Path: ...!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: John B. Newsgroups: rec.bicycles.tech Subject: Re: Bicycle outing with happy ending Date: Thu, 22 May 2025 20:58:05 -0700 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 73 Message-ID: References: <100kqsq$2t6ut$2@dont-email.me> <55cs2kd1jdri887q7q39na426fhhgj9530@4ax.com> <100ldq5$311d2$1@dont-email.me> <100lmlh$32g7r$4@dont-email.me> <100lu6p$3451j$1@dont-email.me> <100nm7e$3ikq5$1@dont-email.me> <100no19$3ivna$1@dont-email.me> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Fri, 23 May 2025 05:58:09 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="e25b66956843c23781b7b84873e2dc73"; logging-data="4120834"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+CGH1bDVL6R4E2gyx/FWcXS/+Fe72Hhb0=" User-Agent: ForteAgent/7.10.32.1212 Cancel-Lock: sha1:zX+dJMNgczoh6NojfZkT69+Usjg= Bytes: 3683 On Thu, 22 May 2025 12:48:25 -0500, AMuzi wrote: >On 5/22/2025 12:17 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote: >> On 5/21/2025 9:21 PM, AMuzi wrote: >>> On 5/21/2025 6:12 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote: >>>> On 5/21/2025 4:41 PM, AMuzi wrote: >>>>> >>>>> But the public reaction to several well publicized >>>>> instances of institutional abuse of mentally ill spurred >>>>> politicians to act, which was widely supported at the >>>>> time.  Those were horrible, and real, but not >>>>> representative. >>>>> >>>>> The unintended consequences now punish the citizenry >>>>> generally more than the inmates before 1963. >>>> >>>> And that should be a lesson in why general public policy >>>> should not be driven by extreme outlier cases. >>>> >>> >>> OK, what's an outlier and what's not? >>> >>> Emmett Till? >> >> The murder of Emmett Till was not an outlier, which was the >> main point of the publicity it generated. >> >> Emmett Till's murder was an example, bringing to public >> consciousness a widespread practice of lynchings and general >> oppression of black people in the deep south. >> >> Sometimes one incident can call attention to a big problem, >> but that doesn't make the incident an outlier, except >> perhaps in its press-worthiness. >> >> > >Not unique, but the total is much less than most people think: > >https://www.statista.com/statistics/1175147/lynching-by-race-state-and-race/ > >https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/map-shows-over-a-century-of-documented-lynchings-in-united-states-180961877/ > >Roughly 86 per year. > >Ohio, for example 10 white, 16 black. > >Emmet Till's murder was significant in many ways and an >oultier in the sense that most received no publicity whatsoever. > >There's nothing good to say about that, but Emmett Till's >death was a significant event toward passage of Mr >Eisenhower's 1957 Civil Rights Act. > >As always, one man's crucial incident is another's >meaningless trivia. > >p.s. The first USA lynching was of a group of Italians in >New Orleans. No one talked about 'civil rights' in that >context, and yet they did die at the end of a rope. But I wonder... how many that were hung were in fact guilty of the crime that they were executed for? In the Italian lynching 6 of the 19 had been declared innocent. ( it was also the introduction of the word "mafia" into the U.S. dialect) -- cheers, John B.