[HighLordDave]

Thanks, RandomThug; I'm trying to cut down the average length of my no spam posts to about 1/5 of their current length because some folks around here say I go on too long. I think I'm also going to ask Buck if he'll change the post count to a "character post count" that shows the number of characters a person posts instead of just their number of posts. I figure that with a couple more like that one, I should be far ahead of Mr Sleep, and just a little bit behind C Elegans, for the GameBanshee posting title.

@fable:
I think that there is no doubt that America is a society divided by class and that the importance of race in the class divisions has been ignored for decades. There is no doubt in my mind that there is a direct correllation between poverty, education and race that works to keep the majority of blacks, hispanics and "undesirables" under the heel of a largely white upper class.

We can see this in the way crimes are prosecuted and perpetrators are handled. For instance, if someone walks into a convenience store with a gun and robs the place, they will end up serving some hard time at a medium- or high-level security installation as a violent criminal. How many people have they affected or caused injury (assuming that only property is stolen and that the robber didn't shoot anyone)? At worst it is the clerk, anyone else who was in the store and the store's owner.

Contrast that to a guy like Ken Lay or Michael Milken who commits "white collar" crime and embezzles millions of dollars away from his company of the government. How many people were affected by Enron's collapse, which was certainly preventable and the direct result of illegal activities by its CEO and board of directors? Or how about the billions of dollars worth of junk bonds Milken peddled? Milken served 22 months in a country-club prison and was fined a fraction of his fortune on a 98 count indictment. Milken also cost taxpayers millions of dollars in bailing out failed savings & loan institutions.

Statistically, the perpetrator of the first cime is very likely to be black or hispanic, and is almost certainly of the lower socio-economic class. The perpetrator of the second crime is likely to be white, educated and wealthy. Yet we see that in crimes which are of comparatively small scale and aimed at property not personal injury, while not excusable and are technically of a violent nature (ie-armed robbery), the perpetrators are dealt with far more harshly than in instances of fraud or other non-violent crimes that are likely to result in the conviction of an upper-class educated person.

A number of groups harp on race as a singular factor, but I think you are right to say that it is often class-related. How many of the black youth in jail are there because of their class, race, or education? How many are in that position because they have chosen to be? How many are living out a self-fulfilled prophecy that they have been raised on?

I think there are too many factors to point to a mono-causal reason why blacks are over-represented in prisons and on death row. However, certainly the major reasons seem to be class and education. Whether it is self-perpetuating or they are being held down by a system that promotes education for white kids at the expense of black kids is up for debate, but the connections between race and prison are alarming.