Trayvon Martin....hmm. I was agreeing with you up till that point. That's a crowd whipping case, not a miscarriage of justice.
Explain please. I think the jury actually reached the correct verdict however it's how it was handled by the cops and the initial prosecutor that I consider racist...I have little doubt that were it 17 year old white kid there would have been a more thorough investigation and it seems probable he would have been charged with at least involuntary manslaughter. If cops didn't have a history of discriminatory conduct when arresting investigating and charging people, this would not have ever made national news. For me that's the issue...not whether Zimmerman was actually guilty of a crime or not...but that the authorities treated Trayvon's life with less regard than they would've a white kid. That's purely speculation of course, but not speculation bereft of context-- the lives of Black youth in the US are routinely treated by society and the authorities with less value than that of White youth.
True. But according to the Innocence Project, you also need to account for coercive plea bargaining.
Correct.
If you banned plea bargaining altogether in your system, and tightened up on prosecutorial misconduct, I wonder what the incarcaration rate of black males would look like then.
Banning plea bargaining would require a major overhaul of the system (you'd have to spend much, much more money and resources on the courts systems and much less on law enforcement and incarceration)-- one which I favor, but I doubt is possible without major changes to the powers structure in this society as a whole.
What? When have I ever dismissed or rationalized away the suffering of the Palestinians? Back that up with an actual quote of mine.
I retract my previous statement. I just went back and looked it up and you made a misinformed statement about the situation in the US with Christian Zionism, which I believe you are doing now with poverty in America and our social welfare system, but you didn't do what I claimed. I apologize.
I am from the UK, my parents are University professors. I started my career in the IT field and got bored of that, I worked in local government community redevelopment for the last 6 years, but i found that pretty disilusioning with seeing how much public funds get waisted to corruption. Plus it involves soft skills so it is too subjective as to whether you are hood at your job, most promotions are based on politics. At least with IT, youve either got it or you dont, noone can challenge that. So now I am back in IT, working as a programmer in the private sector, just started this job 2 weeks ago.
Thanks
What about you Q? Same questions back to you?
I am from the US. My ma (also from the US) worked a variety of jobs. She was enlisted in the US Army around the time when I was born. She later worked as a public school teacher, IT for the USAF, moonlighted at a ghetto liquor store, and the last job she had was as a "sandwich artist" for Subway.
She then had a massive stroke and has been on government disability since then. My dad (from Egypt) was a professional criminal, mostly fraud. Didn't really deal with him much growing up, or today for that matter. I have worked a variety of jobs myself, most of them relatively low-skill manual labor. For over the past decade I have been a labor union organizer/representative.
Topic: Hip Hop and Rape Culture