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Comment by Reedx | Hacker News Reader

> If an upper-middle class blonde hair, blue eyed woman gets accused of a crime, a higher degree of people would at least give her the benefit of the doubt

Which would make sense, no? They're playing the odds. It's exceedingly rare for any upper-middle class woman to commit a crime. So to be surprised by that is understandable. Take color and class out of it, you need only compare "man accused of crime" vs "woman accused of crime". More will give the woman benefit of the doubt, and they're more likely to be correct than giving the man the benefit of the doubt.

But to be clear, of course anyone accused of a crime should go through the exact same legal process as anyone else. Justice should be blind and operate on the facts of the case. You can't just make assumptions or play the odds in court, obviously.

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> Which would make sense, no? They're playing the odds. It's exceedingly rare for any upper-middle class woman to commit a crime.

Our “knowledge” of who commitd crimes is distorted by societal biases that influence the ascription of blame; there is no set of crime statistics that is immune from that.

So, when you justify those biases on the bases of the understanding that they distort, you make a circular argument, where the bias is its own justification.

Women commit very few crimes compared to men. That's not bias, it's a fact. I wasn't talking about how it should be used in court (it shouldn't).

> Women commit very few crimes compared to men. That's not bias, it's a fact.

All methods of assessing who commits crime are subject to societal biases (and largely the same set of biases, so you can't negate them by combining multiple sources). There's no unbiased oracle to consult for true criminal guilt.

And that is even leaving aside that many crimes are defined in ways that, while they are “objective” in the sense that term is used in legal jargon, actual guilt or innocence is itself fundamentally not an objective fact.

White people use drugs at higher rates than black people, but black people are convicted at higher rates for drug possession.

Additionally, it's easier for someone in the upper middle class to legally have the same behavior that would give a lower class person a felony. Case in point, nearly all of the stay at home moms in the upper class neighborhood I grew up in were barred out on Xanax all day. They just all knew the doctor that'd write scripts no questions asked but didn't take insurance, only cash. Lower class can't access that 'doctor'.

> It's exceedingly rare for any upper-middle class woman to commit a crime.

You're confusing "commit" and "get caught and receive significant consequences".

Certainly a lot of truth in that. But it is uncommon for women to engage in criminal behavior compared to men.

This is the very definition of prejudice. If a person is black, or from lower income classes, it doesn't make them fundamentally different from other people. White people can be murderers as much as any other group. Your "common sense" is just a recipe for institutionalized racism.

No. That's pure prejudice. There are lots of upper class criminals. Maybe you have heard of Elizabeth Holmes, the blonde woman in charge of Theranos? Major fraud case.

Ever heard of Aileen Wuornos? Major serial killer case.

Aileen and Elizabeth are outliers. It makes sense to be surprised by it.

If there's a woman and a man and someone asks you to guess the criminal, which one are you going to choose? Flipping a coin would not be a wise strategy.

"Playing the odds" is often code for justifying sexism, racism, etc. And it helps entrench it.

"Black people are often criminals and white people are not. It isn't racism. It is just playing the odds."

I find that statement pretty sickening. We have a system that often sets up certain classes of people for failure and makes it hard for them to avoid being charged, then use their inevitable failure as further justification for heaping on more mistreatment.

http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/04/what-fool-be...

you only prove my point further because you've forgotten that Theranos raised $700 million and her board of directors was a list of very respected researchers, physicians, and businesspeople.

If she was a black women, it would never have gotten to that point ever without a legit product.

Holmes was the perfect posterface for Silicon Valley's version of "progressiveness" that caters upperclass white folks, without care for people of color. Google "white feminism"

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