Emjay said:
The USA's war on drugs has hit the African American community hard. The investigators, prosecutors, judges, juries, etc are not racist. They are following the law.
You are *
so* painfully close to making the connection. That is what systemic racism is! It's built into the system, it's not personal malice by individuals. That exists, too, but that's not where most of the problems lie. Decades of horrible criminal justice policies perpetuate discriminatory practices and entrench the problems, leading to horrible outcomes for people.
Here's a good rundown of the various ways (with mounds of evidence) that systemic racism infects the criminal justice system. Note particularly how pervasive the problem is of black people (especially black men) being targeted for stops, arrests, general police harassment, despite having less drugs/weapons found on them. Or how they get sentenced for longer, for the same crime, compared to white men. Or how they get felony convictions for the exact same drugs that nets white men misdemeanor charges.
What I mean by horrible policies is things like incentivising police forces with arrest numbers, or ticketing numbers to get more equipment. So what do they do? They go to where it's easiest to harass people, arrest them, or ticket them without pushback - which are usually black neighbourhoods. This is bad all the way down - for the community because they get all the negative effects of unnecessary policing. Bad for the police, because it drives a wedge between them and the community, and forces them to hustle for equipment that they actually need, and bad for society at large, because people get pulled into the criminal justice system, which quite often has very negative outcomes. If they're poor and can't afford proper defence attorneys? Sorry, you get hammered. What happens to their families?
Emjay said:
However, we can probably put a direct link between the privatization of the jail system to longer incarceration times. Let's have a discussion about that.
Yes, we should! It's a big part of the problem. Obama tried to get rid of them. Jeff Sessions scrapped that and rewarded them big time. As did Trump.
Trump Administration Giving Boost to Private Prison Campaign Donors, Leaked Memo Shows
The Trump administration has ordered the transfer of more inmates from government-run facilities to private lockups, a leaked memo from the Bureau of Prisons has shown. The move marks the latest boost given to the private prison industry, which donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the president's election campaign and his inauguration.
Emjay said:
but they alienate everyone around them with concepts such as privilege and systemic racism. What can any one individual do about those issues? Talk some more?
I honestly don't see how it alienates people. They're basic sociological facts about society and how we got to where we are, not personal judgements. Some people can be assholes about it, but that's true of everything. Acknowledging privilege and the existence of systemic racism doesn't require any guilt from you. We can simply acknowledge it and advocate for change to improve people's lives.
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