OK

.

Which do you think is the more likely reason: institutional racism or your alternative hypotheses? Again, for the third time, its not like these are the only statistics we have available or marijuana arrests differ from other drug crimes or misdemeanors. So yeah, sorry, Im not here racking my brain to come up with ten other possible reasons so that I can throw my hands up and say "gee, don't know what's happening here"

So maybe the marijuana laws aren't racist because black people are arrested more often under other racist laws? Or is this related to your point about "good police work", any ideas why that would lead to a 3.5x higher arrest rate?

Obviously, not every marijuana arrest is being done by a white hooded cop out to oppress the black man, so yeah, granted on that point.

Didn't have kids in the neighborhood growing up that were of similar age so zero.

Maybe this is the first time you are thinking about the disparity in drug arrests, and that is fine, but just because it's your first time doesn't mean it is everyone else's first time. For most of us, we don't need to re-rule-out e.g. the hypothesis that black people are inherently 3x more criminal than whites every single time the drug war comes up in conversation.

Are you trying to claim your posts are much more than taking pot shots, assuming ill intentions and trolling? Why would anyone think they could have an honest discussion with you?

Personally, think most marijuana/drug possession arrests are incidental to the reason for police contact. Is there a reason why poor have more contact with police then rich/ middle class?

Further if you use drugs in public and/or your vehicle the chance of being found in possession when contacted by police goes way up. Some belief the poor tend to do the above. While rich/middle class usage is more in the garage/basement.

Sure there maybe is some pavlovian type of profiling, where police officer has success in searching vehicles of a particular driver profile and will automatically look for probable cause to search such drivers. Like if your college age, leaving Colorado and entering an adjoining state, stopped for speeding, with out of state license plates, I would bet your vehicle is getting searched.

Is this based on anything or just gutfeel?

This is more of what I was getting at with the affirmative action analogy.

Yes, it IS complex, but people are not ready for that. They can't proceed until they grasp some basic principles. Then maybe they can be shown the back room and see how the sausage is made.

I mentioned it more than a few times but I've had debates/discussions with a lot of fringe people, and none of them follow the path of these threads.

I've mentioned the neo-communists and how they (broad strokes here) don't "believe in" racism in the sense that it's an issue of class that race is piggy-backing on, but there are also the extreme far-right people who say they don't "believe in" helping the poor and downtrodden minorities, in the sense that they DO believe in this type of social welfare but think it should be privatized.

In both of these cases it doesn't take long at all to realize they genuinely do believe the root issues are "problems that need fixing," they just have some banana-pants ideas about how to proceed.

The reason Jib keeps tying himself in knots is because it's apparent he doesn't see any of this as "problems that needs fixing." Maybe it's racism with a dash of classism, or classism with a pinch of racism, but either way it's an obvious bottleneck.

I never claimed to be the one who put in work here, but others clearly have and its visible to almost everyone but you.

that was me mini-grunching like a mother hubbard

Maybe you're phrasing this poorly, but how can we verify it's crap unless we've already waded through?


p.s. And I'm pretty sure I'm the only one trolling Jib at this point. I don't expect him to respond to my implication that jesus is weeping because of his posting.

The courts have ruled over and over that a law is not unconstitutional just because it has a disproportional and adverse impact on a minority group, unless LE acted to achieve that result. The latter is called discriminatory intent, and you need to prove discriminatory intent on the part of the police to render the drug laws unconstitutional in application. Meaning, you need to establish that the police are acting (at least in part) to achieve a disparate impact on blacks. That’s why the arrest rate disparity is irrelevant. It could be 100x and it still wouldn’t matter.

You figure out my brain teaser about the Fugitive Slave Acts yet?

Jibs is the one trying to simplify it by having the sort by the word Negro to determine racism algorithm. Eventuality we get to the way everyone else was already determining it.

Do you really think there can be just one reason, and therefore it must be racism?

Are you really prepared to argue most crimes minorities are arrested for are due to racist laws?

Sometimes drug arrests are made because of a racist and corrupt cop (sprinkle, sprinkle), and racism applies. That is not a reason to declare any law racist, just the officer. So bad cops must account for some of the arrests, but I doubt the whole 3.5 X disparity. Other times it could be a cop pulls someone suspicious over, sometimes "driving while black," which is racist, but other times it's warrented because the driver is acting suspicious, speeding, drunk, unregistered plates, tail light - if black people are less likely to have valid ID (this is the reason voter ID laws are considered racist, right?), are they not also less likely to have valid plates and properly maintained vehicles? That just brings it back to a class issue. Sometimes drug arrests are made because there is more crime in the area, and therefore, a larger police presence and more arrests for all types of crimes, so of course drug arrests will go up as well. Do black people tend to live in higher crime areas?

Pretty much each and every reason can include racism, and many of them may not, so the 3.5 X disparity is likely a combination of a multitude of different, sometimes reciprocal reasons. The question then becomes how much is racism the cause, ie, if racism were completely removed from the equation, how would it effect the results? I assume it would be somewhat lower than 3.5 X, but I have no clue how much it would drop because there are plenty of other possible reasons in play.

I'd like to see the drug laws thrown out because I think they create more problems than they solve, but if they were shown to be effective at stopping hard drug use and the destructive effects associated with that, I'd probably change my mind. That they tend to effect minorities more is a concern, but secondary for the same reason other laws like theft and murder are still warrented despite effecting minorities more.

Drug laws: now only 3x more racist towards black people down from 3.5x!

1) poll taxes...not racist right?
2) Have you written to the Supreme Court and told them the disparate impact case they are hearing is now moot?

When a someone begins attacking/making fun/mischaracterizing, trust in good faith is lost and the tendency is to either fight back or ignore. Any good points made thereafter are easy to miss.

If only there was a long and extremely well-documented history of drug laws used to oppress minorities, then we might have an answer. As it is, we'll just have to deduce from first principles whether or not the War on Drugs is racist.

See above, good work is often lost in the shuffle. Anyway, we've just about got Jib to acknowledge voter ID laws are in effect racist, he did say they are bad if they solve nothing. The last step is convincing himself voter fraud isn't a real problem.

What part of a good faith discussion involves throwing up your hands and saying "if only we had data about the effectiveness of voter ID laws" while refusing to read any data on the subject?

That does seem to be a sore spot for a lot of you, people who are too lazy to read a few 400 page threads to find answers and would instead prefer to start their own conversation.

Haven't seen him for awhile, maybe he is.

Sometimes just the first 5 pages are enough. Or a Google search. Or a Wikipedia page. Steadfastly insisting that I retype for you stuff I have already written is amazingly lazy. If you wanted to find out what happened to Harry Potter, do you email JK Rowling and demand she type you up your own copy?

Every few months over in SMP a new free will thread is started and everyone rolls their eyes. Some drop in to point out the three other long free will threads, and great literature on the subject, others join the conversation again because it can be interesting, most just stay out because they've been over it already a few dozen times. Very few feel the need to bash skulls.

I don't really care if somebody goes through life with a flawed or limited understanding of the prevailing schools of thought on free will. I care quite a bit if people are actively engaged in public discussion with flawed, limited, and willfully ignorant opinions about race issues.