U.N. human rights experts have called for major reforms of the U.S. criminal justice system to combat systemic racism, citing testimonies that jailed Black women had been shackled during childbirth while male inmates were forced to work in "plantation-style" conditions.

In a report published on Thursday, three U.N.-appointed experts said they had found practices in U.S. prisons that amounted to “an affront to human dignity” in visits in April and May.

The U.S. diplomatic mission in Geneva declined to comment. The Federal Bureau of Prisons said it was committed to ensuring the safety and security of incarcerated individuals as well as employees and the public.

One such practice is restraining and shackling women prisoners during childbirth, the report said.

The experts “heard, first hand, unbearable direct testimonies of pregnant women shackled during labour, who due to the chaining, lost their babies”, it said. Asked to give details, a U.N. rights spokesperson referred to “several” cases and confirmed they all involved Black women.

    • Wogi@lemmy.world
      102·
      1 year ago

      Let’s say that there are roughly 3 times as many black players as white players. I have no idea what the actual percentages are, but for the sake of argument let’s say the NBA is 60% black, 20% Hispanic or Latino, 15% white, and the last 5% is everybody not already mentioned.

      If all players are playing roughly equivalently, but 90% of the calls were made against just the white players, would you have a problem with that? What if 95% of the referees are black?

      Let’s even throw a common racist counter point in there, and say that white players are more likely to commit a foul. Say each individual white player is 100% more likely to foul another player than his black teammates are. That would only account for 30% of the fouls and yet 90% of the calls are still made against white players.

      Let’s go on to say that white players are penalized so heavily that for anything that could even appear to be a foul, whether it is or not, other players go to the referee and complain about their white teammates actions. Leading to even more calls against white players.

      What if just having a white sounding name like Justin or Matt was enough to prevent you from even being considered for the NBA draft?