Sunday, December 25, 2016

How employable is Brock Turner?


At first, I was aghast to come across a question that seems insensitive and preposterous. Evidence unanimously proves a privileged young white man, Brock Turner, committed a heinous crime, sexually assaulting an unconscious woman. Such odious behavior has now been amply compounded by consistent absence of remorse and flagrantly disingenuous attempts to deflect responsibility. Yet, there is apparent solicitous concern about how this affects such a sorry soul's future career prospects? If that isn't a blatant example of misplaced sympathy, I don't know what is. Of course, Quora offers a tool to deal with 'bad' questions, just downvote them. However, sometimes bad questions also provide teachable moments. I think this one certainly does.

One teachable moment comes from probing why such solicitous concern for Brock Turner's but not for Cory Batey's future career options. Cory who you ask?


Another teachable moment comes from asking why such different sentences for two rather similar crimes. If anything, for such heinous crimes both defendants should have received similar, harsh sentences. So why such difference in sentencing?

Black (Batey) versus white (Turner) defendant, is one possibility (see below from 1).


Black (Judge Monte Wilkins; Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts) versus white (Judge Aaron Persky; Aaron Persky) judge, is another possibility (see below from 1).


Obviously some justice enforcers are color-blind as indeed they should be while justice itself is apparently blind...to racial disparity that is. A 2013 report to the UN Human Rights Committee shows blacks in the US are routinely disproportionately arrested, convicted and sentenced for comparable crimes (2). Are such disparities surprising in a culture where solicitous concern expressed for a white but not black perpetrator of rather similar, heinous crimes is apparently normal?
Teachable moments do have a problem in that there's no guarantee they're equally learnable moments. The latter depends on the students, questioners and/or readers in this case. After all, one can take a horse to water but can't make it drink.

Bibliography
1. King: Brock Turner and Cory Batey, two college athletes who raped unconscious women, show how race and privilege affect sentences. Shaun King, New York Daily News, Tuesday, June 7, 2016. KING: Brock Turner, Cory Batey show how race affects sentencing
2. Report of The Sentencing Project to the United Nations Human Rights Committee. Regarding Racial Disparities in the United States Criminal Justice System. August 2013. http://sentencingproject.org/wp-...


https://www.quora.com/How-employable-is-Brock-Turner/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala


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