This is reality: if we do indeed lower the burden of proof for the police state to prosecute sexual assault cases, that power will be handed to the same people who are responsible for Ferguson and the NYPD and all the rest. And this is reality: the burden of that increased power will inevitably fall on the poor and the black, because that is who the white police state prosecutes with greater zeal than any other. That is not conjecture. That is not a guess. We know that. We know that the police state is racist. We know that the police state targets the poor. We know that false convictions are far more likely to happen to black and Hispanic men. We know those things. Doing away with the presumption of innocence will not mostly hurt privileged white frat boys. It will hurt poor people and black people the way that our judicial system always does.

This is reality: if we do indeed lower the burden of proof for the police state to prosecute sexual assault cases, that power will be handed to the same people who are responsible for Ferguson and the NYPD and all the rest. And this is reality: the burden of that increased power will inevitably fall on the poor and the black, because that is who the white police state prosecutes with greater zeal than any other. That is not conjecture. That is not a guess. We know that. We know that the police state is racist. We know that the police state targets the poor. We know that false convictions are far more likely to happen to black and Hispanic men. We know those things. Doing away with the presumption of innocence will not mostly hurt privileged white frat boys. It will hurt poor people and black people the way that our judicial system always does.

—

[the burden of expanding the police state’s power to prosecute sex crimes will fall on the poor and the black

Fredrik deBoer](http://fredrikdeboer.com/2014/10/13/the-burden-of-expanding-the-police-states-power-to-prosecute-sex-crimes-will-fall-on-the-poor-and-the-black/)

Also: “[Entitlement] is when you have taken a national conversation on a crime that is more likely to happen to the poor and uneducated and devoted it for weeks to a group that is whiter, richer, and more educated than the country at large.”