This is my second blog post (first one was "Contrasts" on 11/25/14) illustrating the different racial lenses though which the American legal system views the motive and behavior of people.
In the first case, a black woman was arrested for abandoning her child (not sure what the exact charge was). The child was in the park owing to an unusual sequence of events in the family's life, but the mother was working at McDonald's. The child was hardly abandoned, and placing the kid in an already over-burdened foster care system served no one's best interest. The mother was subsequently fired from her job.
In the second tragic case, which occurred yesterday, a toddler shot and killed himself with his father's gun which he found in the glove compartment of the car. While I have no desire to see anyone punished for the tragedy, it does seem to me that having an unattended child in a car with a gun in the glove compartment is almost the definition of child endangerment.
As I said, no purpose would be served to punish anyone in the latter case, but I also fail so see what purpose was served by the woman's treatment in the first case. The contrast is instructive.
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