[zookeeper]

You cannot possibly say that the alt-right has vulgarized the term "triggering" to prevent demagogues like Donald Trump from taking the office of the most powerful nation in the world. Makes sense, right?

No, not in the least. It's a stunning level of red herring, so much so that it makes rational people stop and go "what the **** does that have to do with anything?" Much less the discussion actually at hand in this thread, which had nothing to do with the alt-right devaluing triggering, and everything to do with what triggering is and why the word is used at all. Joshua never mentioned the alt-right or Trump in his posts, you may have noticed.

In other words, what the **** you do you think you're proving by shifting the goalposts like that?

What the..?

You can say anything about the alt-right, what you cannot possibly say is that they have vulgarized the term "triggering". That was very much not their work.

What?

To prevent demagogues like Donald Trump from taking the office of the most powerful nation in the world.

... What?

You cannot possibly say that the alt-right has vulgarized the term "triggering" to prevent demagogues like Donald Trump from taking the office of the most powerful nation in the world. Makes sense, right? I mean, at least as much as any of these threads? And I think you can guess what common denominator I might be referring to with "these".

Are you saying that in context, that doesn't look like sarcasm? Even with the obviously sarcastic following remarks? Well, I dunno, maybe you're just playing along and I'm the one missing the joke now.

[Grizzly]

This is why I don't engage in politics on the forum for the most part on these forums. Too much of a "liberal" echo chamber ending ine a certain liberalism of definitions.

The term triggering is not a liberalised definition. It's simply a term used by psychologists to describe a symptom of psychological trauma. Unless, off course, you want to claim that the field of psychology is liberal but I'm afraid that that says a lot more about you then it does about psychologists.

[NGTM-1R]

Are you saying that in context, that doesn't look like sarcasm?

Considering his post just now, no, it really doesn't. It didn't at the time either, considering respond with "what" to Bryan is usually quite understandable.

[Scotty]

That didn't look like sarcasm at all.

[Luis Dias]

...and is a known fraudster, stealing the money of his Gamergate buddies

****ing hilarious that you link to a Veriloh article, the Alt-Right nutcase who has been shown to be completely filled with ludicrous conspiracy theories in his deluded brain of his, the guy who tried to steer Gamergate into a reactionary conservative movement by himself with his "gg-revolt" shenanigan. Nevermind that all of these accusations are all false.

Not that I'll defend that guy (sargon), he *is* lazy at 90% of times. Not 100% though. Sometimes he does produce good things. I haven't watched that video myself, but to do this ****ty attack on the guy without even realising the source of your accusations, when that isn't even relevant to the video itself... is quite out of character of you. I expected that kind of BS from many people, and you were probably the last person on HLP on my expectations list there.

Else, do carry on.

[Grizzly]

Not that I'll defend that guy (sargon), he *is* lazy at 90% of times. Not 100% though. Sometimes he does produce good things. I haven't watched that video myself,

Well, there's a transcript in the video description, but Sargon is basically spending thirty minutes to justify that he does not understand institutional racism.

[Luis Dias]

You're not even serious there. Institutional racism is dead for decades now. What you meant to refer to was unconscious and structural racism. I disagree with many people who will tell you that these things do not exist, but I actually agree with Ben Shapiro on one singular analysis of this problem: It's an ephemeral unsolvable problem. And because it's so ephemeral, it behaves like a ghost. A phantom menace. And while you might be able to argue for its existence, it's so hard to attack it in any way shape or form in any measurable fashion that it backfires and becomes unproductive a thing.

This is why, incidentally, Civil Rights' own activists didn't care about these ephemeral ghosts at all. They cared about actual written down policies which were racist. That is, they cared about institutional racism. They cared about actual rights and actual solid cases of provable racism. Which is something that isn't really in the news right now. We only have feels. We see some black person being shot in a poor camera by some cop and bam, "racist!", riots pour in and wreck entire cities, because people "feel" the racism.

I'm not saying these more ephemeral, untouchable, subtle racisms do not exist. They do. But the way they are presented and the solutions and movements that are being sold to us are absolutely ridiculous and untenable, arguinly making everything worse (there's actual data to back this up, race relations are now worse than ever, despite all the activism that exists right now).

[Grizzly]

No. Institutional racism does not have to be explicit in the form of laws, as described by the definition by those who coined the phrase, by the oxford and cambridge dictionary, and previously as such on this forum (really, just use this forum's search box). To argue that it's dead you will have a lot of things to explain:

Why are, in the 991 cases of police shootings investigated by the Washington Post, black people overrepresented? The ratio of white/black people in the US is 6:1 according to census data, yet the ratio of white people to black people shot is 2:1. If you look purely at the cases of *unarmed* people being shot, the ratio drops further to 1:1. In a country where institutionalized racism does not exist, why are you six times more likely to be shot whilst unarmed as a black person as opposed to a white person?

This was specifically mentioned in the US presidential debate: Why do these civil rights issues in schools persist? Why did the NYC police use racial profiling in their stop-and-frisk practices?

I could go on, but I think you get the gist of it. When a structural bias shows up in the data like that there's it's no longer a ghost. It's a statisctically provable constant.

And are you honestly going to argue that the people who decide not to ignore the problem are in fact the problem? It's not the black kids being murdered, it's the people being upset by that?

[Gee1337]

Activism is responsible for exasperating problems between race.

In 2012 58% of the people killed legally by private citizens were black, but 75% of those killings were done by black people.

FBI statistics  show that 52% of all murders were committed by black people when they only represent 6.5% of the U.S population, but it has dipped to about 40% in recent years. The FBI homicide report showed that 90% of black people who were murdered were killed by other black people.

Where are black lives matter on the above? Oh yeah that's right... they're too busy shutting down Heathrow airport because global warming is racist or they're too busy marching through the streets chanting:-

What do we want?
DEAD COPS!
When do we want them?
NOW!

They got there wish when 5 officers were gunned down in Dallas.

The statistics suggests to me that there is an inherent problem and it comes down to a culture that glorifies gangs, drugs and drive-by shootings. So, yes it is fair to say that black people are over-represented in crime but you have to ask the question, "Whose fault is that?" It sure isn't the fault of the mythical "white privilege".

When it comes to stop-and-frisk, does it ever dawn upon people that the areas where police carry this out have high rates of gun crime and who populates these areas?

What I find mystifying is when black people ask these questions and they get called an "Uncle Tom" for doing so. I really wish the world wasn't this way and that people would be judged on their individual merits and actions but instead we have a situation where victim-hood has become currency and all western culture suffers as a result and when crazy ideas/opinions are scrutinised, the scrutiniser is branded a racist, a mysoginist or a homophobe. I'm quite happy to be branded as "alt-right" as I there are a lot of ideas that I agree with, but I in no way associate with the likes of The Daily Stormer which is a highly fundamentally racist site and a true example of racism as it believes in white supremacy, which I do not as I believe in egalitarianism. But because I don't care about being branded as alt-right it doesn't make me as an individual a racist, mysoginist or a homophobe when some of my good mates have been of an ethnic group (I hate that phrase as it is another unnecessary branding of a person), I'm married to a strong-willed woman and I have a gay brother.

So since a lot of you don't like Sargon, I will leave you with some Morgan Freeman instead, or is he hated as well?

[MP-Ryan]

When it comes to stop-and-frisk, does it ever dawn upon people that the areas where police carry this out have high rates of gun crime and who populates these areas?

Since I'm lazy and busy today this is the only thing I'm going to refute, if only because it's so damn easy.

Stop-and-frisk didn't result in a whole lot of arrests on gun or violence charges anyway and, hilariously, murder rates have continued to drop well after stop-and-frisk was ended.

Even if you think overwhelmingly targeting minorities is right - and generally speaking, it's not - the statistics on this aren't lying.  New York City's murder rate was dropping and continued to drop regardless of the presence/absence of an unconstitutional policy.

[NGTM-1R]

they're too busy shutting down Heathrow airport because global warming is racist

...are you just completely bat**** insane, or are you literally unable to understand interviews with the actual people at the protest?

[Bobboau]

Why are, in the 991 cases of police shootings investigated by the Washington Post, black people overrepresented? The ratio of white/black people in the US is 6:1 according to census data, yet the ratio of white people to black people shot is 2:1. If you look purely at the cases of *unarmed* people being shot, the ratio drops further to 1:1. In a country where institutionalized racism does not exist, why are you six times more likely to be shot whilst unarmed as a black person as opposed to a white person?

because...
There are 5 1/3rd as many white people relative to black people. All things being equal you would expect roughly 20% (18.75% to be a bit more precise) of crimes (lets go with murder, cause that's one cops would be keen to kill you to stop you from committing) to be committed by black people.
According to FBI crime statistics in 2013 there were 2755 murders committed by whites, and 2698 by blacks. That is approximately a 1:1 ratio, despite there being a 5:1 ratio in the population size. For some reason black people are committing murder 5 times as often as you would expect (or whites 1/5th as often). Does it not make sense that if there was no institutional racism on the part of the police that you would expect any and all police action to be in proportion to the number of crimes committed rather than the population size? I mean I don't see you arguing that cops are biased against men because 95%* of all rape convictions are men.

Now, surely you knew this argument was coming, I don't know why you bothered to wait for someone to post it before writing up your rebuttal.
But I will not make the same mistake you did, I know what the next move in this opening is. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you are now going to argue that my data is flawed. That black people are watched more carefully and punished more severely than white people. It's racism all the way down. Well, if that were the case then you would not expect there to be approximately 5 times as many per-capita violent deaths among the black community as you see in the white community. Deaths are fairly objective things, you can't let someone out of a body bag because you are unconsciously biased in their favor and have them skip home, and there is a fairly clear trend that you are far more likely to be killed by a member of your own race than by a member of another race. So it's pretty clear that even if this data was biased, it can't be that biased unless there were literal white right wing death squads infiltrating black communities and murdering thousands of black people only to then have the cops pin it on some hapless black patsy. I don't think you would make that argument.

Now here's the part where you or someone else strawmans me as a racist, I'll preempt that too. I am not saying that there is anything ingrained in black skin that causes this. I cannot say what causes it for absolute certainty, but this being entirely environmental factors seems like a perfectly reasonable explanation. Namely there is something else black people tend to have in common in this country other than their skin color and probability of committing a crime and that is they are also far more likely to be really ****ing poor. Poverty, while being far from the only factor, is well known as having a positive relationship with criminality.

Now you can tell me that poverty in the black community is caused by systemic cultural racism, and to that I'll say ok fine, I won't challenge that for this argument. Because at this point we are apparently dealing with a situation where the police are possibly the one and only institution in the country acting without a racial bias, and that's what this argument is about, the police specifically. For some reason black people in aggregate commit more crime mostly against other black people and so are also 5 times more likely to be victims of crime. In aggregate they deal with the police more often. At least for murder this proportion seems to be about 1:1 murder/police shooting. Police are in black communities 5 times more often, dealing with black people 5 times more often, protecting black victims of crime 5 times more often, it's not surprising that there will be 5 times as many random accidental shootings by police of black people proportionately.

It is worth noting that this should not be a racial issue, twice as many white people are killed than black people each year. It might not be proportional but this is a problem that affects everyone and trying to solve the non-exsistant racial cause is only going to make things worse.

*I made up this number because the actual number is irrelevant to the point I'm making and I don't think think you'll say the number is lower

[NGTM-1R]

But I will not make the same mistake you did, I know what the next move in this opening is. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you are now going to argue that my data is flawed. That black people are watched more carefully and punished more severely than white people. It's racism all the way down. Well, if that were the case then you would not expect there to be approximately 5 times as many per-capita violent deaths among the black community as you see in the white community.

These two ideas do not of necessity contradict each other. You have not established they do. "The blacks commit more crimes" does not automatically mean that "the blacks are treated more harshly and are absorbing more police attention than they deserve" is wrong. It is still possible for them to be subjected to overpolicing as a proportion of effort and time, or for them to be treated more harshly than others.

[Luis Dias]

I agree with Gee1337's and Bobboau's rant above. The whole statistical analysis that the Left does regarding black people being shot by the police is complete bull**** when you add up the other relevant statistical points. But these points are never mentioned, except for those bad bad people on the right (you know... bigots!), and these points are either ignored or not even reported, so we get this kind of cognitive dissonance in people where they go "That cannot possibly be true... but the stats seem to say it... but it cannot possibly be true, I know police are racist douchebags, I just know it..."

But stats do not lie. And when you go about reporting stats, report ALL of them. Only then, the picture starts to make some sense.

All that is left then is an analysis on why the black demographic (**** the semantics that brougth us phrases like "the black community", as if blacks are all one single organism) is so filled with violence. Here is where racism may well dwell. Lack of job opportunities, discrimination, lack of opportunity to rise the ladder of life, and so all you got is violence. But the Right also has some points here, namely how the black family has been in complete self-destruction mode, mostly due to ideologies that are anti-family and anti-responsibility, etc (feminism, etc.).

I think both camps are on to something. The destruction of the lowest middle class by current economics also play a huge part, given how badly people who earn the minimum wage have to work extra hours just to get by. Families are destroyed naturally by this. Single black mothers (and here the Right is right) are too many, but then they have to have two jobs to support their child or children, and where do these children stay with? With no one. They are abandoned at their homes and their neighborhoods for most of the day. Education is poor due to this (and lack of actual educational culture in the so-called "black culture").

A lot going on there. And this is why terms like "Institutional racism" are absolutely clueless and unhelpful. But the Left Wing is absolutely deluded in their own Righteousness and if things are the way they are it's because it's bigots who disagree with them or who are stopping "real progress" that maintain this Problem. Therefore the entire Right Wing is filled with Bigots. And you are a bigot too. And he's a bigot too. EVERYONE is a bigot! (Btw, I'm not exaggerating, this is what Hillary basically said herself in the debate: we are ALL bigots).

Utter bull****. OR, if not utter bull****, completely lacking in productivity. That is, it's not the way to solve the issue.

[Luis Dias]

But I will not make the same mistake you did, I know what the next move in this opening is. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you are now going to argue that my data is flawed. That black people are watched more carefully and punished more severely than white people. It's racism all the way down. Well, if that were the case then you would not expect there to be approximately 5 times as many per-capita violent deaths among the black community as you see in the white community.

These two ideas do not of necessity contradict each other. You have not established they do. "The blacks commit more crimes" does not automatically mean that "the blacks are treated more harshly and are absorbing more police attention than they deserve" is wrong. It is still possible for them to be subjected to overpolicing as a proportion of effort and time, or for them to be treated more harshly than others.

It's POSSIBLE, but it's just not WHAT IS HAPPENING. What the stats are saying is that the whole analysis done by the Left is WRONG, period. That is, the stats refute "institutional racism" being done by the police. And now that they do so, all that is left is the philsophical handwaving "But it's still POSSIBLE that this is happening". Well, DOH, of course it is. But that *WASN'T* the original claim. The claim is that OF COURSE THEY ARE, it's UNDENIABLE THEY ARE and whomever disagrees is a BIGOT who is still supporting WHITE SUPREMACY. And let's loot cities and kill cops because **** those whities. But these are not hateful people. No. The haters, the real bigots are those who dare to mention the stats that refute the narrative. Just look at THOSE bigots! Quick! Ban them from every single social media!

[666maslo666]

If a group X statistically has higher crime rate, then the police will increase policing of such group, or areas where they live. This can lead to them being even more likely to be arrested and thus increase the crime rate discrepancy and perception even more, leading to a vicious circle. So are the police unfair against black people? I think they are, at least a little bit. But:

1. This increased policing of such people IS statistically justified. Correlates of crime should not be ignored. Still doesnt excuse police brutality, tough, nothing does. But it does excuse police efforts being more concentrated on people / places that are more likely to commit crime.

2. You dont get to 4x (or whatever) the murder rate of the majority just because the police is targeting you. Racism may be a factor behind crime rate differences, but it is not a major one, IMHO. Poverty, culture is more important.

Anyway, it is 2016. Why the hell are police cameras still absent, or potato quality? 1080p 60fps when? Seems like this would go a long way to discourage police brutality, against anyone. It may take some cops actually convicted for brutality due to footage, tough.

[Bobboau]

These two ideas do not of necessity contradict each other. You have not established they do. "The blacks commit more crimes" does not automatically mean that "the blacks are treated more harshly and are absorbing more police attention than they deserve" is wrong. It is still possible for them to be subjected to overpolicing as a proportion of effort and time, or for them to be treated more harshly than others.

I'm not sure I understand your objection. It would make sense for areas/communities/groups that have X times the crime to have X times the police interactions, no? I mean assuming that all other things being equal. If there was some sort of discrimination on the part of the police you might expect it to be higher if the police were actively oppressing the people, or lower if the police were refusing to serve them. Stopping crime is the police's main job, when a crime happens the police get involved.

It's very simple math, let us say that in a given randomly selected police interaction there is some probability K that the police will kill someone who didn't deserve it.
Let us say that Kw is the chance of it happening with a white person, and Kb is the chance with a black person.
If the police were biased against black people, and this bias expressed it's self as the police shooting black people more than white people then Kb > Kw.
If we use P as the number of times that the police interact with a member of that community, then the odds of a person being killed by the police (D)  is  D = K * P.
The police respond to criminal activity, if the police are treating two communities equally, then you would expect their response rate R to crime C in those communities to be the same.
Police interactions in the community would then be proportional to C, P = C * R
If crime happens at a different rate for different communities, and the probability of the police responding to a crime and being killed by the police in an interaction was the same in those different communities, then you would expect the difference in D between those communities to be proportional to the likelihood of a police interaction, and a police interaction you would expect to be proportionate to the number of crimes (assuming the police are enforcing evenly in both communities)
If Cb = Cw*5 then you would expect Pb = Pw*5 then you would expect Db = Dw*5 but only if only if Kb = Kw (and Rw = Rb)

Now it's possible that police are twice as likely to shoot a black man than a white man and at the same time half as likely to respond to a black crime (for sake of simplicity lets just assume all crime being the same race as both perpetrator and victim as that is the overwhelmingly most common case), but if that were the case I would need to see some evidence because that would be a very convenient alignment. But, I suppose it could make sense that poor (black) neighborhoods would have underfunded police forces who respond less often but when they do are trigger happy. This does of course imply the solution to the problem might be more, better funded police in poor (overwhelmingly black) neighbor hoods.

[MP-Ryan]

Oh, now everybody's willing to play statistician for a day.

Wrong angle, folks.  Or, more accurately, a confusion of correlation and causation.

Funnily enough, this is where some qualitative analysis is actually more useful.  Because, yes, while we can expect that the violent crime rates among and by blacks should expose them to additional police scrutiny, a myriad of sociological and criminological studies have demonstrated quite well that the scrutiny blacks receive is actually greater than their crime rates predict, and moreover, that scrutiny is not applied to violent crime as much as it is crimes of poverty.

Radley Balko provides some essential reading on this subject.  Here's just two worth reading: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2016/08/10/the-justice-departments-stunning-report-on-the-baltimore-police-department/?utm_term=.13373e9a7df4 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/09/03/how-st-louis-county-missouri-profits-from-poverty/?utm_term=.2fd87a460eb5

So here's the trouble:  blacks face more scrutiny from police, and police also tend to view blacks as older, bigger, and more dangerous (http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/03/black-boys-older.aspx).  There's plenty of leftover racism from the days of "the savage Negro" that permits that particular myth to subconsciously persist.

So, we routinely see black people in the United States shot in police interactions where white people wouldn't be.  There are a several good recent examples from the news, like Castille, Kinsey, and Sterling.  All of whom were minding their own business before they were subject to violent escalation for no particularly good reason, mostly because the United States cannot be bothered to implement a national use of force model or policing standards. (And for the benefit of the collective memory, I'll remind folks I've been training in de-escalation, verbal skills, and use of force for my particular law enforcement career over the last decade-plus; I'm not an expert by any means, but I'm got some experience in this area).  These shootings are appalling, and this is why Black Lives Matter, questionable as some of their events may be (Toronto and Vancouver Chapters vs Pride Parades, I'm looking at you), is important.  There is NO EXCUSE for an officer to shoot a black man because he told him he legally had a gun and was complying with a request to see his ID.  There is NO EXCUSE for a man to be shot because he requested help with an autistic patient of his and lay down in the street with his hands up.  There is NO EXCUSE for a man outside a convenience store to be immediately subjected to use of force - ultimately botched use of force - and shot while lying on his back because police officers can't apparently be bothered to do the bare ****ing minimum of verbal discussion, de-escalation, and professionalism. None.

So yeah, the US has a policing problem.  It's not just confined to black people, but it's far more visible where they are concerned.  Making excuses for it will not make it better.

[Bobboau]

Who's making excuses? I was saying the race angle is distracting from the actual problem of police brutality.

look, we both agree most of the incidents are unacceptable and the police involved at a minimum need to be fired if not charged themselves. and yet rather than solve the problem of police brutality, we are fighting each other about whether or not race is a factor. If we focused on stopping it across the board irrespective of race, that would include as a subset the racist influenced incidents. do you not see how this is counterproductive and a distraction?

[Det. Bullock]

This is why I don't engage in politics on the forum for the most part on these forums. Too much of a "liberal" echo chamber ending ine a certain liberalism of definitions.

No doubt I will get hounded for this, but lets look at what someone who use to identify as being on the left of politics has to say.

Ladies, gentleman, shivans and zods (is that racist towards vasudans?), I present Sargon of Akkad!

I saw a couple of his videos, my impression is that he is a certified grade A arsehole.

If he were Italian he would be the kind of guy who says that the mafia doesn't exist and magistrates are too paranoid.