| > should acknowledge that someone named XYZ is much more likely to be a felon The obvious problem comes with the questions why is that true and what do we do with that information. Information is, sadly, not value-neutral. We see "XYZ is a felon" and it implies specific causes (deviance in the individual and/or community) and solutions (policing, incarceration, continued surveillance), which are in fact embedded in the very definition of "felon". (Felony, and crime in general, are social and governmental constructs.) Here's the same statement, phrased in a way that is not racist and taboo: Someone named XYZ is much more likely to be watched closely by the police, much more likely to be charged with a crime, and much less likely to be able to defend himself against that charge. He is far more likely to be affected by the economic instability that comes with both imprisonment and a criminal record, and is therefore likely to resort to means of income that are deemed illegal, making him a risk for re-imprisonment. That's a little long-winded, so we can reduce it to the following: Someone named XYZ is much more likely to be a victim of overpolicing and the prison-industrial complex. Of course, none of this is value-neutral either; it in many ways implies values opposite to the ones implied by the original statement. All of this is to say: You can't strip context, and it's a problem to pretend that we can. |