5 ms·

race-card popular lately, but civil forfeiture is a problem here. More race you bring - less efficient you get with fighting real issue at hands. If you do litt

by hippich 11y ago

race-card popular lately, but civil forfeiture is a problem here. More race you bring - less efficient you get with fighting real issue at hands. If you do little research - people of all races and sexes were hurt by that, and local/federal police benefitted from it.

ndespres 11y ago
Please don't do a dismissive handwave over what's really an important element to this story. That the victim is a person of color is absolutely relevant to this story; it demonstrates a bias on behalf of the DEA agent, or perhaps simply a cynicism: they know what they can get away with in the eyes of the public. Of COURSE race is an important element of how law enforcement interacts with citizens. Race is part of these issues. The very term "race card" is offensive and marginalizing, even if you didn't mean it that way.
- SixSigma 11y ago
  > a person of color There's one of your problems. Am I a person of no colour? Your (and this isn't a direct attack on you) use of language contributes to the situation while it is trying to be softly softly.
  - ndespres 11y ago
    We should not define people in terms of what they are "not" or lump them into a group of who they are different from ("minority"). So no, if you are white you can be just that. Maybe it doesn't have as much play outside the U.S. but the term PoC seems to work well here. For the whole semantic argument I'll point to http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_color http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_color .
    - SixSigma 11y ago
      we're even more positive, blacks are called black. No messing about. We also have IC codes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IC_codes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IC_codes Code Ethnicity IC1 White - North European IC2 White - South European IC3 Black IC4 Asian (in the UK Asian refers to people from the Indian subcontinent like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal) IC5 Chinese, Japanese, or other South East Asian IC6 Arabic or North African IC9 Unknown And, just to polish things off, the European Union has declared that there is no such thing as "race".
- konradb 11y ago
  Of course it is very likely race was a factor here, but it may well have been that he was the only poor soul who they could find with an envelope of cash.
- hippich 11y ago
  i don't think i was marginalizing it. if anyone, it was parent and article writer tried to make it look like assets forfeiture affects only some groups of people. It does not. And making it look like it is makes it only harder to fight against. As soon as you try to divide public into groups - you get less power to fight. I am foreigner, so I can see it from different perspective than regular american person, who grew up with the notion "we, whites, are oppressing black men, and we should feel guilty". As soon as you guys realize that whites/blacks/asians/whatever word you come up with for arbitrary characteristic of a group of people, who live same life, live in the same country, has on a daily basis more or less similar issues, and, in case of assets forfeiture, all likely to get abused with it, may be then you understand that you need fight back, and not try to differentiate yourself from your neighbor. Just a random overview from a guy without blurred picture of what is going on in your country.
spacemanmatt 11y ago
You say it's not about race, but let me point you to the story of a Texas freelance racist who was supported by many racist cops and citizens for a long time. I have lived in Texas all my life, and he is a household name among people who care about civil rights. I don't mention this to say civil forfeiture is necessarily racist, as much as to point out that it is a tool entirely too attractive to them. And they are using it as much as they can, here. http://justicedenied.org/issue/issue_27/coleman_convicted.html http://justicedenied.org/issue/issue_27/coleman_convicted.ht...
- hippich 11y ago
  i bet america has racism issues, but civil forfeiture is completely different issue. and trying to bring up racism problem into it makes it only more complicated - suddenly you get "racist cops" who probably, after reading this article will not think about "wow, forfeiture rules are stupid", but rather "huh, so they caught black guy, he probably was doing narcotics" or similar bs. Fight one problem at a time.
  - spacemanmatt 11y ago
    >Fight one problem at a time. Strongly disagreed. And for the reason that they don't occur in a vacuum. Racism and police abuse have a very long history.

by hippich 11y ago

ndespres 11y ago

Please don't do a dismissive handwave over what's really an important element to this story. That the victim is a person of color is absolutely relevant to this story; it demonstrates a bias on behalf of the DEA agent, or perhaps simply a cynicism: they know what they can get away with in the eyes of the public. Of COURSE race is an important element of how law enforcement interacts with citizens. Race is part of these issues. The very term "race card" is offensive and marginalizing, even if you didn't mean it that way.

SixSigma 11y ago
> a person of color There's one of your problems. Am I a person of no colour? Your (and this isn't a direct attack on you) use of language contributes to the situation while it is trying to be softly softly.
- ndespres 11y ago
  We should not define people in terms of what they are "not" or lump them into a group of who they are different from ("minority"). So no, if you are white you can be just that. Maybe it doesn't have as much play outside the U.S. but the term PoC seems to work well here. For the whole semantic argument I'll point to http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_color http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_color .
  - SixSigma 11y ago
    we're even more positive, blacks are called black. No messing about. We also have IC codes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IC_codes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IC_codes Code Ethnicity IC1 White - North European IC2 White - South European IC3 Black IC4 Asian (in the UK Asian refers to people from the Indian subcontinent like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal) IC5 Chinese, Japanese, or other South East Asian IC6 Arabic or North African IC9 Unknown And, just to polish things off, the European Union has declared that there is no such thing as "race".
konradb 11y ago
Of course it is very likely race was a factor here, but it may well have been that he was the only poor soul who they could find with an envelope of cash.
hippich 11y ago
i don't think i was marginalizing it. if anyone, it was parent and article writer tried to make it look like assets forfeiture affects only some groups of people. It does not. And making it look like it is makes it only harder to fight against. As soon as you try to divide public into groups - you get less power to fight. I am foreigner, so I can see it from different perspective than regular american person, who grew up with the notion "we, whites, are oppressing black men, and we should feel guilty". As soon as you guys realize that whites/blacks/asians/whatever word you come up with for arbitrary characteristic of a group of people, who live same life, live in the same country, has on a daily basis more or less similar issues, and, in case of assets forfeiture, all likely to get abused with it, may be then you understand that you need fight back, and not try to differentiate yourself from your neighbor. Just a random overview from a guy without blurred picture of what is going on in your country.

spacemanmatt 11y ago

You say it's not about race, but let me point you to the story of a Texas freelance racist who was supported by many racist cops and citizens for a long time. I have lived in Texas all my life, and he is a household name among people who care about civil rights. I don't mention this to say civil forfeiture is necessarily racist, as much as to point out that it is a tool entirely too attractive to them. And they are using it as much as they can, here. http://justicedenied.org/issue/issue_27/coleman_convicted.html http://justicedenied.org/issue/issue_27/coleman_convicted.ht...

hippich 11y ago
i bet america has racism issues, but civil forfeiture is completely different issue. and trying to bring up racism problem into it makes it only more complicated - suddenly you get "racist cops" who probably, after reading this article will not think about "wow, forfeiture rules are stupid", but rather "huh, so they caught black guy, he probably was doing narcotics" or similar bs. Fight one problem at a time.
- spacemanmatt 11y ago
  >Fight one problem at a time. Strongly disagreed. And for the reason that they don't occur in a vacuum. Racism and police abuse have a very long history.