Think we're immune to racism? We're not!

 By "we", by the way, I mean York County. Sometimes, when I feel like getting mad at the state of things, I do what any person would do... and look at the recent bookings on the York County Sheriff's Department website. I'm not upset that crime exists; I instead get worked up at what, to me, comes off as blatant racism on the part of our Police Department. 

I will admit, I don't know the whole story; I don't have a police scanner radio, so all I know about the cases (besides what runs on other news sites) is the posted bail, mugshot, and offenses for which the person was arrested. I also haven't done any sort of statistical analysis so as to put forth hard evidence of racism in the Department. Every time I look, though, I see that a Black and white person can be arrested for the same offense, and the white one will have a lower posted bail. Sometimes, a Black person will have a higher bail for a less-serious offense. Take Wednesday, for example: these two people were both arrested for third-degree assault and battery. I marked out their names and faces in the interest of not shaming criminals, but if you really want, the site and data are publicly available, so you can find them pretty easily, but I digress. 

Can you spot the difference? Again, I don't know the whole story, but what the Department has chosen to share is that two people arrested for the same offense of the same severity, have two different posted bail amounts. The difference? Their race. 

I'm not cherry-picking, by the way. Here's two arrests made on Sunday and Tuesday, respectively:

It doesn't specify if these are repeat offenders, but really, that's not what matters. The crime is the same, else "assault and battery" or something similar would be tacked on, so shouldn't the bail be the same? I could keep giving examples, but honestly, it's saddening to see. Like, this is just stuff from the past week. My point is that, basically, activists in the area have talked a lot about the racist history of Fort Mill, but less how this stuff is still going on. Black people consistently have higher posted bail for the same crime as a white person, which—and correct me if I'm wrong here—is the exact opposite of how justice is supposed to work. We've come a long way since the Civil War by way of racial equality, but clearly, we still have a long way to go.