zlacker

>>jbegle+(OP)
Post US Civil war, we encoded a set of rules that on their face did not discriminate on race. But their effect was basically to prevent black people from voting and enjoying their civil liberties.

Now we are encoding these biases into models built with mass surveillance. Many of us upper middle class white folks turn a blind eye. Subconsciously we know that’s not really targeting us. “We have nothing to hide” is the battle cry of the apathetic middle class person... when you trace the origin not just to law and order but the “war on terrorism” the relationship to race is even more depressing.

Maybe when we examine deeper we see those using the tools of mass surveillance look like us (heck are from this industry!). This same people working in the surveillance industry only imagine getting the “bad guys” not people that look like them!

On their face this has nothing to do with race. Examine deeper and you see, it’s far easier to take away civil liberties when it’s the “other” it’s being taken away from. Where the in group can blissfully rationalize what’s happening to get on with their day

>>softwa+Au
> we encoded a set of rules that on their face did not discriminate on race. But their effect was basically to prevent black people from voting and enjoying their civil liberties.

That is quite a claim. I am neither agreeing or disagreeing, as I don't know enough about this. Could you share some specific examples of the rules that you are referring to and evidence that they were intended to prevent black people from voting and enjoying their civil liberties?

>>yosito+7E
Some of these no longer exist, but some do:

Grandfather voting clauses: https://www.thoughtco.com/grandfather-clauses-voting-rights-...

Felony disfranchisement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_disenfranchisement_in_t...

Related to felony disfranchisement, the war on drugs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_the_war_on_drugs

Gun control laws: https://newrepublic.com/article/112322/gun-control-racist

Literacy tests: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test#Voting

Cash bail: https://harvardlawreview.org/2018/02/bail-reform-and-risk-as...

Stop and frisk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop-and-frisk_in_New_York_Cit...

Some of these fall under the broader category of Jim Crow Laws[1], but most the original Jim Crow Laws are more obvious in their racism.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws

>>kerkes+AG
redlining wasn't a law (it is illegal now), but it really supercharged these sorts of things by putting all of the PoC in very specific areas that were always depressed away from all of the white folk.

>>SEJeff+YH
what's the difference between a law and a policy? redlining explicitly excluded black neighborhoods from FHA loans.

>>throwl+9K
Laws are passed by Congress, policies are created by the executive to define things left unspecified by law, pursuant to broader powers granted by Congress.

Policies that aren't laws carry the same effective force of law, but they can be changed on a whim by the president with an executive order.

The Federal Home Loan Bank Act established the agencies that would create redlining, but the redlining itself was created by the administrators and independent agencies created by the act.