THBT The US Has Discriminatory Political Policies Regarding Minorities
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Full description: whether explicitly or implicitly, the US [United States] currently has political policies that unfairly treat minorities (blacks, Hispanics, Indians, and other under-represented groups).
Discrimination: the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex.
I was curious whether the crux of my Systemic Racism was flawed or not. Anyone other than Coal is free to accept.
i) Housing Policy
Laws like redlining -- that is, refusing a loan to people because they are a financial risk -- continue in the present. Blacks still have a problem obtaining loans to buy housing. The grandchildren of those who suffered under the racist policy result in a compounded disparity. Whites were able to buy houses and grow rich, while blacks lost those opportunities. [POL.H1] The discrimination within the mortgages and lack of wealth kept the communities separated by race. Home ownerships’ importance links back to racial inequality. Back in 1998, mortgages have been denied to minorities, widening the existing disparity. [POL.H2]
An expert delivers more detail on how federal, state, and local policy separated blacks from whites. Starting with a personal story from Ferguson, the discrimination from real estate agents is reinforced by policies. These include, but are not limited to racially explicit zoning decisions, housing projects, restrictive covenants, subsidies excluding blacks, and annexation designed to remove blacks. [POL.H3] Even though these effects are no longer explicit, they endure due to a lack of government action. And so the racial zoning continues, the penalty of those living in black neighborhoods increases, and in the author’s words, “we may be replicating segregation on the European model”.
Some opponents suggest that the disparate impacts do not relate to the racism, and thereby weaken the claims of further sections in this paper. However, as the Supreme Court decided, the Fair Housing Acts do not need to show explicit discrimination. The racial justice is designed to reduce the racial wealth gap. Even the Justice Department agrees with this idea. The impact matters because “no official policy required blacks and Latinos to get worse loans, but rather subtle racial biases driving the result” [POL.H4]. Beyond the explicit racism, we must take into account the subtler, implicit racism, deeply embedded in the US system. Even now, “poor whites end up living in richer neighborhoods than middle class Blacks and Latinos”. The results of housing discrimination shine through, and the impacts must be addressed to resolve the unfair practices contributing to economic disparities.
ii) Immigration Policy
Next, expert Elizabeth Aranda analyzes our racist immigration policies, which further the racial profiling previously stated. Our government effectively criminalizes merely based on the color of your skin. Even in her abstract alone, "policies and programs that exclude, segregate, detain, and physically remove immigrants from the country reproduce racial inequalities in other areas of social life through spillover effects that result in dire consequences for these immigrants and their kin." [POL.I1]
As the author continues, the detriments to the immigrants treat undocumented similar to sex offenders and murders. Along with this abhorrent act, the enforcement creates fear and vulnerability in the immigrant community. This in turn negatively affects the socioeconomic results of the immigrants. And we directly highlight how we perpetuate the inequality. Through her analysis, Aranda realizes that the laws spread the "meanings recursively across social levels", proving the foundation of systemic racism. While opponents would commonly say there exists an inherent inequality between minority races and whites, our practices perpetuate this inequality. And so our government is directly responsible for these outcomes listed above.
To add on another source, Sabo et al. prove the immigration-related mistreatment of Latino US citizens and residents. [POL.I2] Through their research, they find the local policy uses military-style tactics and weapons to oppress the minorities. These victims were mistreated and prove the “normalization of immigration-related mistreatment among the population”. Connecting back to the police’s use of racial profiling, it seems to me that we will use any justification to support our bias against minorities.
iii) Voting Policy
Even though the US Civil Rights Movement has made a lot of progress, blacks still lack political power, and endure discrimination in the electoral process. As American Progress describes, in 2011 and 2012, lawmakers in multiple states curbed registration drives. [POL.V1] Furthermore, US Supreme Court in Shelby County v Holder allowed strict voter ID requirement, suppressing thousands of black voters. Multiple other states also enacted this, closing polling places and limiting access to early voting. Furthermore, Native Americans, Latinos, and African Americans were noted as far more likely to experience discrimination while participating in politics.
Crime is not the main focus of this argument, but it is necessary to mention. POL.V1 also realizes that the war on drugs targeted people of color for arrest. Even though incarceration problems may be a bit different from explicit policies, the connection to disallowing felonies to vote means that any problems within the arrest system expand and discriminate against innocents. As a result, 9.5 million Americans lacked full voting rights due to felony convictions. If this wasn’t enough, Husted v A. Philip also allowed Ohio to purge more than 846,000 black voters, a severely disproportional amount. Even Florida also enacted a poll tax to target the black residents, despite the 24th amendment otherwise. And as a final nail in the coffin, despite the 14th amendment guaranteeing jurisdiction for those naturalized in the US, Trump declared an “executive order revoking the citizenship of any American with an undocumented parent”. As the racist policies extend all the way up to the very top, it seems impossible to deny US’s discriminatory policies. If this wasn’t enough, ACLU also supports this idea with noting about voter ID laws, registration restrictions, purges, and felony disenfranchisement. [POL.V2] The disproportionate amount of minority affected makes it clear that our policies are racist and biased.
It is near impossible that so many experts and news articles would waste time about an already-resolved problem. It would be even more unlikely for major corporations and powerful people to invest in the name of equality. With so many credible people speaking up about systemic racism in the US, it’s undeniable that it is a significant problem.
My voters, friends, the time to act against systemic racism is here and now. Already, six corporations have donated millions to billions of dollars to fight the inherent bias within people. [SUM3] Police and judges have not self-reflected or educated themselves enough, and the evidence I have provided is as resounding as any scientific theory. To deny the existence of systemic racism is to deny the very effort to fight for equality, and potentially return to a world where white males dominated and minorities are snuffed out like a candle. It is true that the Supreme Court has established a baseline with Brown V Board of Education. But it takes more than 12 to change the world and to demonstrate the lack of systemic racism.
- Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance, including state and local law enforcement agencies. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000d-1.
- Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, gender, and national origin. See 42 USC §§ 2000 - 2000e-17.
- The Immigration Reform & Control Act prohibits employment discrimination based on citizenship or national origin. See 8 U.S.C. § 1324.
- The Voting Rights Act prohibits various forms of voting discrimination, including the singling out, intimidation, and harassment of voters based on race, color, or speaking a minority language. See 52 U.S.C. §§ 10101 - 10702.
- The Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of dwellings, and in other housing-related transactions, because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin, and disability. See 42 U.S.C. §§ 3601-19.
- Executive Order 12898, issued on February 11, 1994, requires that each federal agency conduct its program, policies, and activities that substantially affect human health or the environment in a manner that does not exclude or otherwise subject persons to discrimination based on race, color, or national origin.
- Executive Order 13166, issued on August 11, 2000, requires each federal agency to take steps to ensure that eligible persons with limited English proficiency are provided meaningful access to all federally-assisted and federally-conducted programs and activities.
- Executive Order 13985, issued on January 20, 2021, establishes a whole-of-government initiative to address racial equity, support underserved communities, & redress systemic racism.
- Executive Order 14019, issued on March 7, 2021, establishes a whole-of-government initiative to promote equal access to voting for minorities.
- Shelby County v Holder didn't allow strict voter ID requirements. Rather, it allowed states to change election rules without "preclearing" these changes with the federal government.
- Pro doesn't show that strict voter ID requirements treat minorities unfairly in all cases, and Pro ignores the fact that federal courts have repeatedly struck down voter ID requirements that discriminate against minorities. See e.g. North Carolina NAACP v. McCrory (holding that a strict voter ID law violated the Constitution & Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act because it unfairly discriminated against blacks).
- Pro falsely claims that Florida enacted a poll tax targeted towards black residents. The truth:
- Florida required that felons (i.e. not just blacks, but anyone convicted of a felony) complete all the terms of their criminal sentences, including the payment of any fines or restitution. See Jones v. Florida. The more notable point here, which Pro ignores entirely, is that Florida allows ex-felons to vote.
- Systemic racism refers to race-based inequities that have nothing to do with "prejudice" or "unfair discrimination," but rather are the result of socially-mediated behavioral disparities. See Loury 2020.
- Systemic racism lacks any causal connection to specific political policies.
The key-takeaway to the peer-reviewed journal is a note on Obama’s election followed by restrictive voting laws. The stricter ID requirements lowered vote turnout, and further explained in Alabama, “white political control was nearly everywhere threatened by majority-black populations”. The redistricting plan in 2008 reduced the black population to only 29%, forcing the minority candidate to lose his seat. All in all, the author convincingly uses Body Out of Place to prove that individuals drive forth systemic racism policies. We must not allow this slippery slope to continue and have politicians abuse their power on citizens.
Silton further follows through with the nail in the coffin, noting how the Supreme Court's interpretations precisely destroyed the Constitutional amendments themselves, by lowering the standard to "mere articulable suspicion."
Though opponents suggest that blacks may commit more crimes, more in-depth research proves that Hispanics are the ones at risk in this argument. Within the point of black-and-white prison rates, the true overrepresentation is due to Hispanics inherently having a disadvantage. The key takeaway to a lengthy study display that due to their inability to understand the law, lack of resources, and poorness, they are overrepresented in prison [CRI2]. In the expert's words, officials believe they are less likely to rehabilitate -- despite lack of backing for this, lacking resources against sanctions, and especially limited English language skills. And so they conclude, "the white–Hispanic gaps in arrest and incarceration are large." Remember that my argument is primarily that we are partially at fault with assuming minorities to be criminals or evil, merely due to the societal disparities.
In summary, the standards for arrest are lower for blacks and other minorities, thus, the systemic racism is contributed through our laws’ loose restrictions.
- I never said that enforcement was "discriminatory."
- I said that it might lead to non-equal outcomes in some cases. There's difference.
- Pro asks, "if a policy allowed police to shoot at people because they deemed them severe harm, and this was used to discriminate and kill a disproportionate amount of black men, would this not be discriminatory?"
- Pro's logic would render all policies (no matter how neutral or impartial) racist because of the potential that racist individuals would enforce them in racist ways. Therefore, we must hold racist individuals accountable for racist enforcement, not the policy itself.
- To ensure that government officials don't abuse the discretion given to them by neutral policies, the US has an independent judiciary that protects minorities against the government itself. This is built into the system, and it's a bedrock of current US policy.
- Pro says that "enforcement policies are still a type of policy."
- Yes, that's true. But Pro doesn't actually identify any enforcement policies that are discriminatory. Per Biden's recent executive orders, it's clear that enforcement policies are quite different from the picture that Pro paints. And either way, the problem hasn't ever been enforcement policies, but rather bad actors who violate the policy.
- Pro refers to a so-called "expert."
- Being an "expert" doesn't make you right. And to the extent we're talking about "immigration policy," this "expert" isn't one. She doesn't have any understanding of immigration law at all (she completely mischaracterizes what the law is), her article is poorly-written & argued, filled with vague & obscure language, weak data that ignores a number of important variables, and numerous claims that lack any evidentiary basis at all. And most egregiously, she assumes that disparate outcomes evidence bias, despite no actual evidence of actual bias -- if you don't assume that disparate outcomes evidence bias, her entire argument reduces to nothing.
- Pro offers evidence of militarization at the border, but no evidence that this unfairly discriminates against any specific minority group.
As CON stated in his opening, "[t]his debate is about whether current US policy unfairly discriminates against minorities." In CON's words, mere demonstration of "past injustice" or "systemic racism," is not the same thing as establishing "current US policy towards minorities" that are discriminatory. Further as CON stated in R1, (i) civil rights laws protect minorities from discrimination and (ii) executive orders do the same. He listed numerous of them. PRO at no point meaningfully stated why any of the civil rights laws or executive orders identified by CON fail to prohibit discrimination against minorities, as became his burden once PRO cited them. Instead, PRO spent his characters trying to show that discrimination of the past, which CON did not dispute, translates into current discrimination. This he was unable to do because, as CON states in R4, even if it was true that the disparate outcomes identified by PRO were the case, they are better explained by "socially-mediated behavioral disparities" rather than the result of any "current US policy."
In my opinion, CON won this debate.
Further details on my opinion can be located at comments 10-13, which contain, respectively, Parts 1-3 of the same, that I will link below:
https://www.debateart.com/debates/3037/comment-links/37811
https://www.debateart.com/debates/3037/comment-links/37812
https://www.debateart.com/debates/3037/comment-links/37813
Yes, well said.
Yes. I try not the judge why when handling reported votes, but sometimes 'Why?!' goes across my brain.
Someone seriously reported my vote?
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>Reported Vote: Coal // Mod action: Not Removed
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>Points Awarded: 3 to con.
>Reason for Decision: See Votes Tab.
>Reason for Mod Action:
The vote was found to be sufficient per the site voting policy standards.
It's a solid vote, especially when factoring in the extra commentary offered.
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Didn’t keep up with the arguments. Gimme a bit to read through it and I’ll get back to you.
any feedback? Did I choose a bad premise?
3 of 3.
In R3-R4, PRO largely repeats the same arguments (with one ostensible exception I note below), with cumulative sources in support, while claiming (as he did in earlier rounds) that CON "dropped" arguments that CON did not "drop." I have admonished PRO about this misbehaviour in the past, and it seemingly has fallen on deaf ears. (Tangentially, I note my irritation with this species of misconduct, and would subject him to the same sort of corporal punishment I advocated for in American public schools, if he continues this recalcitrance and I was presented with the opportunity to do so. I nevertheless decline to award his opponent the conduct point, because the misbehaviour on PRO's part was, while egregious enough to merit discipline, not so egregious to tip the voting scale --- despite his lexicographical obnoxiousness, e.g., "completely and utterly dropped." A paddling is certainly well merited.) The one exception to PRO's cumulative arguments/sources was his newly introduced bit on criminal racial profiling, which though distinguished under a separate heading in R3, is really just the same thing he said in his immigration points.
In R3-R4, CON's rebuttal is refreshingly brief and to the point. A conspicuous difference from an otherwise long, tedious and often circuitous series of arguments from PRO. To wit, CON observes that, either generally or specifically with respect to housing, immigration, voting and racial profiling, "[p]ro still hasn't identified a current US policy that unfairly discriminates, or causes unfair discrimination, or even perpetuates it, and therefore Pro still hasn't come anywhere close to meeting his burden."
And I agree.
2 of 3.
In R2, PRO rebuts, contending that (i) with respect to housing, "policies allow for racism to continue to exist in the[ir] current implementation and action," and according to the Brookings source cited by CON, some form of de facto redlining still exists, which is itself discrimination; (ii) with respect to immigration, "direct criminalization of immigrants, and therefore racist policy, fulfill the premise of being a discriminatory political policy," and PRO claims his sources support his points; and (iii) with respect to voting, minorities experience disparate outcomes, which means that "[t]he progress that Con claims to have made are near to none in actual showing." PRO endeavors to state a definition for systemic racism, and substantiate his claim that it is the case in the USA. CON, on the other hand, states in R2 that "Current laws, regulations, & executive orders are the primary source of evidence for determining what US policy is, and taken together, this evidence shows that current US policies strongly oppose unfair treatment of minorities." According to CON, merely allowing racism to exist is not identification of " any current policies that unfairly discriminate against minorities." As applied in the contexts cited by PRO, (i) there is no evidence, based on the examples alluded to by PRO, that the state of affairs in housing is the result of discrimination, and, based on CON's subjective experience, alternative explanations apply, such as people's preferences in where they live; (ii) with respect to immigration, "Pro doesn't actually identify any enforcement policies that are discriminatory"'; and (iii) with respect to voting, the policies identified by PRO result in "no unfair discrimination of minorities" in the present, based on the evidence to which PRO cites. Systemic racism is once again addressed.
1 of 3.
PRO argues the US does while CON argues that the US does not. Generally, PRO's argument focused on past discrimination which, he contends, "continue to legally or informally uphold segregated realities for . . . minorities." In support, PRO cites (i) housing, (ii) immigration and (iii) voting. In rebuttal of PRO's R1 arguments, CON notes (i) housing discrimination in the form of redlining (as identified by PRO) is not the current policy of the United States, by law or happenstance; (ii) the state of affairs in the world does not evidence discriminations against minorities based on (a) PRO's own sources and (b) the current leadership of certain companies; and (iii) voting discrimination of the type identified by PRO is prohibited by, at least, the executive order to which CON cites and the "poll tax" identified by PRO is no such thing. CON notes that PRO's references to systemic racism lack clarity, though as that term is commonly understood he provides no evidence in support.
My vote notwithstanding, I note, however, that PRO does seem to be getting a little bit better at debating as time goes on. And he should heed the feedback he has received from others, including Whiteflame and myself, in future debates. In my opinion, PRO did better here than he did in his debate against me on a similar subject. So there is improvement, and improvement is good.
sorry about introducing so many new arguments, I realize I've been researching too many historical ideas and not enough current issues. Hope it's okay.
POL.H4's citation link is broken. Take a look at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d3sKrct__5djaXh-e0fFa7EvH1flWS0y/view?usp=sharing if you need to see the actual supreme court decision. [Hereby called POL.H5]
Sources:
POL1. https://v.gd/racialformation
POL.H1. https://v.gd/redlining
POL.H2. huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/Americas-Homeownership-Gap.pdf
POL.H3. https://www.epi.org/publication/making-ferguson/#epi-toc-3
POL.H4. https://www.demos.org/blog/why-disparate-impact-claims-are-essential-racial-justice
POL.I1. https://v.gd/immigrationracism
POL.I2 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953614001026
POL.V1.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2019/08/07/473003/systematic-inequality-american-democracy/
POL.V2 https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/block-the-vote-voter-suppression-in-2020/
OV1. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4133127/
OV2. https://v.gd/SystemicJimCrow
OCC1. https://v.gd/journalhealthracism
SUM2. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1948550617751583
SUM3. raliance.org/6-companies-taking-action-to-confront-systemic-racism/
Oh no... I suspect I made a terrible mistake.
Had I not already completed a debate with Undefeatable on this very subject, I would take it up, but everything I have to say on the subject was said then. Besides, there have been other debates on this issue by other members, and they have seldom drawn much interest by voters. I conclude it is not now a hot button, if it ever really was. Personally, I suggest we give the Left a break and ignore this red herring excuse for social unrest. It is a sufficiently whipped talking point and I wish BLM would just SYF, and the 1619 project would join 2021.
He also included in the description that the policy could be "implicitly" racist. Which means he will simply find any policy where one's personal interpretation leaves the possibility of implicit racism. Then he will give an example of a negative outcome, claim that it was caused by the implicit racism of the policy, and accuse you of victim blaming if you try to attribute the negative outcome to something like fatherlessness rather than racism.
When you view the world through the oppressor/oppressed lens of Critical Race Theory, race is everything and everything is racist.
The resolution says "has discriminatory policies," not "had discriminatory policies." Few would argue that practices like Jim Crow wasn't discriminatory. Yet, none could even begin to coherently argue that such practices continue today.
I slightly disagree, but I don't have enough data, knowledge, or energy to back my position up, so I'll let someone else take this debate.
just curious, you disagree with the premise right? I'm not 100% clear how you defeated Redlining and immigration, but voters somehow thought you won on that aspect as well.