Author Topic: Minority oppression in the USA  (Read 4046 times)

Matibhadra

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Minority oppression in the USA
« on: November 10, 2013, 12:56:38 AM »
Are you concerned with minority oppression in China and the like? Then just look at what is happening right now in your own backyard, in the “free and democratic” US...

[...] if Los Angeles is any indication, people of color—and black and brown people in particular—will continue to be criminalized. More alarming is the fact that that targeting of people of color starts at a young age, specifically against minors. The Los Angeles Unified School District, which is the second largest school district in the United States, teams up with what’s called the Los Angeles School Police Department, or LASPD. The LASPD is the largest public school police department in the nation, and employs nearly 500 officers that exclusively police children, some as young as 6 years of age. The vast majority, 74 percent, are Latino. 10 percent are black, 10 percent are white, and 6 percent are Asian.

The LASPD issues tickets for alleged fighting or marijuana possession—but its truancy enforcement drew condemnation, because officers often ticketed minors who were simply late to school, instead of actually skipping school. Up until recently, an LASPD truancy ticket was a $250 fine, but that cost could easily have gone up, especially when children weren’t that keen to tell their parents they were caught late for class. Arriving to school just fifteen minutes late could have cost families up to $1,000.


http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/11/09

Have you ever heard about similarly nasty racial targeting by China against Tibetans?

Blueupali

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Re: Minority oppression in the USA
« Reply #1 on: November 10, 2013, 07:53:26 AM »
My goodness, I think about the nonsense in the U.S. a lot, since I live here, but never in context of how this might look in relation to China's suppression of Tibetans.
  So, obviously, in the U.S., we have a history of severe racial issues, as the colonists actually had started off enslaving Africans and their descendants.
  So, I was not aware of this particular nonsense of the L.A. police department, but I have noticed that we generally have too powerful a police force and that a lot of local laws probably violate our constitutional rights.
  I have actually been thinking about how to get Americans interested in reform, because I think we are so busy trying to work off our bank loans that we let them oppress us; also it's hard to know what the police are up to; they seem nice enough to rich white people, who don't have any concept how they treat poor and minority peoples.