If you are white and rich, 14 days in jail — (for the bigger crime) — but if you're black and poor, 1825 days — (for the lesser)

14 September 2019

US justice — always a "trip"

You may have followed wealthy television star Felicity Huffman's encounter with "law".

She got 14 days in jail for paying someone to falsify her daughter's college admissions SAT score.

Looking at that case, journalist Dara Sharif pointed to the societally obvious:

Huffman’s [14 day jail] sentence paled in comparison to that of another mother, a black woman from Connecticut named Tanya McDowell, who was sentenced to five years in prison for the crime of using a friend’s address to enroll her son in kindergarten in 2010, as The Hour explained in a 2017 story.

McDowell was homeless at the time she used a friend’s address for enrollment purposes.

And while her sentence was indeed served concurrently to that for an unrelated drug conviction, the sentence for the school enrollment issue alone was still a disparate five years.

The moral? — If you understand how the American system consistently ignores these disparities . . .

. . . you will know what you need to about our "shining city upon a hill" culture.

PeteFree.com

If you are white and rich, 14 days in jail — (for the bigger crime) — but if you're black and poor, 1825 days — (for the lesser)