I have a separate question you may be able to help me with.
When people want to define their political enemies they are willing to go back over 100 years to define who they are today.
Yet, when I point out examples of institutional racism like the war on drugs that is still currently being carried out today, I'm regularly told by these pe…
I have a separate question you may be able to help me with.
When people want to define their political enemies they are willing to go back over 100 years to define who they are today.
Yet, when I point out examples of institutional racism like the war on drugs that is still currently being carried out today, I'm regularly told by these people that it's all ancient history, America has move on and so should I.
Can you explain how we arrive that these two very distinct versions of time simultaneously?
The war on drugs? Which part of the war on drugs? That which began with Nixon? Or that which was largely expanded by the likes of Biden et al? I would definitely agree with the idea that the war on drugs was partially moved by racism, but a substantial aspect of it was simply driven by fear and puritanism. This can easily be demonstrated by the fact that there was a lot of support for the drug laws passed in the 80s by black people. The current war on drugs is not particularly racist, albeit it disproportionately affects black people. The laws are not being carried out with the intent to cause harm or oppress black people because they are black. That said, I still personally oppose modern drug laws, not because they are racist though -- but because they are simply unjust. Likewise, if we look at the historical roots of minimum wage laws, we can find racist sentiments that drove them; that does not mean minimum wage laws today are racist. I, likewise also oppose minimum wage laws, but not because they are racist.
"Institutional racism" -- let us say, racism that is part of the structural design of an institution, is not demonstrated by the drug war today. Just because a racial group is disproportionately affected by a policy does not make that policy racist; there can be many causal factors besides racism that affects outcomes that show disparities among races. If a policy is carried out due to racial animus or the policy itself specifically discriminates based on race, that is racist.
When an institution, or organization, such as the Democratic Party, though has a lineage of wealth and power that goes back 150 years, and the people today in that organization derive their wealth and power from that lineage, there is very good reason to hold the people in that organization responsible for redeeming whatever crimes that organization is responsible for in its past. Particularly, if that organization wishes to or suggests that they are committed to correcting the fallout of injustices of the past, such as institutional racism, and they are centrally responsible for those injustices, it is especially important that we bring attention to it.
So my suggestion to you... keep opposing the war on drugs, but stop using it as an example of "institutional racism." It is tragic that black people are disproportionately affected by the war on drugs given the historical injustices that laws have brought upon black people, but they currently are not racist. Just unjust. If you want to point out systemic racism, look to the affirmative action policies and the "equity" policies that are currently being implemented. Those are policies that specifically discriminate based on race. If you want to find "institutional racism" -- look to the diversity training that is being conducted in the government and corporations that teach black people that "attention to detail" and "objectivity" are "whiteness" and white people that they can't see black people as individual humans.
But yah, you will find racist individuals, including powerful individuals such as judges and cops, who still have racist attitudes and make decisions based on that. But the system they are part of, well, that is quite anti-racist. However, political factions are trying hard to change that.
JP - I think you are articulating the views of Public intellectuals like Coleman Hughes and Glenn Lowery. Right?
I subscribe to Hughes on Patreon and am familiar with his views... Certainly not an expert.
I find, like Chomsky, Taibbi, Hedges, Greenwald and many others that Identity Politics is really nothing more than distraction away from Pocket Book Economics. Advertisers will pay for ads on anyone pushing identity politics but if you get too deep or speak with too much frequency about issues like Wages, Health Care, Monopsony, Regulatory Capture etc... advertiser supported media throws sand into the machine to shut it down.
BLM... Their purpose, like MLK, is to organize and bring attention to problems specific to people of color. MLK. during his time was opposed by the majority of Americans including many very powerful black organizations. Looking back historically, those that opposed him did so for no rational reason. Black figures that opposed him failed to produce as much as he did on behalf of black Americans and their civil rights.
I am not going to be distracted with identity politics... But it sounds like you are, right?
"I would definitely agree with the idea that the war on drugs was partially moved by racism, but a substantial aspect of it was simply driven by fear and puritanism"
From the mouth of the architect of the war on drugs:
"I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. “You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
If it's primarily puritanism as you suggest, than why are drug crimes overwhelmingly enforced against black people at 4 times the rate of white people despite usage being roughly the same?
I generally find it more helpful to focus on class than race and I'm not too concerned with racist individuals since they're irrelevant and can believe whatever they want. I'm talking about the institutional racism like the kind I showed above that is still being enforced today.
More specifically, I'm asking why are the same people doing back flips to declare institutional racism that occurred 20 minutes ago irrelevant and a thing of the past in one paragraph, and in the next talking about how the institutional racism of a party from 160 years ago is highly relevant today?
"From the mouth of the architect of the war on drugs:"
Unfortunately, that quote from Baum, supposedly by Ehrlichman, relayed 22 years after, and after Ehrlichman died and could not refute or confirm it, is not reliable. Journalistically, that is just horribly sloppy and unethical.
"If it's primarily puritanism as you suggest, than why are drug crimes overwhelmingly enforced against black people at 4 times the rate of white people despite usage being roughly the same?"
So you think secretly drug laws are currently dictating police officers to discriminate against black people because they are black people? There are many possible reasons why the statistics are the way they are, including that black people on average commit more crimes than white people, and in the process are caught with drugs; that police are called to neighborhoods with black people more than white people because crimes are being committed and in the process black people are caught with drugs; that black people are convicted of possession more because they are more likely to be poor and have less effective legal defense; that some cops have racial prejudices and are more likely to investigate or arrest a black person; all of the above.
Even if it is entirely that cops have racial prejudices, that would not change the reason why voters continue to support harsh drugs laws. Again, there was a lot of support for the drug war from black people in the 80s. Were those black people racist? Are black people today who think that there should be harsh drug laws today racist? Do I think that drug laws increase the likelihood that individual racists act upon their prejudices in the criminal justice system? Yes. Does that make the criminal justice system racist? No.
It is not "institutional racism" when individual cops are racist but they are doing so in contradiction to the laws and expectations of the institution -- the criminal justice system they are part of. If you can demonstrate that the police chiefs are encouraging their officers to target black people then you have a case for institutional racism -- for that police department.
"More specifically, I'm asking why are the same people doing back flips to declare institutional racism that occurred 20 minutes ago irrelevant and a thing of the past in one paragraph, and in the next talking about how the institutional racism of a party from 160 years ago is highly relevant today?"
I don't know who those people are. Talk to me. I don't think it is irrelevant when cops arrest black people because they are black-- 20 minutes ago. I just don't call it institutional racism. Those statistics you provided isn't sufficient evidence to claim there is "institutional racism" -- nor does it follow from those statistics any particular policy. And that cops and judges can be racist today and that its still possible that black people can face racism does not mean that it isnt highly relevant that the party that wishes to use that fact and other historical narratives to push racist policies is the party that nursed the KKK. It isn't a party from 160 years ago. It is the same party. If you proved there was wide spread institutional racism today, it wouldn't change the fact that the Democratic Party owes reparations for their war for slavery and nursing the KKK.
If Joe Blow murders a person today, it doesn't exonerate John Smith from murdering a person in the past. Crimes today don't redeem crimes of the past. When organizations commit crimes, and their wealth and power is passed on, and their wealth and power largely derived from those crimes, time and other organizations' crimes do not absolve those organizations.
And of course, Joe Biden, our current president, was one of the people who architected the war on drugs in the 80s. As much as I disdain Biden, I do not think he implemented the 80s drug laws because of racism; he simply did it out of political Machiavellianism. And It was popular -- among white people and black people.
You seem to be using all your logic to refute the evidence while making enormous leaps of faith to confirm what you want to believe. I guess you will have your own truth, although it's interesting that earlier you used Reagan's quote about facts as stubborn things. I guess you were just being hyperbolic.
The black community has always been seen as a threat to the establishment and has been targeted with lifestyle crime laws such as drugs, gambling and prostitution at much higher rates than other communities with equal rates of committing that crime. You want to imagine this 150 year pattern that continues today is some wild coincidence? Sure, and the cops who raided Stonewall in 1969 had no idea there were gay people present and the sodomy laws were enforced equally against gays and straight people. If you're going to run with denial, go for the touchdown.
Just a few more of many examples of systemic racism in policing:
The Mann Act, Also called the White Slavery Trafficking Man Act (no racism there) was specifically designed to go after black men having sex with white women. It was used to arrest black world champion boxer Jack Johnson for dating a white women in 1913, who he married once he got out of prison. I wouldn't mention a law written over 100 years ago if it were not still on the books and used today to disproportionately incarcerate black men.
The Mumford Act, the first gun laws in the US restricting gun use and supported by the NRA were passed specifically to criminalize the black freedom movement for having guns.
Combined with the drug war it's become another way to incarcerate black men for having a gun after a drug felony conviction.
Hoover's FBI (a man I suspect you think did not have a racist bone in his body) carried out the extra-legal execution of Fred Hampton in Cooperation with the FBI in 1969:
The pattern is long, clear, and just so happens to always land on the same group. Now, can your fertile mind create an endless pile of shit to claim all of these laws that specifically targeted the black community were just some random event that had nothing to do with black people? Sure you can, the same way a flat earther can argue endlessly that the world is flat. For people such as yourself, the obfuscation is always far more complex and convoluted than the facts. It takes a lot of mental gymnastics to consistently ignore Occam's razor. I don't expect you to admit to any of this now, but hopefully at some time in the future you will think about why you are so emotionally invested in ignoring the obvious on this topic?
"I don't expect you to admit to any of this now, but hopefully at some time in the future you will think about why you are so emotionally invested in ignoring the obvious on this topic?"
I am ignoring something? Seems like I'm directly addressing it.
"although it's interesting that earlier you used Reagan's quote about facts as stubborn things."
I never quoted Reagan. "Facts are stubborn things" comes from John Adams.
"I wouldn't mention a law written over 100 years ago if it were not still on the books and used today to disproportionately incarcerate black men."
The Mann act was amended to only refer to illegal acts. Since its amendment, and more recently, there is no indication that it is used to prosecute black people specifically.
"The Mumford Act, the first gun laws in the US restricting gun use..."
So, you think gun control laws are racist? You are opposed to gun control laws because they are racist, yah?
"Hoover's FBI (a man I suspect you think did not have a racist bone in his body) "
No, I suspect he was racist. Dunno how that has anything to do with what we are talking about though.
"The pattern is long, clear, and just so happens to always land on the same group. Now, can your fertile mind create an endless pile of shit to claim all of these laws that specifically targeted the black community were just some random event that had nothing to do with black people?"
So, your argument is that because there were laws in the past that were particularly designed to target black people, the drug laws today, which do not specifically target black people, are racist? And furthermore, because there was probably some racist motivation in the support of the drug laws in the past, that today the laws are racist?
That argument would logically entail that minimum wage laws are racist, as minimum wage laws were initially established to maintain wages of white workers at the cost of black workers and other minorities, who were willing to work at lower rates. Minimum wage laws, historically, harmed the economic livelihood of black people. Minimum wage laws are also tied to some pretty nasty "Progressive" eugenics ideology in the early 20th century.
"It is much better to enact a minimum-wage law even if it deprives these unfortunates of work. Better that the state should support the inefficient wholly and prevent the multiplication of the breed than subsidize incompetence and unthrift, enabling them to bring forth more of their kind.” - – Royal Meeker, Princeton scholar and labor commissioner to Woodrow Wilson, as quoted in Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 25
“[Wage] competition has no respect for the superior races,” said University of Wisconsin economist John R. Commons in his 1907 book Races and Immigrants ( p. 151). “The race with lowest necessities displaces others.”
“[The minimum wage will] protect the white Australian’s standard of living from the invidious competition of the colored races, particularly of the Chinese.”
– Arthur Holcombe of Harvard University, a member of the Massachusetts Minimum Wage Commission, speaking approvingly of Australia’s minimum wage legislation in 1912 (quoted from “Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive Era”)
Furthermore, abortion would also be considered racist, as abortion was pushed by none other than Planned Parenthood, whose founder was a racist and eugenicist. Even today, 79% of Planned Parenthood’s surgical abortion facilities are near minority neighborhoods.
Your argument with me is a bit peculiar. You seem to be fixated on the fact that our current drug laws are racist and don't particularly care about the fact that I agree with you that our drug laws are bad. I am simply disagreeing with the notion that they are racist, but you are very emotionally invested in the fact that they are racist. And you seem particularly offended by the fact that I assign guilt to the Democratic Party for its past but do not assign racism to current drug laws? Why? Much of the current drug laws were actually spearheaded by the Democratic Party itself, including Biden, our current president.
So anyway... let us clear things up, based on your logic, minimum wage laws, pro-abortion laws, and gun control laws are racist. Confirm?
Thank you for the correction on the attribution for the Adam's quote. The point still stands, it appears you were being hyperbolic when you used it.
I'll skip your random stuff you introduced unrelated to the topic of systemic racism with the criminal system, which leaves us with:
"Now, can your fertile mind create an endless pile of shit to claim all of these laws that specifically targeted the black community were just some random event that had nothing to do with black people? Sure you can, the same way a flat earther can argue endlessly that the world is flat."
You seem to have used your most recent post to prove my point.
Ignoring for a moment the current ridiculous language used in the 1986 version of the Mann Act that would have still allowed for the arrest of Jack Johnson who was dating a white sex worker, "the transport for the purpose of prostitution or other illegal sexual acts," yes, the language in the Mann Act was indeed updated because the talk of "white slavery" was so blatantly racist it was too much for even the FBI to bare. Despite your assertion that modifying the heavily morality based language such as "debauchery" out, the Mann Act along with all sex related crimes continue to be overwhelmingly enforced against minorities as they always have been. The Window dressing with the change in language has done nothing to address the disproportionate bias in the application of lifestyle crime laws.
Monorities are simply over-represented at every level of the criminal system in a way that cannot be explained away simply through random events or the "what if" alternatives you proposed. Those items might lead an increase, not the 2-4 fold increase we currently see.
"Monorities are simply over-represented at every level of the criminal system in a way that cannot be explained away simply through random events or the "what if" alternatives you proposed".
No, not quite.
Minorities are "over-represented" by the actual statistical details of major and violent crimes kept by both the FBI and by police organizations, and confirmed by a study done by Obama's own Justice Department and by Harvard professor Roland Fryer's studies.
In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53% of known homicide offenders in the U.S. and commit about 60% of robberies, though they are 13% of the population. In NYC blacks commit 98% of all shootings. In city after city, blacks commit the majority of violent crimes, and most importantly, ***Most of the victims of these crimes are also black*** This is a major violation of civil rights of the black community, and race apologists refuse to recognize this fact. But the populations in black neighborhoods do know it and they are the first to ask for MORE police, not fewer.
Without debating the validity of the dubious statistics you cite or starting a debate police funding, the trouble with this view at the meta level is that it assumes the majority of crime is violent, which it is not.
Even if I accept all these statistics without context, it does not explain the disproportinate impact on black people of lifestyle crimes involving things like drugs, sex work and gambling where there is no victim. It also doesn't explain why 58% of arrests in a city like Portland were of the homeless and the majority of those for non-violent crime. As an aside, in the whitest city in America this meant those arrested were also disproportionately black since they represent a larger percentage of the homeless.
Police and politicians have started to receive so much criticism and push back for these policies in recent years that there has been a general push to redefine more non-violent crime as violent to justify continued mass incarceration. Having a gun as a felon is increasingly considered a violent crime even when not in the commission of a crime. In almost all jurisdictions robbery while no one was home has long been considered a non-violent crime, but their has recently been a nationwide push to move it to the violent crime category.
The truth is the typical criminal looks nothing like the super-predator society has prepared you to expect. The most common victim of crime is not a blonde haired blue eyed girl, but another black man who is the victim today, but was the criminal yesterday. There is a strong correlation between children with a violent background and no father, which is always the end result of incarceration no matter how justified. The majority of victims of crime don't call the police because they have no expectation the police will make things better. Besides, the clearance rate for violent crime (the rate at which crime is solved) is embarrassingly low. For murder it's around 50%. For rape it's under 25%. If you have been a victim of crime as I have you will be amazed how absolutely callous the police are about what happened to you. They will fill out some paperwork, but for the vast majority of victims of violent crime that is the best the criminal system has to offer them.
I do not disagree with you for the most part, except for your remark about "dubious statistics" which can be found in FBI files that show blacks to be disproportionately the aggressors in violent crime in black communities. You then switch to "lifestyle crimes" like drugs and sex, which I consider to be victimless crimes and should not be the subject of police activity but, yes are disproportionately making blacks the bad guys.
I consider the crime statics on the FBI website dubious for two reasons. The primary being that reporting crime to the FBI is currently done on an entirely voluntary basis with many departments simply not reporting either some or all of the numbers they do not want to report
The second is that the police have been caught repeatedly and intentionally under reporting and over reporting crime numbers to fit the narrative they want. Just a few examples of many:
My original point was simply to point out the disparity in enforcement and since a large percentage, if not a majority of crime enforcement not only involved non-violent crime, but victimless crime enforcement we cannot look at the impact of policing on minority communities without taking that into account.
For what it is worth, by "there is systemic racism in policing" and do not mean police are racist, or that there is some coordinated plan to get black people. My point is that when you look at crime statistics in aggregate the fall disproportionately on certain groups. I don't think this is where we should focus most of our resources when we talk of police reform, but it's worth acknowledging as one of many factors when looking at these things.
Addendum: A solid body of evidence finds no structural bias in the criminal-justice system with regard to arrests, prosecution or sentencing; rather, crime and suspect behavior, not race, determine most police actions.
That's odd. Looks like you later post appeared after my earlier post. Must be a substack thing. Please see my later response posted above your earlier addendum here.
I have a separate question you may be able to help me with.
When people want to define their political enemies they are willing to go back over 100 years to define who they are today.
Yet, when I point out examples of institutional racism like the war on drugs that is still currently being carried out today, I'm regularly told by these people that it's all ancient history, America has move on and so should I.
Can you explain how we arrive that these two very distinct versions of time simultaneously?
The war on drugs? Which part of the war on drugs? That which began with Nixon? Or that which was largely expanded by the likes of Biden et al? I would definitely agree with the idea that the war on drugs was partially moved by racism, but a substantial aspect of it was simply driven by fear and puritanism. This can easily be demonstrated by the fact that there was a lot of support for the drug laws passed in the 80s by black people. The current war on drugs is not particularly racist, albeit it disproportionately affects black people. The laws are not being carried out with the intent to cause harm or oppress black people because they are black. That said, I still personally oppose modern drug laws, not because they are racist though -- but because they are simply unjust. Likewise, if we look at the historical roots of minimum wage laws, we can find racist sentiments that drove them; that does not mean minimum wage laws today are racist. I, likewise also oppose minimum wage laws, but not because they are racist.
"Institutional racism" -- let us say, racism that is part of the structural design of an institution, is not demonstrated by the drug war today. Just because a racial group is disproportionately affected by a policy does not make that policy racist; there can be many causal factors besides racism that affects outcomes that show disparities among races. If a policy is carried out due to racial animus or the policy itself specifically discriminates based on race, that is racist.
When an institution, or organization, such as the Democratic Party, though has a lineage of wealth and power that goes back 150 years, and the people today in that organization derive their wealth and power from that lineage, there is very good reason to hold the people in that organization responsible for redeeming whatever crimes that organization is responsible for in its past. Particularly, if that organization wishes to or suggests that they are committed to correcting the fallout of injustices of the past, such as institutional racism, and they are centrally responsible for those injustices, it is especially important that we bring attention to it.
So my suggestion to you... keep opposing the war on drugs, but stop using it as an example of "institutional racism." It is tragic that black people are disproportionately affected by the war on drugs given the historical injustices that laws have brought upon black people, but they currently are not racist. Just unjust. If you want to point out systemic racism, look to the affirmative action policies and the "equity" policies that are currently being implemented. Those are policies that specifically discriminate based on race. If you want to find "institutional racism" -- look to the diversity training that is being conducted in the government and corporations that teach black people that "attention to detail" and "objectivity" are "whiteness" and white people that they can't see black people as individual humans.
But yah, you will find racist individuals, including powerful individuals such as judges and cops, who still have racist attitudes and make decisions based on that. But the system they are part of, well, that is quite anti-racist. However, political factions are trying hard to change that.
JP - I think you are articulating the views of Public intellectuals like Coleman Hughes and Glenn Lowery. Right?
I subscribe to Hughes on Patreon and am familiar with his views... Certainly not an expert.
I find, like Chomsky, Taibbi, Hedges, Greenwald and many others that Identity Politics is really nothing more than distraction away from Pocket Book Economics. Advertisers will pay for ads on anyone pushing identity politics but if you get too deep or speak with too much frequency about issues like Wages, Health Care, Monopsony, Regulatory Capture etc... advertiser supported media throws sand into the machine to shut it down.
BLM... Their purpose, like MLK, is to organize and bring attention to problems specific to people of color. MLK. during his time was opposed by the majority of Americans including many very powerful black organizations. Looking back historically, those that opposed him did so for no rational reason. Black figures that opposed him failed to produce as much as he did on behalf of black Americans and their civil rights.
I am not going to be distracted with identity politics... But it sounds like you are, right?
"I would definitely agree with the idea that the war on drugs was partially moved by racism, but a substantial aspect of it was simply driven by fear and puritanism"
From the mouth of the architect of the war on drugs:
https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/
"I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. “You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
If it's primarily puritanism as you suggest, than why are drug crimes overwhelmingly enforced against black people at 4 times the rate of white people despite usage being roughly the same?
https://norml.org/marijuana/fact-sheets/racial-disparity-in-marijuana-arrests/
I generally find it more helpful to focus on class than race and I'm not too concerned with racist individuals since they're irrelevant and can believe whatever they want. I'm talking about the institutional racism like the kind I showed above that is still being enforced today.
More specifically, I'm asking why are the same people doing back flips to declare institutional racism that occurred 20 minutes ago irrelevant and a thing of the past in one paragraph, and in the next talking about how the institutional racism of a party from 160 years ago is highly relevant today?
"From the mouth of the architect of the war on drugs:"
Unfortunately, that quote from Baum, supposedly by Ehrlichman, relayed 22 years after, and after Ehrlichman died and could not refute or confirm it, is not reliable. Journalistically, that is just horribly sloppy and unethical.
"If it's primarily puritanism as you suggest, than why are drug crimes overwhelmingly enforced against black people at 4 times the rate of white people despite usage being roughly the same?"
So you think secretly drug laws are currently dictating police officers to discriminate against black people because they are black people? There are many possible reasons why the statistics are the way they are, including that black people on average commit more crimes than white people, and in the process are caught with drugs; that police are called to neighborhoods with black people more than white people because crimes are being committed and in the process black people are caught with drugs; that black people are convicted of possession more because they are more likely to be poor and have less effective legal defense; that some cops have racial prejudices and are more likely to investigate or arrest a black person; all of the above.
Even if it is entirely that cops have racial prejudices, that would not change the reason why voters continue to support harsh drugs laws. Again, there was a lot of support for the drug war from black people in the 80s. Were those black people racist? Are black people today who think that there should be harsh drug laws today racist? Do I think that drug laws increase the likelihood that individual racists act upon their prejudices in the criminal justice system? Yes. Does that make the criminal justice system racist? No.
It is not "institutional racism" when individual cops are racist but they are doing so in contradiction to the laws and expectations of the institution -- the criminal justice system they are part of. If you can demonstrate that the police chiefs are encouraging their officers to target black people then you have a case for institutional racism -- for that police department.
"More specifically, I'm asking why are the same people doing back flips to declare institutional racism that occurred 20 minutes ago irrelevant and a thing of the past in one paragraph, and in the next talking about how the institutional racism of a party from 160 years ago is highly relevant today?"
I don't know who those people are. Talk to me. I don't think it is irrelevant when cops arrest black people because they are black-- 20 minutes ago. I just don't call it institutional racism. Those statistics you provided isn't sufficient evidence to claim there is "institutional racism" -- nor does it follow from those statistics any particular policy. And that cops and judges can be racist today and that its still possible that black people can face racism does not mean that it isnt highly relevant that the party that wishes to use that fact and other historical narratives to push racist policies is the party that nursed the KKK. It isn't a party from 160 years ago. It is the same party. If you proved there was wide spread institutional racism today, it wouldn't change the fact that the Democratic Party owes reparations for their war for slavery and nursing the KKK.
If Joe Blow murders a person today, it doesn't exonerate John Smith from murdering a person in the past. Crimes today don't redeem crimes of the past. When organizations commit crimes, and their wealth and power is passed on, and their wealth and power largely derived from those crimes, time and other organizations' crimes do not absolve those organizations.
And of course, Joe Biden, our current president, was one of the people who architected the war on drugs in the 80s. As much as I disdain Biden, I do not think he implemented the 80s drug laws because of racism; he simply did it out of political Machiavellianism. And It was popular -- among white people and black people.
You seem to be using all your logic to refute the evidence while making enormous leaps of faith to confirm what you want to believe. I guess you will have your own truth, although it's interesting that earlier you used Reagan's quote about facts as stubborn things. I guess you were just being hyperbolic.
The black community has always been seen as a threat to the establishment and has been targeted with lifestyle crime laws such as drugs, gambling and prostitution at much higher rates than other communities with equal rates of committing that crime. You want to imagine this 150 year pattern that continues today is some wild coincidence? Sure, and the cops who raided Stonewall in 1969 had no idea there were gay people present and the sodomy laws were enforced equally against gays and straight people. If you're going to run with denial, go for the touchdown.
Just a few more of many examples of systemic racism in policing:
The Mann Act, Also called the White Slavery Trafficking Man Act (no racism there) was specifically designed to go after black men having sex with white women. It was used to arrest black world champion boxer Jack Johnson for dating a white women in 1913, who he married once he got out of prison. I wouldn't mention a law written over 100 years ago if it were not still on the books and used today to disproportionately incarcerate black men.
The Mumford Act, the first gun laws in the US restricting gun use and supported by the NRA were passed specifically to criminalize the black freedom movement for having guns.
https://www.history.com/news/black-panthers-gun-control-nra-support-mulford-act
Combined with the drug war it's become another way to incarcerate black men for having a gun after a drug felony conviction.
Hoover's FBI (a man I suspect you think did not have a racist bone in his body) carried out the extra-legal execution of Fred Hampton in Cooperation with the FBI in 1969:
https://www.history.com/news/black-panther-fred-hampton-killing
The FBI Targeting MLK and other black leaders through the 1960's and 1970's through Cointelpro:
https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/cointelpro-teaching-the-fbi-s-war-on-the-black-freedom-movement/
The pattern is long, clear, and just so happens to always land on the same group. Now, can your fertile mind create an endless pile of shit to claim all of these laws that specifically targeted the black community were just some random event that had nothing to do with black people? Sure you can, the same way a flat earther can argue endlessly that the world is flat. For people such as yourself, the obfuscation is always far more complex and convoluted than the facts. It takes a lot of mental gymnastics to consistently ignore Occam's razor. I don't expect you to admit to any of this now, but hopefully at some time in the future you will think about why you are so emotionally invested in ignoring the obvious on this topic?
"I don't expect you to admit to any of this now, but hopefully at some time in the future you will think about why you are so emotionally invested in ignoring the obvious on this topic?"
I am ignoring something? Seems like I'm directly addressing it.
"although it's interesting that earlier you used Reagan's quote about facts as stubborn things."
I never quoted Reagan. "Facts are stubborn things" comes from John Adams.
"I wouldn't mention a law written over 100 years ago if it were not still on the books and used today to disproportionately incarcerate black men."
The Mann act was amended to only refer to illegal acts. Since its amendment, and more recently, there is no indication that it is used to prosecute black people specifically.
"The Mumford Act, the first gun laws in the US restricting gun use..."
So, you think gun control laws are racist? You are opposed to gun control laws because they are racist, yah?
"Hoover's FBI (a man I suspect you think did not have a racist bone in his body) "
No, I suspect he was racist. Dunno how that has anything to do with what we are talking about though.
"The pattern is long, clear, and just so happens to always land on the same group. Now, can your fertile mind create an endless pile of shit to claim all of these laws that specifically targeted the black community were just some random event that had nothing to do with black people?"
So, your argument is that because there were laws in the past that were particularly designed to target black people, the drug laws today, which do not specifically target black people, are racist? And furthermore, because there was probably some racist motivation in the support of the drug laws in the past, that today the laws are racist?
That argument would logically entail that minimum wage laws are racist, as minimum wage laws were initially established to maintain wages of white workers at the cost of black workers and other minorities, who were willing to work at lower rates. Minimum wage laws, historically, harmed the economic livelihood of black people. Minimum wage laws are also tied to some pretty nasty "Progressive" eugenics ideology in the early 20th century.
"It is much better to enact a minimum-wage law even if it deprives these unfortunates of work. Better that the state should support the inefficient wholly and prevent the multiplication of the breed than subsidize incompetence and unthrift, enabling them to bring forth more of their kind.” - – Royal Meeker, Princeton scholar and labor commissioner to Woodrow Wilson, as quoted in Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 25
“[Wage] competition has no respect for the superior races,” said University of Wisconsin economist John R. Commons in his 1907 book Races and Immigrants ( p. 151). “The race with lowest necessities displaces others.”
“[The minimum wage will] protect the white Australian’s standard of living from the invidious competition of the colored races, particularly of the Chinese.”
– Arthur Holcombe of Harvard University, a member of the Massachusetts Minimum Wage Commission, speaking approvingly of Australia’s minimum wage legislation in 1912 (quoted from “Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive Era”)
Furthermore, abortion would also be considered racist, as abortion was pushed by none other than Planned Parenthood, whose founder was a racist and eugenicist. Even today, 79% of Planned Parenthood’s surgical abortion facilities are near minority neighborhoods.
Your argument with me is a bit peculiar. You seem to be fixated on the fact that our current drug laws are racist and don't particularly care about the fact that I agree with you that our drug laws are bad. I am simply disagreeing with the notion that they are racist, but you are very emotionally invested in the fact that they are racist. And you seem particularly offended by the fact that I assign guilt to the Democratic Party for its past but do not assign racism to current drug laws? Why? Much of the current drug laws were actually spearheaded by the Democratic Party itself, including Biden, our current president.
So anyway... let us clear things up, based on your logic, minimum wage laws, pro-abortion laws, and gun control laws are racist. Confirm?
Thank you for the correction on the attribution for the Adam's quote. The point still stands, it appears you were being hyperbolic when you used it.
I'll skip your random stuff you introduced unrelated to the topic of systemic racism with the criminal system, which leaves us with:
"Now, can your fertile mind create an endless pile of shit to claim all of these laws that specifically targeted the black community were just some random event that had nothing to do with black people? Sure you can, the same way a flat earther can argue endlessly that the world is flat."
You seem to have used your most recent post to prove my point.
Ignoring for a moment the current ridiculous language used in the 1986 version of the Mann Act that would have still allowed for the arrest of Jack Johnson who was dating a white sex worker, "the transport for the purpose of prostitution or other illegal sexual acts," yes, the language in the Mann Act was indeed updated because the talk of "white slavery" was so blatantly racist it was too much for even the FBI to bare. Despite your assertion that modifying the heavily morality based language such as "debauchery" out, the Mann Act along with all sex related crimes continue to be overwhelmingly enforced against minorities as they always have been. The Window dressing with the change in language has done nothing to address the disproportionate bias in the application of lifestyle crime laws.
Monorities are simply over-represented at every level of the criminal system in a way that cannot be explained away simply through random events or the "what if" alternatives you proposed. Those items might lead an increase, not the 2-4 fold increase we currently see.
https://theappeal.org/black-men-disproportionately-represented-on-sex-offender-registries/
"Monorities are simply over-represented at every level of the criminal system in a way that cannot be explained away simply through random events or the "what if" alternatives you proposed".
No, not quite.
Minorities are "over-represented" by the actual statistical details of major and violent crimes kept by both the FBI and by police organizations, and confirmed by a study done by Obama's own Justice Department and by Harvard professor Roland Fryer's studies.
In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53% of known homicide offenders in the U.S. and commit about 60% of robberies, though they are 13% of the population. In NYC blacks commit 98% of all shootings. In city after city, blacks commit the majority of violent crimes, and most importantly, ***Most of the victims of these crimes are also black*** This is a major violation of civil rights of the black community, and race apologists refuse to recognize this fact. But the populations in black neighborhoods do know it and they are the first to ask for MORE police, not fewer.
Without debating the validity of the dubious statistics you cite or starting a debate police funding, the trouble with this view at the meta level is that it assumes the majority of crime is violent, which it is not.
Even if I accept all these statistics without context, it does not explain the disproportinate impact on black people of lifestyle crimes involving things like drugs, sex work and gambling where there is no victim. It also doesn't explain why 58% of arrests in a city like Portland were of the homeless and the majority of those for non-violent crime. As an aside, in the whitest city in America this meant those arrested were also disproportionately black since they represent a larger percentage of the homeless.
Police and politicians have started to receive so much criticism and push back for these policies in recent years that there has been a general push to redefine more non-violent crime as violent to justify continued mass incarceration. Having a gun as a felon is increasingly considered a violent crime even when not in the commission of a crime. In almost all jurisdictions robbery while no one was home has long been considered a non-violent crime, but their has recently been a nationwide push to move it to the violent crime category.
The truth is the typical criminal looks nothing like the super-predator society has prepared you to expect. The most common victim of crime is not a blonde haired blue eyed girl, but another black man who is the victim today, but was the criminal yesterday. There is a strong correlation between children with a violent background and no father, which is always the end result of incarceration no matter how justified. The majority of victims of crime don't call the police because they have no expectation the police will make things better. Besides, the clearance rate for violent crime (the rate at which crime is solved) is embarrassingly low. For murder it's around 50%. For rape it's under 25%. If you have been a victim of crime as I have you will be amazed how absolutely callous the police are about what happened to you. They will fill out some paperwork, but for the vast majority of victims of violent crime that is the best the criminal system has to offer them.
I do not disagree with you for the most part, except for your remark about "dubious statistics" which can be found in FBI files that show blacks to be disproportionately the aggressors in violent crime in black communities. You then switch to "lifestyle crimes" like drugs and sex, which I consider to be victimless crimes and should not be the subject of police activity but, yes are disproportionately making blacks the bad guys.
I consider the crime statics on the FBI website dubious for two reasons. The primary being that reporting crime to the FBI is currently done on an entirely voluntary basis with many departments simply not reporting either some or all of the numbers they do not want to report
The second is that the police have been caught repeatedly and intentionally under reporting and over reporting crime numbers to fit the narrative they want. Just a few examples of many:
https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/carjacking-spike-youth-crime/Content?oid=88315011
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-lapd-crime-stats-claim-20171103-story.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/29/nyregion/new-york-police-department-manipulates-crime-reports-study-finds.html
My original point was simply to point out the disparity in enforcement and since a large percentage, if not a majority of crime enforcement not only involved non-violent crime, but victimless crime enforcement we cannot look at the impact of policing on minority communities without taking that into account.
For what it is worth, by "there is systemic racism in policing" and do not mean police are racist, or that there is some coordinated plan to get black people. My point is that when you look at crime statistics in aggregate the fall disproportionately on certain groups. I don't think this is where we should focus most of our resources when we talk of police reform, but it's worth acknowledging as one of many factors when looking at these things.
Addendum: A solid body of evidence finds no structural bias in the criminal-justice system with regard to arrests, prosecution or sentencing; rather, crime and suspect behavior, not race, determine most police actions.
That's odd. Looks like you later post appeared after my earlier post. Must be a substack thing. Please see my later response posted above your earlier addendum here.