Minsky on The Liberal Patriot

[Minsky]

Random thought Vicky & Dan--I read the post you linked to on your blog the other day and wanted to mention that I found a subtle irony in it. (https://livinginthebedofapickup.blogspot.com/2024/08/why-we-wont-vote-for-harris-her-anti.html)

Specifically, that it seems your perspective on the problems being faced by many ethnic minority communities and their police-civilian relations is actually *more* congruent with a theory of 'systemic racism' than Balko's, *if* we take the definition you cited in the post (which, in another irony, is Balko's own) seriously. Your thesis seems to acknowledge that the criminal justice system sometimes (but not always) *does* produce some racially unequal outcomes, (since you don't dispute the numbers in Balko's statistics), but that this does *not* imply racial prejudice on the part of police officers or lawyers, because it could be due to a wide range of secular historical and socioeconomic factors that have nothing to do with them personally. (thus making it silly to blame said police officers and lawyers for these racial inequities, or imply that they are all personally racist)

In fact, I would say much of your criticism of Balko's work actually amounts to a criticism that he does not apply the idea of 'systemic racism' rigorously *enough*--he pays it lip service by citing correlational statistics, but then through lazy analysis winds up chalking everything up to personal prejudice on the part of police officers and lawyers, rather than higher-order causes in a larger, more complex and impersonal socioeconomic system. (FWIW, I find that both progressives and their critics tend to engage in the same lazy analysis whenever this idea is brought up)

Just something I found interesting when I first read the post. Many thanks to your wife for her service. (no snark intended)