Is tolerance intolerant?

[bennyboy]

How can we keep families together?  How can we reduce incarceration rates in black communities?

Ending the war on drugs would be a good start; they're a HUGE part of why America has the highest incarceration rate on Earth. And, of course, there's still a disproportionately higher amount of black people sent to jail for the same crime that white people are more likely to be given a slap on the wrist for. As a good example, in the 1980s, crack had higher penalties than regular cocaine (despite being the exact same chemically) for no discernible reason except it was a cheaper form that, consequently, had a higher use among poor blacks than the obscenely rich people who used cocaine in the 1970s. And even now, black people are likely to serve harsher sentences than white people for the same exact drug-related crime.

I'm very much a believer in blind justice, especially with regard to sentencing.  A jury should be given a case description-- so and so had X grams at possession, and had been apprehended Y times for the same offense, and so on.  I'm pretty sure that if Shaquanda Johnson and Eugene Goldstein are both up for sentencing, Johnson is automatically going to get harsher sentences-- even from black judges or juries.

In general, I think arbitration should only be used to minimize sentences, not to aggravate them.

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Get caught with weed while white and you're just a kid having some fun, caught while black...drug dealer.  Highly ironic.....since the white kids are drug dealers more often by orders of magnitude.

I completely agree.  Chappelle's bit about his white friend Chip is dead on, in my opinion.  "Gee officer. . . I didn't KNOW I couldn't do that."

And attire matters VERY much also: it's a class perception to some degree.  When I was a young long-haired kid with ripped jeans and a heavy metal t-shirt, I was getting jacked up pretty regularly, and treated by city police in Vancouver in ways that were clearly illegal-- involuntary room searches without a warrant, sexual comments, and so on.  As soon as I cut my hair and bought a suit, I'm pretty sure I could have walked down Main Street with my dick out and got a minor scolding.

I do not know if black people who are very well-dressed suffer as high levels of racism as kids in street clothes, but I doubt it.

But anyway, this effect is why I think early prison release programs based on sentencing variance should be blind and based purely on objective facts (amount possessed, for example), and some things which are no longer serious crimes (like pot possession) should be rewound.