Posted by Eugene Volokh:
Felon Serving a Life Sentence Chosen as Exemplar of American Blacks
by the German magazine Stern. The magazine ran a photo display s
comparing various parts of American life (Democrat vs. Republican,
Left vs. Right, Cynical vs. Romantic); for Black vs. White, the white
is a Florida retiree and the black is Charles Ezeb, a felon serving a
life sentence.
The display, as [1]Medienkritik points out, seems aimed at showing
Americans generally, or perhaps American conservatives, in a bad
light. (These sorts of quote-picking exercises tell you more about the
biases of the authors, and which quotes they wanted to pick, than
about what the public actually thinks.) But the black vs. white item
is just a shocker quite independently of that.
Oh, and check out Ezeb's quote:
"The USA is a pretty rotten country viewed from in here."
-- Charles Ezeb, serving life in the Louisiana State Penitentiary,
Angola, Louisiana.
I'm quite happy to believe that the Angola pen is a pretty rotten
place, and even more rotten than it should be. But, say, Ezeb, what
did you do to get that life sentence? Might you have been helping make
the U.S. a worse country for the people around you (most likely
especially for the black people around you, given that [2]most U.S.
homicide is intraracial, as is most other violent crime)?
Makes one even more curious why Stern would choose this particular man
for their black vs. white comparison, no?
(Incidentally, I did google, newspaper, and caselaw searches to see if
I could find more about Ezeb's conviction; I found no information but
also no evidence of any controversy about whether Ezeb may have been
wrongfully convicted. As best I can tell, he's likely a pretty serious
criminal who's rightly been locked up for his crimes.)
References
1. http://medienkritik.typepad.com/blog/2005/03/sterns_gallery_.html
2. http://www.fbi.gov/filelink.html?file=/ucr/cius_03/xl/03tbl2-7.xls
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