I don't think it's intrinsic to the concept of human rights
Nobody said it was. But it is almost definitionally true that the people most at risk of having their individual or human rights infringed are those people who are subject to the most forceful remedies of the state. And these are, by and large, not people for whom it is easy to have sympathy.
Illuminating of what exactly that would make their view more "important" (as stated above) than the views of law abiding citizens?
It is easy to treat a good and compliant person well; observing someone do this tells us little. It is harder to treat someone “bad” well, so seeing this happen can give us greater confidence that people in positions of power are treating others equally, free from prejudice. It’s tells us more, and thus is more important.
I think if you break it down more granularly, you'll see that what police interactions vary more within, for example, ethnic groups, than between ethnic groups, based on characteristics such as past criminal history, etc.
You might; I can’t say. It doesn’t ameliorate unequal treatment on the basis of other characteristics, regardless.
Both groups get equal protection under the law. That's not what's being discussed here. It's more whether they deserve equal criticism by the media and politicians, and there the message is relevant.
The focus on minorities seems always a bit strange to me and a bad start to argue for more civil liberties. Everyone should be equal under the law and I talk about civil liberties that are enshrined in law.
That doesn't mean minorities are not at a disadvantage or that everyone being equal under the law describes reality, but the best way to help with that are universal human rights and their strict enforcement. Minorities are too often used as a shield to their disadvantage. Using minorities as an argument to restrict speech for example is a very common example and plainly wrong.
I think the rankings in the US are correct and not really in the top class, but I do believe that the US ends its paranoia trip at some point. Maybe wishful thinking.
Germany has some better rankings but really lacks in freedom when compared to the US.
> These "judges, jurries and prosecutors" are just people who don't want to associate with potentially dangerous people regardless of the legal outcome.
This is true, but also has excused discrimination in the past (e.g. white flight), and can very easily lead to the tarring and feathering of innocent people.
At the individual level, not associating with potentially dangerous people is fine and smart. When large swaths of people avoid the same potentially dangerous people, though, the "potentially" part really does merit a bit more weight.
I believe Duskstar's point was that minorities without records would be treated better, and non-minorities with records would be treated worse. Thus, police would react to someone's criminal history, and not just their skin color.
But the thing is that they had to apply the law differently to interject that bias/persecution. If you can show that they applied it differently based on race or some other factor, then it should be sufficient... if you have police and a DA that are willing to do their jobs (they aren't, cause they're all buddy buddy). Doing it this way (looking for discrepancy in fact of law without explaination) shouldn't involve politics.
The "law" and police are regularly used as an instrument of oppression.
Certainly you know gay clubs used to be raided and gay people arrested and beaten up by the police not until that long ago.
In Russia today it's the police making sure no one speaks their mind.
The Uyghurs in China are persecuted by Chinese law and order.
Blacks in the deep south a century ago? And goes on and on and on…
But yeah… historically if you have been a white straight cis man the law has maybe not have been that mean towards you since the end of feudalism. Other people though…
As the wiki article notes, this kind of argument tends to not be very successful.
One guidepost on when Equal Protection claims are more likely to be successful is the notion of "strict scrutiny" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_scrutiny). For instance, if prosecutions are taken against people of one ethnic group, then these prosecutions are subject to a higher degree of judicial scrutiny and are more likely to be overturned.
As the parent comment to this one notes, targeting the most lucrative violator would seem to not be prejudicial in this way.
I don't think there is much commonality of purpose with many of the legal/governmental trends today, other than acting out of fear of some perceived bogeyman (though not necessarily the same one in each case) or in the interests of a powerful minority at the expense of the majority (ditto).
Still, it doesn't matter to a black kid in London whether he's being excessively hassled because a senior officer made an active decision to employ racial profiling or because of institutional racism within the Met. The consequence is still the same.
Moreover, in most of the worst cases today, there really is someone actively making those decisions. Guantanamo Bay did not become what it is by accident. The West did not invade Iraq by accident, and the Blair administration did not fail to notice the two million citizens marching in protest to demonstrate that the war did not have popular support. More recently, the police did not detain peaceful protestors in London in a restricted area for hours without food, water or toilet facilities by accident, and the courts that condoned such behaviour did not reach their decision without looking at the evidence to establish the facts of what really happened and why.
These actions all had different victims, and obviously some had much more serious consequences than others. The one thing they all have in common is authorities that are granted powers in law that most of us don't get using those powers in ways that conflict with what we used to consider basic human rights and getting away with it. However well-intentioned they might have been in their actions, however they rationalised those decisions in their own minds, some rights and freedoms should be above interference by the administration of the day, whoever the victims are and however small their number, and any decent human being ought to stand up for those rights and freedoms wherever they are threatened. As I said, I think that is exactly the warning Pastor Niemoeller was trying to give us.
True, yet acting as US is a country that should be a moral example where such things never happen also doesn't help, a country where having the wrong skin colour might be a death sentence when stoped by the police.
Not much different than being stop by the police in more dubious countries.
> Leaving hazy judgement calls up to the police for enforcement, at least in the US, has not fared particularly well for non-white people. See, for example, the history of enforcement of "jaywalking", a "crime" which was recently decriminalized in California for precisely that reason
You will notice that this wasn't solved by setting up enforcement cameras on every street that ticket all jaywalkers equally.
Hmm--that doesn't match my impression. Rather, police would presumably stop and frisk people they pattern-matched as up to no good. (Popular niceties notwithstanding, police generally know the score.) If some group is committing a disproportionate number of crimes, it's entirely reasonable that they'd be stopped more.
I want my police to skillfully work on the crime problem, not carefully spend equal minutes on each demographic group.
I get it and I have no disagreement with qualifying the numbers. It's a very complicated issue, but, if it is in fact true, when controlled for all other factors, if a particularity defined demographic group engages in disproportionate amount of criminal activity (less or more), then wouldn't you expect that that would filter down to the individual interactions?
If an individual police officer is choosing who to frisk (or interact with), and the only things they have to go on are visible superficial characteristics (i.e. age, gender, ethnicity, clothing, etc.), and the global fact that those characteristics are statically correlated with more or less crime, that would be impossible for an individual to control their biases.
We know this is a painful exercise, because people are not just those superficial characteristics, and it's unfair for an individual to be singled out for those characteristics - but that's the ONLY information available to the officer.
The officer cannot control their bias, because if they try, they will either over or under compensate and because they are human. It's why we have double-blind trials and the scientific method - we know even well-meaning humans cannot control their biases. And this isn't an example of racism, because it could clothing or gender that trigger the frisk (I guarantee you that men are stopped more than women - WHY?!?!?), but aspect of human cognition. The only way to control for that is by introducing a non-biased random decision maker. For example, in airport security, there will be a device that will randomly flag passengers for extra screening. Perhaps something like that should be the case in these 'stop-and-frisk' policies? But even that has limited value. If a particular neighborhood with issues of crime, is dominated by an ethnic group, even random sample will involve disproportionate 'harassment'.
A while back Sam Harris had a debate with an airport security expert on profiling in airport security[1]. Sam Harris advocated for profiling and security expert was not. Sam Harris was 100% wrong and didn't admit it. The security expert talked about how proper airport security should work (and the problems with profiling and how to control for that). That debate has analogues to this conversation, because police should adopt some of those strategies because profiling is socially painful and breeds resentment and has limited success ... and individuals will not make the right decision in context.
If we're talking about what a state considers to be marginal groups, you must not compare your own imagined experiences if you're not part of a marginal group. The consequences of being caught by the police as a black man, for example, is far far worse in the US than it is in China or many other places. This is also a much more likely event.
You might want to try arousing the suspicions of your own state to see how it really reacts. You might be disappointed.
When people see others in the neighbourhood that fit a 'pattern they might associate with criminality' this has nothing to do with viewing 'others that need to be punished' rather just a fearful view of difference, and probably lack of exposure to people that creates some low-key bigotry. Throw in some neuroticism and too much free time, possibly some mental health issues and it's a problem.
You would be surprised how controversial this is. Try saying all civilians should be protected, or should have equal rights. The racist will come and tell you how one side is more important than the other to have the same rights to life, dignity and safety.
Nobody said it was. But it is almost definitionally true that the people most at risk of having their individual or human rights infringed are those people who are subject to the most forceful remedies of the state. And these are, by and large, not people for whom it is easy to have sympathy.
Illuminating of what exactly that would make their view more "important" (as stated above) than the views of law abiding citizens?
It is easy to treat a good and compliant person well; observing someone do this tells us little. It is harder to treat someone “bad” well, so seeing this happen can give us greater confidence that people in positions of power are treating others equally, free from prejudice. It’s tells us more, and thus is more important.
I think if you break it down more granularly, you'll see that what police interactions vary more within, for example, ethnic groups, than between ethnic groups, based on characteristics such as past criminal history, etc.
You might; I can’t say. It doesn’t ameliorate unequal treatment on the basis of other characteristics, regardless.
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