poverty that exists in the countryside and even entire cities stagnating and evidence of decay is more or less ignored e.g. Note how the Tiny House movement is an attempt for 'middle class' poor mostly to differentiate themselves from 'those people' living in trailer parks (who in turn would be appalled if they were conflated with those living in section 9). Presiding over it all is of course the spread of the gated communities. This is all an emergent class structure similar to the one that developed in Europe centuries ago. In my country, any time we hear of Southerners, the implication is immediately that they are red necks, racists, ignorant jesus freaks. We don't get that from our television or radio. We get it from your movies, television and radio. Many europeans don't realize they are inadvertently being drawn into (one side of) a culture war on a different Continent e.g. see BLM protests in London.

porpoisemonkey 10y ago
I don't think the conclusion that it's solely, or even mostly, class based is correct. Up until the 1965 there was open discrimination towards minorities enshrined in law. That's a mere 51 years ago from today - well within the lifespan of Americans living now. The United States also has a well-documented history of active disenfranchisement of different races. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Chinese_legislation_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Chinese_legislation_in_th... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America... Just about every crime statistic you'll come across also shows higher incarceration rates for minorities however the number of impoverished Americans of caucasian ancestry dwarfs any other minority group. http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p13.pdf http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p13.pdf https://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acsbr11-17.pdf https://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acsbr11-17.pdf My own personal experience growing up in the American Midwest is that racism is alive and well in those areas. I vividly remember open and profane discussions about blacks amongst the local population being spouted by both adolescents and adults. This included the gratuitous use of what is colloquially referred to as the N-word (in the offensive fashion).

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]