Specter's Perspective

“There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be, but we have done various things over intellectual history to slowly correct some of our misapprehensions.”

According to evidence recently accepted by the Supreme Court, a black man who kills a white is three times more likely to suffer the penalty of death than a white man who kills a white. A black man who kills a white is eleven times more likely to be slain by the state than a white man who kills a black. In my idealistic youth, this was known as racial discrimination or even racism. Now, says the majority on the Supreme Court, it is “a discrepancy that appears to correlate with race.” However, as the justices went on to say, such “apparent disparities in sentencing are an inevitable part of our criminal justice system.” If that last statement is true, it is rather a condemnation.