There are, supposedly, many legal protections to guard a citizen’s interaction with law-enforcement agencies and their officers: you may not be detained without cause (‘Am I under arrest?’ ‘Am I?’ ‘If I’m not, may I go?’); you and your personal spaces and possessions may not be searched without cause (‘Do you have a warrant?’); youContinue reading “The Legal Protection Of Armed And Deadly Assault By The Police”
Tag Archives: racism
Political Protests And Their Alleged Associated Criminality
In The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New Press, New York, 2012, pp. 40-41), Michelle Alexander writes: The rhetoric of “law and order” was first mobilized in the late 1950s Southern governors and law enforcement officials attempted to generate and mobilize white opposition to the Civil Rights Movement. In the years following BrownContinue reading “Political Protests And Their Alleged Associated Criminality”
Vincent Simmons: ‘The Innocent Burn When Falsely Accused’
A few decades ago, while watching a Bollywood potboiler at home with my parents, I saw a central character react sharply to a concocted accusation–perhaps of theft–by the movie’s villain, out to frame him and send him to jail so as to clear the way for his other nefarious plots. As our hero responded toContinue reading “Vincent Simmons: ‘The Innocent Burn When Falsely Accused’”
Is “Black Lives Matter” Aiding And Abetting Criminals?
This is a very serious question and deserves a serious answer. It is so serious that the New York Times has asked: Is “police reticence in the face of such protests, some led by groups like Black Lives Matter causing crime to rise in some cities”? The first answers are in. Those honorable folk, “the headsContinue reading “Is “Black Lives Matter” Aiding And Abetting Criminals?”
Gideon’s Army: Fighting A Just War
The first time I saw Gideon’s Army, Dawn Porter‘s documentary about three public defenders fighting a lonely battle in the American South, I watched impassively, even as anger and sadness swirled within me. The second time I did so–yesterday, in a classroom with the students in my Philosophy of Law class–I blinked back tears. (MoreContinue reading “Gideon’s Army: Fighting A Just War”
School Discipline And Socialization For The Carceral State
Schools are a buffer zone, artfully, strategically, placed between zones of dysfunction–the homes of ‘broken’ families, populated by the wrong ethnicity and racial category, which produce criminality and social pathology–and the rest of society. Here, a net may be cast, trawling through the swarms of schoolchildren, catching the bad, the misbehaved, the unrepentant repeat offendersContinue reading “School Discipline And Socialization For The Carceral State”
Our Police, Keeping Our World Safe From Young Black Women
The next time a video link passes you by on social media stop and take a closer look. Chances are, the dysfunction implicated in it can be traced back to one cause, and one cause alone: teenaged black women. And the police of this nation are on the case, keeping us safe by any meansContinue reading “Our Police, Keeping Our World Safe From Young Black Women”
Was Charlie Hebdo ‘Mocking’ The Death Of Alan Kurdi?
Charlie Hebdo has offended again. A recently published cartoon titled “So Close to His Goal”, shows Alan Kurdi, the Syrian toddler whose tragic drowning death sharply focused the world’s attention on the desperation of the migrant crisis in Europe, lying face down on the sand near a billboard featuring Ronald McDonald and advertising a 2-for-1Continue reading “Was Charlie Hebdo ‘Mocking’ The Death Of Alan Kurdi?”
Fraternities: The Curse Of The Sylvan Campus
‘Fraternity’ used to be a perfectly good word–remember Liberté, égalité, fraternité? Used to be, when you saw that word in print, you thought of revolutionaries, the brotherhood of man, the formation of political and social bonds that spanned class and caste and creed. But then it was taken over by a bunch of drunken rapists-in-training,Continue reading “Fraternities: The Curse Of The Sylvan Campus”
Is Artificial Intelligence Racist And Malevolent?
Our worst fears have been confirmed: artificial intelligence is racist and malevolent. Or so it seems. Google’s image recognition software has classified two African Americans as ‘gorillas’ and, away in Germany, a robot has killed a worker at a Volkswagen plant. The dumb, stupid, unblinking, garbage-in-garbage-out machines, the ones that would always strive to catchContinue reading “Is Artificial Intelligence Racist And Malevolent?”
Samir Chopra 