The justice system is not racist

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Description

This debate is over whether or not the justice system is actually racist

Round 1

02.22.2023 03:14AM

Pro

Forfeited

02.22.2023 03:21AM

Con

Preamble:

I shall use evidence to prove that the justice system has racial bias in sentencing against African Americans compared to whites, and is therefore racist.

Were it not racist, then equal sentences for equal crimes would be the standard.

1. Terrorism:

I offer this simple Modus Ponens (“mode of affirming”) syllogism:

P1: If white people committing violent acts of terrorism is legally tolerated, then the system is racist.
P2: White men are not legally punished for committing violent terrorism against African Americans.
C1: Therefore, the justice system is racist!

Speaks for itself.

Over the course of two days, white terrorists burnt down 35 city blocks driving 9000 people into homelessness, and further murdered 300 people plus injured 800 more. Because they were whites targeting African Americans, they were not punished. Not one white person was arrested, and yet the police arrested African Americans for their barbarian neighbors deciding to murder them due to their skin color [1].

Speaks for itself.

2. Rape:

I offer this simple Modus Tollens (“mode of taking”) syllogism:

P1: If not racist, then African American offenders are given the same sentences for rape as white offenders.
P2: African American men are punished worse than whites.
C1: Therefore, the justice system is not non-racist!

Speaks for itself.

African American men are put to death for raping white women, whereas white men are not put to death for raping African American women [2].

Speaks for itself.

3. Averages:

It may be argued that those extremes do not speak of the averages. So let’s review the averages.

Whites even with a greater number of conventions, face less incarcerations and time in prison when incarcerated. Even with very similar rates of drug sales, African Americans are >8x more likely to be charged as drug dealers for selling said drugs. The list goes on [3]…

Sources:

Round 2

02.22.2023 05:21AM

Pro

Forfeited

02.22.2023 05:22AM

Con

Extend.

And please correct P3 to C1, for the first two major contentions.

Round 3

02.22.2023 07:22AM

Pro

Forfeited

02.22.2023 07:24AM

Con

Extend.

Due to the timing of this, I’ll most likely be missing next round.

Round 4

02.22.2023 09:24AM

Pro

Forfeited

02.22.2023 10:26AM

Con

Vote con!

Sir.Lancelot

02.23.2023 10:13PM

#19

I’ll debate you, Novice.
But I know your ego is too fragile to allow you to lose to me.

02.23.2023 10:11PM

#18

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@Barney

@Bones

Yeah, you already know I don't like my time being wasted.
I offered you three potential resolutions. Yes or no, are you going to debate me on them.

I will give you 3 tries to answer once again. If I don't get a yes/no, then I will just repeat the question. If you think I am going to get into some back and forth with you, you must be mistaken, because I not 10 years old. Feel free to keep running, or answer the question. If you just keep dodging...I mean, whatever.

02.23.2023 05:24PM

#17

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@Novice_II

---> tangents and rants about various personal problems and/or theories about me following him to his house
--> As I dislike being lied about and I insist you are lying, I'll happily accept a debate challenge from you on if that actually occurred on this site instead of merely inside your imagination.
-> Happy to debate Barney anytime, unfortunately it seems as if he is still running from me.

If you're not batshit insane, I'm still offering you a free win. But if you'd rather keep telling everyone who will listen that I'm "running" from you as evidenced by your inability to debate, then by all means keep at it.

02.23.2023 01:13PM

#16

We already have him making the claim that the Death Penalty is "[o]ccasionally necessary but misused." We can just debate a resolution along the lines of "The death penalty should be used in the United States, where I take a con position. We can also do a Gender Wage Gap topic (as stated previously) or the resolution "Being agnostic is more reasonable than being an Atheist," etc.

02.23.2023 01:03PM

#15

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@Barney

I see you mentioning your support of the death penalty, we could debate on that. If not, we could debate on some iterated topic from the gender pay gap -- a recent debate you did against some low hanging fruit. I am happy to make any of these debates happen.

02.23.2023 12:57PM

#14

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@Bones

Happy to debate Barney anytime, unfortunately it seems as if he is still running from me. To be honest, I don't even see him as serious competition anymore, but again, if he wants to debate I am available.

Tejretics

02.23.2023 11:29AM

#13

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@Barney

I agree with you about the causal relationship! All I was saying is the argument needed to be proven in the debate, rather than criticizing its truth out of round (for example, citing a study that controlled for income differences directly, or used a quasi-experimental approach). Trivially I wasn’t making the reverse causality claim in the RFD, just the omitted variables one.

02.23.2023 08:33AM

#12

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@Tejretics

-> "Con doesn’t explain why this debate has to be set in the United States"
This is true, I could have used almost anywhere. There just happened to be a few good examples from the USA which popped into my mind quickly.

-> "nor do they do much work in tying these disparities to racism in the justice system"
I did leave it as correlation without proving causation. I'll defend that correlation implies a causal relationship, and deductively it seems unlikely that their skin color is caused by mistreatment within the criminal justice system.

A confounding variable to that is of course wealth. Thankfully the large sample sizes allows us to statistically determine that it only partly explains the disparity.

02.22.2023 11:53PM

#11

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@Bones

Interestingly, we have a debate which heavily touched on this:
https://www.debateart.com/debates/3415-derek-chauvin-was-not-a-racist

Melcharaz

02.22.2023 10:00AM

#10

this could have been a good example of tautology. oh well.

Bones

02.22.2023 08:17AM

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@Barney

@Novice_II

You two should really push the as of late lacking quality of debates outside of its current state by debating this topic.

02.22.2023 06:54AM

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@AustinL0926

I do not think it should be outright mandatory even then. However, that would be a suitable time for it to be on the table.

AustinL0926

02.22.2023 06:29AM

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@Barney

So you think that anyone who is:

a. accused of multiple murders
b. proven to be guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt

should receive the DP? I could see a few problems with that...

02.22.2023 06:17AM

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@AustinL0926

Serial killers with no serious doubt as to their guilt.

E.g., someone caught shooting up a school should be put to death, O.J. Simpson should not due to there being /some/ doubt.

AustinL0926

02.22.2023 05:29AM

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@Barney

In what circumstances would it be necessary?

02.22.2023 05:25AM

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@NoahMetz14

You've missed half the debate, but can still come back. At this point I do advise doing it as a rematch with a larger time window.

My arguments are setup to serve more as a sample of how to argue online. You could literally copy/paste and apply minimal editing, to switch them to be favoring the other side.

02.22.2023 04:48AM

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@AustinL0926

Occasionally necessary but misused.

AustinL0926

02.22.2023 04:21AM

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@Barney

What are your opinions on the death penalty, out of curiosity?