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| How far down do you define deviancy in Ferguson? |
| 2014-11-26 |
| The late Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s celebrate phrase “defining deviancy down” first appeared in a 1993 essay in The American Scholar. “I proffer the thesis,” wrote Moynihan, “that, over the past generation…the amount of deviant behavior in American society has increased beyond the levels the community can ‘afford to recognize’ and that, accordingly, we have been re-defining deviancy so as to exempt much conduct previously stigmatized.” What used to be a civil rights movement has drawn a bright line behind the late Michael Brown, whose guilt in two violent felonies (robbing a convenience store while assaulting a store clerk, and assaulting a police officer) is not in dispute. It is sad, to be sure, that Brown died in a confrontation with a police officer, but no legal case can be made that the police officer rather than Brown chose to make the confrontation deadly. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |