Judges are given discretion over sentencing. They use the discretion to sentence African Americas more than whites.
Likewise with prosecutors. The system allows them broad discretion and they use it to charge Africa. Americans differently.
Dear Mr Biden:
You’ve either been a Senator or the Vice President for 50 years now. If systemic racism is such a big deal are you just now figuring it out? Why should anyone trust you to solve this problem you just discovered if you haven’t even noticed it since the early 1970’s.
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Show the policy that puts judges all across the country sentencing them differently. If something is systemic, it has to show up in the system; a policy, a guideline, a law. How do newly appointed judges know they are supposed to do that? Are they teaching it in Ivy League law schools?
We know from research that black americans are sentenced more harshly that white americans.
This can only happen because of the design of the system that allows for that discrimination.
The policy you are looking for is the discretion.
I don’t know why it is used in a discriminatory way. but it is. And it can be because that is how the system is designed.
How are all those judges getting on the same discretion page?
I know you don’t know, because it’s not.
It can be something else.
So, just listening is going to fix things?
Has Biden not been listening for the last fifty years?
If he has, why isn’t it fixed yet?
If he hasn’t, what give anyone confidence he will start doing so in his seventies? Old dog, new tricks.
If he wasn’t listening, but does start listening now, what makes you think listening per se will fix it?
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Link for statistics?
Men are punished much more severely than women for similar crimes. Is that evidence of sexism?
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Biden specifically referenced the killing of George Floyd, but I see nothing in his proposals that would change that.
Trump succeeded in passing bipartisan criminal justice reform in 2018. Why didn’t Obama already do that?
The number of unarmed black men killed by police in 2019 was about one third of the number in 2015 under the Obama/Biden administration. Looks like progress to me, but Democrats and the media ignore that.
Systemic racism has always been a bi partisan effort. Both Democrats and Republicans over the course of this nation’s history has either been willing participants in their complicity or gratefully benefited from it or both. Making it seem like only one party or one ideology were involved in systemic racism in the United States is not only revisionist history, but it’s downright dishonest.
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And black men have no role in improving the situation. Yup. Yup. It’s even racist to think that they should. Isn’t it?
You are expecting ‘systemic racism’ to mean ‘A law or policy that is itself, explicitly racist. ie: a law that says it is illegal for non-whites to sit at lunch counters’.
But you won’t find that. Because discrimination is unconstitutional and those laws - which used to exist - are all gone now.
the way most systemic racism works now is by allowing for discrimination to happen within the frame work of the system. A system designed to allow for discrimination.
Nothing. Nothing at all.
Am I? “Systemic” has a definition. That’s not it.
What? What the hell is that? “Designed to allow for discrimination”? Show me the design that “allows” it. “The way it works now”?
Do you honestly believe that?
This “systemic racism” claim is so vague you can’t show it? It’s a feeling.
“The system is racist!”
“Ok, show me where and I’ll fix it.”
“It allows racism so it’s racist!”
“Ok, show me where and I’ll fix it.”
“More black men are in prison!”
“They commit more crimes by the same proportion.”
“Systemic racism!”
This is amazing. The left in this country has been burning, murdering and robbing cities for a ■■■■■■■ month over something they can’t define and can’t even show, much less prove exists.
All over the country, thousands of judges are in league (somehow or other), conspiring, to sentence black men differently than white men simply because of their race. And defense lawyers have to be in on it too. And prosecutors. There is no evidence in the actual system, but it’s happening. New judges coming in are made aware (osmosis?) of it somehow. Thousands and thousands of officers of the court, all working together in perfect synchronization without any instruction to circumvent the multilayered checks in order to discriminate against black man. Oh and juries, they have to be in on it too. They have to convict them if it is a jury trial. Including black people on juries.
And that claim makes sense to you.
There is an Occam’s Razor explanation that is much, much more likely. Like almost assuredly.
Corey Ladd’s case was brought up as somebody in prison for marijuana. He was convicted as a habitual offender for a half-ounce of weed. Judge sentenced him to 20 years. Not for the weed, for being a habitual offender. He appealed and the judge was told to reconsider. Judge Karen (imagine that) cut it to 17 years. He appealed again. The DA dropped the habitual offender charge. Ladd was released. So he ended up doing 4 years. For habitual drug offenses. We can discuss whether that law is draconian (it is), we can discuss whether or not weed should be illegal at all (it shouldn’t), we can discuss whether or not the cops were ■■■■■■■ with them with their “convicted felon” bull ■■■■ (highly likely). What we can’t discuss is systemic racism. Because Corey Ladd is white.
And while we’re on the topic, the whole crack v. cocaine thing doesn’t work either.
So if you want, you can bring in two cases, one white one black, in which everything else was equal, but the judge gave disparate sentences. We can pick it apart line by line. It won’t take long to find the difference. You will say “but that shouldn’t matter! It’s practically the same!” You might even get me to agree it shouldn’t matter. But it does. That’s how the law works. It all matters.
“Society” has made everything illegal for everybody all the time. We are all subject to imprisonment for any of it all the time. Because society wants to control behavior absolutely. Try finding a place to smoke weed (or carry a gun) that’s not within 1,000 feet of some type of school. It’s a lot harder than you might think. That used to get you jail time for the gun, we had to fix it. Any type of drug posession probably still does, I don’t know.
The American Injustice System is broken. Society did it. What it is not is “systemically racist.” Daniel Shaver is just as dead as Rayshard Brooks.
When I was in Latin America, there was a lot of discussion by very smart people about “culture of criminality”. Culture colliding with law (created by culture). Lack of respect for laws as written. Refusal to comply. Indifference. A lot of it is because of bad law. Some of it is an “outlaw culture”. And if you don’t think it exists in the black community you are ignoring the obvious.
It also exists in other cultures - bikers for example, not just biker gangs. The “Good Ol’ Boys” culture with their confederate flags. Punk rockers back in the day.
Every young man has an element of it inside of them. When you put a couple of them together it builds. The difference in crossing the line is the degree and the outlet. If they’re lucky, they find an outlet the state approves of and become war heroes. Or they grow out of it before something bad happens. If they’re unlucky they get caught and end up in prison or dead.
We have a society who believes it can control the cultures of young men, force “acceptable” behavior, through the use of rules and punishment. If the behavior continues, the punishment wasn’t harsh enough. Authoritarian high modernism. Social engineering in conflict with human nature.
If you have a half ounce of weed, it’s a ticket. If you have a half ounce of weed and a pistol, even with a permit, it’s prison. ■■■■ like that.
It’s not “systemic racism” just because more of this race or that is locked up. And the truth of it is, it can’t be systemic anything unless it is written in the system. The legal system functions on the written word from the top to the bottom. It is “systemic illegality”.
You want fewer black men in prison? Change the law. There will be fewer white men in prison too. What will we claim then?
You can’t show a single law that “targets” one race anymore. You are fighting ghosts.
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Think of it as a cop video.
CNN or Yahoo “News” and leftists would never do that.
Oh, wait. Someone started a thread here showing someone held against a tree and called it a “lynching:”
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He wasn’t listening before??
Good thing libs don’t do that.
If they did we’d have to defund the police.
“The Obama administration did more with respect to police reform and misconduct than any administration in the modern area and it was a personal commitment for the president and for Attorney General Eric Holder,” said David Kennedy, director of the National Network for Safe Communities at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Did you read that article?
Your own rant points to systemic racism…
You have a half ounce of weed, it’s a ticket, you have half ounce and a gun you go to jail. Now, who do you think is going to be more likely to have a gun on them? A white drug user, or the inner city drug seller, selling to the white guy?
So…that’s an example of systemic racism. Even more blatant that my example.
Going back to my examples.
Central park 5:
rosecution of the five remaining defendants - Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise and Yusef Salaam - in the rape and assault case was based primarily on confessions which they had made after police interrogations. None had counsel during this questioning. Within weeks, they each withdrew these confessions, pleaded not guilty, and refused plea deals on the rape and assault charges. None of the suspects’ DNA matched the DNA collected from the crime scene: two semen samples that both belonged to one unidentified man. No substantive physical evidence connected any of the five teenagers to the rape scene, but each was convicted in 1990 of related assault and other charges. Subsequently, known as the Central Park Five , they received sentences ranging from 5 to 15 years. Four of the defendants appealed their convictions, but these were affirmed by appellate courts. The four juvenile defendants served 6–7 years each; the 16-year-old was tried and sentenced as an adult and served 13 years in an adult prison. The five other defendants, indicted for assaults of other victims, pleaded guilty to reduced charges and received less severe sentences.
Brock Turner
Why did 5 innocent black kids end up in jail for years and years while a guilty white guy serves 6 months?
Because the system is set up to disadvantage black people, and the system gives discretion in ways that ultimately lead to discrimination for a variety of reasons.
- The black kids didn’t have a lawyer present.
- The white kid had a high priced attorney every step of the way.
- The judge in the black kids case levied harsh punishment.
- The judge in the white kids case worried for the white kids future.
This is systemic racism.
As is your example of drug laws.
Why is the system designed to allow this? That’s a whole 'other conversation. but the system is rigged against people of color.
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