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.