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Re:Scientists Back Kiera Wilmot by Tweeting About All the St... by tzs on Friday May 03, 2013 @01:44PM (#5651455)
That link you gave could equally well be used to support the argument that the prosecutor is prejudiced AGAINST white people. Set off a minor explosion at a school where it will put black people at a slight risk, he prosecutes. Kill a white kid, he does not prosecute.
Re:Scientists Back Kiera Wilmot by Tweeting About All the St... by KirinDave on Friday May 03, 2013 @01:53PM (#5651507)
Maybe, if America doesn't have a history of white-oppresses-black racism stretching back to before its founding as a country. Since it does, I do not thing any rational reader could com to that conclusion.

In either case, it doesn't matter. The point is the prosecutor really seems to be taking race into account on juvenile cases. Were they favoring black kids or unduly penalizing them is immaterial.

Re:Scientists Back Kiera Wilmot by Tweeting About All the St... by tzs on Friday May 03, 2013 @02:31PM (#5651734)
A rational reader could not come to any conclusion from the link you provided, because the two cases considered there are so different, and even if they were similar the sample size is way too small.
Re:Scientists Back Kiera Wilmot by Tweeting About All the St... by KirinDave on Tuesday May 07, 2013 @01:34PM (#5669469)
It is not small at all in the context of American history. It was really not so long ago that we were requiring black people to use separate water fountains from white people and blocking them from whole classes of employment. Many places in that region of the US still cling–perhaps unwittingly, I suppose–to extremely racist traditions like segregated public and private events. The statistics on black incarceration and economic status are well established.

So when someone raises the specter of racism in a powerful public office like this, the accusation warrants investigation if nothing else. And other people here have asked for hundreds of samples, but this prosecutor's data set (which is really the thing in question here) is really not that large.

What's more, it loses sight of the real problem! The real problem is a curious girl is being overly punished for experimenting. The laws that put her in this jeopardy should also be under attack in addition to investigating the racist factors that come to light.

Re:Scientists Back Kiera Wilmot by Tweeting About All the St... by scarmig on Friday May 03, 2013 @03:52PM (#5652264)
Yes. And the War on Drugs can be seen just as easily as evidence that the government is racially biased against white people, because it decides to protect blacks from the decimation of drugs in their own community while letting white teenagers smoking pot run wild in their own.