[Imc-web] my last comment

[Wendy Edwards]

> the sort of discourse that appears on our website.  Labeling it as 
> "leftist" and "doctrinaire" is simply a gratuitous and unwarranted 
> attack on our editorial policy, as well as a very inaccurate 
> generalization about UC IMC members and users of the website. Anyone who 

Well. I think that most people would agree that UCIMC leans to the
left politically, so "leftist" would probably be accurate.  There are
a few posts that have struck me as "doctrinaire" and others that
haven't.

> has been following the recent discussion of the workings of white 
> supremacy in the Champaign County justice system can see that this is 
> not the case. For instance, do you consider yourself as part of this 
> "leftist" crowd you're attacking? If not, then you have just disproved 
> the statement you made. In addition, discussion of our editorial policy 
> (as it typically does for the great majority of such web-based services) 
> takes place in two places -- on this list or in face to face meetings -- 
> and not as comments to unrelated stories.

Well, since Kevin does not seem to live in Illinois, he's unlikely
to show up at a web meeting.  However, he has brought his concerns to
the list.

> In addition, you chose to use a fundamentally racist presumption::
> >many on the Left refuse to acknowledge the fact that black people 
> >commit more violent crimes, as a percentage of their population, than 
> >non-blacks. This is backed up by the higher rates of arrest and 
> >conviction (and the total absence of evidence for some kind of white 
> >supremacist conspiracy), and, just as importantly, the higher 
> >victimization rate of blacks.
> Given the string of unproven assumptions, your anonymous comments, and 
> the chip you so proudly display on your shoulder about them -- a 
> conclusion reinforced by the tone of your email here -- I concluded that 
> you were trolling per our policy.
 
Look, as the person who posted the statistics and graphs in the first
place, the numbers show some things about criminal charges in Champaign
County between 2000 and 2006.  Period.  They don't show that our justice
system is "white supremacist" nor do they prove that black people are
more likely to commit violent crimes.  There are too many things we
don't know at this point.

For example, not all crimes are reported, and of the ones that are, not
all perpetrators are caught.  There's no 100% reliable way of 
establishing "whodunnit" - the best we have is police investigation
and trials.  We know that some people have been wrongly convicted,
and it seems reasonable to assume that guilty people have sometimes
gotten off.  So what we do know is that black people are 
disproportionately more likely to be criminal defendants in Champaign
County.  Is this because they're more likely to commit the crimes in
the first place?  Maybe, but we don't really know.  Are whites just
more likely to get away with crime?  That's also possible, but there's
not enough information to prove or disprove that either.

Personally, I didn't think that Kevin's comment were any worse than
some of the other ones in the discussion.

Wendy