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> The US situation is unfortunate, but it's more the result of poverty and low-level racism, not racially tinged policy.

Is this just your conclusion, or the conclusion of anyone who has studied mass incarceration in the United States?

> do you think Obama was in on it?

i find it fascinating how to some folks, pointing at obama's ethnic background is apparently some kind of knockdown argument.

> i find it fascinating how to some folks, pointing at obama's ethnic background is apparently some kind of knockdown argument.

It's pretty close to a knockdown argument against someone whose position is US government policy is to imprison black people on account of their ethnicity.

The great-grandparent comment may have been suggesting that. However, she was too vague to be sure.

>against someone whose position is US government policy is to imprison black people on account of their ethnicity

Can you provide a source for this wild claim?

> Can you provide a source for this wild claim?

The commenter I responded to was so vague, that they could have been making that claim. After all, they were likely drawing parallels between the situation in the OP and the US.

But who knows what they really thought; they never clarified. I called that out at the time and in every comment since.

That's not even a claim.

So I think most people would describe mass incarceration as a systemic issue, not one that any individual president or administration is wholly responsible for. The President is not an absolute monarch who can impose their will all throughout the US government...

That being said, it's just plain easy to find actual incidences where US policy was explicitly racist in it's intent and effect.

https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-rich...

> "You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

> It's pretty close to a knockdown argument against someone whose position is US government policy is to imprison black people on account of their ethnicity.

it's not, not even slightly, as far as i can tell. what makes you feel this is the case?

> it's not, not even slightly, as far as i can tell. what makes you feel this is the case?

If there was a high level policy to explicitly imprison African Americans (rather than one that disproportionately imprisons blacks because of complicated circumstances), it's hard to believe a black president would support it or allow it to continue.

Not the GP but you really should avoid being deliberately obtuse. Also, I agree whataboutism is a problem, but most of us live in the US. It makes sense that we would talk about our own country.

Lastly, you are wildly off the mark regarding racialized drug policies in the US. Just two references:

https://www.aclu.org/issues/mass-incarceration/racial-dispar...

https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-rich...

> but most of us live in the US. It makes sense that we would talk about our own country.

In an article about Chinese human rights abuses? At the most charitable, needing to make everything about the US is a form of political narcissism.

If you want to talk about US problems, post an on-topic article and talk about them there.

I’m proud to be American and proud to think about how America measures up to other countries. My belief in America’s virtues is strong enough that I’m comfortable using other countries’ problems to discuss American problems. (It’s almost like this is one reason to read world news.)

Calling this “political narcissism” is thinly veiled political solipsism. I’m amazed to read that here—do you just put your thoughts about the country in which you live in a little box, separate from everything else? It’s not like you can’t ignore these threads if you’d like; most of us can walk and chew gum at the same time.

It sounds to me like you have some deep-seated insecurities that I really don’t think you should have. I think you should address these before you go around whining about other people’s attempt to discuss things.

> It sounds to me like you have some deep-seated insecurities that I really don’t think you should have. I think you should address these before you go around whining about other people’s attempt to discuss things.

How condescending.

I have a deep-seated frustration that threads on this and similar topics become trainwreck full of derails and distraction. I'd be surprised if the majority of comments in this thread even discussed China or the situation there, rather than use it as a jumping off point derail to a US topic. As far as I can tell, I'm the only person to have used the term Xinjiang in this entire thread. This is in a post about Xinjiang.

Just to emphasize: this thread is such a trainwreck that it dropped like a rock off the front page. That does no one any good.

> It’s almost like this is one reason to read world news.

A better reason to read world news is to understand and discuss the world, not to compulsively engage in domestic topics.