I do not recollect with precision, but there is an article posted on HN few years ago, showing the 80s archives of New York Times, in it NYT was squarely arguing for harsher sentencing and so were African American civic leaders.

May be there is racism that is institutional, but the point is most people even those who are against harsher sentences today thought it was a remedy. We will be failing ourselves if we cannot examine that fact and simply hitch and re-assign every "fucked up" decision to racism.

> May be there is racism that is institutional, but the point is most people even those who are against harsher sentences today thought it was a remedy.

That's exactly the irony of institutional racism: it's so rarely _consciously_ racist. It is often "colorblind".

> May be there is racism that is institutional, but the point is most people even those who are against harsher sentences today thought it was a remedy

I didn't. I thought it was racist back then. Many black leaders thought it was racist back then too

Now that's just crazy talk.

Have you studied the crack epidemic or have you simply slurped up some recent liberal political journalism?

> studied the crack epidemic

Your bias is showing. Crack arrest spree is more accurate. I was politically active while it was happening, so no, this isn't a recent observation.

Can I just add how incredibly rude "slurped up some recent liberal political journalism" is? You should be ashamed of the way you talk to strangers on the Internet.

> So what you're saying is that black people can't be trusted to have their own opinions because of institutional racism? Words fail

No, I'm saying that you cannot make an appeal to authority. It is a logical fallacy. Just because some blacks were in favor does not mean it was not racist

If this were a group of white politicians and community leaders seeking tougher sentences for crimes occurring in their neighborhoods, I'm pretty sure we'd be hearing a debate on the merits of the proposal.

But because black politicians and community leaders came to the conclusion that tougher sentences for crack dealers are warranted based on their experience it must be because of institutional racism. It's like they've come to a conclusion you don't agree with so you feel free to dismiss their agency. Help me out here, because it's the only way I can read this.

You keep repeating this argument. Its premise is invalid. It was not in fact black politicians that raised the sentences for crack cocaine in relation to powder cocaine; it was the overwhelmingly white US federal legislature.

That's... completely irrelevant. The harsher sentences had wide support from black leaders and politicians.

It's obviously not completely irrelevant, as your argument depends on a causal link between black support for crack sentencing laws and the adoption of those laws. In fact, no such causality is established, and it is indeed unlikely, given that the laws were passed by an overwhelmingly white legislature in the grip of a nationwide (largely unjustified) freakout about crime.

John Pfaff's "Locked In" is a great source for the background on this stuff (Pfaff would be the first to say that drug sentencing laws are not the reason for mass incarceration in the US, but that's not the question at issue in this thread).

And white politicions supported harsher sentences in the past as well. Do they speak for us today? Did they speak for everyone back then? Last I checked you only needed a simple majority to get elected.

> If this were a group of white politicians... we'd be hearing a debate on the merits of the proposal.

You can't know that.

When was the last time white community leaders and politicians proposed a policy to address a problem in their own neighborhood and were accused of institutional racism?

And thus that's the trap that has been set: if you don't follow the recommendations of black leaders, you're a racist. If you follow the recommendations of black leaders, you're a racist.

Even a poorly powered AI in 1983 figured out the only way to win is to not play the game.

That's not at all what they said.