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by lukeschlather 3549 days ago
There's a lot of deliberate misinformation by people who want black people to be arrested at a higher rate than whites.

And part of the genius of their misinformation campaign is deliberately coming up with policies that target poverty, so that it's difficult to tease out how much of the racism is just a natural outcome of the policy vs. biased policing.

But that's the thing. Even if the policing isn't biased against blacks (you know it is) the policy is deliberately biased against blacks.

Adjusting for income demonstrates that the police aren't totally to blame - and that's correct. They may not even be primarily to blame. But adjusting for income also understates the scope of the problem.

Arguably, the deeper problem is that doing drugs while poor will land you in jail for 15 years while doing the same drugs while rich will get you a slap on the wrist.

2 comments

>against blacks (you know it is)

STOP DOING THIS. It's not a way to conduct a rational discussion.

>Arguably, the deeper problem is that doing drugs while poor will land you in jail for 15 years while doing the same drugs while rich will get you a slap on the wrist.

Yes, being poor lands you into trouble much more frequently because poor areas are so much more heavily policed. But that's the point, many of these issues are related to biases against poor communities in general, not specifically black people.

You said "exaggerate" which was a tacit acknowledgement that you know and have seen the income-adjusted numbers. Obviously the income-adjusted numbers are less dramatic, but they are just as damning.

What's no way to conduct a rational discussion is when any figure, no matter how well-researched, is immediately called into question apropos of nothing.

If they are damning, use those numbers. Stop lying. Rational people don't call you out for illustrating a problem, they call you out for misrepresenting it.
Why are you so eager to deny that the USA still has a lot of racist systems/processes in place?
Why are you so eager to deliberately misrepresent information to make things seem significantly worse than they actually are? When you do that and people find out that you effectively lied, you lose credibility and they stop listening. How do you plan to affect change with that strategy? Get the people stupid enough to believe your lies to riot?
> by people who want black people to be arrested at a higher rate than whites

You seem to know an awful lot about the motives of people who disagree with you.