Brecht - The Exception and The Rule, 1930

"When the innocent are murdered
The judges gather round their corpses and condemn them.
At the grave of the murdered
All their rights are murdered.
The words of the tribunal
Fall like the shadow of a knife
And the knife, alas, is sufficient.
What need, afterward, of a verdict?
Overhead fly the vultures and whither?"

Then I pronounce the verdict. The Court regards it as proven that the Coolie approached his master not with a stone but with a water flask. But even when this is granted, it is more credible that the Coolie wished to kill his master with the flask than that he wished to give him something to drink. The carrier belonged to a class which indeed has motive to feel itself handicapped…The absence of police and laws made it possible for his employee to seize his share of the water – nay, encouraged him to do so. The accused acted, therefore, in justifiable self-defence – it being a matter of indifference whether he was threatened or must feel himself threatened. In the circumstances he had to feel himself threatened. The accused is therefore acquitted. The plea of the carrier’s widow is dismissed.

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Where is the politician who will own up to the painful complexity of the problem and acknowledge the widespread fear of crime committed by young black males? This does not mean that raw racism has disappeared, and some judgments are not the product of invidious stereotyping. It does mean, though, that the public knows young black males commit a disproportionate amount of crime. In New York City, blacks make up a quarter of the population, yet they represent 78 percent of all shooting suspects — almost all of them young men. We know them from the nightly news.


Those statistics represent the justification for New York City’s controversial stop-and-frisk program, which amounts to racial profiling writ large. After all, if young black males are your shooters, then it ought to be young black males whom the police stop and frisk. Still, common sense and common decency, not to mention the law, insist on other variables such as suspicious behavior. Even still, race is a factor, without a doubt. It would be senseless for the police to be stopping Danish tourists in Times Square just to make the statistics look good.

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Even if it’s not very stange, find it estranging
Even if it’s usual, find it hard to explain
What here is common should astonish you
What here’s the rule, recognize as an abuse
And where you have recognized an abuse
Provide a remedy!"