A Moment of Clarity.
For Your Consideration.
words.
"Trayvon Martin’s killing focused our national discussion because
Americans made him a concrete model of opposing moral judgments about
the plight of young black men. Is it because of their own lack of values
and self-discipline, or to the vicious prejudice against them? Given
either of these judgments, many conclude that we need more laws —
against discrimination if you are in one camp, and against violent crime
if you are in the other — and stronger penalties to solve our racial
problems.
There may be some sense to more legislation, but after many years of
both “getting tough on crime” and passing civil rights acts, we may be
scraping the bottom of the legal barrel. In any case, underlying the
partial truths of the two moral pictures, there is a deeper issue. We
need to recognize that our continuing problems about race are
essentially rooted in a fundamental injustice of our economic system."
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Getting Past the Outrage on Race
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