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By wat0n
#15177820
Pants-of-dog wrote:No, you have misunderstood.

It would be more correct to say that since US property laws are an imperfect mechanism, instances of infractions against these rights still occur and there still exists the very real possibility that the causes of said infractions are systemic.


Yet that doesn't amount to claiming the legal system is geared to defending theft - or, let's say, white supremacy. Even worse, those technicalities (such as not being able to fulfill a standard of proof) may arise as a result of protecting other fundamental civil rights (such as presumption of innocence). So I'd like you to provide an example just to see what you mean by "technicality" here.

Pants-of-dog wrote:Are you saying that the individual legislators intentionally acted against the interests of BIPOC people?


I'd say that, for instance, when several Southern states imposed segregation laws or barred Blacks from voting during Jim Crow, that's precisely what they did - and I don't think anyone would disagree with this idea. Same holds for the advent of Black being turned into chattel slaves in the 17th and 18th centuries. And the infamous 1857 Dredd Scott SCOTUS ruling was quite clear in its intent as well.

But what's the intent of current Civil Rights legislation?

Pants-of-dog wrote:If your only evidence is your incorrect idea about another aspect of CRT, this argument is unconvincing.


Sure, "incorrect" :roll:
By Pants-of-dog
#15177823
wat0n wrote:Yet that doesn't amount to claiming the legal system is geared to defending theft - or, let's say, white supremacy. Even worse, those technicalities (such as not being able to fulfill a standard of proof) may arise as a result of protecting other fundamental civil rights (such as presumption of innocence). So I'd like you to provide an example just to see what you mean by "technicality" here.


Again, the argument is that the mere existence of anti-discrimination laws does not prove the negative claim that there is no racism in US laws.

That was your claim, after all: that the existence of such laws proves that there is no racism in US law.

I'd say that, for instance, when several Southern states imposed segregation laws or barred Blacks from voting during Jim Crow, that's precisely what they did - and I don't think anyone would disagree with this idea. Same holds for the advent of Black being turned into chattel slaves in the 17th and 18th centuries. And the infamous 1857 Dredd Scott SCOTUS ruling was quite clear in its intent as well.

But what's the intent of current Civil Rights legislation?


Again, I am not discussing individual intent.

Please note that systemic racism does not involve individual intent.
By wat0n
#15177827
Pants-of-dog wrote:Again, the argument is that the mere existence of anti-discrimination laws does not prove the negative claim that there is no racism in US laws.

That was your claim, after all: that the existence of such laws proves that there is no racism in US law.


Yet the existence of such technicalities also does not mean there is a permission to steal under US law :|

Pants-of-dog wrote:Again, I am not discussing individual intent.

Please note that systemic racism does not involve individual intent.


I'm not speaking about individuals but institutions here. Specifically, the respective legislature, which is clearly not an individual but an institution.
By Pants-of-dog
#15177835
wat0n wrote:Yet the existence of such technicalities also does not mean there is a permission to steal under US law :|


That is not relevant to the claim.

I'm not speaking about individuals but institutions here. Specifically, the respective legislature, which is clearly not an individual but an institution.


You specifically discussed the intents of legislators. Are you now discussing something else?

If so, please clarify your argument.
By wat0n
#15177837
Pants-of-dog wrote:That is not relevant to the claim.


Why not?

Pants-of-dog wrote:You specifically discussed the intents of legislators. Are you now discussing something else?

If so, please clarify your argument.


Sure. You should be able to infer Congress' goals in passing a law, as represented by the majority that passes it, by just reading the arguments provided during legislative discussion.
By Pants-of-dog
#15177842
wat0n wrote:Why not?


Anti-discrimination law is an imperfect mechanism for addressing systemic racism in the law even if the existence of such technicalities does not mean there is a permission to steal under US law.

Anti-discrimination law is an imperfect mechanism for addressing systemic racism in the law even if the existence of such technicalities does mean there is a permission to steal under US law.

Sure. You should be able to infer Congress' goals in passing a law, as represented by the majority that passes it, by just reading the arguments provided during legislative discussion.


I do not see how some abstract and hypothetical thing called “the will of congress” clarifies whatever argument you are making.
By wat0n
#15177844
Pants-of-dog wrote:Anti-discrimination law is an imperfect mechanism for addressing systemic racism in the law even if the existence of such technicalities does not mean there is a permission to steal under US law.

Anti-discrimination law is an imperfect mechanism for addressing systemic racism in the law even if the existence of such technicalities does mean there is a permission to steal under US law.


Which one of these did you mean? :?: I'll assume the first one.

Just because anti-discrimination law may be imperfect, it does not mean there is systemic racism in the law either.

Pants-of-dog wrote:I do not see how some abstract and hypothetical thing called “the will of congress” clarifies whatever argument you are making.


So you believe one cannot infer institutional positions? :?:

It's also not so hypothetical since courts will sometimes look at legislative history to infer intent and, therefore, interpret the law...
By Pants-of-dog
#15177851
wat0n wrote:Which one of these did you mean? :?: I'll assume the first one.

Just because anti-discrimination law may be imperfect, it does not mean there is systemic racism in the law either.


Both are true statements, which is why the second part (i.e. your point) is irrelevant.

The imperfect nature of anti-discrimination law only means that anti-discrimination law would not have detected all of the discrimination already present in US law or all of the newly created discrimination in law.

So you are correct that, by itself, it does not show systemic racism.

Systemic racism in US law can be seen in things like disparate impact of laws, judge and jury selection, sentencing disparities, and other things.

So you believe one cannot infer institutional positions? :?:

It's also not so hypothetical since courts will sometimes look at legislative history to infer intent and, therefore, interpret the law...


Okay.
By wat0n
#15177854
Pants-of-dog wrote:Both are true statements, which is why the second part (i.e. your point) is irrelevant.


But it's then not quite true to say that discrimination is then embedded in the law, at all, in either case. Why? Because antidiscrimination law opens a venue for doing away for any discriminatory laws.

Pants-of-dog wrote:The imperfect nature of anti-discrimination law only means that anti-discrimination law would not have detected all of the discrimination already present in US law or all of the newly created discrimination in law.

So you are correct that, by itself, it does not show systemic racism.

Systemic racism in US law can be seen in things like disparate impact of laws, judge and jury selection, sentencing disparities, and other things.


That's actually also questionable, though. Disparate impact (even in a business context) requires more than simply showing a difference exists. It must also not be justified from a business perspective.
User avatar
By Godstud
#15177857
@wat0n The application of laws are up to people, and so you might make a law and have a certain intention for it, but that does not mean it's going to be exercised fairly or justly.

Report to the United Nations on Racial Disparities in the U.S. Criminal Justice System
APRIL 19, 2018
African-American adults are 5.9 times as likely to be incarcerated than whites and Hispanics are 3.1 times as likely.

The source of such disparities is deeper and more systemic than explicit racial discrimination. The United States in effect operates two distinct criminal justice systems: one for wealthy people and another for poor people and people of color. The wealthy can access a vigorous adversary system replete with constitutional protections for defendants. Yet the experiences of poor and minority defendants within the criminal justice system often differ substantially from that model due to a number of factors, each of which contributes to the overrepresentation of such individuals in the system. As former Georgetown Law Professor David Cole states in his book No Equal Justice,

These double standards are not, of course, explicit; on the face of it, the criminal law is color-blind and class-blind. But in a sense, this only makes the problem worse. The rhetoric of the criminal justice system sends the message that our society carefully protects everyone’s constitutional rights, but in practice the rules assure that law enforcement prerogatives will generally prevail over the rights of minorities and the poor. By affording criminal suspects substantial constitutional rights in theory, the Supreme Court validates the results of the criminal justice system as fair. That formal fairness obscures the systemic concerns that ought to be raised by the fact that the prison population is overwhelmingly poor and disproportionately black.7)

https://www.sentencingproject.org/publi ... sparities/

The Relationship between Race, Ethnicity, and
Sentencing Outcomes: A Meta-Analysis of
Sentencing Research

Eighty-five studies meeting our stated eligibility criteria were located. Analysis
of these data reveal that, after taking into account defendant criminal history and current
offense seriousness, African-Americans and Latinos were generally sentenced more
harshly than whites.
Differences in sentencing outcomes between these groups generally
were statistically significant but statistically small (although not necessarily substantively
small). Further,analyses indicate that larger estimates of unwarranted sentencing
disparity were found in studies that examined drug offenses, imprisonment or
discretionary sentencing decisions, and in recent analyses of Federal court data.
Smaller
estimates of unwarranted sentencing disparity were found in analyses that employed
more control variables (especially those that controlled for defendant SES), utilized
precise measures of key variables, or examined sentencing outcomes relating to length of
incarcerative sentence.
Additionally, there was some evidence to suggest that structured
sentencing mechanisms, such as sentencing guidelines, were associated with smaller
unwarranted sentencing disparities. The limited available research contrasting sentencing
patterns of whites to those of Asians or Native Americans does not generally reveal
significant differences between these groups.


https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/208129.pdf
User avatar
By Drlee
#15177864
@Pants-of-dog
Fabricated fears are not a good justification for censorship of teachers.


Nobody is censoring teachers. They are establishing educational requirements. Teachers are employees of the public and hired to teach what they are told to teach. If they want to teach what their heart desires they can teach in the private school system. And if they can find one that will let them.

Your assertion that CRT would only be taught in law school is absurd.
By wat0n
#15177865
Godstud wrote:@wat0n The application of laws are up to people, and so you might make a law and have a certain intention for it, but that does not mean it's going to be exercised fairly or justly.

Report to the United Nations on Racial Disparities in the U.S. Criminal Justice System
APRIL 19, 2018
African-American adults are 5.9 times as likely to be incarcerated than whites and Hispanics are 3.1 times as likely.

The source of such disparities is deeper and more systemic than explicit racial discrimination. The United States in effect operates two distinct criminal justice systems: one for wealthy people and another for poor people and people of color. The wealthy can access a vigorous adversary system replete with constitutional protections for defendants. Yet the experiences of poor and minority defendants within the criminal justice system often differ substantially from that model due to a number of factors, each of which contributes to the overrepresentation of such individuals in the system. As former Georgetown Law Professor David Cole states in his book No Equal Justice,

These double standards are not, of course, explicit; on the face of it, the criminal law is color-blind and class-blind. But in a sense, this only makes the problem worse. The rhetoric of the criminal justice system sends the message that our society carefully protects everyone’s constitutional rights, but in practice the rules assure that law enforcement prerogatives will generally prevail over the rights of minorities and the poor. By affording criminal suspects substantial constitutional rights in theory, the Supreme Court validates the results of the criminal justice system as fair. That formal fairness obscures the systemic concerns that ought to be raised by the fact that the prison population is overwhelmingly poor and disproportionately black.7)

https://www.sentencingproject.org/publi ... sparities/

The Relationship between Race, Ethnicity, and
Sentencing Outcomes: A Meta-Analysis of
Sentencing Research

Eighty-five studies meeting our stated eligibility criteria were located. Analysis
of these data reveal that, after taking into account defendant criminal history and current
offense seriousness, African-Americans and Latinos were generally sentenced more
harshly than whites.
Differences in sentencing outcomes between these groups generally
were statistically significant but statistically small (although not necessarily substantively
small). Further,analyses indicate that larger estimates of unwarranted sentencing
disparity were found in studies that examined drug offenses, imprisonment or
discretionary sentencing decisions, and in recent analyses of Federal court data.
Smaller
estimates of unwarranted sentencing disparity were found in analyses that employed
more control variables (especially those that controlled for defendant SES), utilized
precise measures of key variables, or examined sentencing outcomes relating to length of
incarcerative sentence.
Additionally, there was some evidence to suggest that structured
sentencing mechanisms, such as sentencing guidelines, were associated with smaller
unwarranted sentencing disparities. The limited available research contrasting sentencing
patterns of whites to those of Asians or Native Americans does not generally reveal
significant differences between these groups.


https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/208129.pdf


Same could be said about sentencing of males, who get longer sentences for the same crimes. So there is systemic misandry?
User avatar
By Godstud
#15177868
@wat0n No. The same cannot be said of that. You are being purposefully disingenuous. I will not deign to respond to such childish distraction and "whataboutisms".

Is it because you cannot form a cogent argument when provided with evidence that shows your position is compromised? Are the facts too damning?
By wat0n
#15177870
Godstud wrote:@wat0n No. The same cannot be said of that. You are being purposefully disingenuous. I will not deign to respond to such childish distraction and "whataboutisms".

Is it because you cannot form a cogent argument when provided with evidence that shows your position is compromised? Are the facts too damning?


I don't see how is it compromised. How about you explain why you wouldn't say that?

Starr wrote:Abstract

This paper assesses gender disparities in federal criminal cases. It finds large gender gaps favoring women throughout the sentence length distribution (averaging over 60%), conditional on arrest offense, criminal history, and other pre-charge observables. Female arrestees are also significantly likelier to avoid charges and convictions entirely, and twice as likely to avoid incarceration if convicted. Prior studies have reported much smaller sentence gaps because they have ignored the role of charging, plea-bargaining, and sentencing fact-finding in producing sentences. Most studies control for endogenous severity measures that result from these earlier discretionary processes and use samples that have been winnowed by them. I avoid these problems by using a linked dataset tracing cases from arrest through sentencing. Using decomposition methods, I show that most sentence disparity arises from decisions at the earlier stages, and use the rich data to investigate causal theories for these gender gaps.


What's good for the goose is good for the gander: If mere longer prison terms or a greater likelihood of being imprisoned for some subpopulation means there is systemic discrimination against that subpopulation, then you should reach that conclusion regardless of the subpopulation at hand. If not, then you are actually reading it through your preconceived beliefs and making the result fit these beliefs, and not the other way around.

For the record, I don't think the above paper proves there is systemic discrimination against males either.
User avatar
By Godstud
#15177871
Your reply is a classic logical fallacy. A "Whataboutism". This is what people who can't argue a point, do. Your stance about there not being racial discrimination in US law is completely in error when facts can be presented showing it to be such.

We are not discussing gender discrimination in sentencing, and I don't find any comparison to that, relevant. Stick to the topic instead of trying to avoid it when your claims are disputed by facts.

Please provide evidence to contradict my sources or accept the information and the damning evidence of racial discrimination in the US justice system.
By wat0n
#15177877
Godstud wrote:Your reply is a classic logical fallacy. A "Whataboutism". This is what people who can't argue a point, do. Your stance about there not being racial discrimination in US law is completely in error when facts can be presented showing it to be such.

We are not discussing gender discrimination in sentencing. Stick to the topic instead of trying to avoid it when your claims are disputed by facts.

Please provide evidence to contradict my sources or accept the information.


Or maybe your logical fallacy is circular reasoning: You start from the premise that there is systemic racism, then you interpret the evidence in that light to reaffirm your premise. After all, if you start from the premise there is systemic racism, what other reason could there be for the differences in sentencing outcomes by race except for it?

By showing the exact same thing can be said with regards to claims of systemic misandry by asking if differences in sentencing outcomes by gender are evidence of it, I'm simply providing an example of why your reasoning is circular and why those differences in sentencing (even after adding some controls, including the actual crime and criminal history) are not the smoking gun you think they are. This is true even if there is indeed a system that's in fact designed to discriminate by race (even though the existence of such design has not been quite proven, but whatever), just in case you believe I'm appealing from fallacy. Pointing this out is not whataboutism, it's reductio ad absurdum.

One interesting thing to consider for sentencing research would be to at least look at the result after controlling for judge and prosecutor random effects (on top of the district fixed effects and other controls like those used by the literature) and interacting those with race or gender. If the results disappeared then it would mean that some judges or prosecutors are in fact acting individually here, and that would lead to a different interpretation of what's going on.
User avatar
By Gardener
#15177879
Pants-of-dog wrote:No, you have misunderstood.

It would be more correct to say that since US property laws are an imperfect mechanism, instances of infractions against these rights still occur and there still exists the very real possibility that the causes of said infractions are systemic.

Yes. It is called 'crime', caused by 'criminals'.

I was discussing systemic racism.

It was not a factor in the George Floyd murder !
Would you like me to define that for you?

That reminds me.. I really must book an appointment with my dentist.


Actually, they are.

Is this an ACTUAL 'actually', or a narrative 'actually' which can mean anything you want it to be ?


There is such a ban. There is even a thread about it.

There is no ban on teaching about the hypothesis of systemic racism. The 'ban' is only on teaching Critical Race Hypothesis. Just as there is a 'ban' on teaching Nazi Racial Eugenics (with textbooks by Hans F. K. Günther), or the ethos of Scientology, or Flat Earth Theory, or the Ptolemaic model of the universe.

Since CRT is not taught at the elementary or secondary level, this is not a real worry.

Oh yes it IS.
User avatar
By Godstud
#15177882
@wat0n You're simply talking childishly, now. I gave you a US Department of Justice source, quoting over 80 studies. This is not a fabrication on my part, but denial on yours.

Your "misandry" nonsense is irrelevant to the discussion and merely an attempt to divert the topic, and create a Strawman.
By wat0n
#15177895
Godstud wrote:@wat0n You're simply talking childishly, now. I gave you a US Department of Justice source, quoting over 80 studies. This is not a fabrication on my part, but denial on yours.

Your "misandry" nonsense is irrelevant to the discussion and merely an attempt to divert the topic, and create a Strawman.


It's not childish to use reductio ad absurdum to show your reasoning is not sound. It's a valid way to do so.

And it's not a strawman either.

PS: I'm also checking the paper out with more detail, and I find it surprising to see how noisy some of the source studies are. I'm not sure how this is accounted for in the meta-analysis.
User avatar
By Drlee
#15177897
It seems to me that both sides are wishing to argue the systemic problems in the US oligarchy. Both sides agree. The real argument, as I see it revolves around these three points:

Does CRT accurately describe the US system?

Is CRT a viable teaching tool for K-12 education?

Can rank-and-file teachers create a lesson plan that discovers the subtlety and presents it to children.

Concentrating on the first, my opinion is that it does not. It is superficial at best and inaccurate frequently. It is pop science. UFOs.

We will never get to the solution to systemic racism until we drop the hyperbole and tease out all of the "eaches".

As for asking an everyday teacher to construct a lesson plan that makes CRT useful and not damaging at all is absurd. College maybe.
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