Confessions of a Public Defender

[doubtingt]

I don't see how you say this is proof of a race problem.

What?
If 90% of the criminals are of a given race, far above the racial distribution of his city (not just his clients, but his impression of the entire courthouse)(Which i tend to suspect as far as robust accounting goes, but still, 'IF' his estimates are anywhere near accurate), then something's causing problems for that race. Whether it's the economic conditions that drive it, or police bias, or the district attorney chooses to prosecute by use of a color wheel or by use of the voter polls of the last election or by the donations for teh policeman's ball as distributed by neighborhood, whatever the reason, there's still a race problem.
Just not the one the quoted jackass has identified.

1) We don't know the actual distribution of criminals from his data--sampling bias.

2) Even if 90% of criminals are black (which isn't the case) it doesn't prove it's racial. When you look at supposedly racial patterns you almost inevitably find race is actually just a proxy for something else--when you find that something else race will drop out of the picture. (A statistician looks for those variables that can be used to improve the prediction. Consider a real world example: On average blacks get less treatment and have less good outcomes in the ER. Race? Nope--once you more carefully you'll find it's the ERs, not the patients. You'll get less treatment and have a less good outcome at an overcrowded ER no matter what your race. ER + race is no more predictive than ER alone.)

He's describing an extremely destructive culture. It's not a surprise that people from that background become criminals. Yes, it's a culture held by black people but it's not because they are black.

By "that background" you mean slavery and constant oppression by the majority white culture, right? The "culture" most responsible for such behaviors is not "held by black people". It is reactionary sub-culture nested within and a product of the majority US culture. Cultures, especially minority cultures, are not some deliberate conscious creation but an emergent reaction (often rational and natural psychological reactions) to a larger context.

You're not rebutting what I'm saying so I think you misunderstand what I said.

I'm talking about the culture he described. It's not held by most black people, but the people that hold it are mostly black. Cultures are normally not deliberate, I'm not saying this one is. I'm saying it's the root cause of the problem he's seeing--as always, a cultural problem, not a racial one.

It isn't "held by" the people he's describing either. Those people are products/victims of such cultural forces, not the controllers and determiners of the culture as the phrase "held by" implies. So, again I ask what exactly you mean by that phrase. Also, how can culture be a root cause when culture is itself created by other factors, which in this case is white racism and slavery? IOW, it is a culture problems caused by racial problems.

When a child is severely abused their whole life, this creates destructive (to themselves and others) tendencies in the child. Get a group of such former abused kids together and you have a group of people who share these destructive tendencies, but is that a culture "held by the abused"? Sure, there are ways in which people within and without the community can exacerbate and prevent healing of those psycho-social wounds and I do think they are often those claiming to be the champions and defenders of such communities. But to claim the people most harmed by such destructive environments "hold" them as though they could just drop them and essentially flip a switch and erase all history if they just really wanted to improve their situation is absurd.

I said nothing about how to fix it--I don't know how to fix it (beyond the fact that throwing money at the problem isn't an answer.) I'm just saying it's the cause of the problem.

You used and now defended your use of the phrase "culture held by blacks". I don't care if you mean all blacks or just those reflected by the OPs description. I want to know what you mean by "held by" in that phrase because it sure seems like it is intended to imply that they control and determine the culture and thus are to blame. So, answer this simple question, would you also say that the interpersonal problem experiences by severly abused kids is caused by a "culture held by abused kids"? IF not, then why use it with blacks and is it because you do mean "created by" when you say "held by" and thus you place responsibility on blacks for reacting to their abuse but not on kids for reacting to child abuse?
Also, if these aspect of culture is not deliberate, as you admit, then the culture itself is not caused by the people who are impacted by it. Therefore, the real cause isn't "the culture" but the things that caused the culture, which in this case is race and the racism of whites.

 

[Duke Leto]

Leave him be, doubtingt. He'll sit there in his smug (unemployed) moral superiority to his cultural inferiors and will NEVER be brought to admit the irrationality of his position.

As a fool returneth to his folly and a dog to his vomit, so Loren Pechtel returns to his bigotry.

 

[ksen]

I think we can boil down doubting's response to loren as:

"What do you mean 'you people?'"

 

[scombrid]

Most whites with business in court arrive quietly, dress appropriately, and keep their heads down. They get in and get out–if they can–as fast as they can. For blacks, the courthouse is like a carnival. They all seem to know each other: hundreds and hundreds each day, gossiping, laughing loudly, waving, and crowding the halls.

That doesn't peg everybody's bullshit detector?

People actually read though that section of the passage and still think that the piece is authentic? Authentic to point that they think it merits analyzing how a public defender could come to that conclusion?

 

[doubtingt]

I think we can boil down doubting's response to loren as:

"What do you mean 'you people?'"

I would disagree (surprised?) I think that "you people" is inherently bigoted and quite directly reflects that a person views the person they are speaking with a part such a homogenous group that their group membership can be confidently used to determine the person own actual unobserved traits.
I am not accusing Loren of that. I think he's making a more subtle error in thinking that, regardless of whatever his own level of bigotry is, could be and is made by people not blinded by such levels of bigotry. I even think that righteous opponents of racism can fall for this error in thinking and thus lead them to irrationally deny that their are highly destructive (crime promoting) features of the culture within black communities out of fear that admitting this places the blame on them since they "hold" their own culture as though they create it from scratch.
It might even be the case that the solution to the problem must come mostly from within the black community and they must act vigorously to alter that culture, even though that are not the ones that are the "root cause" of those cultural problems to begin with. Often root causes cannot be changed, so the source of change must be something that isn't to blame. People afraid of appearing to blame blacks for their own situation or wanting to divert focus toward government or institutional solutions often downplay cultural sicknesses within the black community and things done and said by people and leaders within that community that reinforce that culture. I think that people truly seeking positive change are aided by strongly highlighting that root causes and solutions are often not the same thing and that racism can be the root cause of problems within the black community and yet cultural practices and discourse in those communities can perpetuate the problems and need to be actively changed as a key to the solution.

IOW, please don't demean my efforts and my arguments by equating them to accusing someone of saying "you people".

 

[ksen]

jesus christ, I bet you're a blast to hang around with.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Conclusion: Either the author of the Public Defender tract is lying through his teeth when he claims to have few White criminal clients, or he is serving a municipal jurisdiction in the South with virtually no White population.

I suppose the latter is remotely possible, but I tend to agree with AthenaAwakened and regard the article as an inflammatory fabrication.

Remember, though, that he's a public defender. He doesn't see all criminals, only those with no means to pay for their own lawyer. A white defendant is much more likely to have family that will help.

As usual Loren, your pathetic reasoning skills fail you miserably.

Click through to the goddamned chart in my post. You'll see that all the Southern states have way above average White inmate populations. Especially the Appalachian ones where the Whites are really poor as hell that are the only ones where the "metropolitan areas" have the demographic mix described by the alleged author. Would you like to explain to me how Georgia has something more than twice as many White inmates as a percentage of the population while than Pennsylvania while they share similar crime rates? (See links here.)

You're barking up the wrong tree here--your data does not rebut what I was saying. Remember, he's a public defender--he only sees the suspects without the money to hire their own lawyer. Thus data on the prison populations is irrelevant.

It'd seem pretty goddamned likely that rather a lot of Southern Whites can't afford the services of a Defense Attorney and are at the mercy of public defenders, since many more Whites per capita get convicted in Georgia in spite of comparable per capita rates of crime. Your hypothesis ignores the facts.

You are supposing.

In other words: it is extremely unlikely that a county level public defender in the US South will have a jurisdiction with as low a percentage of the population being Black as this guy claims up front.

He's lying.

Or he's mistaken. We already can see he's not looking at the stats when it comes to criminals, why not figure he also wasn't looking at them about the population?

- - - Updated - - -

You used and now defended your use of the phrase "culture held by blacks". I don't care if you mean all blacks or just those reflected by the OPs description. I want to know what you mean by "held by" in that phrase because it sure seems like it is intended to imply that they control and determine the culture and thus are to blame. So, answer this simple question, would you also say that the interpersonal problem experiences by severly abused kids is caused by a "culture held by abused kids"? IF not, then why use it with blacks and is it because you do mean "created by" when you say "held by" and thus you place responsibility on blacks for reacting to their abuse but not on kids for reacting to child abuse?
Also, if these aspect of culture is not deliberate, as you admit, then the culture itself is not caused by the people who are impacted by it. Therefore, the real cause isn't "the culture" but the things that caused the culture, which in this case is race and the racism of whites.

I'm saying the culture is mostly held by blacks, not that most blacks hold the culture. Why can't you see the difference?

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Conclusion: Either the author of the Public Defender tract is lying through his teeth when he claims to have few White criminal clients, or he is serving a municipal jurisdiction in the South with virtually no White population.

I suppose the latter is remotely possible, but I tend to agree with AthenaAwakened and regard the article as an inflammatory fabrication.

Remember, though, that he's a public defender. He doesn't see all criminals, only those with no means to pay for their own lawyer. A white defendant is much more likely to have family that will help.

As usual Loren, your pathetic reasoning skills fail you miserably.

Click through to the goddamned chart in my post. You'll see that all the Southern states have way above average White inmate populations. Especially the Appalachian ones where the Whites are really poor as hell that are the only ones where the "metropolitan areas" have the demographic mix described by the alleged author. Would you like to explain to me how Georgia has something more than twice as many White inmates as a percentage of the population while than Pennsylvania while they share similar crime rates? (See links here.)

You're barking up the wrong tree here--your data does not rebut what I was saying. Remember, he's a public defender--he only sees the suspects without the money to hire their own lawyer. Thus data on the prison populations is irrelevant.

It'd seem pretty goddamned likely that rather a lot of Southern Whites can't afford the services of a Defense Attorney and are at the mercy of public defenders, since many more Whites per capita get convicted in Georgia in spite of comparable per capita rates of crime. Your hypothesis ignores the facts.

You are supposing.

In other words: it is extremely unlikely that a county level public defender in the US South will have a jurisdiction with as low a percentage of the population being Black as this guy claims up front.

He's lying.

Or he's mistaken. We already can see he's not looking at the stats when it comes to criminals, why not figure he also wasn't looking at them about the population?

- - - Updated - - -

You used and now defended your use of the phrase "culture held by blacks". I don't care if you mean all blacks or just those reflected by the OPs description. I want to know what you mean by "held by" in that phrase because it sure seems like it is intended to imply that they control and determine the culture and thus are to blame. So, answer this simple question, would you also say that the interpersonal problem experiences by severly abused kids is caused by a "culture held by abused kids"? IF not, then why use it with blacks and is it because you do mean "created by" when you say "held by" and thus you place responsibility on blacks for reacting to their abuse but not on kids for reacting to child abuse?
Also, if these aspect of culture is not deliberate, as you admit, then the culture itself is not caused by the people who are impacted by it. Therefore, the real cause isn't "the culture" but the things that caused the culture, which in this case is race and the racism of whites.

I'm saying the culture is mostly held by blacks, not that most blacks hold the culture. Why can't you see the difference?

what culture Loren? Give me the characteristics of this culture. And then, show me the figures that prove the statement that this culture is mostly held by blacks.

I will start dinner, ...

and an afghan, ...

and writing the great American novel, ...

and digging my way to China.

Maybe that will finally give you enough time to find the data to back up what you say, or at least explain it.

 

[doubtingt]

Conclusion: Either the author of the Public Defender tract is lying through his teeth when he claims to have few White criminal clients, or he is serving a municipal jurisdiction in the South with virtually no White population.

I suppose the latter is remotely possible, but I tend to agree with AthenaAwakened and regard the article as an inflammatory fabrication.

Remember, though, that he's a public defender. He doesn't see all criminals, only those with no means to pay for their own lawyer. A white defendant is much more likely to have family that will help.

As usual Loren, your pathetic reasoning skills fail you miserably.

Click through to the goddamned chart in my post. You'll see that all the Southern states have way above average White inmate populations. Especially the Appalachian ones where the Whites are really poor as hell that are the only ones where the "metropolitan areas" have the demographic mix described by the alleged author. Would you like to explain to me how Georgia has something more than twice as many White inmates as a percentage of the population while than Pennsylvania while they share similar crime rates? (See links here.)

You're barking up the wrong tree here--your data does not rebut what I was saying. Remember, he's a public defender--he only sees the suspects without the money to hire their own lawyer. Thus data on the prison populations is irrelevant.

It'd seem pretty goddamned likely that rather a lot of Southern Whites can't afford the services of a Defense Attorney and are at the mercy of public defenders, since many more Whites per capita get convicted in Georgia in spite of comparable per capita rates of crime. Your hypothesis ignores the facts.

You are supposing.

In other words: it is extremely unlikely that a county level public defender in the US South will have a jurisdiction with as low a percentage of the population being Black as this guy claims up front.

He's lying.

Or he's mistaken. We already can see he's not looking at the stats when it comes to criminals, why not figure he also wasn't looking at them about the population?

- - - Updated - - -

You used and now defended your use of the phrase "culture held by blacks". I don't care if you mean all blacks or just those reflected by the OPs description. I want to know what you mean by "held by" in that phrase because it sure seems like it is intended to imply that they control and determine the culture and thus are to blame. So, answer this simple question, would you also say that the interpersonal problem experiences by severly abused kids is caused by a "culture held by abused kids"? IF not, then why use it with blacks and is it because you do mean "created by" when you say "held by" and thus you place responsibility on blacks for reacting to their abuse but not on kids for reacting to child abuse?
Also, if these aspect of culture is not deliberate, as you admit, then the culture itself is not caused by the people who are impacted by it. Therefore, the real cause isn't "the culture" but the things that caused the culture, which in this case is race and the racism of whites.

I'm saying the culture is mostly held by blacks, not that most blacks hold the culture. Why can't you see the difference?

Arrgggg!!! Will you just define what you mean by "held by"?????????
Rephrase it without using that term at all.
Also, you have claimed that this culture "held by" blacks is the "root cause" of the problems described in the OP. That presumes that the culture "held by" blacks essentially causes itself and that there is nothing outside of it that caused these features of that culture.
That strongly implies that blacks themselves "made up" these cultural practices without reaction to their environment. Are you implying that and how can you defend it against my argument, or are you now willing to admit that you were wrong in claiming that whatever culture is "held by" blacks is the "root cause"?

 

[ksen]

what culture Loren?

Patriarchal white culture . . . but don't tell loren.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Arrgggg!!! Will you just define what you mean by "held by"?????????
Rephrase it without using that term at all.
Also, you have claimed that this culture "held by" blacks is the "root cause" of the problems described in the OP. That presumes that the culture "held by" blacks essentially causes itself and that there is nothing outside of it that caused these features of that culture.
That strongly implies that blacks themselves "made up" these cultural practices without reaction to their environment. Are you implying that and how can you defend it against my argument, or are you now willing to admit that you were wrong in claiming that whatever culture is "held by" blacks is the "root cause"?

Why all the wrangling pretending to not understand me?

He accurately described the culture, where he screwed up badly is describing it as black culture rather than black criminal culture.

 

[Duke Leto]

Why all the wrangling pretending to not understand me?

He accurately described the culture, where he screwed up badly is describing it as black culture rather than black criminal culture.

The problem is that you are using a personal definition of "culture" different from the generally understood one, which has the added magic feature of being unchangeable by outside intervention. In this magic version of "culture", which bears no resemblance to the anthropological definition, people are morally at fault for embracing a criminal culture, which is fucking incoherent nonsense.

Edited

 

[barbos]

If it's not the culture then it must be biological race?
Or are you suggesting that there is really some conspiracy to send blacks to prison for crimes they are not commuting at all?
And culture do tend to self-propagate itself because children do tend to emulate parents overall despite all that teenage rebel stage.

 

[Duke Leto]

If it's not the culture then it must be biological race?
Or are you suggesting that there is really some conspiracy to send blacks to prison for crimes they are not commuting at all?
And culture do tend to self-propagate itself because children do tend to emulate parents overall despite all that teenage rebel stage.

The questions are basically:

1) Are the Black criminals who part of this culture doing so out of a conscious choice? Would they continue to exhibit these cultural practices if they had better cultures available to them? Consider a Christian Fundamentalist living in rural Louisiana versus one in New York City's East Village. Fundamentalism doesn't stay very pure for very long in New York because there are a lot of very visible and obviously better lifestyle options. The idea of leaving religion is much harder to contemplate in places like the above mentioned rural Louisiana where the religious lifestyle seems the only option. The cultural milieu changes behavior, and reduces individual volition. Loren seems to be of the opinion that this kind of cultural development is something individuals are fully morally accountable for and anyone who does not change the culture they grew up in simply isn't trying hard enough. This is functionally the same as flunking a non-English speaking child for bad SAT scores.

2) Can negative cultural practices be eliminated by government intervention? Loren believes that this is not the case. That's not totally true, he believes government interventions he likes are effective and those he dislikes are not.

So what we end up with on planet Loren is criminal "culture" that his highly hereditary, the entire fault of the people living in that "culture", who are not fixable and should be left to kill themselves off.

But he doesn't think it's genetic, so it can't possibly be racism on his part. It just happens to have all the practical qualities of actual racism.

Edited

 

[barbos]

So, this thread is about Loren now?
I certainly think culture is hard to change by government intervention.
If you grew up in certain culture chances are you will stay that way for the rest of you life.
Otherwise there would not be such a thing as culture.

 

[Duke Leto]

So, this thread is about Loren now?
I certainly think culture is hard to change by government intervention.
If you grew up in certain culture chances are you will stay that way for the rest of you life.
Otherwise there would not be such a thing as culture.

Yeah, this has now degenerated into discussion of Loren's "non-racial" bigotry. He tries to have it both ways and a lot of us are sick of his bullshit.

Somewhat on culture. If we were talking about language or basic reaction to bureaucracy, or other such stuff where the "culture" is very well established. It's emphatically not been proven that certain "cultures" have a tendency towards criminal behavior. If you believed that, then where have Germany's invasions gone since 1945? The stuff is a lot more fluid than you're giving it credit for.

 

[barbos]

Somewhat on culture. If we were talking about language or basic reaction to bureaucracy, or other such stuff where the "culture" is very well established. It's emphatically not been proven that certain "cultures" have a tendency towards criminal behavior. If you believed that, then where have Germany's invasions gone since 1945? The stuff is a lot more fluid than you're giving it credit for.

That's pretty weak claim. But I think I know why it has not been proven. Because proving that would gain you nothing but accusations of racism.
And why would anyone do that?

 

[Duke Leto]

Somewhat on culture. If we were talking about language or basic reaction to bureaucracy, or other such stuff where the "culture" is very well established. It's emphatically not been proven that certain "cultures" have a tendency towards criminal behavior. If you believed that, then where have Germany's invasions gone since 1945? The stuff is a lot more fluid than you're giving it credit for.

That's pretty weak claim. But I think I know why it has not been proven. Because proving that would gain you nothing but accusations of racism.
And why would anyone do that?

Why are you playing Devil's advocate on this?

 

[barbos]

Somewhat on culture. If we were talking about language or basic reaction to bureaucracy, or other such stuff where the "culture" is very well established. It's emphatically not been proven that certain "cultures" have a tendency towards criminal behavior. If you believed that, then where have Germany's invasions gone since 1945? The stuff is a lot more fluid than you're giving it credit for.

That's pretty weak claim. But I think I know why it has not been proven. Because proving that would gain you nothing but accusations of racism.
And why would anyone do that?

Why are you playing Devil's advocate on this?

You're welcome

 

[doubtingt]

If it's not the culture then it must be biological race?
.

It isn't culture vs. biology (in part b/c most environmental influence is not "culture"). It is a question of "a culture held by black people that is the root cause" (whatever that means b/c Loren has refused 4 simple request to define what he means by "held by") verus a larger and more long term culture and/or environment that is the cause of whatever self-destructive but natural and likely reactions exist within portions of the black community.
Note that this all excepts the OP descriptions at face value. I'm letting others take on that assumption. I am pointing out that even if the OP and Loren accept those descriptions, the rational interpretation is that the blacks in question are reacting to a form of victimization at the hands of centuries of the majority white culture, thereby supporting liberal views.

I somewhat disagree with Duke in that I doubt much effectiveness by government intervention. While outside factors give rise to cultural practices, once they are established, cultural practices feed and defend themselves from external influence. That is why I've gone to lengths to point out that even when the root causes come from outside a culture, the solutions need to come from within it. Outside factions can give support to those internal forces.