Obama thinks criminal background checks are racist

[SpatiallyAware]

Lots of us don't live in places and social circles like this forum where every third statement is straight out of a Concerned Citizens for Thurmond rally. We call racism a lot on this forum because there's a shitload of racism on this forum. That doesn't mean we see it everywhere.

STEM nerds are generally a very miopic lot with deeply held, largely unexamined racist and sexist beliefs, so it's not surprising you see a lot of that on Anadtech forums, really. Comes from being largely white, middle class, male, and being trained to see the world in a simple, mechanistic way, I guess. The best argument there is for requiring history and social science breadth requirements.

Being trained to see the world in a simple, mechanistic way?


That is literally what the race brigaiders are doing... They look at three simple data points and draw this overwhelming conclusion of RACIST!!!!!

These issues are very obviously FAR more complicated than some redneck on a mountain who grew up racist and hasn't died off yet.

These issues are FAR more complicated than the 1 in 30 police officer who is slightly racist and slightly more likely to arrest a dark person.

 

[berzerker60]

Being trained to see the world in a simple, mechanistic way?


That is literally what the race brigaiders are doing... They look at three simple data points and draw this overwhelming conclusion of RACIST!!!!!

These issues are very obviously FAR more complicated than some redneck on a mountain who grew up racist and hasn't died off yet.

These issues are FAR more complicated than the 1 in 30 police officer who is slightly racist and slightly more likely to arrest a dark person.

More likely, they see those three data points in the context of an education that (at least ought to have) provided a historical background of racism in America, knowledge of the overall US justice system and wide array of other statistics ALSO pointing to systematic racial bias, and combine that with other information to use these to illustrate the racism that still exists in the system (albeit less than it used to).

Racism isn't the domain of mountain rednecks, far from it. Racism was the absolute mainstream, including mainstream science, for most of American history. It also isn't a binary thing where someone is just "a racist" or "not a racist." It also isn't perfectly correlated to general goodness of a person. An other wise good, kind, intelligent person who believes himself to be not a racist and who genuinely doesn't want to be racist can still sometimes act in racist ways - for example, locking your door as a black person walks by because you're afraid he'll hi-jack it, or giving jobs to white people over equally qualified black people just because you're 'more comfortable' with the white person, or any number of other ways. That doesn't mean he needs to be cast out of society, but he needs to be made aware of the damaging impact of his actions so that he can address them. Those who DO intentionally act in racist ways need to be shamed to make it clear that that behavior is not socially acceptable, but those types are becoming less common.

Much more common is people who just rely on 'common sense' and 'the way they were raised' without ever really even being aware of the advantages being white gave them, on top of their own hard work and sacrifice. That, combined with an understanding of the world that's mechanical and causal, can lead people to be susceptible to the just world fallacy, that is, that if someone succeeds it must be because he deserved it, and if someone fails it must be because he deserved it. Derived from that comes general victim blaming ('she must have been asking for it'), classism ('if they weren't so lazy they'd have an IT job like me'), and sometimes racism ('they need to just get over it and pull themselves up like my grandfather did').

 

[Fern]

I find myself conflicted. If a person is free from jail / prison, does that mean they are second class citizens? They are not in fact free men to be treated equally?

Seems like crimes have life long punishments, does that constitute cruel and unusual?

You want to hire a finance professional who has a felony for embezzlement?

You want to hire a security guard who has been convicted of stealing employer's inventory after-hours?

You want to hire a day care worker that is a convicted pedophile?

You're a trucking company, you want a hire a driver that has been convicted of felony (somebody died) DUI?

You are saying they are still threats to society. Why are they not in jail or six feet under? The point of our system is to eliminate such threats, not to have everyone walking free but stained by a record which destroys future potential.

If everyone has a record and is caught up in this system, then no one is truly treated equally. That so called virtue of our society would simply be a lie. We already have plenty examples of how anyone on probation has lost their civil liberties.

People don't out of prison because they aren't a threat (sometimes probation boards do make that judgement call though). Many get out because their sentences are up or overcrowding etc.

No, no one is truly treated equally. People are not equal. Maybe we should make a law that a person can't list their education on the job app, won't be fair to those who didn't go to college or have an irrelevant degree.

Yeah, if you did the crime it's on your record. It's part of who you are much like prior experience or your education is. The only real difference I see if that one is 'positive' the other is 'negative'.

Fern

 

[Fern]

Why does he support background checks on buying guns then????

Good point.

Fern

 

[Fern]

Spatially,

What homer did was show that pot usage among white people was at the same level or higher than pot usage among black people. He then showed that the arrest rate for pot possession was 10X higher for blacks than whites. If you can't see a problem with that, might I suggest you head to the nearest optometrist?
-snip-

Where and when you smoke pot has a pretty big impact on whether or not you get arrested.

You smoking in your home/apt. Or are you hanging out on the street with a bag in your pocket?

Are you rolling down the street with a suspended license and a bag of weed and an illegal handgun under your car seat? If so, you think the cop is just going to dump your weed in the bushes, or is the pot charge coming in with all the others?

Simple statistics taken without context are the easiest thing in the world to lie with.

Fern

 

[berzerker60]

Where and when you smoke pot has a pretty big impact on whether or not you get arrested.

You smoking in your home/apt. Or are you hanging out on the street with a bag in your pocket?

Are you rolling down the street with a suspended license and a bag of weed and an illegal handgun under your car seat? If so, you think the cop is just going to dump your weed in the bushes, or is the pot charge coming in with all the others?

Simple statistics taken without context are the easiest thing in the world to lie with.

Fern

If they were in isolation, sure. Here's more:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/juvenile/bench/race.html

A number of recent surveys have shown that there are profound racial disparities in the juvenile justice system, that African-American and Hispanic youth are more likely to be tried as adults. They are more likely to receive longer sentences, they're more likely to be in locked facilities, and on and on and on, even when charged with the same offense as whites.

The Color of Justice
This study, released by the Justice Institute in February, 2000, found that in California, African American, Latino and Asian American youth are significantly more likely to be transferred to adult court and sentenced to incarceration than white youths who commit comparable crimes. Compared to white youths, minority youths are 2.8 times more likely to be arrested for a violent crime, 6.2 times more likely to wind up in adult court, and 7 times more likely to be sent to prison by adult court. Youth Crime/Adult Time: Is Justice Served?
This study released on October 26, 2000 by Building Blocks for Youth, found that minority youth, particularly African American youth, were over-represented and received disparate treatment at several points in the process. In the 18 jurisdictions in the study, 82% of the cases that were filed in adult courts involved a minority.
And Justice for Some
This 2000 study was prepared by The National Council on Crime and Delinquency for the Building Blocks for Youth Initiative. It concludes that "African American juveniles are overrepresented with respect to their proportion in the population at every decision point" in the juvenile justice process.

http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/rd_reducingracialdisparity.pdf

A study of 13,566 officer-initiated traffic stops in a Midwestern city revealed that minority drivers were stopped at a higher rate than whites and were also searched for contraband at a higher rate than their white counterparts. Yet, officers were no more likely to find contraband on minority motorists than white motorists.
...
A New York State study found that minorities charged with felonies were more likely to be detained than whites. The researchers concluded that 10 percent of minorities detained in New York City and 33 percent in other parts of the state would have been released prior to arraignment if minorities were detained at the rate of comparably situated whites.

There's a lot more out there. They paint a pretty bleak picture.

 

[bshole]

Why is that one side of the issue is posting data and studies and the other side simply discounts that information without providing a shred of objective evidence to support their side of the issue? Seriously go back and look.

 

[HomerJS]

There are MANY other factors that could easily cause this - maybe beige-ish and darker people are more likely to be carrying pot, while beige-ish and lighter people are more likely to partake while at home. Could be a cultural difference in the way different races use pot. Could be that certain groups are more careful in the where the hide it.

Maybe beige-ish and darker people were caught doing worse crimes and the cop decided to give them a slap on the wrist with a possession charge?



But no, none of that can ever be discussed. Instead it's much easier to deflate it to simple "RACIST" and then the topic is closed.



I mean seriously, do you think LEOs are just letting preppy beige-ish and lighter kids go who they catch them with weed?

Seriously you pulled that out of your ass! The only brown stained thing here.

So white people grow their own pot so they don't have to carry and "brown people" have to go out and buy from white people and carry it elsewhere???

Really??

Meanwhile anything credible to refute these facts????

 

[Londo_Jowo]

How much of disparity is due to the difference in having a paid defense lawyer and having a public defender? Maybe in the inner city Judges tend to be harsher than Judges in the suburbs.

 

[SpatiallyAware]

Seriously you pulled that out of your ass! The only brown stained thing here.

So white people grow their own pot so they don't have to carry and "brown people" have to go out and buy from white people and carry it elsewhere???

Really??

Meanwhile anything credible to refute these facts????

Did you miss the all-important "Maybe" part of my statement?


Link me to any study that evens accounts for factors other than race. Oh wait, they don't exist, because the liberal machine doesn't benefit from those sorts of external factors. It's gotta be about race to cause an uproar....

 

[SpatiallyAware]

Seriously you pulled that out of your ass! The only brown stained thing here.

So white people grow their own pot so they don't have to carry and "brown people" have to go out and buy from white people and carry it elsewhere???

Really??

Meanwhile anything credible to refute these facts????

How much of disparity is due to the difference in having a paid defense lawyer and having a public defender? Maybe in the inner city Judges tend to be harsher than Judges in the suburbs.

No no no. It's easier to scream and cry that all beige LEO's are racist and specifically target little dark kids.

 

[Bowfinger]

[ ... ]
Link me to any study that evens accounts for factors other than race. Oh wait, they don't exist, because the liberal machine doesn't benefit from those sorts of external factors. It's gotta be about race to cause an uproar....

The problem with pulling nonsense out of your rectum is it's so easy to refute with facts. For example, this site has data based on not only race, but also ethnicity, age, and gender: http://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/#Race_ethnicity_age_gender_and_the_prison_population

You'll also find BJS.gov has all sorts of statistics. If that's not enough for you, feel free to check through the other four million links Google returns. There's a tremendous amount of information available. Oh wait, you won't, because wing-nuts never let facts interfere with BS claims.

 

[HomerJS]

How much of disparity is due to the difference in having a paid defense lawyer and having a public defender? Maybe in the inner city Judges tend to be harsher than Judges in the suburbs.

So poorer people deserve less justice and people in inner cities deserve harsher sentences?

Whatever the reason since these people are more likely then others to have that record means it is less likely they can get a job and that part of the cycle continues.

 

[justoh]

Why is that one side of the issue is posting data and studies and the other side simply discounts that information without providing a shred of objective evidence to support their side of the issue? Seriously go back and look.

Kind of hard to say what the issue is. If it's about whether criminal background checks are racist, the answer is obvious: "no, don't be silly." And since no "data and studies" could be relevant to that question, they were probably ignored when presented.

 

[HumblePie]

Point of clarification. This is not a "policy." It is a guideline issued to employers, a suggestion of how to avoid discrimination lawsuits. Background checks are not being disallowed. As for the 2 lawsuits filed by the EEOC itself, I'd rather see more detail about the allegations in those lawsuits than accept Fox's summary of them.

Background checks are messed up right now. The companies doing the background checks cannot be sued for mistakes they make so long as they correct them within 30 days of a request to do so. I have a friend who was provisionally hired but a background check said he was a felon. It was an error but by the time the background check company fixed the error, it was too late as the employer needed to hire someone sooner.

No offense, but I see this akin to checking your own credit score before buying something big.

If you are going to apply for a job, might as well personally go through the companies that provide background checks to make sure no errors will occur.

 

[piasabird]

However, a background check for purchasing guns is not racist. Which is it brother?

Drug screening is even better.

 

[piasabird]

law suit

 

[berzerker60]

Kind of hard to say what the issue is. If it's about whether criminal background checks are racist, the answer is obvious: "no, don't be silly." And since no "data and studies" could be relevant to that question, they were probably ignored when presented.

No one has actually claimed that background checks are racist in the first place. That's just the OP titling the thread in a provocative way. It's not what anyone is actually discussing.

The argument was about how widely background checks should be used, since the racism built into the current justice system leaves a disproportionate amount of black people (even ones who have committed the same crimes as white people) with felonies on their records, and thus stops them from getting jobs, and thus encourages additional crime to feed themselves and their families. Statistics are relevant to establish that such institutional racism still does exist, and they've been provided. The response has been "well statistics could possibly be explained in this far-fetched way, therefore there's not actually a problem at all"

 

[Londo_Jowo]

So poorer people deserve less justice and people in inner cities deserve harsher sentences?

Whatever the reason since these people are more likely then others to have that record means it is less likely they can get a job and that part of the cycle continues.

Good job trying to put words in my mouth.

 

[SpatiallyAware]

No one has actually claimed that background checks are racist in the first place. That's just the OP titling the thread in a provocative way. It's not what anyone is actually discussing.

The argument was about how widely background checks should be used, since the racism built into the current justice system leaves a disproportionate amount of black people (even ones who have committed the same crimes as white people) with felonies on their records, and thus stops them from getting jobs, and thus encourages additional crime to feed themselves and their families. Statistics are relevant to establish that such institutional racism still does exist, and they've been provided. The response has been "well statistics could possibly be explained in this far-fetched way, therefore there's not actually a problem at all"

ROFLOLOLOL


I love how you guys feel about "the system" and it being racist.



What exactly do you want to see? Equal number of arrests for every shade of color, while ignoring the inherent crime statistics involved in each race?

Basically, you want to create racism in our justice system to fight racism................

 

[justoh]

No one has actually claimed that background checks are racist in the first place. That's just the OP titling the thread in a provocative way. It's not what anyone is actually discussing.

The argument was about how widely background checks should be used, since the racism built into the current justice system leaves a disproportionate amount of black people (even ones who have committed the same crimes as white people) with felonies on their records, and thus stops them from getting jobs, and thus encourages additional crime to feed themselves and their families. Statistics are relevant to establish that such institutional racism still does exist, and they've been provided. The response has been "well statistics could possibly be explained in this far-fetched way, therefore there's not actually a problem at all"

Good, because it's clearly race neutral.

As for how widely background checks should be used, based on your argument it should probably only be requested from white applicants.

 

[berzerker60]

ROFLOLOLOL


I love how you guys feel about "the system" and it being racist.



What exactly do you want to see? Equal number of arrests for every shade of color, while ignoring the inherent crime statistics involved in each race?

Basically, you want to create racism in our justice system to fight racism................

How about when charged with identical crimes, equal numbers of black, white, and latino youths get charged as adults, or get sentenced to the same number of years as adults, or get charged in the first place? How about equal numbers of people get stopped and searched given the same (lack of) evidence of wrongdoing? We're provided a number of statistics that show that given the same crimes black and to a lesser degree latino people get prosecuted more and given harsher punishments. There are lots and lot more such statistics out there. You've just been refusing to actually read them, I guess.

 

[SpatiallyAware]

How about when charged with identical crimes, equal numbers of black, white, and latino youths get charged as adults, or get sentenced to the same number of years as adults, or get charged in the first place? How about equal numbers of people get stopped and searched given the same (lack of) evidence of wrongdoing? We're provided a number of statistics that show that given the same crimes black and to a lesser degree latino people get prosecuted more and given harsher punishments. There are lots and lot more such statistics out there. You've just been refusing to actually read them, I guess.

I have read far more research about this than I care to even delve in to and am very familiar with the subject.


Again, the VAST majority of research has looked had 2 or 3 data points. This situation is far far more complicated than that. It has to do with situational differences, not color.




<insert any color> sitting on the edge of a lake fishing is far LESS likely to be arrested (and charged) than <insert any color> prowling around a gated community peering into garages and obviously casing houses.


You are so blinded by "RACISTS RACISTS" that you must be literally incapable of stepping back and looking at these situations for what they are.



Again, are you implying that our police force itself is racist? Here and there, sure, but you are incredibly out of touch with current society if you seriously think that the vast majority of cops AND judges are just "out to get" "black" people.

 

[poofyhairguy]

How much of disparity is due to the difference in having a paid defense lawyer and having a public defender?

Huge part of it. I remember as a kid one time a cop let me go despite under age drinking because "his daddy's lawyer will make this a pain in our ass." They didn't know my dad, they were going by skin color and the car I drove.

 

[Jeffg010]

Ok I'll stop the back ground checks when the stop having quotas