Claims of random searches function to dismiss racial injustice complaints

Evidence

In a criminal justice context, a history of treating one demographic group differently creates redundant encodings all over the place. Policing a minority neighborhood more aggressively than others, for instance, means that all of a sudden something as seemingly neutral as length-of-rap-sheet, i.e., number of previous convictions, can become a redundant encoding of race. — Brian Christian, The Alignment Problem, 296 (#expands, via linked claim)

Sherene Razack writes that using hate as an analytic “discourages the thinking that is required to make sense of the high numbers of murdered Indigenous women, police shootings of Black people, and a range of historical atrocities such as the Holocaust, settler colonial massacres and violent dispossession.” Hate is framed as an individual problem that the state condemns and helps to resolve. It is also an emotion, psychologized as an individual pathology that can be combated like a disease, rather than sets of policies that are enacted for political interests. This approach regards Islamophobia as an individual problem of hate between people, not as a structural issue connected to state policies or media representations. — Evelyn Alsultany, Antisemitism and Islamophobia The…, 34 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Dworkin is inferring judges’ attitude from the rhetoric ofjudicial opinions, and this is perilous, because judges are not always candid and also because they often are not self-aware. Even if judges are consistently and deliberately deceptive, this would not impair the soundness of the pragmatic explanation of judicial behavior. — Richard A. Posner, What Has Pragmatism to Offer Law?, 120 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Claimed randomness of searches masks racial profiling and silences complaints. — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 307; Prior biased policing leaks into race-neutral variables like conviction history — Brian Christian, The Alignment Problem, 296; Framing discrimination as individual hate obscures its structural and policy-based causes — Evelyn Alsultany, Antisemitism and Islamophobia The…, 34 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Prior biased policing leaks into race-neutral variables like conviction history #expands (0.75) — Brian Christian, The Alignment Problem, 296
• Framing discrimination as individual hate obscures its structural and policy-based causes #corroborates (0.70) — Evelyn Alsultany, Antisemitism and Islamophobia The…, 34
• Deceptive judicial rhetoric does not refute explanations of behavior #contradicts (0.60) — Richard A. Posner, What Has Pragmatism to Offer Law?, 120
• Racism functions as practices that ascribe and legitimate social positions #corroborates (0.55)