h/t: Being Liberal
LOGIC: “Conservative Logic (an oxymoron)”
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Category Archives: Racial Profiling
PRISON-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: “The Ironic “War on Drugs”" / MUST WATCH!
The House I Live In
Is The War On Drugs Nearing An End?
Watch video here . . .
The War on Drugs Is a War on America! Time to End It!
Read more here . . .
Related articles
- Brad Pitt: America’s war on drugs is a charade, and a failure (guardian.co.uk)
AMURIKAN PRISON-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: “American Prisons Facts” / Stephen Fry
PRISON-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: “The Shame of America’s Gulag” / Chris Hedges
Illustration by Mr. Fish
If, as Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote, “the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons” then we are a nation of barbarians. Our vast network of federal and state prisons, with some 2.3 million inmates, rivals the gulags of totalitarian states. Once you disappear behind prison walls you become prey. Rape. Torture. Beatings. Prolonged isolation. Sensory deprivation. Racial profiling. Chain gangs. Forced labor. Rancid food. Children imprisoned as adults. Prisoners forced to take medications to induce lethargy. Inadequate heating and ventilation. Poor health care. Draconian sentences for nonviolent crimes. Endemic violence.
AMURIKAN RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM: RTAmerica / “The Face of Terror”
THE BLACK EXPERIENCE IN AMERIKA: James Baldwin / “Baldwin’s Nigger” / 1968
Baldwin’s Nigger 1 of 3
Baldwin’s Nigger 2 of 3
Baldwin’s Nigger 3 of 3
NEOLIBERALISM: Prison–Industrial Complex / U.S. Incarceration Rates
Source: BillMoyers.com
Credit: ACLU
Conservatives’ Twisted, Racist Logic in the Trayvon Martin Case
. . . Zimmerman’s defenders marshal “data” and “statistics” proving that black men commit a “disproportionate” amount of crime in American society. . . .
In reality, matters are much more complicated. A surrender to a basic and fallacy laden argument that black people, and black young people in particular are uniquely and especially prone to violence, oversimplifies the nature of crime in America. As the old saying goes, “numbers lie and liars figure.” Or alternatively, the lazy recitation of statistics is a dumb person’s idea of how a smart person sounds. . . .
As compared to white neighborhoods, black and brown communities are also subject to more severe surveillance and aggressive police tactics. Moreover, the disproportionate number of minorities in the criminal justice system can be largely explained by the War on Drugs. In total, if white communities were subject to the same type of aggressive police tactics as black and brown communities, the number of white people in prison would skyrocket.
The data is very telling here. While people of color are the prime targets of such policies as “stop and frisk” and racial profiling, it is in fact white people who are far more likely to be both drug users and to be in possession of narcotics at a given moment. This reality signals to a larger social phenomenon: black individuals who commit crimes are representative of their whole communities, crime is racialized, and there is no qualifier of individual intent. All black people are deemed suspicious and guilty because of the deeds of the very few.In contrast, white people who commit crimes are unique individuals: the criminals who destroyed the global economy, a group of white men, were not taken as representative of the entire white community. There is a long list of crimes such as domestic terrorism, serial murder, child rape, sedition, treason, and financial fraud that are almost exclusively the province of white people. But again, whites as a group are excluded from suspicion or indictment as a “criminal class.”
