Balloon Juice has a blog post about this Buffalo News story and the neighborhood reaction to it. Synopsis: 8 young, black adults were shot outside a nightclub. Buffalo News analysis piece: 7 of them had pretty serious rap sheets. Here's the racist part:
"A felony prosecution or conviction increases your statistical likelihood of becoming a victim of a crime, and it's particularly true for men and particularly true for African-Americans," said Yvonne Downes, a criminal justice professor at Hilbert College.What does being black have to do with anything? It has no causal relationship to the event at all. There was no reason to throw that in to the story. Of much more interest would have been the marital status of their parents. At least that has causation associated with it. Instead, the Buffalo News treats previous arrests, themselves events caused by something, as root causes. Race is thrown in because it's what we all talk about as if it mattered.
Properly written, the story should have read like this: "Growing up in a broken home increases your statistical likelihood of becoming both a victim and a perpetrator of a crime, and it's particularly true for men." That would indicate proper causation and would remove the irrelevant racial makeup of those involved.
Instead, we talk about race. Constantly.
Meanwhile, the Balloon Juice blogger wants drugs legalized, reasoning that if you remove laws, you'll have less crime. At least that makes logical sense, even if the idea is blindingly stupid.
Regarding the drug legalization thing at the end:
ReplyDelete(1) Legalizing opium, heroin, or any of the many highly addictive drugs that usually gruesomely kill their addicts after destroying their lives - agreed. Spectacularly bad idea.
(2) Aggressively prosecuting pot smokers/dealers as if they were indistinguishable from dealers in opiates or methamphetamines - I'd have to say this is *also* a bad idea. I've known a lot of people[1] who were pot smokers in high school and college. As far as I know, all of them eventually got bored with it and either gave it up, or only indulge on occasion. All are now gainfully employed, productive members of society[2]. So why are we wasting police time and court time and prison space on pot smokers, again?
[1] No, I didn't smoke it myself. I mean, honestly, the smoke smells like kerosene mixed with mouldy sweatsocks, I don't want that crap in my lungs. I also don't drink or smoke cigarettes (for similar reasons), but that doesn't mean that I think the people who do are bad people who ought to go to jail for it.
[2] However, if they had been arrested, convicted, and thrown into jail for possession of pot, *then* they'd have been pretty much screwed. Which I think would have been a waste that served no one.