Judge_of_Java

In one of your answers, you briefly touched upon the fact that mass incarceration affects African Americans and Latinos disproportionately. How much of this is due to culture, as opposed to some vague idea of institutional racism?

For instance, 72% of African American children grow up in single parent households. Statistically, single parent households are among the poorest demographics regardless of race, and it's been shown that there exists a correlation between poverty and increased crime rates.

I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts, since (from what I can tell) society at large would rather ignore what I just said and focus on what everyone else can hand out to those who feel oppressed.

I apologize in advance if I come across as inflammatory. If I did, it wasn't my intention.

It's amazing to me that 100% of police shootings are apparently flawless decision making under stress and nobody blinks at that.

Nobody in their right mind has made the claim that those decisions were flawless and to do so would be horribly disingenuous. A lot of legal latitude is afforded to police officers on the basis that the shooting was reasonable. Most of the time, the threat of serious bodily harm to either the officer or a bystander is justification enough, but the metric by which this is determined is whether or not another officer, if placed in the same exact situation, would have also discharged their weapon.

So the shootings weren't justified based on '100% correct decisions by all participants.' The shootings were considered to be legally justified because the criteria by which justification is determined was adequately met in a court of law.

Meaning that 100% of the time the police did it perfectly according to the law.

With respect, I think you might be looking at it from the wrong angle, at least partially. "Justified" doesn't mean that the officer's decisions were perfect, it just means that the officer in question was not deemed to be criminally culpable.

I do agree that the statistics are rather... interesting. No arguments from me there.

With all due respect, this doesn't really address my question. Maybe I should have been more clear.

I cited the single parenthood rates in the black community and how that can correlate with poverty and crime, but I should also mention the aspect of this culture that seems to denigrate individuals when they acquire education and wealth through legitimate channels.

This is my question: In your opinion, does this contribute to the situation in any meaningful way, and if so, how would you address it?