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[Amuys]

Yes, the prison system is indeed a racket that makes an inordinate amount of money from having people locked up. I agree with that.

[Reelya]

... if you think it's been conquered by the courts and laws, I don't really know what else to say to you. Have fun, I guess.

Can you prove otherwise? It's illegal to discriminate since the Civil Rights Act and all the additional anti-discrimination laws following it.

I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here, and assuming you've never even googled the topic. Let's start with just sentencing for crimes, where the type/severity of crime has already been factored in. This is purely within the legal system therefore difference in crime and arrest rates shouldn't matter at that point: a black man and a white man should receive similar sentences for being found guilty of the same crime. Let's check that hypothesis with a few googles:

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/death-penalty-black-and-white-who-lives-who-dies-who-decides

Two of the country's foremost researchers on race and capital punishment, law professor David Baldus and statistician George Woodworth, along with colleagues in Philadelphia, have conducted a careful analysis of race and the death penalty in Philadelphia which reveals that the odds of receiving a death sentence are nearly four times (3.9) higher if the defendant is black. These results were obtained after analyzing and controlling for case differences such as the severity of the crime and the background of the defendant. The data were subjected to various forms of analysis, but the conclusion was clear: blacks were being sentenced to death far in excess of other defendants for similar crimes.

... and that's not even in the South yet.

And this is the Wall Street Journal of all things on racism in sentencing:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324432004578304463789858002

Prison sentences of black men were nearly 20% longer than those of white men for similar crimes in recent years, an analysis by the U.S. Sentencing Commission found. That racial gap has widened since the Supreme Court restored judicial discretion in sentencing in 2005, according to the Sentencing Commission's findings, which were submitted to Congress last month and released publicly this week.

As for victim race:
https://www.aclu.org/race-and-death-penalty

While white victims account for approximately one-half of all murder victims, 80% of all Capital cases involve white victims. Furthermore, as of October 2002, 12 people have been executed where the defendant was white and the murder victim black, compared with 178 black defendants executed for murders with white victims.

^ That means they're 4 times as likely to make it a death-penalty case when the murder victim is white vs non-white. When a white person murders a black person, well, that's almost never treated as a potential death-penalty case. It's only happened a handful of times.

And I'm not even getting into arrest rate data here, where you can find a ton more shit going on. In fact, at every stage of the pipeline, the systems is rigged against black people. You then multiply all those small stages together and end up with excessive discrimination.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-farbota/black-crime-rates-your-st_b_8078586.html

(1) If a black person and a white person each commit a crime, the black person is more likely to be arrested. This is due in part to the fact that black people are more heavily policed.
(2) When black people are arrested for a crime, they are convicted more often than white people arrested for the same crime.
(3) When black people are convicted of a crime, they are more likely to be sentenced to incarceration compared to whites convicted of the same crime.

... add to that, that their average sentence is also longer compared to a white person convicted of the same crime, and you have a set of filters which at each stage of the process skews the prison population towards more black people.

~~~

BTW, there's clearly no gender pay gap at all either, because that is similarly illegal under the Equal Pay Act 1963.

[Shadowlord]

Iirc, it's Republican orthodoxy that the "gender pay gap" is a liberal lie. Not saying you're wrong, just saying that comparison will backfire with some people.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

It's not a lie, but it is an essentially rhetorical bit of liberal dogma, especially taking into account that most of the people who talk about it i.e., middle-class liberal white women, are the ones who are almost unaffected by it.

".73 cents on the dollar" is all female demographics taken as a whole and averaged against all male demographics. This tells us almost nothing about the details of pay inequality. It's an inherently misleading bit of generalization, hence why I've been accused by fellow students of the female persuasion of "making 30% more than them" when neither of us have jobs at all!

[Amuys]

I think that in an attempt to not sound racist or sexist, you're doing some mental gymnastics to claim that there is a grand conspiracy putting down minorities and women. Generally blacks tend to get convicted more than whites due to not being able to defend themselves as well in the courtroom, whether out of lower education and having to rely on public defenders. There's a pay wage gap because there aren't as many women in long hour, high paying jobs as men.
It's really just circumstance and economics, not malice.

[Reelya]

I don't think that's really a tenable position, given that of people actually found guilty, black felons get significantly longer sentences.

A black person who has been convicted is quite a bit more likely to be jailed, and receive a longer sentence than a white man convicted of the same crime. For example, the Pennsylvania data was comparing white and black men convicted of capital murder offenses, and found that black defendants were four times as likely to be sentenced to death. So we're not even talking about a difference in conviction rates: the courts agree that all the white and black people in the sample did the crime. But the difference in the call for "death" is massive.


~~~

BTW: the idea that thousands of professional researchers merely "never noticed" differences in education level or that black people had public defenders isn't believable. What's more likely: you noticed this simple detail nobody else ever did, or they already account for things like wealth, education level, public defender quality etc. Basically, if there was any easy explanation like that someone would have done the math already.

[Cruxador]

Oh crap Cruxador posts here. I really can't escape no matter where I go.

I bet if you really tried, you could find some plebeian place I wouldn't deign to spend time in.

I honestly do not care when people talk vile things about race, whether it's in some rambling manifesto or in a rap song. When people use that as an excuse to defraud or attack people, then it's a problem since it's gone beyond words and is thus punishable by law.

Saying things is illegal in some places though, even some which claim they have free speech.

Amuys' claims are vague and disjointed, everyone else is dismissive and anecdotal. Not much meaningful information appears to be being exchanged.

I suspect it's more likely that he's just assuming a knowledge-base that you may not hold.

Iirc, it's Republican orthodoxy that the "gender pay gap" is a liberal lie. Not saying you're wrong, just saying that comparison will backfire with some people.

Rather than a lie, a misrepresentation. Nobody really contests that the average earnings of women in the US are lower than the average earnings of men. But that doesn't account for the fact that women are more likely to place a higher value on benefits other than pay, particularly time off and working with people in a fulfilling way, or the fact that women are less likely to move or make major life sacrifices for work. In fact, when you compare women's earnings to those of men in the same job, they can go either way depending on industry but are generally pretty close. The only one I recall seeing statistics on where there was a major disparity is in tech companies, where women are substantially more highly paid than men.

[Shadowlord]

I think that in an attempt to not sound racist or sexist, you're doing some mental gymnastics to claim that there is a grand conspiracy putting down minorities and women. Generally blacks tend to get convicted more than whites due to not being able to defend themselves as well in the courtroom, whether out of lower education and having to rely on public defenders. There's a pay wage gap because there aren't as many women in long hour, high paying jobs as men.
It's really just circumstance and economics, not malice.

There doesn't need to be a grand conspiracy for unequal outcomes to result. The only requirement is for people to have racial biases, and for lawyers to be able to take advantage of it.

But even if lawyers couldn't take advantage of it, and even if we assume judges are neutral arbiters of the law who are immune from bias, bias in cops would still have an impact on who was more likely to attract their attention, who would be more likely to be suspected of being involved in illegal activities, who they would be more afraid of being shot by and therefore more likely to shoot when they thought they perceived a threat, who people would be more likely to perceive as out of place or likely criminals when they're not (and call the cops on them), etc.

Spoiler: Here's a quote from the middle of that article on peremptory challenges (click to show/hide)

A 2014 Washington Post-ABC News poll revealed that blacks and whites live in different worlds when it comes to perceptions of justice. Only 1 in 10 African Americans said blacks and other minorities receive equal treatment with whites in the criminal justice system. In contrast, 6 in 10 white Americans had confidence that police treat the races equally.

Numerous studies have shown that prosecutors use their peremptory challenges to strike black potential jurors at a much higher rate than whites. And the opposite is true of criminal defense lawyers.

In the North Carolina study, prosecutors used 60 percent of these challenges to strike black jurors, who constituted only 32 percent of potential jury members. Defense attorneys used 87 percent of their strikes against white jurors, who made up 68 percent of the jury pool.

“Race discrimination in juror selection cannot be condoned,” said a group of federal and state prosecutors, including the District’s former U.S. attorney Joseph diGenova and former Prince George’s County state’s attorney Glenn F. Ivey, in an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court on behalf of Foster. “Indeed, this court has long recognized that such discrimination causes serious and widespread harm: to the defendant, whose constitutional rights are violated; to the juror, who is excluded from the judicial process; and to our justice system, which is undermined by such inequality.”

[Chevaleresse]

On the wage gap thing, I'll summarize an article I read on it:

1. Women tend to enter industries that pay lower. This is often repeated but I don't see people going much further than this.
2. Women, within any given industry, tend to pick more flexible (and therefore usually lower-paying) jobs. That is, jobs that require less travel, can be performed more from home rather than requiring a large number of workplace hours, etc. This is often due to a somewhat increased priority towards children and/or social life. A major factor seems to be maternity; countries with mandatory paternity leave for fathers tend to have significantly reduced wage gaps.
3. Women, within the same job types in the same industries as men, tend to negotiate less for higher wages/fees/salaries/etc.

The article also goes on to point out that this isn't really a finger pointing at women and telling them to "man up," as it were. Rather it's an expected result of different societal norms for men and women, with the former expected to be tougher, harder bargainers, and career focused, while women are expected to be more empathetic, compromising, and family focused.

I personally believe there's also a certain amount of inertia that the friction of society has yet to overcome. The "old guard" of business leaders is in large part still around; I would expect to see marked changes toward a 50/50 gender ratio in the next couple decades.

[Descan]

yeah except perhaps industries women go into pay less because women are in them?

to wit: computer programming used to be "a womans job," then it changed to "a mans job" and pay rose. teachers are seen as womens work, and pay poorly. so too are nurses. i think i also heard tell that russian science was considered "womans work" and paid less than western scientists? i'm not so sure about that one.

point is: "women go into jobs that pay less!" is not the end. why do women go into those jobs, and why do they pay less?

[Strife26]

Nursing isn't a particularly low paying field by most accounts (nor is the trend towards continued female domination).

[mainiac]

Nursing is quite unpleasant, requires a degree, an extensive internship and special licencing and pays about twenty one bucks and hour. http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes292061.htm#ind
That puts them fifty cents an hour ahead of truckers, who dont need a college degree. http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes533032.htm
That puts them five bucks an hour behind plumbers which requires licencing but no degree and where the apprenticeship pays better then nursing internships. http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes472152.htm

It's not the worst compensation in the world but there is an argument to be made that it's below what you would expect.

Nursing should also not be confused with registered nurses, who have a nicer, better paying job.

[Shadowlord]

What we've got here is... failure to communicate.

[Vector]

I have to say that virtually every time I've tried to negotiate higher wages, I've been laughed at or looked down on. The economy around here is such that harder tactics would not be smart.

[Chevaleresse]

yeah except perhaps industries women go into pay less because women are in them?

to wit: computer programming used to be "a womans job," then it changed to "a mans job" and pay rose. teachers are seen as womens work, and pay poorly. so too are nurses. i think i also heard tell that russian science was considered "womans work" and paid less than western scientists? i'm not so sure about that one.

point is: "women go into jobs that pay less!" is not the end. why do women go into those jobs, and why do they pay less?

I believe a good portion of my post was dedicated to pointing out that "women go into jobs that pay less" isn't the full story, and a large portion of that was outlining why women DO choose to go into jobs that pay less. Please read my posts if you expect me to read yours.

As for the only part of your post that wasn't answered, I don't really have anything for you that I can source. I might point out that correlation isn't causation; demand for programmers has, as you likely know, risen dramatically in recent decades due to the increasing ubiquity of computers, and therefore the price tag attached to a programmer has risen.

I have to say that virtually every time I've tried to negotiate higher wages, I've been laughed at or looked down on. The economy around here is such that harder tactics would not be smart.

I don't really have an answer to thid either, I will freely admit. Part of the reason I'm here is to educate myself further on the issue.