Obama's Public Support of Michael Vick

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Sachita

It's called my vigilante fantasy. Sorry but I can't change how I think or feel on this. It's not up to me, you're right and glad, thats cool. Now why not respect my viewpoint as I have yours? Because its based on a personal agenda or what "this country" allows?

Look, I'm not trying to change your mind. I don't think I can and I wouldn't bother to try. I'm glad you are willing to own that it's your vigilante fantasy. I'm not going to pretend, however, that what I'm reading from you does not have real-world consequences NOR am I going to pretend that you aren't a citizen, capable of serving on a jury. As I said the other day, the fact that if a black man and a white man are convicted for the same crime and you hold every other single factor constant, the black man is much more likely to get death than the white man, is based upon a pre-existing conception that is present in the minds of participants in the judicial system LONG before they see the inside of a courtroom. I am sure you are passionate about this subject and I’m equally certain that if it were my son and he stood accused--not convicted but accused--and even if the evidence was flimsy that you would have no problems voting to convict him and would sleep the sleep of the righteous that very evening. That doesn't mean I think you are a bad person, it means I think you are an white American who, if you were born 10 - 15 years either side of me, were trained in ways overt and subtle to fear the following in more or less this order:

Black men
Nuclear weapons
Communists
Russians
Arabs
Muslims

If you were born anywhere between the late 50's and mid 70's, we grew up with about the same media. I remember that media and I cannot get out of my head all the images of black man as threat.

Still not changing my mind. Nor would I change my mind about a predator that abuses children. To me they are almost the same or at least the emotion it invokes and its truly how I feel. But don't worry, I'm not running for office. lol

I know it's how I feel which is why I'm glad that it is vanishingly improbable I will ever have to rely on your tender mercies and the ability to keep your vigilante fantasies and/or other feelings in check.

Originally Posted by Sachita

oh AJ also you keep wanting to make this a black issue and for me it has nothing to do with that at all. I don't care what color or sex a person is. If they committed the crimes he cleared did against helpless animals I'd feel exactly the same way.

Maybe you would, maybe you wouldn't. The fact of the matter, Sachita, is that the same crime committed by a black man is ROUTINELY treated as being far more severe than one committed by a white man. It goes farther than that. If I had paddled my son in public, I'd be an abusive mother. If my wife paddled my son in public, she'd be a strict disciplinarian. We could do the *precise* same action but the downstream consequences would be highly disparate. She would most likely not have a visit from CPS, I would almost certainly wind up in a courtroom and ordered to take parenting classes. What's more, given your statements, I have every reason to believe that if you were sitting in that jury box you would, without hesitation, vote to convict me of child abuse and then, when talking about why you did, state (and believe) that race NEVER entered your mind. Again, I'm not calling you a racist, I'm calling you a white American raised in a particular time with a particular media zeitgeist. In that zeitgeist, blacks--male and female--are just this side of untamed creatures who sometimes need harsh discipline so that we'll act right. We are incorrigible by assumption.

The assumptions that I am trying to shine a bright light are just *there*, Sachita. They are in the background, it is the substrate upon which we have discussions of crime and punishment, law and order in this society. Most people will no more notice them than a fish notices water. They would be conspicuous ONLY in their absence. This is why I keep reiterating that I do not think you are a racist, simply an American. I am willing to bet that if you did a survey of every DA, every judge, every juror who has EVER been in the courtroom and part of the process that sent a black man to prison or to death row, you would not find one in a hundred who would say that race had ANYTHING to do with it. I'm sure that every single one of those people would say they were colorblind and didn't see color. I'm sure that every one of those people would invoke their black friends, neighbors or coworkers as proof of their commitment to racial harmony. I'm absolutely certain that every single one of those people would claim, swearing on the graves of their parents, the lives of their children and their own honor, that if the defendant had been a white man their voting behavior would have been PRECISELY the same.

And then, when the next case came to court, and it was similar but the defendant was white and he was given life or a long sentence with the possibility of parole and you asked them to explain how they could come up with such wildly disparate outcomes given the similarities of the case not a one of them would be able to explain it satisfactorily. There would be some hemming and hawing about some minor point of forensic or circumstantial trivia but at the end of the day, what we would have is an outcome that LOOKS based upon race and which no one involved in the process would be able to ever satisfactorily explain.

For the last two days, Sachita, that is the point I have been trying to get people to really grapple with here. I do not think that this is going to change your mind much less your feelings about this. But I cannot just sit by while this conversation goes on and pretend, for the rhetorical convenience of those that disagree with me, that there is not something deep in the American psyche that says that a black man who commits a crime is FAR MORE dangerous than a white man who commits a crime and is thus deserving of MUCH harsher and longer penalties. I can't because it's not true. When I want to pretend, I will put in a game in my Xbox, play D&D, watch some sci-fi movie or do something else to take my mind into the land of the fantastic. This isn't a time or subject where I think that maintaining pretense is reasonable.

And again, I'm not trying to change your mind or your feelings about this. I'm just trying to point out and shine a light on what I see happening. It has nothing to do with disrespect, in fact, it is BECAUSE I respect your opinion enough to take what you are saying seriously, to assume that this is a well-thought out position that you would be unlikely to hold, and to presume that your thoughts have actual consequences in the real world if the circumstances are right. I assume that you have meant every word that you have posted on this thread. I assume that you have thought about them before you clicked "submit reply" and that, therefore, there is nothing that you have posted that you do not mean.


Cheers
Aj