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Politics : Al Gore vs George Bush: the moderate's perspective -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GUSTAVE JAEGER who wrote (2890)	10/17/2000 2:12:23 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10042

Note I said IF it is true. It definitly used to be true overall, and it is also true for certain specific cases, but evidence about how much it is true overall is conflicting and uncertain. Actually I think you are misindentifying when the discrimination is likely to take place. Either a black rapist and a white victim or a white rapist and a black victim is likely to result in a highly charged case. In my opinion the most likely case to draw less attention and possibly less vigourous prosecution would be when you have a black rapist and a black victim. This type of discrimination however will not be effected at all by hate crime laws. There're so many things in life that SHOULD BE.... And yet, after 224 years of independance and about 40 years since the civil rights mayhem, minorities are still, patiently waiting for the US legislator "to fix it"! So since you see that the problem has not been resolved over many years you give up hope of addressing the real problem? If different racial groups are not being treated fairly then the only answer is to start treating them fairly. Makeing new crimes for certain protected groups doesn't treat anyone fairly. As for actually "fixing it", I think there has been a lot of progress, but the only way to make things perfect is to change people's ideas. Blatent and obvious discrimination by prosecutors and courts can be dealth with by legal means. More subtle discrimination and predjudice can not be eliminated by law. The more radical cure to an unjust, prejudiced justice apparatus How is the "apparatus", prejudiced? People in it may be but you can only eliminate that by changeing the ideas and beliefs of the people except for in the most blatent cases. The answer then would be (in addition to promoting vigorous prosecution of all violent crimes) to strongly push the idea of treating people as people, not mainly as members of some group. Changeing the "hearts and minds" of millions of people this way can take a long time, and it may not ever be perfectly done (I would be surprised if unjust predjudice were ever complely eliminated), but it is directly addressing the problem rather than doing something just to be seen as doing something. One interesting fictional example of how predjudice is persistant and senseless - I saw an epsidose of a science fiction show recently. I think it is called "Alien Nation", but I'm not compelty sure. Anyway in this show there are about 200,000 aliens living in LA. In this episode there is a highly charged situation where there is a lot of predjudice against the aliens. One of the aliens is a cop. A black police officer complains about the alien being promoted saying "You give them a little authority and they get uppity." Tim