> The problem I have with pieces like the original article are that they are making it sound like we are engaging in a Gestapo-like rounding up of large numbers of minorities for no reason and throwing them in jail.
The reason people are "making it sound like that" is because that's actually what's happening.
Freddy Gray was plucked from a sidewalk, detained, and then killed, for literally no lawful reason.
The context for his story, and the many others like it, is the war on [certain] drugs [when used by some kinds of people] that is current social policy.
This approach to criminal justice appeared at precisely the same time that overtly racist means of policing were outlawed, to accomplish the same goal.
Do you really think it's random happenstance that urban blacks get arrested for experimenting with drugs in a way that suburban whites do not?
Did a country with a few centuries of of legally enshrined racism and violence towards blacks just, you know, stop doing that fifty years ago, suddenly?
Do you know what Ockham's razor is?
The reason people are "making it sound like that" is because that's actually what's happening.
Freddy Gray was plucked from a sidewalk, detained, and then killed, for literally no lawful reason.
The context for his story, and the many others like it, is the war on [certain] drugs [when used by some kinds of people] that is current social policy.
This approach to criminal justice appeared at precisely the same time that overtly racist means of policing were outlawed, to accomplish the same goal.
Do you really think it's random happenstance that urban blacks get arrested for experimenting with drugs in a way that suburban whites do not?
Did a country with a few centuries of of legally enshrined racism and violence towards blacks just, you know, stop doing that fifty years ago, suddenly?
Do you know what Ockham's razor is?