Several well known African American scholars and leaders have commented on the "super-predator" language.
For example Michelle Alexander has said
In her support for the 1994 crime bill, for example, she used racially coded rhetoric to cast black children as animals. “They are not just gangs of kids anymore,” she said. “They are often the kinds of kids that are called ‘super-predators.’ No conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel.”
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And Ta-Nahesi Coates has said
Since the days of slavery, into the days of super-predators, and now the time of the Knockout Game, there has always been a strong need to believe that hordes of young black men will overrun the country in a fit of raping and pillaging. It's how we justify ourselves. Information can't compete with national myth.
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Ben Jealous has said
The superpredator idea was this notion that a child at age six months could be such a sociopath as to be beyond redemption. And it’s a violation of theology, it’s a violation of basic psychology. It was never used, as far as I know, to describe anyone white. It was always used sort of to describe young black men as a mass. And it made life very tough for us. And it helped push in bills, quite frankly, that have led to the biggest spike in the incarceration of women that we have seen—of, typically, black women.
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Anybody who remembers the 80s and 90s will remember the racial undertones of the tough on crime political language that was used to justify all the racist policing and incarceration.
In conclusion that is why super-predator language is racist.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Sure is...
