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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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I don't think Emett Till's murder is comparable to contemporary murder by a jealous husband. Roy Bryant did not make an attempt to conceal his identity when he abducted Hill, and the people Till was staying with did not resist his abduction. My guess is that they did not believe that Till would be killed, that he would be abducted and whipped but let live. That is what J.W. Milam would tell a journalist their intentions were afterwards in his published confession in Look Magazine (though the FBI doesn't think the timeline he laid out there works given the distances he would have had to travel) It is also what the lawyer for the prosecution in Till's trial would say was the appropriate punishment for his transgression. Bryant and Milam were not even indicted for kidnapping even though they had confessed to it before the trial.

This suggests that there was a social convention that white men could abduct and non-lethally punish black men and boys. If they had just kidnapped and whipped him they would likely not even have been charged. Murder crossed a line such that they were tried, but an all white jury would still acquit them.

They were arrested for kidnapping but they weren't charged with it.

You've brought up two examples where arguments escalated into impulsive shootings where the people were caught immediately and plead guilty. That's not indicative of a belief that you have a socially agreed upon right to do this violence without punishment. Your third example is a drive by with no details of how the shooter was caught. A drive by may be a poor attempt to conceal identity but it's still an attempt.

Bryant and Milam acted days after Till's alleged whistling and in a premeditated fashion and still took no action to conceal their identities from Mose Wright when they knocked on his door (except for threatening him) and asked him to identify Till. Till's family did not resist except to offer a bribe, because they knew resisting would bring greater punishment and because they expected Till to be whipped but not killed, as the prosecutor suggested was the appropriate punishment for Till.

Yes men across different cultures do violence to restore honor. The difference is that this was a caste system where there was a socially understood right for white men to restore their honor with violence against a black child without resistance from that child's family and go unpunished by the state or society. That's nothing like two guys shooting each other in the club over a girl and then pleading guilty and being sentenced to 25 years.

I know that you want to believe this, but the evidence seems to suggest the opposite. They were immediately arrested, suggesting that kidnapping was not acceptable.

They were acquitted by an all white Jury suggesting they correctly predicted that they did not need to hide their identities because it was acceptable to the people who would be in the jury. They were not punished.

In the case of the Fire Chief they dropped charges because he claims to have used pepper spray in self defense on the man who beat him, but there's video of someone who looks like him using bear spray on a sleeping homeless person. The fire chief also won't testify in court, so the local prosecutor thinks they'll lose since the homeless person will claim self defence after being pepper sprayed on a public sidewalk. Both he and the transient appear white in the video. I'd like to see the local prosecutor be more aggressive but this doesn't seem like much of a case of a racial caste system.

There was a manhunt for the black man who fired at the white child grazing her cheek and police obtained warrants for counts of attempted murder first degree. He is in custody now. The white guy who shot the black teen and sent him to the hospital was allowed to go free on bail and has been charged with first degree assault. The legal system seems to have acted appropriately. Biden commented on the controversial case where someone was seriously injured and not on the uncontroversial case where someone was grazed.

The Alameda County DA issued a blanket memo (not benefiting any particular race) saying that prosecutors should not use sentence enhancements and seek the lowest available prison term, with an exception for sex crimes against children and murder. Jasper Wu's killers all have been charged with murder, shooting at an occupied vehicle, possession of a firearm and two of them with conspiracy to commit a crime and "criminal street gang conspiracy". Google says the penalty for murder in CA is 25 years to life, so not exactly non-carceral.

The second paragraph of your 'mutual conflict' story says three charges were brought on one of the individuals involved and the State's Attorney says that the didn't invoke mutual conflict and CPD mischaracterized them. I'm don't know much about how self defense rights work in the case of large gun battles but it seems complicated to resolve who is the aggressor and who is legally defending themselves without video footage.

These are generic soft on crime stuff and not evidence of a contemporary racial caste system.

Till's killers just half-assed hiding the body and the killing. They reasoned - correctly - that they didn't need to do a great job at hiding what they were doing - just that they had to not taunt cops and potentially angry locals while doing it. The average White dude in that time and place was pretty willing to look the other way, but thought that this kind of thing right in front of his face was a bit distasteful.

The state put its thumb on a scale by making sure it was an all-white jury in a majority black area.

Yeah, there is a general stance from the left that if black people commit racially charges crime it's best not to comment but if white people do that is worth commenting on. I don't think this is based on belief in a racial caste system where black people have a socially understood right to kill white people without punishment. I think it's the belief that state can be trusted to punish black criminals who kill white people but might let white people off the hook. The black shooter in that case is in custody while white shooter in Missouri went free on bail. I think this is an outdated assumption and they'll both be punished but this historical distrust of the state to punish white perpetrators is why Biden called and not a belief that the shooter had a social right to kill black people. If you want to make a wager about whether that shooter will serve more jail time than Emmett Till's killers I'd be interested.

The statement you pointed to as evidence of individual leniency for killers of an Asian child previously turned out to be a blanket statement about treatment of non murder/sex crime felonies. Where is the explicit statement of preference of lesser charges for black kids rather than general soft on crime liberalism?

I don't know what the fuck is going on in Chicago and SF generally and I think they're being way too soft on people. But the examples of leniency you've brought up are a white on white homeless guy and gang violence in Chicago which I presume is black on black. This is all bad, but it does not amount to a racial caste system.