In May of 2023, Cyrus Carmack-Belton entered Rick Chow’s store to purchase a water: Andy [Chow’s son] told jurors he first noticed Carmack-Belton while stocking shelves. His mother asked the teen to leave his bookbag at the front of the store, to which he complied. “He goes to the water cooler, and that’s when I think he pockets the water,” Andy testified. “He starts coming to the front, and I ask him if there’s anything in his pocket, and he says no.” Carmack-Belton was telling the truth. But the Chows pursued him anyway. (Harris, R. J. L. (2026, May 31). In the death of a 14-year-old, Rick Chow’s defense rests | the State. The State. https://www.thestate.com/news/local/crime/article315949118.html) Essentially, Chow’s son was suspicious of 14-year-old Cyrus Carmack-Belton leading to the latter being confronted by the entire family. What possibly occurred is as follows: Belton entered the store; he complied with Chow’s request to leave his belongings at the door; he was confronted by Andy Chow for concealing an 8-ounce water bottle in his pants pocket; he denied the inquiry; there was some altercation with the family attendants inside of the store; Belton attempted to stabilize the volatile situation by leaving; Andy or Rick Chow interpreted this as fleeing; 52-year-old Rick Chow pursued Carmack-Belton, armed and accompanied by Andy Chow for the entire length of a football field -over goal post to goal post- off of the store premises. During the final seconds of Rick Chow’s pursuit, he feared 1. that Carmack-Belton had a gun 2. that he pulled it out 3. and that he aimed it at Andy Chow with the clear intent to harm So, Rick Chow, used tactical-rapid-reaction resulting in the use of deadly force against Carmack-Belton because Chow could confirm that he would pull out a gun and aim it at his son with the intent to harm. How could Rick Chow have processed all these points in a matter of seconds as the aggressor? When did he have time to arm himself? During the in-store engagement; prior to Carmack-Belton’s departure from the store, or in pursuit? When Carmack-Belton de-escalated the situation by leaving the store premises, did Andy Chow pursue him willingly or did Rick Chow abet his son into being an accessory to the pursuit? These questions remain unclear. Regardless, Rick Chow admits to his premeditation, yet a judge rules in favor of a jury’s acquittal verdict, arguing Chow is legally protected by South Carolina’s Stand Your Ground Laws to defend his son. I would like to note that, as far as court records publicly report, police apprehended a 9mm handgun off of the ground, and a 45-calibre handgun from Rick Chow. The “Stand Your Ground” laws are an expansion of “ancient ‘Castle Doctrine’” into The Protection of Persons and Property Act (2026). However, you can be prosecuted by the law despite these statues if a) you were not engaged in unlawful activity and had a right to be in that location, b) you were not at fault and did not provoke the violent encounter, and/or c) you had a reasonable fear of imminent peril, death, or great bodily harm. See the following clarifications on Stand Your Ground Laws, Code Duello, and history around the 2006 Protection of Persons… Act: In antebellum states, Stand Your Ground is protection against someone’s challenge in the event that the person who initiated the duel/challenge is murdered, a ‘no duty to retreat’ burden of proof. In Alabama, before “Stand Your Ground” became law, Alabama enforced an example of antebellum-frontier culture by relying on the “Code Duello” (a strict, unwritten 18th-century set of rules originating in Ireland from a feudal period where there was no law enforcement) to settle personal grievances. However, this does not legalize deadly force to settle a personal grievance in any era in America. In fact, if a person who initiated a duel/challenge murders the person they pursued, they can be tried for murder under the full extent of the law. With all of these dense facts and legislative statutes surrounding the event, how was Rick Chow acquitted of all charges if he was the aggressor and pursuer? You may have figured this article would focus only on the protection of Black Lives and Black-Youth, however, you have heard this narrative 100 times over, and South Carolina v. Rick Chow has brought this debate to a head in measure. We must now accept that black repression is real—not simply a positionality. Rick Chow’s actions may not clearly present as racist towards Carmack-Belton being Black. However, if Carmack-Belton was not the aggressor, complied with the discriminative request upon approaching the storefront, and even de-escalated tension (regardless of Andy Chow’s testimony) by leaving the premises, then how did Chow get acquitted when Carmack-Belton was being chased for 130 yards and fatally shot in the back? Chikei Rick Chow, George Zimmerman, and Soon Ja Du from the L.A. Riots were all protected by outdated laws in favor of “no duty to retreat” despite video evidence, despite 911 calls, and despite irrefutable forensics proving the accused should have served a life sentence. Yet this seems to have been too hopeful an idea. Author’s Note As a Black-Woman who founded her mission to pursue a law career in public interest during the Trayvon Martin case, I, in 2026, am now concerned that the need is not to amend loopholes or modernize the law, but fight against institutionally backed anti-Black exemptions. I am fearful I will have to fight between the lines in the same way my predecessors have, for social justice reform to be humane; despite believing society has progressed past its chattel roots. Acknowledgement: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author, not necessarily Our National Conversation as a whole.
By Raven W. M.
As a recent graduate and a young professional, I have read many alarmist reports about how AI is impacting the labor market. The forecasts suggest a gloomy, apoplectic picture on the one hand, and an optimistic, utopian future on the other. The truth likely sits somewhere in the middle. Indeed, a recent report suggests that entry-level jobs have declined by 35 percent since January of 2023. The bigger threat is that by cutting these jobs, the pipeline for early-career professionals weakens because these are the jobs that can jumpstart careers. When you take away this pipeline, it becomes much harder to bring in new professionals in various industries, and job-seekers will look elsewhere. On the contrary, those dismissing the issue as a temporary period before an AI boom have no way of guaranteeing this success. The pain exists now, and so when former Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, spoke to graduating students about the boons of AI, he was booed because he was perceived as out of touch with reality. Even if his arguments on the innovative benefits of AI have their merits, it was made without properly acknowledging the pain that those students are facing. Arguing that the pain is “temporary”, as part of a transition, does not help. Thus, the question worth asking is not whether AI will help boost economic growth, for it surely will, but rather what kind of disruption it will bring, at what cost, and who bears the brunt of that cost? Then, we can answer what an intelligent response looks like. The Double-Edged Sword – Why More Output Can Mean Less Value AI, like with any technology that disrupts the market, can act like a double-edged sword. If used correctly, the tool should be a complement to existing tasks, allowing workers to boost productivity. If I can use AI to do a task that normally takes a week in one day, now I’ve saved 6 days to do other tasks. In this sense, AI serves to boost the speed of content, setting aside quality for a moment. The skeptic, of course, can point to how quantity cheapens quality. In a sense, this may be true, but only subjectively. Scarcity increases the value of goods. By the inverse logic, when you use technology to mass produce those same goods, their value goes down, and so does their perceived “quality”. In general, value in economic terms can be defined by the utility of a good plus scarcity. If we keep utility constant, value goes up and down depending on how rare the good is. To use a concrete example, let’s say the good you are providing is a business report for a boss. In the world before AI, let us say it took 7 hours of work to make this report and send it to the boss. Every week, you provide such a report, with data and reasoning on what the business should consider. Now consider the world with AI. That same report now takes 1 hour to make with the right prompts and AI system. You have decreased the work time by a factor of 7. Now, the boss demands a report once a day, rather than once a week. The scarcity of this product has gone down significantly. In this case, even if the quality of the data and analysis of each of the 7 reports matches the reports from before AI use, the value of each of these reports goes down. Why? The data is similar, the same process and analysis is used, and for all intents and purposes, you are generating the same product, just 7 times as frequently. Well, the issue is that when you have more of a good in a given timeframe, the marginal value – or additional value of it – goes down. The first report hits hardest for the boss, because it presents the most new data for the week. By the time the boss reads the fourth or fifth report of the week, it still feels useful, but less so, as it feels more like a variation of what was already provided in the first report. Each additional report will no longer feel original, and thus, the additional value of the good goes down. This process of eventual stagnation, despite added productivity, is what economists call the Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility. Another way to understand this rule is by using chocolates. The first bite of chocolate may taste delicious, and the second one may taste good, but the added value of moving from your 19th bite to the 20th is far less than the added value of moving from 0 bites to 1 bite. This is because by the time you reach your 20th bite, you already have a sense for the taste, an expectation, so the additional bite adds little value. Eventually, we enter a stabilized state where the additional good that is produced adds little value to you. (Source: Berkman et al.) In this same vein, going back to the earlier analogy, if AI lets us generate more products, such as business reports that your boss wants, paradoxically, the very fact that he or she can get more reports in a given week means that each report has less value. This is not because the quality of the goods drops per se, but rather because of decreased scarcity and the increased pace of diminishing marginal returns. In other words, AI benefits the economy by helping us create more goods in less time, but with that comes reduced scarcity, and thus lower value for said goods. This adjustment is not new, for it’s a cycle we face with any production-enhancing technology, and the same is true for AI. Cheaper For The Consumer, But Costlier For The Worker With AI increasing the abundance of certain goods, there are economic implications that come with this situation. Driving down scarcity, as established earlier, drives down the value of each good produced. When you can create more
By Vaibhav Sinha
In the past few years, creators such as Nara Smith have created aesthetic appeal behind the lifestyle termed “slow living”. These creators typically are depicted in a cottage-like or family styled home, often in a kitchen, and wearing feminine clothing – sometimes even changing the pitch of their voice to be softened. The slow living trend has now offshooted into various forms of slow living, whether it be romantical, conservative, or anti-government/anti-federalist. What is true amongst all of these creators and groups however, is that they create digestible propaganda for many teen and adult followers. Alongside the rise of slow living creators, it is apparent that there is a group of creators attempting to fit the niche but not quite adjusting to it. Housewives to blue collar workers are increasingly posting “cook with me for my husband” videos, but their videos often have less potential to achieve virality. The reason for this is because the more “aesthetic” lifestyle in fact just reflects an unattainable class difference and privilege. Most people cannot simply quit their job and be provided for by their husband and still live a romanticized lifestyle. Ultimately, these housewife creators get lumped into “struggle content”. The polarity between the two creator groups shows us something significant, however. Slow living creators who present their lifestyle as an escape from modern life are still integrated within the system. When women who are not wealthy or married to wealthy men attempt this, they lose all integration, and their lives become unpalatable. Hence, the content made by wealthy creators serves on two fronts: to propagandize women into making choices without understanding their circumstances for the simple sake of gender role preservation, and to make money off communities who uplift these creators onto a pedestal in order to later attempt the same lifestyle. While a vast amount of slow living creators may simply be scrapbooking their lifestyle, they fail to use their platform in a way that distinguishes themself from patriarchal ideals such as the promotion of cultural rigidity surrounding women’s lifestyles. We find ourselves again at the forefront of the cultural argument – why one or the other? One end of the political spectrum glorifies professionalism and demolishes the virtue of family formation, while the other end either claims choice but glorifies housewifery or promotes sexist hierarchy of women’s lifestyle. Unfortunately, the slow living lifestyle is not exempt from politicization, and it has been a mode of the latter. Even if the women viewing these videos truly believe that housewifery is their calling, these creators are running an unrealistic version of the “American Dream” – one that many will seek but be met with economically and societally painful experiences instead. Consequently, they may not have a way out, unlike the instagrammers who can return to their media careers.
By Megan Fincher
Follow Us