[DerpObvious]

If I had two white characters in a comic strip, with one being a stereotypical "loser" being arrested by the police (let's say in a comical manner, over a single joint) and the other one joking about it, is it racist because the issue of the war on drugs primarily affects minorities?

[mtinkerhess]

Good question! I think that's getting into blurry lines territory.

Rape victims often suffer for a long period of time from the experience; people busted for a joint usually get over it more quickly. A reader of the comic is more likely to be suffering PTSD from rape than from getting busted.

Societal attitudes toward rape materially impact the likelihood of the occurrence of rape by creating a culture of safety or of danger; attitudes about drugs generally don't affect whether an officer will make an arrest (until laws get changed). Media shapes societal attitudes; therefore media creators have an obligation to be socially responsible.

Although rape doesn't only affect women, I estimate that it does affect them more disproportionately than the war on drugs disproportionately affect minorities. Men going about their day-to-day business aren't concerned with the threat of rape or related issues; white pot smokers going about their day-to-day pot smoking should be concerned with encountering the police (depending on local law).

[DerpObvious]

> attitudes about drugs generally don't affect whether an officer will make an arrest (until laws get changed).

This is untrue: officers operating under the same set of laws within my state have disparate policies regarding arrest (and from the DAs, prosecution) based on the local social leanings.

> I estimate that it does affect them more disproportionately than the war on drugs disproportionately affect minorities.

According to the CDC study cited in another reply, you'd be wrong.

> Men going about their day-to-day business aren't concerned with the threat of rape or related issues;

This seems like it's cultural and about social attitudes, rather than about any actual danger level. (Based on the same CDC report.)

I'm not sure that I buy the argument that because one group of people is afraid of something that impacts a wider group of people, no one can make jokes about it.

Here's a few questions: would your opinion of whether the rape joke was "sexist" depend on if the male author had been the victim of rape and was making jokes about it as a therapeutic device (noting that all the rape jokes in the strip are about "dicks" and male slaves)? how is the joke existing different in this context? should he stop if people are still uncomfortable about it? why is this (not) okay if the author hasn't been raped, but has some sort of anxiety about it? where exactly does it become "sexist" again?

[wutbrodo]

> I estimate that it does affect them more disproportionately than the war on drugs disproportionately affect [sic] minorities.

I appreciate that you're willing to be so open-minded about this stuff (in contrast to a lot of the conversation around both these topics), but the numbers that you're guessing and basing your assumptions on are just wildly off the mark. Black Americans are estimated to make up 13% to 20% of drug offenders in the US, but 35% percent of drug arrests are of black offenders. At the peak of the disparity (early 90s), black drug offenders were being arrested at FIVE times the rate of white drug offenders. The current disparity is between 3.5 and 4 times as much. Note that this is talking specifically about elevated arrest rates of drug _offenders_, so the fact that the amount of drug usage between the two groups may differ is not relevant. By the way, the disparity only increases as you look at indictment and incarceration rates vs percentage of population or percentage of offenders.

[newobj]

... says the guy who makes video games where you kill people.