Originally Posted by
TUT317
There is actually an agenda but the important question becomes, whose or what's agenda?
Therefore, the important question to ask ourselves is, do African Americans choose to 'live part'. Well, in some respects they do. I think we have established there is a good argument for claiming that drug laws may have inadvertently contributed to making many African Americans involved in a particular types of drug being labeled as felons.
These people now have the appropriate label and the appropriate legal weight to reinforce this label. In essence, they are separate and unequal. The law is weighted heavily against them because they choose a particular drug of choice. After all, it was their choice.
A similar type of argument has been rescinded to the political dust bin in the old South Africa. The argument for 'living apart' policy was that if most native South Africans had the choice they would choose to live apart from the white population. This is of course debatable, but there is not doubt that in certain periods of old South African history this would have been part of the normal language. This likely choice ( forced or otherwise) would have had a strong propaganda component behind it.
What was conveniently not stated was that white people in this society will control all the social, political,legal and economic strings. You can live apart and equal, but we will make decisions on how 'equal' will actually be determined in terms of social, political, legal and economic resources.
Herein lies the problem. We can put a good argument for the legal system inadvertently favouring one social-economic group over another. When we have a reality check we realize that this has inadvertently disadvantaged the African American component of society.
However, this only accounts for a legal disadvantage. How do we explain away the other disadvantages that seem to work against the African American component of society. We have explained away the legal aspects, but how do we explain the social and economic aspects?
It is possible that we can use the same 'unintended consequences' argument and in the end this may well suffice. However, it will require more than that to chance things for the better. The first step will be the need to actually admit that this problem exists. To bury one's head in the sand and admit there is no problem is to give tacit approval.
Tut