Americans all stand equal before the law, children are taught
in this country, regardless of wealth or race or social status. Because
this is a classless society.
Of course, children here are also told that a nocturnal fairy will exchange old teeth for cash.
The bitter truth, more obvious by the year, is that law enforcement in the U.S. is actually the enforcement of the class system itself.
If you are poor, you understand that. If you are wealthy, you probably understand it, too, but in another way altogether.
For a member of the American underclass, a minor brush with authorities can turn into the kind of Kafkaesque despair that most Americans associate with places like Egypt or Russia or Iran.
So the story of Kalief Browder, detailed earlier this month in the New Yorker — "Three years on Rikers without trial" — could only have been a shock to the readers of that magazine, who are generally members of America's elite, and therefore largely shielded from judicial abuse.
Long story short, Browder was arrested wrongly for robbery and assault. And for the sin of refusing to cop a plea he was imprisoned in New York's fearsome Riker's Island jail, mostly in solitary, for three years without trial, before prosecutors gave up and admitted they had no case.
Keeping him locked up didn't seem to bother anyone; Browder, a juvenile delinquent from the Bronx, belongs to the nuisance class, and that was enough.
Such treatment, it goes without saying, simply would not happen to a kid from the preppy confines of Sag Harbor or Montauk.
Read more: How the law follows the wealth gap in modern-day America - World - CBC News
Of course, children here are also told that a nocturnal fairy will exchange old teeth for cash.
The bitter truth, more obvious by the year, is that law enforcement in the U.S. is actually the enforcement of the class system itself.
If you are poor, you understand that. If you are wealthy, you probably understand it, too, but in another way altogether.
For a member of the American underclass, a minor brush with authorities can turn into the kind of Kafkaesque despair that most Americans associate with places like Egypt or Russia or Iran.
So the story of Kalief Browder, detailed earlier this month in the New Yorker — "Three years on Rikers without trial" — could only have been a shock to the readers of that magazine, who are generally members of America's elite, and therefore largely shielded from judicial abuse.
Long story short, Browder was arrested wrongly for robbery and assault. And for the sin of refusing to cop a plea he was imprisoned in New York's fearsome Riker's Island jail, mostly in solitary, for three years without trial, before prosecutors gave up and admitted they had no case.
Keeping him locked up didn't seem to bother anyone; Browder, a juvenile delinquent from the Bronx, belongs to the nuisance class, and that was enough.
Such treatment, it goes without saying, simply would not happen to a kid from the preppy confines of Sag Harbor or Montauk.
Read more: How the law follows the wealth gap in modern-day America - World - CBC News
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