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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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My turn: black attacker, elderly asian victim, racial slurs used, charges dropped.

Did you read the actual articles or just go off the headlines?

In the first case Grayson (the person whose charges were dropped, but did not touch the victim) was the person videoing and the DA claims the victim expressed an interest in restorative justice for him and the charges were dropped, while the actual attacker WAS charged with robbery and elder abuse, his case is still pending. Charges were not dropped against the actual attacker. So this does not meet your own expressed criteria. Grayson was a racist asshole I would suggest but did not attack the victim. So we have black attacker, elderly asian victim, racial slurs used (though not by the attacker), charges not dropped (against the attacker).

**"According to the District Attorney's Office spokesman Alex Bastian, Grayson is not being charged for now and will instead be placed in a restorative justice program, at the victim's request.

Jonathan Amerson, 56, appeared in court Tuesday on charges of robbery and elderly abuse in connection with the attack on the unidentified 68-year-old man in front of a housing complex on Osceola Lane who was hauling large bags of recycled material."**

Charges were not dropped in the second case, as pointed out in the article and indeed the title(!). A Plea deal is not the same as charges being dropped. Indeed they both received the maximum sentences as noted below given they were juveniles.

**"A 15-year-old girl will be held in a youth detention facility until she turns 21 for a D.C. carjacking with another girl that left a Virginia man dead.

The girl received the maximum sentence in juvenile court Friday after pleading guilty last month to felony murder in the death of Mohammad Anwar, a Virginia man who was working as a delivery driver.

The second perpetrator, a 13-year-old girl, pleaded guilty Thursday to second-degree murder. Under the maximum sentence, she also would be released once she turns 21. "**

So given the charges were NOT dropped in your examples we just have to find a single case where a white attacker, racially motivated attacked an old black man and then charged to establish equal treatment by YOUR own standard, no?

Timothy Caughman 66 was killed by James Jackson 28 in New York because:

"Jackson also stated that the killing was intended to start a race war in a manifesto written by him: "The racial World War starts today. This political terrorist attack is a formal declaration of a global total war on the Negro races."

To be fair we don't know if he used a racial slur at the time given no witnesses, but the motivation seems clear.

If I can suggest that the lesson here is to pick your examples so that they actually match your contention? Because here, if nowhere else someone is likely to actually check.

Just to point out I am not condoning the behavior in the articles here, but if you are going to use dueling anecdotes (and this is a good example of why we probably shouldn't), you should at least make sure you are well armed. Check and clean your pistols carefully, before you consider issuing the challenge.

Murdering a black man: life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Murder while black: receive the maximum sentences for a lesser crime that the prosecutors gave them the option of pleading guilty to. No possibility of prison time but a few years in "youth care".

If you think that's comparable, I don't know what to tell you.

if you think that's comparable, I don't know what to tell you.

I don't (though of course neither are the specifics of each crime as in one was a premeditated murder, the other was felony murder by juveniles while trying to steal a car) but that wasn't the claim you made. You said charges dropped. If you want to pivot to a different argument then feel free. But if your evidence does not support your specific claim then do better at writing your claims or picking your evidence.

Dueling anecdotes is a bad debating technique for a number of reasons, but if you are going to use it, you have to be very very tight on making sure your examples match your claims. Otherwise you will get bogged down in defending the specifics of each case. It can be rhetorically powerful but it is very difficult to use correctly. If you don't use it properly it hurts your argument because it looks like you are either over-claiming on what your evidence shows, or were just googling headlines that kind of matched your thesis. You should then expect to get called out on that. Or you can be aware of that in advance and construct better arguments, which leads to better engagement.