Comment by rdouble
13 years ago
It is a terrible way to look at it, even if you're white, because you can always be the wrong kind of white person.
Where I grew up, kids on the hockey team, or whose dad owned the car dealership, would repeatedly get away with drunk driving and beating up their girlfriends, whereas poor kids were regularly taken down to the station for skateboarding, even though there were no laws against it.
I'm not an American, and my country is, especially now, poorer than the parent's (he said Brasil, IIRC).
Nothing about some "white boy perspective" to what I said.
That's based on a misunderstanding about what I meant by saying the police should not be totally efficient.
Less efficient != discrimination.
Less efficient != corruption.
It's not a two way association. One could say that a "corrupt police" is "less efficient" but the inverse is not true.
If anything, with it being less efficient, in the way I describe, FEWER poor, black, "wrong kind of white" etc people will actually get caught.
That's like saying two wrongs make a right.
I agree with cold tea actually, at least to a point.
Robust liberties and clear restraints on law enforcement powers at the expense of law enforcement efficiency are a cornerstone of liberty and have been everywhere and throughout history.
The reason why it is only to a point though is that less efficient police driven to maintain quotas will typically focus on the poor who are less able to defend themselves. Most of the data i have seen suggests that there are not major class differences in drug use in the US, but there are huge class differences in enforcement because buying habits are different and so it takes more police work to bust the middle class than it does the poor.
I think that this is one of those cases where we have a perpetual social problem which cannot be remedied by automating the system.
Which they often do, hence the proverb.
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Yep, I think you get the idea about "white boy from 1st world" though... Someone from a "higher caste", with more influence in the society or who can afford lawyers.