Justice Delayed vs. Justice Denied: Race, Politics, and Money in State Government

Already critics are suggesting that if it goes as far as abolition, the results would be ''disastrous''. But even they agree that the committal hearing process needs a remake. That is also The Sunday Age 's view: As Mr Clark says, ''some form of… preliminary hearing or scrutiny of serious criminal charges needs to be available'', but committals have become too loosely controlled, duplicate much of what must happen at the trial stage, run for too long and, in many cases, turn into something of a lawyers' picnic.

But the difference between the first two words is at the heart of what could be the most effective reform to committals. At present magistrates must be satisfied that there is reasonable prospect that a properly instructed jury could convict a charged person. If, as Chief Magistrate Ian Gray suggests, that word were replaced with would likely convict, fewer cases with little chance of success would be sent to trial. We would also support tightening and controlling cross-examination in the magistrates courts. Too often these days witnesses - and too often there are too many of those - are cross-examined on matters where there is little dispute about their evidence or that are covered in their statements.

In magistrates courts new duties now take up increasing time, such as family violence intervention orders, which have grown 48 per cent in the last five years. Committal hearings remain an important part of the justice safety net. They screen out cases where the evidence is not strong enough and allow accused people to know what they are facing at trial and formulate a position as to whether to plead guilty or not guilty.

But the process needs to be streamlined and unclogged. And our message to Mr Clark is: Once you understand why the names keep changing, it is easier to follow the changes and conflicts. And it is really interesting sociologically. My sources are people who are in the group being discussed, or reports or research about the preferences of people in the group being named.

And, of course, these things are always changing and evolving. This is about the United States. The preferred terms are different in other countries. I will also be highlighting which groups are colonial minorities who were involuntarily subjected to US rule, rather than voluntarily immigrating. White and Black are color names that some people in the group prefer. Red and yellow are NOT acceptable color names for people and will be heard as offensive. There were White Power, Black Power, Red Power, and Yellow Power movements in the late s, but calling a person red or yellow was not polite even then.

The easiest way to avoid serious offense is to stick with the continent names European, African, Asian, American although these are not always preferred. Black and African American are the two preferred terms for people who can trace their ancestry to sub-Saharan Africa, especially those who are the descendants of North American slaves. The people who are called African Americans or Black Americans have skin tones ranging from various shades of dark brown to various shades of pale, with many shades of brown between these extremes.

Their ancestors include various distinct ethnic groups from sub-Saharan Africa, but also indigenous Americans and people from Europe and Asia. Nevertheless, compared to most of the other groups we will discuss, they have a very strong sense of collective identity as Black Americans or African Americans due to their particular history as the descendants of people who were involuntarily brought to North America and subjected to chattel slavery followed by the rules of segregation.

They may, however, jump in and explain to you rather vigorously why they prefer the other term. There are a large group of White young people who have been educated in predominantly-White schools who have been taught that Black is insulting or that the only correct term is African American. Surveys generally say that younger and more educated people are more likely to prefer African American, and that preference for African American was going up over time, although I imagine this has shifted in the last few years with the rise of Black Lives Matter and renewed interest in Black Power ideologies.

Reasons to prefer Black include tracing ancestry to the Caribbean, a sense of affiliation with the Black Power movement especially among older people who lived through the s and s or the Black Lives Matter movement, and rejection of the idea that Black people are immigrants and not real Americans.

The term Afro-American was used briefly in the s. It is now out of fashion but nobody finds it insulting. In Latin American contexts, you will see usage of Afro-descent. Both in Latin America and in the US you will see terms like Afro-Cuban or Afro-Brazilian, which are understood as terms of either simple description or of ethnic pride. The African people who were originally kidnapped and sold as slaves had distinct ethnic identities and languages such as Yoruba, Ibo, Wolof, Mandinka, and some families retain memories of their African ancestors through oral traditions, but in general these ethnic identities merged among the people born to slavery in North America.

Black immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean often have a different ethnic identity from Black Americans, although the larger White society generally just lumps them all together. Even with the legacies of European colonialism and racial slavery, people from majority-Black nations have typically developed a different kind of Black identity from people who have grown up in the United States, and there can be ethnic hostilities between American Blacks and African or Caribbean immigrants.

Although refugees may be from any class, voluntary immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean are on average more highly educated than Black Americans. Caribbean people are also descendants of slavery and generally identify as part of the larger group of Black people, but at the same time see themselves as culturally distinct from Black Americans, as well as from Africans.

Immigrants from African nations such as Nigeria, Somalia, the Sudan, etc. The children of African immigrants may or may not fold their identity into a larger Black identity, although the experience of being treated as Black in the United States generally makes them very race-conscious. There have been pan-African movements that stress unity among different nations and ethnicities in Africa that have encompassed the African diaspora i. Pan-Africanism was politically important for Black Americans in the s. Even if they are trying to distinguish themselves culturally from Black Americans, African immigrants generally see themselves as Black in this global pan-African sense.

People of African descent from Spanish-speaking countries in the Caribbean e. More on that below. Puerto Ricans, who also often have some African ancestry but do not generally identify as racially Black , are also a colonial minority. The term Negro is now outdated. It can be viewed as offensive, especially by young people who do not know its history and especially those who think that it may be the n-word that they are not allowed to say.

In its time, the word Negro was often a word of political pride, especially by higher-class people, and the term was never used as an insult. There was a campaign in the 20 th Century to insist upon capitalizing Negro. Since the shift to Black in the s, most Black people capitalize Black, and I follow this preference. For consistency I also capitalize White, which most Black people do not.

I will explain later what is at stake in this. Martin Luther King, Jr. The word Negro went out of use very quickly after Dr. King was killed in April The Black Power movement had been gaining steam since The choice of Black or Negro through the s was a political choice tied to conflict between the integrationist politics of the Civil Rights Movement which used Negro versus the militant separatist politics of the Black Muslims and, after , SNCC and other Black Power organizations, which used Black. Support among Blacks for integrationist Civil Rights politics collapsed after Dr.

This was before Dr. By , the word Black was the only preferred term.

Justice Delayed vs. Justice Denied

But this young woman never knew that; she saw a Black face and was out of there. The National Association for the Advance of Colored People was founded in and still has that name. It is the political term signifying pan-racial unity among people who are not White and is often used in political or activist circles. There are many people who believe I should not write that word even in an informative essay like this one, and I hesitate as I do it.

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I am hoping that in this context, buried in an article that builds up to it, the usage is acceptable. There are many people who view this word as vulgar and unspeakable and offensive. In the United States, it is the most loaded word one can utter, it is the nuclear weapon of racial epithets. There is no other word that comes even close in its explosive power. It is always insulting when said by a non-Black.

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It is the word that is linked with degradation and violence. It ruined her week and made her not want to have anything to do with White people for a while. There was never a positive or even neutral public use of the word historically. No political movement ever formed around the identity n-.

Under slavery and segregation Black people sometimes used the word themselves because they had no other word and you will often see the word used in literary fiction by Black people to convey the culture of a past period. None of that makes the word acceptable by non-Black people in modern usage. What is confusing to young non-Black people is that they hear Black people using the term often among themselves, especially in rap music, and think they ought to be able to use it.

Students also bring up singing along with rap music. When the topic was brought up, at least one minority student talked about being appalled at groups of White people listening to rap and singing the n-word together. There are arguments among Black people about whether they should be able to use the n-word for this kind of edgy radical effect. Many Black political writers use the n- word in this way. I have read things written by Black people on both sides of this debate, some saying that they should be able to use the word and that avoiding it just gives it power, and others saying it just gives White people the idea it is OK to use the word.

But these are debates about whether Black people should ever use the word, not debates about whether White people should be allowed to call Black people the n-word.

Non-Black students who have attended majority-Black schools and non-Black athletes on mixed-race teams may talk about context, and the subtleties of using racial insults with each other as a way of declaring friendship across boundaries. What I say about this is, first, yes this does happen, especially among men, and there are some subtle rules about this. Third, just because you have one relationship in which you use the n-word appropriately as insult bonding definitely does not give you the permission to go around insulting any other Black people you happen to meet.

You do not get any kind of pass at all just because you happen to know a Black person who let you call them n-. If Black people want to make these distinctions, that is their business.

• La casa del Tahur (Spanish Edition);
• Ils sont des torchons animaux au crochet (French Edition).
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The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word traces the origins of the word, the history of its usage among Blacks, controversies about it, and how context affects the word. He argues that there are usages among Blacks that are entirely positive. He even argues that there are rare circumstances in which the n-word may be appropriately used by White people, but his examples convinced me that even when such usage is appropriate when you know the context, there will be plenty of people who are offended anyway.

For example, there are people who believe the n-word should not be spelled out in this essay, even for the purpose of explaining why not to use it. If you search the Internet a little, you can find dozens of articles and blog posts mocking White people for whining about not being allowed to say the n-word when Black people can use it. This is viewed as the ultimate example of White privilege in action: There are dozens of other words that have been used historically and in the present to insult Black people that can generally be written without the same level of pain as the n-word but you should assume that if you use them you will be considered a racist, and I cannot imagine any way in which you would use these words except with insulting intent.

The ones that come to my mind are shade, spook, darkie, coon, ghetto, jigaboo, welfare queen. There are also dozens of racist stereotyped images that are considered insulting. Although a lot of Black people, like everyone else, like watermelon and fried chicken, there is a long history of extremely racist images using watermelon or fried chicken, and use of these terms or images, especially watermelon, in association with Black people is often considered racist. And, in context, pretty obviously is. At the same time, there is a concern that Black children are not viewed or treated as children by Whites, so you will also see people calling teens boys or girls to reinforce their youth.

These terms refer to the indigenous people of North America, the people who were here before the Europeans. Although there are scientific debates about how long the indigenous people have been in the Americas, the shortest estimate is 12, years, which would be before the invention of agriculture in Eurasia and before writing was invented. The longer estimates range above 40, years. Indigenous Americans are genetically most closely related to people in Asia. There are scientific debates about how they got to America from Asia. Many American Indian groups tell an origin story that their people arose on the land they were living on before the European invasion.

Each nation has a distinctive culture, language and history. Because of the policies in the US over history which have sought to destroy indigenous cultures and communities, many people who have American Indian ancestry have been disconnected from the tribe and may either identify as White or identify vaguely as American Indian without much specific tribal or cultural awareness. Anthropologists often use the term Amerind or AmerInd for this group, but it is not used popularly. I often abbreviate AmInd but that is just for convenience.

The term American Indian specifically refers to the descendants of original inhabitants of what is now the 48 states of the continental United States excluding Hawaii and Alaska. Constitution and claims about sovereignty and special status are tied to that word and that Constitutional basis.

There are still some people who prefer Native American. Thus, an American Indian is a descendant of the original inhabitants of the American continent, while an Indian American is an immigrant or a descendant of an immigrant from India. Indigenous, not Indian, is also one of the preferred terms in Canada, and the term Indian is never used to refer to indigenous people in Canada.

Although it is not common in casual use, many American Indian activists will use the term indigenous, especially if they are linking their movements to indigenous movements in Canada or Latin America. This term stresses that these people are the original inhabitants of this land, and everyone else is an immigrant voluntary or involuntary. This is because the legal status of each of these groups is governed by different laws. The indigenous inhabitants of Australia are called Aboriginal Australians.

Buck, squaw, redman, redskin, warrior, chief, timber n-.

Again, there are doubtless many others I am unaware of. Hispanic and Latino [or Latin or Latinx] are essentially synonyms like Black and African American that refer to the same basic group of people, those whose origins are in Latin America or the Spanish-speaking islands of the Caribbean. Neither is an insult although some prefer one and some the other. The most vociferous objections in my experience have come from Central Americans who prefer Latino, and there was also more of a sense in past decades that Hispanic was the term preferred by political conservatives while Latino was the term preferred by activists.

As I explain below, there are also parts of the US where people use Hispanic and Latino to refer to different groups of people. Race is asked in one question, and a separate question asks whether the person is Hispanic or Latino. It would never include people from Spain and easily includes the people from Brazil, but still excludes the people from the English- and French-speaking Caribbean islands.

Africans were brought as slaves throughout the Americas and their descendants are in the majority in some areas, especially Caribbean islands, northern Brazil, and specific parts of other countries. European nations claimed sovereignty over all American territories for a few hundred years, but European settlers became a majority in some places in Latin America, especially Chile, Argentina and southern Brazil, while they remain a small elite minority in others. Asians have migrated to the Americas since , both as merchants and as laborers, and there are significant minorities of people of Asian descent in Mexico, Peru and other countries with a Pacific Coast, as well as many Caribbean islands.

In practice, these people whose ancestry is very diverse are lumped together and treated as a race in the United States. Although Latinos are often thought of as immigrants or descendants of immigrants to the US, and many are, there are two groups that are not: They did not move; the US took them over. As they say, they did not cross the border, the border crossed them in Also, many Mexicans were driven out of those territories by Anglo mobs after the cession, and some of the people who migrated into that area after were people who had been driven out, or their descendants.

In Spanish grammar, both latino latina and hispano hispana would not be capitalized, but they are capitalized in English. I have been asked why not switch to the gender-neutral English word Latin, which was used in the s and s. The answer appears to be a rejection of English-centric language. I have also read critiques by Latino writers of Latinx as too Anglo-centric, as in Spanish it would be pronounced Latin-equis. In the s my sources said that people from the Caribbean especially Cubans generally preferred Hispanic, while Mexicans and Central Americans preferred Latino.

Because of who lives where in the continental US, this meant that Hispanic was generally preferred on the East Coast, and Latino in the Southwest, but it appears this has changed. Many people associate Hispanic with White and Latinx with indigenous. There are a lot of confusions around the edges with these categories. I do not know how South Americans or Puerto Ricans are classified in these places. Hispanics who are not immigrants or children of immigrants often do not speak Spanish, but only English.

Mexican American movements of the s and s stressed the politics of full integration and emphasized English. Many migrants from Mexico and Central America are from indigenous groups whose first language is not Spanish; some may not speak Spanish only poorly if at all. In Mexico and Central America, indigenous communities are at the bottom of the racial pecking order and are often discriminated against and have lower levels of income and education than other people. At times, they have been subject to violent attacks that have led them to flee as refugees. Central Americans generally migrate to the United States through Mexico.

Both Mexicans and Central Americans tend to seek to distinguish themselves from each other in the US. Puerto Rico is a subordinated part of the US. The US has claimed sovereignty over Puerto Rico since , but Puerto Rico is treated as a separate country for some purposes e.

Puerto Ricans have been US citizens since Spanish is the preferred language in Puerto Rico, but all Puerto Ricans learn English as a second language. I have heard references to Puerto Ricans as Boricua, but did not know what it meant so I looked it up. Boricua is a term of ethnic pride.

Some sources say it applies more to people living in the mainland US, and other sources say it applies to Puerto Ricans in general. I believe it is used among Puerto Ricans themselves, and it is not expected that outsiders will use the term. I have also heard of the term NewYorican for Puerto Ricans living in New York, but I do not know whether this is widely used and whether it is considered positive or negative. This is the same thing as not all Europeans are French, and you should not call a German person French, although they are both European.

A German person does not have to hate France to tell you that it is incorrect to call them French. This does not seem hard to me, and I do not know why it is confusing for some people, but it is. By the way, the same issue applies to Asians: Chinese people are not Japanese, Vietnamese are not Chinese, etc. More about this later. The people we are talking about are those with Mexican ancestry. Some Mexican-descent people have ancestry that is primarily European-Spanish, but most Mexican-descent people have ancestry that is partially or primarily indigenous American, so Mexican-descent people can and often do claim an entitlement to be in the territory of the United States based on being the native people of the American continent.

There was years of Spanish colonialism in what used to be New Spain then Mexico encompassing both modern-day Mexico and modern-day southwestern US that involved a lot of mixing between Spanish and indigenous people. Some of the indigenous people resisted Hispanicization and are still identified as indigenous in Mexico or American Indian in the United States , while others adopted Spanish as their language and became the Mexican people. There are also people in Santa Fe who are descendants of Jews who fled Spain after the expulsion in who identify as Spanish or Hispanic rather than Mexican.

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These people also count as Mexican American for our purposes. Mexican is a strong positive identity for most Mexicans, and many Mexican immigrants to the United States teach their children to have a strong positive identity as Mexican. Some Mexicans are of predominantly European descent. Some Mexicans in Mexico are elites who are wealthy and highly educated.

Although Mexican immigrants to the US are disproportionately lower income people seeking low wage work, some Mexican immigrants are highly-educated elites. There are also many immigrants from Mexico who are from indigenous groups in Mexico whose first language is not Spanish, and some who do not speak Spanish well at all.

A Mexican-American is an American of Mexican descent. This includes everyone born in the territory of the United States and those who have become naturalized citizens of the United States. There have been Mexican people in what is now the United States since before there was a United States, and Mexican Americans whose families have been in this territory for generations deeply resent the implication that they are foreigners.

This includes Spanish-speaking communities along the Mexican border. Many other Mexican Americans are grandchildren or great-grandchildren of Mexican immigrants who are at least as American as the White descendants of European immigrants. There has been a rise in immigration from Mexico since the s, so there are also many young Mexican Americans who are children of Mexican immigrants. And there are people who have been raised in the United States who immigrated as small children who also consider themselves to be Mexican American.