7 ms·

Lumping together the violent criminal class as the underclass is pretty offensive. Just because you're poor/working class doesn't mean you have to resort to...

by hayd 5y ago

Lumping together the violent criminal class as the underclass is pretty offensive. Just because you're poor/working class doesn't mean you have to resort to... er... cracking people's head open with a baseball bat unprovoked. This is not normal.

bradhe 5y ago
I think we have to talk in broad swaths here, we can't zoom in on individuals.
krnlpnc 5y ago
Unprovoked? Neither “class” has realistic access to social services or health care in the US, so the mental health and addiction issues that often lead a person down this road go unaddressed. Further, the US legal system (and US society) heavily stigmatizes “offenders”. Once a person is down its extremely hard to get back up, and people need money survive. Not saying that violence is ok, but in many cases people just need help instead of punishment.
- hayd 5y ago
  Agreed, we need to treat addiction much much more aggressively. Here in CA/SF the current policy is to simply ignore low-level crime (which funds their drug addiction aka "to survive")... instead let's take people off the street (and take them off drugs).
pydry 5y ago
If you maltreat 10 poverty stricken people to the point of desperation, one or two probably will act out this way. More will probably kill themselves, though.
kstenerud 5y ago
Actually, it's quite normal in highly unequal societies, and has been documented time and time again throughout history, as has the cycle of wealth redistribution. Nobody has managed to stop the inevitable march to redistribution, although they have managed to mitigate the late-stage violent period in some cases, and even avoid violent revolution.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- yolo69420 5y ago
  there are many much more unequal societies than the US where this just isn't a problem. russia or china, for example. their rates of violent crimes like this are far below that of the US. it's a pretty idiotic trend in recent years to reduce every societal problem to a income, wealth or other types of inequalities. there are societal problems that are completely and utterly caused by different issues, and this is one of them.
  - schainks 5y ago
    China has a huge wealth gap like in the US, yes, but _everyone_, even peasant farmers, can afford health care and real food that isn’t McDonalds. The lowest class materially knows their life is improving, year over year, so they don’t have cause to act out. Saying “look at their rates of violent crime” overlooks how the Chinese government _very heavily_ cracks down on dissent or violent offenders in the general case, usually by shooting everyone indiscriminately or making a public example out of them. Anecdotally, I’ve been at a Chinese bar when a fight broke out. People tried resolving it quickly, before the police found out. If a situation escalates enough, a whole truck of police show up and beat everyone there, including bystanders, for not “keeping the peace”.
  - heavenlyblue 5y ago
    > russia or china, for example. their rates of violent crimes like this are far below that of the US. Hm. I am myself not from Russia exactly but from 90s Baltics and I personally remember repeated occasions I had to do end up in fights with local “trash”. Once that ended with a guy punching one of the girls from our crowd in the face because she was being too outspoken about him trying to incite a fight with one of us. To be fair we should have expected that but none of us had any time to react. To be clear that is actually quite a normal thing. Well, at least at the time it was and the area I lived in was not one of those incredibly poor areas. Russia has way worse places. So yeah, we never reported that because truth to be told it was very usual and the whole general philosophy is to endure or to fight back yourself and not go to the police. So I would not think this stuff ends up in statistics. What ends up in the stats is all of the really bad stuff like rape and killings at the same time. I would not even expect any medium-hard definition of “rape” would be reported on a regular basis let alone someone getting punched in their face.
lozenge 5y ago
Tell that to the police, who target the working class with crimes like loitering, jaywalking, or "driving on a suspended license" (inability to keep up with court fine on top of court fine) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/04/coronavirus-new-york-police-enforce-social-distancing https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/04/coronavirus-ne...
- jiscariot 5y ago
  From what I have seen in Minneapolis/St. Paul, those are things (low-level, livability crimes) which have stopped being enforced over the past 5-10 years. We are starting to see the effects of this inverse-broken-windows social experiment, and it's not looking good, at least where I live. e.g. Aggressive panhandling, tent cities, traffic infractions, public transit fare evasion, shoplifting (<$1k), etc.
  - kstenerud 5y ago
    And that will continue getting steadily worse until public outcry causes the city to reverse course and get "tough on crime" again. After that, the "us vs them" mentality crystallises into fractured communities that eventually start to be run by gangs, similar to what you get in Brazil.
    - nerb 5y ago
      cool, the typically slippery slope. wonder if there could be other reasons for latin american countries being destabilized... hmm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
  - nerb 5y ago
    b/c there could be no other reasons for this to be the case, and the only solution is to arrest, jail, or fine people potentially exacerbating their poverty? this sounds like pearl clutching and not wanting to think more about an issue with tons of variables.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

by hayd 5y ago

bradhe 5y ago

I think we have to talk in broad swaths here, we can't zoom in on individuals.

krnlpnc 5y ago

Unprovoked? Neither “class” has realistic access to social services or health care in the US, so the mental health and addiction issues that often lead a person down this road go unaddressed. Further, the US legal system (and US society) heavily stigmatizes “offenders”. Once a person is down its extremely hard to get back up, and people need money survive. Not saying that violence is ok, but in many cases people just need help instead of punishment.

hayd 5y ago
Agreed, we need to treat addiction much much more aggressively. Here in CA/SF the current policy is to simply ignore low-level crime (which funds their drug addiction aka "to survive")... instead let's take people off the street (and take them off drugs).

pydry 5y ago

If you maltreat 10 poverty stricken people to the point of desperation, one or two probably will act out this way. More will probably kill themselves, though.

kstenerud 5y ago

Actually, it's quite normal in highly unequal societies, and has been documented time and time again throughout history, as has the cycle of wealth redistribution. Nobody has managed to stop the inevitable march to redistribution, although they have managed to mitigate the late-stage violent period in some cases, and even avoid violent revolution.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
yolo69420 5y ago
there are many much more unequal societies than the US where this just isn't a problem. russia or china, for example. their rates of violent crimes like this are far below that of the US. it's a pretty idiotic trend in recent years to reduce every societal problem to a income, wealth or other types of inequalities. there are societal problems that are completely and utterly caused by different issues, and this is one of them.
- schainks 5y ago
  China has a huge wealth gap like in the US, yes, but _everyone_, even peasant farmers, can afford health care and real food that isn’t McDonalds. The lowest class materially knows their life is improving, year over year, so they don’t have cause to act out. Saying “look at their rates of violent crime” overlooks how the Chinese government _very heavily_ cracks down on dissent or violent offenders in the general case, usually by shooting everyone indiscriminately or making a public example out of them. Anecdotally, I’ve been at a Chinese bar when a fight broke out. People tried resolving it quickly, before the police found out. If a situation escalates enough, a whole truck of police show up and beat everyone there, including bystanders, for not “keeping the peace”.
- heavenlyblue 5y ago
  > russia or china, for example. their rates of violent crimes like this are far below that of the US. Hm. I am myself not from Russia exactly but from 90s Baltics and I personally remember repeated occasions I had to do end up in fights with local “trash”. Once that ended with a guy punching one of the girls from our crowd in the face because she was being too outspoken about him trying to incite a fight with one of us. To be fair we should have expected that but none of us had any time to react. To be clear that is actually quite a normal thing. Well, at least at the time it was and the area I lived in was not one of those incredibly poor areas. Russia has way worse places. So yeah, we never reported that because truth to be told it was very usual and the whole general philosophy is to endure or to fight back yourself and not go to the police. So I would not think this stuff ends up in statistics. What ends up in the stats is all of the really bad stuff like rape and killings at the same time. I would not even expect any medium-hard definition of “rape” would be reported on a regular basis let alone someone getting punched in their face.

lozenge 5y ago

Tell that to the police, who target the working class with crimes like loitering, jaywalking, or "driving on a suspended license" (inability to keep up with court fine on top of court fine) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/04/coronavirus-new-york-police-enforce-social-distancing https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/04/coronavirus-ne...

jiscariot 5y ago
From what I have seen in Minneapolis/St. Paul, those are things (low-level, livability crimes) which have stopped being enforced over the past 5-10 years. We are starting to see the effects of this inverse-broken-windows social experiment, and it's not looking good, at least where I live. e.g. Aggressive panhandling, tent cities, traffic infractions, public transit fare evasion, shoplifting (<$1k), etc.
- kstenerud 5y ago
  And that will continue getting steadily worse until public outcry causes the city to reverse course and get "tough on crime" again. After that, the "us vs them" mentality crystallises into fractured communities that eventually start to be run by gangs, similar to what you get in Brazil.
  - nerb 5y ago
    cool, the typically slippery slope. wonder if there could be other reasons for latin american countries being destabilized... hmm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
- nerb 5y ago
  b/c there could be no other reasons for this to be the case, and the only solution is to arrest, jail, or fine people potentially exacerbating their poverty? this sounds like pearl clutching and not wanting to think more about an issue with tons of variables.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]