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- "America's romance with the death penalty"
- "The death penalty is also capricious, a problem often explained by racism. Even though 50% of all murder victims nationwide are black, almost 85% of the victims in death-penalty cases are white, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Since 1976, only four white defendants have been executed for killing blacks, yet 75 black defendants have been executed for murdering whites.
- "Blacks who kill whites are 19 times as likely to be executed as whites who kill blacks.[...]
- "A 1994 staff report by the House Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights found that in cases where the [federal] government decided to seek capital punishment under the drug-kingpin statute, 89% of the defendants were either black or Latino. More recent statistics show little improvement. Of the 133 defendants authorized for death-penalty prosecution from 1988 to 1998, 76% were members of racial minorities.
- "Recently, Attorney General Janet Reno has sought the death penalty in a brutal multiple murder at a Washington, DC Starbucks but not for the similar case at an area McDonalds. Was it because the alleged Starbucks killer is black and two of the victims were white while all of the McDonald's victims and the perpetrator were black?"
(Added: 22-Feb-2000 Hits: 1 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
- "Breathing while black"
- "Given the hue and cry over racial profiling -- particularly the state trooper-created "offense" of "driving while black" -- it's a little strange that so little has been made of the recent ruling of a federal appeals court in New York.
- The ruling, in effect, dismissed the claims of black male residents of Oneonta, N.Y., and black male students at the State University of New York College at Oneonta (SUCO) that they were mistreated by local police in a 1992 sweep in search of a burglary suspect.
- You may remember the case. A 77-year-old woman in the mostly white town of about 10,000 said she was attacked by a black man in her home near the SUCO campus. She told police she hadn't seen her attacker's face, but knew (by looking at his hands, one of which held a knife) that he was black and (by watching his gait as he crossed her room) young.
- The police asked a SUCO administrator for a list of its black male students. The list of some 125 names was handed over, and the police tried to locate and question everyone on it. When that yielded nothing useful, police swept the town, stopping almost every black man they saw and inspecting their hands for cuts. (The attack victim said she thought her assailant might have cut himself.)[...]
- Some of those who were stopped sued. They needn't have bothered. The case against Hartmark was dismissed in February 1997 by a three-judge U.S. Court of Appeals sitting in Manhattan. It was unclear whether the rights of the plaintiffs had been violated, the court ruled. A few weeks ago, that same 2nd Circuit court dismissed the complaints against the police administrators, saying their tactics did not constitute discriminatory racial profiling because the officers were looking for a suspect in a particular crime on the basis of a description.
- Some description. A description that fit almost every black and sprightly man in the town. […]
(Added: 22-Feb-2000 Hits: 3 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
- "Do the multiracial count?"
- in the continuing series from Salon: about how the category "multiracial" will be used on the 2000 census.
- Having worked in admissions before, the part about the University of California using SAT scores was vastly amusing.
(Added: 15-Feb-2000 Hits: 3 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
- "Gang of one": Texas vs the innocent
- "Critics say cops and prosecutors are too quick to label some minorities as gangsters [...] Today, at age 29, Le has one more year to serve on his three-year probation for conviction on a reduced charge, of robbery. But Le insists he's not a robber, much less a gang member. And he finds himself an unwitting example of what Asian community activist and attorney Tom Hoang says is a troubling trend: police slapping young Asian-Americans with gang-member labels when they're not gangsters. If a prosecutor proves that a defendant committed a crime as part of an organized group, that evidence can increase the penalty by a degree. But Hoang and other defense attorneys say that the mere suspicion of gang membership can lead to the conviction of innocent people."
(Added: 22-Feb-2000 Hits: 1 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
- "Killing with Prejudice: Race and the death penalty in the USA"
- Produced by Amnesty International
- "Beyond any reasonable doubt, the US death penalty continues to reflect the deeply-rooted prejudices of the society that condones its use. Amnesty International cannot find any evidence that current legal safeguards eliminate racial bias in the application of the death penalty."
(Added: 22-Feb-2000 Hits: 2 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
- "Profiling the racial profiler" by Randall Kennedy
- (from Intellectual Capital, Thursday, December 3, 1998)
- "I do not doubt that some officers do stop some motorists solely on the basis of skin color. But that is not the main problem. Police action based exclusively on the basis of race certainly is objectionable. But it also is certainly of marginal significance.
- "Virtually all police chiefs would condemn an officer who stopped someone solely on a racial basis. So would virtually all judges. In other words, a consensus that police should not stop or question people solely because of race already exists.
- "The real problem, the difficult question, and the inquiry that sparks controversy, is whether police should be able to consider race at all."
- For what it's worth, this article was written about a year before Brown vs Oneonta was issued. It would seem that not all judges would consider race an invalid reason for stopping people.
(Added: 22-Feb-2000 Hits: 2 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
- "Race Over"
- What a terribly hopeful (if that's the word) and thoroughly misguided person this is.
- At the very least, the time scale in the essay is WAY too condensed.
- Then again, as long as you don't let it blind you to what is, there's nothing wrong with hope and vision. After all, without those, we'd probably never get anywhere.
(Added: 23-Feb-2000 Hits: 2 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
- "Trial and Error": Illinois vs the innocent
- " A Tribune investigation found hundreds of homicide cases where prosecutors violated their oath by hiding evidence or twisting the truth. Innocent people went to prison, some to Death Row."
(Added: 22-Feb-2000 Hits: 2 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
- "When Rights are Wrong: Chicago's paradox of unwanted rights"
- "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."--Benjamin Franklin.
- It is, I should think, safe to say that Franklin could not have foreseen the modern housing project. Nonetheless, the dictum probably applies here as well as during a rebellion. After all, once the right to illegal search and seizure has been conceded for a given situation, what's to prevent it from being expanded to cover less critical situations?
(Added: 22-Feb-2000 Hits: 1 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
- l'Affaire Rocker continue, or, major brain damage strikes again
- ...and NOW the players' association protests.
- Can I just say that I think the baseball players' association are a bunch of craven cowards? They should have protested the original "treatment" sentence, let alone this. I mean, if physical assault is usually unpunished, or frequently lightly punished, then he frankly did nothing to deserve this.
- Yes, I still think that somewhere in his heart of hearts, Rocker is a racist pig. But, you know, strange as it may seem, the constitution pretty much guarantees you the right to BE a racist pig. Freedom of speech isn't worth much if it's not the freedom for unpopular idiotic speech. If he'd been saying the same things at a gay pride rally or a MLK day event ... well, he'd have really gotten what he deserved, but that's another issue. At least in that case, the well-traveled "you don't yell fire in a crowded theatre and you don't incite" exceptions would apply.
- Besides, I think just trying to exist in major league bseball, let alone on his team, would be punishment enough for the next year.
(Added: 1-Feb-2000 Hits: 1 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
- Adjust your sets
- an article about why the NAACP's campaign aimed at the big broadcasters is ultimately not likely to work, despite short-term gains, and why it may not last.
(Added: 24-Jan-2000 Hits: 0 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
- All mixed up: black and white and taboo all over
- A special report from Salon on multiracial/mixed-race America. The first part is a report on why Hollyweird is so ... well, weird about showing mixed race couples on television. (Could it be because society at large is just a tad twitchy about them? ..... Naaaah.) In some ways it doesn't go far enough for me ... though I'm not sure what I want it to do. I just want more. Maybe the other articles in the series will do it when they come out.
(Added: 14-Feb-2000 Hits: 2 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
- Black Secret Service agents claim discrimination
- Well, given the problems the FBI has had with this, I can't say that I'm even vaguely surprised that the problem exists. I am surprised that it's taken so long for them to do anything about it, though.
(Added: 25-Feb-2000 Hits: 1 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
- Blacklist: Black History Month/Proud History
- An interesting take on Black History Month from Blackstripe.com, first done on Frontiers in 1998.
- I have to say, though, some of those profiles reach real hard. They infer a lot from what wasn't done or said, rather than what was. Nonetheless, interesting to read.
(Added: 16-Feb-2000 Hits: 3 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
- FBI investigating LAPD Rampart cases
- Including, it seems, charges of murder and attempted murder. It seems that the LA police chief is finally realizing that there's simply no way to manage this as a purely internal probe (DUH!) and has asked the FBI for more help.
(Added: 25-Feb-2000 Hits: 0 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
- Immigration woes
- "I don't qualify [for immigration] because I'm Latin American. I don't qualify because I don't have a lot of money. I don't qualify because I'm not heterosexual."
(Added: 25-Feb-2000 Hits: 1 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
- Jeb Bush's One Florida Initiative: yeah, right
- I must admit, none of this really surprises me. It should, but it doesn't.
- What will be interesting is to see whether or not this translates into higher black turnout in the November elections. It would be ironic if Jeb Bush's attempt to soften his conservative colleagues programs wound up not only costing the Republicans seats in the Florida legislature, but wound up costing the Republicans Florida.
- Well, one can hope, anyway.
(Added: 10-Feb-2000 Hits: 1 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
- KRON-TV: Black History Month
- KRON-TV in San Francisco does a special site for Black history month. A lot of biographies, a lot of brief history information, plus links to other web sites of interest.
(Added: 14-Feb-2000 Hits: 0 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
- LAPD deports witnesses to abuse
- It seems that, as a matter of policy, the LAPD would pick up Latinos who had witnessed police abuse, and get them deported. This despite official city and INS policy that said that witnesses to crimes wouldn't be asked about such things, because it meant that people wouldn't report crime if they'd get deported.
- Surprise surprise.
(Added: 25-Feb-2000 Hits: 0 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
- LAPD whistleblower sentenced to five years
- "He was sentenced under a plea bargain that grants him immunity for other crimes he has admitted to investigators, district attorney spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said earlier."
- I must admit to wondering precisely what those crimes are. Given what we know about, what admissions have come out, I'm thinking that he got a MAJOR free pass to get only a five-year sentence.
- At least the way things are going, he'll probably not be alone in jail too long. It looks like several of his fellow coppers might be joining him in a year or two.
- Then again, perhaps he'd rather take his chances with the other prisoners instead.
(Added: 25-Feb-2000 Hits: 0 Rating: 0 Votes: 0) Rate It
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