Right, but the parent's point is that this aspect skews representation quite a bit. (I'm not sure of the constitutionality) but one option would be to not count prisoners or non-voters when tallying up representatives. My understanding is that Canada allows people in prison to vote--this would solve it more simply. I also understand the jurisdiction for someone in prison is their address prior to being incarcerated--which sounds like an even better solution.

I know it's SOP to strip voting for felons. It's been enough of a challenge to restore voting rights in many areas, but there are other ways to address this problem and basically incentivize this.

Prison gerrymandering is a triple-whammy in a sense. Not only is the prisoner stripped of their right to vote, the [likely white] community where the prison is located is allowed to count the prisoner in their census for the purposes of allocating resources at every level of government AND the community where the prisoner is from loses a Census taker.

I recently heard someone describe it as an echo of the three-fifths compromise. I also hadn't realized HR1 and other bills look to be making progress at getting rid of the practice:

https://www.congress.gov/amendment/116th-congress/house-amen...

Black Americans are 0.5% of the population of the world, but fully 8% of its prisoners. Race is certainly relevant when you're talking about the US.

Now do crime stats

Poor people commit more crimes.

We made sure black people were poor by enslaving them and then systematically discriminating.

We white people owe the descendants of slaves reparations. Inequality gets worse over generations, not better.

Mormons were prosecuted too. Kicked out of Missouri. They GTFO'd and trekked west and established new settlements. Jews also have a history of prejudice, yet they seem to always leave their next generation better off.

At some point people just have to fight for what's theirs in this world, not always gonna be someone to help us up.

The Mormons kicked out of Missouri were free people before and after. They had access to all kinds of resources, were allowed to get an education, own land, accumulate wealth and (with limited exceptions) vote, etc.

Meanwhile basically all Black people in America were enslaved for the next 30 years, millions died under slavery and millions were suddenly freed and given nothing. "Separate but equal" wasn't even for another 30 years and segregation & Jim Crow were another 70 years after that!

By the time Black people were reasonably allowed to participate in US society, politics & business they had been forcibly held back in the only ways to get ahead (accumulating education, land and money) by hundreds of years.

Yes. Any wealth accumulation even by free Black communities was repeatedly undermined and destroyed.

The bombing of Black Wall Street (Greenwood-Tulsa) is the most infamous example: the only air bombings to be set upon the continental United States were a campaign of racial terror.

Numerous examples exist of freedman communities being completely eradicated using public works projects. Entire towns flooded when it came to decisions to create dams and neighborhoods bulldozed when the interstate expressways were run through cities.

https://twitter.com/ericabuddington/status/13752633634716549...

> the only air bombings to be set upon the continental United States were a campaign of racial terror.

They weren't the only aerial bombings in the continental US.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_MOVE_bombing

Yeah, that's really not so different from being sold naked in irons at slave auctions for centuries. Also similar is the way everyone can identify jews by the star on their foreheads, and mormons by the bright glow of their genitals.

That view is unreasonable and those are deeply incomparable examples.

People who aren't arrested and convicted don't show up in crime stats, so crime stats and punishment stats are identical. You're begging the question.

That begs the question entirely. Only the people convicted of a crime make up the relevant crime statistics.

Now adjust for context.

I just did, and you didn't like it :)

Race Realism is widely discredited bullshit, thanks

Hahahaha

By income level, ignoring race.

Bear in mind that the criminal incarceration system in this country in its founding documents is constructed to create an involuntary labor force.

> Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-13/

The 21st century EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is interpreted similarly:

> For the purpose of this article the term "forced or compulsory labour" shall not include: (a) any work required to be done in the ordinary course of detention imposed according to the provisions of Article 5 of this Convention or during conditional release from such detention; (b) any service of a military character or, in case of conscientious objectors in countries where they are recognised, service exacted instead of compulsory military service; (c) any service exacted in case of an emergency or calamity threatening the life or well being of the community; (d) any work or service which forms part of normal civic obligations.

https://fra.europa.eu/en/eu-charter/article/5-prohibition-sl...

See earlier 1953 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) Article 4 at https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/European_Convention_for_the_P...

This doesn't invalidate the point, it reinforces it. It's a system that continues, rooted in the structural foundations of the governments of historically colonial/slave-trading powers.

It's not exactly surprising to see an exemption carved out for it in European documents.

It's indeed lamentable that we live in a society where forced community and military service is considered necessary. But it's a tad myopic to believe such constitutional exceptions are rooted in "colonial/slave-trading powers". You're pushing a narrative that just doesn't fit the facts. Just because penal systems were coopted to further discriminatory ends doesn't mean these exclusions are intrinsically rooted in Jim Crow or colonialism. Such a misdiagnosis is a recipe for failure in reform--both regarding specific, discriminatory abuses, and more general abuses that arise from the fact these exceptions are far more deeply and universally rooted in global human civilization. Show me a single country that doesn't impose incarceration, for example? (Incarceration isn't usually an enumerated exclusion simply because, for whatever reasons, it's more typically understood that incarceration or similar deprivation of rights is implicitly excluded from any enumerated right granting freedom of movement. Indeed, the labor as punishment exclusion is presumably more common precisely because societies happen to be more self-aware about the conflict given the relatively recent history in the West abolishing slavery and servitude.)

that provision doesn't necessarily imply maliciousness though. for instance, allowing for prisoners to be required to do work for the jurisdiction, and usually for the prison itself, while incarcerated. it's not unreasonable to expect prisoners to work off their debt to society in some manner (better yet if it develops the useful skills and experience at the same time).

but where that goes wrong is when prisoners are working for private interests for slave wages (i.e., food and shelter) and the difference being pocketed by said private interest rather than going to pay for said incarceration.