Running racism in America thread

I assume you object to laws allowing those who kill LEOs to be eligible for the death penalty, etc.?

 

The reason is because you're trying to deter race motivated hate crimes. If you don't have them, people just go about doing hate crimes thinking its no big deal. The racial component may not add much when its murder, but when they are racially motivated assaults and battery crimes? The enhancement adds something substantial that might otherwise be treated as a simple crime and the person does nothing more than probation.

 

Not behind The Athletic paywall.
Kawakami: Attacks on Asian Americans are an attack on us all

 

You know how people were quick to racially profile blacks with hoodies as criminals? When I see the shaggy beard, the red flags coming up yet no one talks about this because it's a white person:

 

Deterrence based on penalties doesn’t really work. America jails more people per capital than every civilized country. We had the death penalty for a long time and it didn’t deter mass shootings or serial killings. America also has a judicial system where there’s a perception that guilty people can get away with crimes because of loopholes and media hype of judges and juries who let people go.
Punishment keeps bad people off the street, it doesn’t stop them from committing crimes.
And those motivated by racism or religious bigotry often feel they are morally superior and doing god’s work. They aren’t deterred by an extra penalty for murder

 

Hey, when I was studying criminal law in law school, looking at the reasons for criminal punishment, I was not a big fan of deterrence. I fell on the side of rehabilitation (big surprise given my posts here right?) I still feel that way. Criminal punishment, enhancements, are just a stop gap measure that don't address the root causes and are not a big deterrence. Take the death penalty, it's intended to provide some vindication for the victim's family/supporters, but at the end of the day, studies that I've seen show that there's no more real satisfaction than if it was just life in prison. And like you say, not really any more effective in stopping the crime.

As for hate crime enhancements, I'm the last guy advocating for them. They are political statements intended to show the legislators care but are yet again a stop gap without addressing the root cause, which IMHO is parenting (just like commerce clause always justifies Congressional action; parenting is my catch-all causation for all bad acts).

 

Great post.

When I think of "white privilege" or "white male privilege" I think about the time in college a cop pulled me over two minutes after I'd bought a big case of beer using a fake ID, the kind of fake ID that gets you in serious trouble, not the "you kinda look like this older guy from down the hall" fake ID. The cop walked up, checked my real ID, walked back to his car. I took off my jacket and tossed it over the beer in the back. He came back and just said, "Promise me you'll enjoy that beer you're trying to hide somewhere safe and not go driving, ok?"

I think about how I didn't grow up in a neighborhood with any gang violence and didn't know anyone who'd even seen drugs, let alone used any, until high school. I didn't have any pressure to do anything stupid, to get wrapped up in bad stuff, and whatever dumb stuff I did do, the cops were often lenient. Kids could have made the exact same quasi-reckless decisions I did and ended up with criminal records that would have ruined opportunities that came later. (I certainly wasn't any kind of hellhound, but did a lot of the dumb things kids do, this side of drugs.) Same goes for my grandpa, and my dad, and my brother. My family was never bogged down by dumb teenager stuff.

That's not even getting into the jobs I've held, where without question, it's helped tremendously fitting every stereotype for sports reporter, and now working in agriculture. I don't think any of my bosses would have balked at hiring someone of color or a woman for those positions, but I think when I showed up looking like a functional, normal white dude, I looked like who they thought was supposed to fill that position.

The way it all relates back to slavery isn't just that the hole black people were placed in in the 19th century was so deep, it's that it was so deep and our society has ensured the walls were so muddy it's much more difficult to climb out. My g-g-g-grandpa came from a poor region of Germany and like so many others, he didn't have anything either. He and his ensuing family absolutely had a hole to climb out of, but it definitely wasn't muddy, and there probably was a ladder.

Good on the white guy construction worker for busting his ass, but he did it without being pulled over on the way to work that day, without getting a ticket instead of a warning for his expired plates, without going to jail when the cop could have given him a wink and a nod, without dealing with a shitty wrong-side-of-the-tracks neighborhood. He can be proud of what he's accomplished, but he's ignorant to think it's as easy for everyone as it was for him.

Shitty meme.

 

Lay off him, he had a bad day and was at the end of his rope.

 

And the faschy flop haircut.

 

Rehabilitation is also bullshit. The motivation for most crime is money. The belief that they can get more for less effort in drugs or robberies. And in the short term most are right. You can’t rehab someone who doesn’t want to.