Most of it these days is less about being intelligent enough and more about whether you're positioned to encounter or hear about a "chilling effect" [1]. Historians will probably only ever be able to debate order-of-magnitude estimates of how many students gave up protesting because of the Kent State shootings, or how many writers "self-censored" because of PRISM/XKeyscore [2], or how many people decide not to exercise their Second Amendment rights because they don't want to risk being categorized as "armed" in a police encounter [3] [4].
One example that's a bit more concrete is the combination of pre-trial detention and plea bargains. These form, in effect, a punishment for exercising one's right to a fair trial, a punishment that exists because our court system is quite far from having the capacity to properly handle the sheer volume of prosecutions that occur [5].
As an attorney, I find your plea bargain argument unpersuasive. Major themes in the criminal justice system are acknowledgment of guilt and acceptance of responsibility. These are going to work against you after spending a year claiming you didn’t do it if the jury decides you did.
If you're a heterosexual white male, you probably won't notice them. You'll also probably not care for that any non-heterosexual white male might feel differently. For everyone else, we have loads of examples of how not free they are at times. Heaven help you if you "fit the description".
If you can't think of any specific examples on your own, then you're just not really trying very hard.
Try driving while not white in certain cities and see how free you feel. Try being a naturalized citizen or first gen to see how free you are in certain cities. Try being a female and looking to make your own health care decisions in certain states. Are these less vague allusions enough for you?
Freedom does not mean the opposite of being in jail. There's a lot of freedoms that are taken away from people purely based on race/sex whether you want to call it baiting or not. They still exist as problems.
No, not at all. For example, plenty of white people feel unwelcome in areas — but neither group is prohibited and in both cases the experience is generally a) in their own head because nobody thinks about other people and/or b) cultural because there’s members of that community who don’t experience the same.
> Try being a female and looking to make your own health care decisions in certain states.
When your rights intersect another’s rights is always a matter of law — I’m not free to kill others outside legislated confines, either.
> There's a lot of freedoms that are taken away from people purely based on race/sex whether you want to call it baiting or not.
Then you should list some, rather than give vague and untrue grievance narratives.
Quoting what you heard off your telescreen is not convincing. For one, what “certain cities” are you even talking about? Are you referring to blacks being pulled over in black-majority crime-heavy areas? And I have never heard of stigmas against naturalized citizens. As for the vague allusion to abortion, I’m not allowed to kill a baby after it comes out, so why should it be legalized for the mother to? Especially when, if she doesn’t want a child, she can simply get an IUD, or simply take birth control and morning afters?
