3 ms·
"Please point to one law or government policy in the US in CURRENT_YEAR that systemically discriminates against a specific group, so people are aware of it, so
by another-dave 5y ago
"Please point to one law or government policy in the US in CURRENT_YEAR that systemically discriminates against a specific group, so people are aware of it, so we can fix it."
Sentencing disparity between powdered cocaine (whose usage skews towards white people) and crack cocaine.
- logicalmonster 5y agoSorry, I missed seeing this comment and wanted to respond because you at least tried to offer something concrete. For the sake of clarification, is there any "apples-to-apples" statistical comparison available to prove some kind of bias? By that, I mean not comparing all powdered cocaine users and all crack cocaine users (comparing groups like that is bad statistics IMO), but comparing sentences among all white/black powdered cocaine users, or comparing sentences among all white/black crack cocaine users? For instance, would a black businessman working for Goldman Sachs caught with 1 kilo of powdered cocaine get the same kind of sentence as a white equivalent? Or would a white crack cocaine user get the same kind of sentence as the black equivalent? To me, that's the question that's a bit more revealing and interesting. PS: For the record, personally I don't believe that there ought to be any sentencing disparities. The War on Drugs is an abject failure for anything other than growing a destructive government intrusion into peoples' lives and the criminal penalty for possession of any drug should be precisely 0.