Concern over drug convictions for blacks

Ditto to the above few comments - the issue is class, not color, and unfortunately those two things are very closely linked, especially in the Midwestern states shown to have the highest disparities. In the city I grew up in, blacks get arrested more often than whites for just about everything, but that's because they mostly live in high crime areas which *are almost exclusively poor*. The suburban area I grew up in had almost zero crime, and almost zero black people. The ghetto where people are shot on a regular basis and prostitutes and drug dealers roam the streets has almost zero white people.

And that makes total sense - people with less money commit more crimes. Drug dealing is a ridiculously lucrative job for someone with a shitty education and very few life prospects. The problem is that black people tend to be the people with the least money and poorest education. Pretty simple problem, pretty damn difficult to fix. There is definitely a racial bias in the police/judicial system, but no bias can be exercised if the people being affected never end up in front of a judge. (And personally, I think a lot of the bias of police and judges is a subconscious reaction to seeing so many more black people in front of them - "black people must be really bad if I'm presented with way more of them than anyone else." So they treat them disproportionately badly as a result of being presented with them disproportionately.)
 
oh how timely haha

weird, I just had to write down the 5 1/2 x's statistic in a class on tuesday
 
foodisgood said:
Why waste time going into nice white neighborhoods spending several man-hours to build a case against a white kid that can lawyer up and get off easy, when you can walk into the ghetto, pat some guys done, and arrest them on the spot. Blacks rarely, if ever, can afford a lawyer to get off. We'd be under so much pressure to make arrests and get numbers that most officers would simply go for the easy arrest rather than do honest police work.

Unfortunately, that is how the majority of our police do their jobs.
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Sounds remarkably similar to law enforcement's rationale for continuing to bear down on marijuana users (regardless of race) -- they're easy pickins, and they don't fight back. If all the police want to do is justify their jobs and budgets with high arrest numbers, they're going to go for whomever is easiest to go for.

Open-air drug markets are the selling place of the truly desperate. Why would anyone with ANY other way to make money put themselves at such a risk??

I know I sound like a broken record 'pussy liberal' 8) on this, but this problem will only be solved when dignified working class jobs that pay a living wage are once again plentiful in America's inner cities.
 
foodisgood said:
Unfortunately, that is how the majority of our police do their jobs.
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There are some law enforcement that would prefer not to arrest on drug crimes. What are police to do when citizens call and say that a certain park is so full of open drug dealing that they won't even take their kids there. Many times police try to cull an area of drug trafficking because of complaints or because of repeated violence.

MyDoorsAreOpen said:
I know I sound like a broken record 'pussy liberal' on this, but this problem will only be solved when dignified working class jobs that pay a living wage are once again plentiful in America's inner cities.
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Really you are right, if there isn't some belief that people can prosper some are going to go after very high risk opportunities.
 
i always had the feeling that althought the americans abolished slavery in an open way, they like to make money by putting people in prison and making them turn a profit whcih is pretty much the same behaviour under different words
 
I know I sound like a broken record 'pussy liberal' on this, but this problem will only be solved when dignified working class jobs that pay a living wage are once again plentiful in America's inner cities.
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True, but I don't think it's that simple. There isn't much stopping a person from the inner-city at excelling in school and furthering their education. People get involved with (selling) drugs for various reasons. Some do it because there are no other options, but most do it for selfish reasons; it's easy and involves little effort, they want fast money, they like the lifestyle, etc. There needs to be a whole shift into their reasoning for getting involved. Seeing their parents, siblings, and neighbors getting locked up isn't a big enough deterrent. So I don't think them having (easier and ) better job opportunities is going to provide that change.
 
Fuck that article, it's a bunch of bullshit. They wouldn't give me a public defender because I'm white. If I was black, I would have gotten one without a problem. Also, if I was black, my court fees wouldn't be so high. If I was black, I would only have to pay 5 dollars a month for probation instead of fifty. I was in a black neighborhood, and got arrested because I am white. Maybe this article is telling us something, that black people are more likely to use drugs than other people?
 
phrozen said:
True, but I don't think it's that simple. There isn't much stopping a person from the inner-city at excelling in school and furthering their education. People get involved with (selling) drugs for various reasons. Some do it because there are no other options, but most do it for selfish reasons; it's easy and involves little effort, they want fast money, they like the lifestyle, etc. There needs to be a whole shift into their reasoning for getting involved. Seeing their parents, siblings, and neighbors getting locked up isn't a big enough deterrent. So I don't think them having (easier and ) better job opportunities is going to provide that change.
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There's quite a lot stopping many a would-be scholar in an urban black neighborhood, actually. At the top of my list, there are many inner city black families with no precedent or experience with raising an education-oriented kid, because they did nothing but blue collar jobs for countless generations, until those jobs were cut down drastically 3 decades ago. And many of those blue collar jobs which remain, and thankfully will always remain, don't pay a living wage, because it's their market: there's an oversupply of labor. (The US ain't China or India, but we have a LOT of people.) So there are households with single working mothers, and no one to make sure the kid does his homework, and low budget diets that aren't exactly brain food. I won't go on any more -- the point is that whenever there is desperation, there will appear a certain subset of the population willing to do, well, desperate things. Things that involve putting their necks on the line.

Every human population has drugs, drug buyers, and drug dealers. But in communities where pretty much everyone makes ends meet, the drug trade goes on only in secret, between people who know each other, at least at a businessman-client level. You find this pattern of drug trade in inner city US black, and other poverty afflicted, communities too. But you also find more people driven by unemployment to seek illegal work, which in this case means a glut of drug dealers, competing for a limited customer base. There will be ones inevitably nudged out of the 'safer' circles of drug trade, and willing to solicit absolutely anyone to buy their product, rather than starve.

I could take a colder, less bleeding heart look at these open air street dealers and say that they've found a niche and adapted well to it, with increased street / people smarts. And those who do get by on it, probably feel motivated to live it up as much as their money will allow, since any day could be their last to sow their wild oats. I know I would, if I put food on the table entirely illegally.

That's my take on it, anyway, having lived and worked for 2 years in a city that was a little over half black (Trenton).
 
Its not just drug convictions, its everything. It's hardly the governments fault that black people cant keep there hands in there own pockets and resist bashing peoples heads in.

If you think im racist so be it, this is just from personal experience and various statistics - black people are more like to do criminal activities.

Almost every brown or black person ive met is in someway was or is a criminal.. its funny when you hear em say 'bro i fucking hate how the pigs always target us, why the fuck for'.

Well its pretty fucking obvious 'why the fuck for' when the majority of your race are lazy, thieving, drug dealing criminals.
 
There's quite a lot stopping many a would-be scholar in an urban black neighborhood, actually. At the top of my list, there are many inner city black families with no precedent or experience with raising an education-oriented kid, because they did nothing but blue collar jobs for countless generations, until those jobs were cut down drastically 3 decades ago. And many of those blue collar jobs which remain, and thankfully will always remain, don't pay a living wage, because it's their market: there's an oversupply of labor. (The US ain't China or India, but we have a LOT of people.) So there are households with single working mothers, and no one to make sure the kid does his homework, and low budget diets that aren't exactly brain food. I won't go on any more -- the point is that whenever there is desperation, there will appear a certain subset of the population willing to do, well, desperate things. Things that involve putting their necks on the line.
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I agree that as far as education is concerned, there needs to be parental support. And yes it is difficult to pursue higher education when one out of five black males has been incarcerated and you come from poverty and a broken home. But the notion that education is paramount to having better standards of living is drilled into students as early as possible, even in inner-city public schools. At least that's my experience.

Anyway, I still stick by my statement that most of the people we're talking about choose to sell drugs for selfish reasons, not because they don't have other options or because it's the best available option for supporting their family. They have other options, and I agree with you that pursuing those options is harder for someone that's coming from inner-city poverty instead of the comfortable middle-class.

Would you agree that other minority populations have gone through the same struggle, and are now past it? I'm thinking along the lines of poor immigrants, who once lived in the very neighborhoods that are now open-air drug markets(at least here in Philly)... So what allowed them to escape that life? Was it "dignified working class jobs?"

There will be ones inevitably nudged out of the 'safer' circles of drug trade, and willing to solicit absolutely anyone to buy their product, rather than starve.
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AFAIK, some drugs have always been predominantly moved through open air markets. At least in the inner cities. Sure more discreet distributions exist, but people choose to stick to open air dealing not out of desperation, but simply due to more sales and therefore more profit.
 
phrozen said:
Would you agree that other minority populations have gone through the same struggle, and are now past it? I'm thinking along the lines of poor immigrants, who once lived in the very neighborhoods that are now open-air drug markets(at least here in Philly)... So what allowed them to escape that life? Was it "dignified working class jobs?"
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No. It was the fact that in all immigrant groups unable to make their migratory journey to the USA exclusively overland, most of those who are/were able to finagle transportation to the USA were among their home countries' brightest and most resourceful, and brought marketable skills to the table when they immigrated, that were passed on intergenerationally in ethnic enclaves.

Marketable skills, or at least tight bonds to people who have and are willing to share them, are what translate into upward social mobility.

Black Americans have not been subject to any of these selection pressures. They were forcibly selected from Africa, and subsequently in the antebellum South, for their physical prowess -- for human machines, if I may be so crude. And now that there are fewer and fewer needs for purely physical laborers in the US, this puts this group at a severe disadvantage.

Mexicans and Central Americans are the only immigrant groups that can compare, since they're some of the few national groups that are able to send large numbers who AREN'T their nations' best and brightest to the USA. If India had a land border with the US, trust me, Americans would not stereotype all Indians as smart and education-obsessed.
 
I don't know enough about the history of US immigrants, and their background. So I can't continue to talk about that. But to be a little more specific about my comment about the area where the local open air markets exist... That area was originally inhabited, and created for, the poor working class that were employed by the nearby factories(mostly textiles). Those factories went away, and so did those jobs. And as the jobs went away, most of those people(Irish, Italian) moved out in search of better lives and jobs. The houses in that area remained cheap, and still are, and other poor people - now African Americans and hispanics- moved in. So why can't the current population do the same as the previous ones? With the current population there, there seems to be no generational upward movement through the class system. And again, I don't think it's just because the "jobs" aren't there. One of the reasons behind that lack of movement may be the war on drugs and the high incarceration rate of the minorities that live there, another may be the familial structure(or lack thereof).


Anyway, I can be fine with agreeing to disagree, as we've gone a bit off topic. And no, I'm not saying don't reply... :)
 
Heres why black people are arrested more for drug charges.

1: They choose to go into that career.... not out of desperation for most, but because they are lazy and cant be fucked working a real job and getting normal/average wages.(IME)
2: They are easy to target... its pretty easy for cops to do there job catching crims when they are painted black. All they gotta do is roll up into a black neighbourhood and bam, theyve got an arrest seen as there are so many black criminals. Its hardly the cops fault that black people are so careless/stupid that they get arrested to easily.
 
moonyham said:
Almost every brown or black person ive met is in someway was or is a criminal.. its funny when you hear em say 'bro i fucking hate how the pigs always target us, why the fuck for'.

Well its pretty fucking obvious 'why the fuck for' when the majority of your race are lazy, thieving, drug dealing criminals.
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Weren't the brown folks (I'm guessing Maori) on your piece of turf there before white folks decided to invade and appropriate it for themselves? And if so, wouldn't you consider stealing real estate to be "thieving" and "criminal"? :\
 
We, the 'white people' did not steal the maori's land.. we traded it for guns and alcohol!^


As to 'knowing every black man to ever live'... well.. i dont have to know every black person who ever lived, to know that i will never trust a random civvie walking down teh street who is black over a random civvie walking down the street who is white. I dont care what you say, almost every fucking islander/black person ive met(and ive met alot.. i use to go to a 90% PI school) is either 1: a thief 2: dishonest as fuck 3: a drug dealer 4: violent(mostly this).

So what ever.. i dont need to know every black person to know that they are, on average, alot more trouble than white people.

I mean im not saying ALL black/brown people are like this.. ive got pacific islander and ethiopian mates.. although they are kind of violent and threaten to kill alot of people and i use to do some certain crim activities with them :\


-theres a reason why the joke 'whats the biggest marae in NZ' is so funny when you hear 'mt eden prison'. It's becuase its fucking true.

(a marae is like, a church/place for maoris to hangout sort of thing)
 
Keep up with the racist talk and you'll be looking at a warning, and probably a ban pretty soon after that, given the way you're talking shit and insulting people in multiple threads.

I'm also struggling to understand why you think that Maori are in any way connected to people of African descent, but that's a side point....
 
Keep the thread on topic please. Off topic replies will get unapproved. If you want to discuss them, please take it to pm's.
 
phrozen said:
So why can't the current population do the same as the previous ones?
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A smaller percentage of black Americans (than the corresponding percentage for Americans of European, Asian, South American, or very recent African extraction*) are 'in the loop', when it comes to competing for today's jobs that pay a wage a family can live on. For very clear historical reasons. The precendent for white and black Americans having really anything much to do with each other outside of strictly business situations is still pretty new.

Just like new effects can take differing amounts of time to set in, old legacies differ in the amount of time they take to peter out. Slavery is not within living memory, granted. Segregation is.

* Like I said, Americans from these places were selected for their having a legal means for moving here, as well as the funds to do it. You can really only sneak into the US, with little education or skills, if you can do it across a land border.

No education and no skills means you play the big game called society at a disadvantage every step of the way, and don't give your kids much of an edge either, most likely.

It helped working class Europeans that they came and raised their first American born generation well within an era of plentiful manufacturing jobs. And that the ones born in the US weren't in many cases distinct from established populations of European Americans.
 
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