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Some of us old dopers were luckier, or smarter, or ---lighter skinned. Useful talking follows experience, the more experience the better. Talking that precedes experience is known as bullshit.
while we're on prison systems, how about
Over the last three decades 12 million Americans have lost the right to vote for all or most of their adult lives.
Prisoners Prohibited from Voting
We have been interviewing current and former prisoners in New York , Connecticut, and Ohio about their voting histories, attitudes about voting, and knowledge and understanding of the rules of disenfranchisement that apply to them. We find that prior to disenfranchisement they registered and voted at rates similar to the general population (40 to 50 %) and most would like to do so again. As few realize they have the right to vote, their registration and voting rates post-release are reduced to half of what they were before. This is accompanied by a time lag in getting back on the roles that effectively doubles the years of voting life lost to disenfranchisement. A recent study by The Sentencing Project finds sharp disparities in the effects of disenfranchisement by race: in Atlanta one of every seven African American males is disenfranchised. So as the imprisonment rate for blacks has climbed over 3 decades, long traditions of voting in many black families have been broken – each successive generation votes at lower rates than the previous one. This is true of all Americans since the 1960s, but the rates are most pronounced in black communities, where 30-40% of the men have been disenfranchised. A study by the University of Virginia School of Law finds that in states with the harshest disenfranchisement laws the overall voter turnout among African Americans is 13% lower than those who disenfranchise only for prison time. And that may be no accident.
As few realize they have the right to vote, their registration and voting rates post-release are reduced to half of what they were before. This is accompanied by a time lag in getting back on the roles that effectively doubles the years of voting life lost to disenfranchisement.
A recent study by The Sentencing Project finds sharp disparities in the effects of disenfranchisement by race: in Atlanta one of every seven African American males is disenfranchised. So as the imprisonment rate for blacks has climbed over 3 decades, long traditions of voting in many black families have been broken – each successive generation votes at lower rates than the previous one. This is true of all Americans since the 1960s, but the rates are most pronounced in black communities, where 30-40% of the men have been disenfranchised. A study by the University of Virginia School of Law finds that in states with the harshest disenfranchisement laws the overall voter turnout among African Americans is 13% lower than those who disenfranchise only for prison time.
And that may be no accident.
gee, ya think not?
the technique of establishing draconian punishments for minor offences, then enforcing those punishments with extreme racial bias, then disenfranchising the convicted, is as neat a "democratic" way of reversing universal suffrage and creating apartheid-in-all-but-name as you could wish. those who follow US electoral history will probably be thinking "Southern Strategy" at this point. yup... The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
