From: Miriam English (miriam@werple.net.au)
Date: Fri Aug 03 2001 - 21:33:02 MDT
At 10:08 AM 03/08/2001 -0700, Al Villalobos wrote:
>A while ago I reponded to Barbara Lamar's comment of
>
>"if
>you're non-white, when, to the best of my knowledge, whites commit at least
>as many crimes per 100 people as do non-whites.
>
>Barbara"
<snipped figures>
>Assuming the above figures are correct, If I were to accept Barbara's
>statement, then the jail demographics should reflect the overall population
>closely. Clearly, it does not. In fact, it's not even close. Based on
>this information, If I were to posit that "Blacks commit WAY more crimes
>than Whites." Would that be a racist statement? And If so, why?
Because the figures only reflect numbers of people sent to jail. There are
a couple of reasons why this is not a good indicator of overall criminal
bent. The main one is that most white-collar criminals are never caught and
imprisoned. Another problem with the figures is that they really indicate
that poor people are sent to jail more than rich people. If the races were
reversed in position of wealth you would find more whites in jail than
blacks. There is plenty of evidence to show that the racial structure of
poverty is the result of racism, not a result of any inherent inferiority
or superiority.
I am disappointed that a racist thread has turned up on the extropians
list. The denials of racism by some of the (plonked) individuals here
remind me of a statement by someone I knew years ago: "I'm not racist. I
can't help that blacks are stupid." I was astonished, but no amount of
explanation could convince him of the absurdity of what he said.
- Miriam
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Q. What is the similarity between an elephant and a grape?
A. They are both purple... except for the elephant.
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http://werple.net.au/~miriam
http://members.optushome.com.au/miriame
Virtual Reality Association http://www.vr.org.au
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