Entries Tagged as 'Racism'
10 March 2008 · Comments Off
Via The Sentencing Project, I encountered this little bit of love given to the U.S. by the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination:
The Committee remains concerned about the disparate impact that existing felon disenfranchisement laws have on a large number of persons belonging to racial, ethnic and national minorities, in particular African-American persons, who are disproportionately represented at every stage of the criminal justice system.
The article also mentions that 13% of all African-American men are precluded from voting due to felon disenfranchisement laws.
I’ll repeat something I’ve written before: while I certainly have no problem with removing certain miscreants from free society’s rights and privileges, I am uncomfortable with anything less than the notion that once a person has paid their debt to society, they should have the rights and privileges of a free person again.
And, if there’s concern that such reinstatement might pose a hazard to society…why are we releasing those folks?
Tags:
Crime · Elections · Disenfranchisement · Racism · Voting Rights
4 January 2008 · Comments Off
Seen in the Courant:
Doctors are more likely to prescribe strong painkillers for white patients than for blacks and other minorities, according to a finding that researchers say may spotlight bias in the emergency room.[...]
In the study, opioid narcotics were prescribed in 31 percent of the pain-related visits involving whites, 28 percent for Asians, 24 percent for Hispanics and 23 percent for blacks.[...]
In more than 2,000 visits for kidney stones, whites got narcotics 72 percent of the time, Hispanics 68 percent, Asians 67 percent and blacks 56 percent.
I do, however, wonder what sorts of normalization was done to account for social or economic differences. I’ve got to believe that there is some correlation among ethnicity, cultural opinions about meds, how pain is expressed, whether patients are able to afford and willing to pay for meds, etc.
Tags:
Health · Bias · Racism
