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Comment by AdmiralAsshat | Hacker News Reader

> I think that USA do not see inmates as human beings. That is the only way to explain what happens there. But, they are human and abusing them is as much as a crime as abusing anyone else.

Most people in the US don't. Which, combined with its history of racism, goes a long way towards explaining the school-to-prison pipeline.

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Law enforcement and prison unions have a financial interest to support mass incarceration. They lobby against drug legalization and have a history of systematic violence. I wonder which way union members vote.

> history of racism

US is one of the least racist - up to and including freeing slaves.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15...

The article is about something else -- whether people admit racism to a survey. Americans know that racism is "politically incorrect".

How many countries had millions of slaves (15% of the population) to free?

Also interesting that you say "up to and including freeing slaves", which excluded the racially founded prison industrial complex that was created to replac e slavery after the 13th Amendment.

Not saying US is the worst, am saying not to ignore USA's ugly history and present, especially USA claims to be the world leader in freedom and human rights.

I certainly agree with you that, on the whole, the US is a far more tolerant country than many of us give it credit for. However, the US was pretty late to the game to abolishing slavery; and it only did so after being dragged kicking and screaming [0]. The south then did everything in its power to resurrect de-facto slavery. And that is just the anti-black racism.

[0] Even the North didn't support abolishing slavery until after the Civil war started, at which point the argument was largely 'we just fought and won a war over this, lets at least get something out of it".

Slavery, Chinese exclusion act, Japanese internment, Jim crow laws, are just some examples of the times public policy was explicitly racist. A bunch more things are implicitly racist, with the war on drugs being one of them (interestingly one of Nixon's aides said that the war on drugs was essentially made to criminalize black people and hippies).

i think you need to read up on your history, especially regarding when and why the prison system was founded.

also, that link is regarding a survey asking people if they think they are racist, it’s hardly objective

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