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US Politics Elizabeth Warren's controversial 2018 remarks that the criminal justice system is "racist front to back" is now mainstream in Massachusetts

definitelyameatbag

Well-known member

In anticipation of comments similar to the ones I saw on a reddit thread for this: This is from a journal based in and focused on the state of Massachusetts, and they had data from a poll they held after Warren, US Senator for Massachusetts, made comments which caused, let's say, "disagreement" with that state's police union and its Governor. It's not suggesting Warren was the first or only person to be making these statements, it's just making the case that public opinion has shifted decisively towards agreeing that criminal justice has a racism problem and that the shift has happened recently.
 
I'm three weeks late here, but...


Unarmed black men are not in fact shot disproportionately by police, although they are more likely to experience some sort of force. Going by memory, in 2019 about 15 unarmed black men were shot by police, out of around 50 total. (Incidentally, that's also around the number of people who were killed by lightning.)

I can't find the data offhand, but apparently the region where this is not true and black men are killed at a much higher rate is New England.
That is particularly odd... given the circumstances.
 
That is particularly odd... given the circumstances.

Apparently (and going by memory) New England has a specific historic pattern of ghettoization of blacks that has resulted in a very high level of segregation and concentration of blacks in poor areas.

This is consonant with the thesis that what is really behind police brutality is not race, but class, and blacks are more likely to be hassled by cops because they are poor. Because poor people commit more crimes, and blacks are disproportionately poor.

Matt Taibbi (who wrote a book on this) says that cops told him that the core problem is that they are under orders to maximize arrests, because more arrests makes their bosses look good to those above them (and probably means more money for the precinct etc.). The reason that they hassle people for trivial offenses is that there is always a chance that the person that they are stopping is wanted for something more serious, and this gives the police chance to check them. They target blacks because blacks are statistically more likely to be wanted for such offenses, and they are so because they are statistically more likely to be poor.
 
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