Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Sandwich on November 26, 2014, 08:07:42 pm
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What're y'all's thoughts?
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the palestinians are behind this, mark my words
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Not cool man, everyone knows its an ILLUMINERTY plot to distract the world from OBABO modifying the ****stitution to become President-Emperor for lyfe.
Its also a very sad thing to see happen. (Serious)
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the palestinians are behind this, mark my words
Stop doing this. You've been warned before. Next time gets you a few days off.
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Pointless.
Plain and simple.
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The prosecutor displayed obvious biases from day one but refused to recuse himself and bring in an independent prosecutor. He completely discarded the usual procedure of a Grand Jury in a way that forced the jury members to behave more like jurors at an actual trial - instead of a quick vote to indict or not indict based upon the arguments that the prosecutor was obliged to supply to the jury, he made them sift through the entire body of evidence with no direction or recommendation. The prosecutor's job IS to try to convince the Grand Jury that probably cause for indictment has been met. Precedence suggests an indictment would have been a near certainty had the normal procedure not been altered. He sabotaged the case, period. There is evidence of a police coverup (http://www.cracked.com/blog/7-wacky-farts-that-can-help-us-understand-ferguson-mo/) and Wilson's testimony is literally unbelievable (http://www.vox.com/2014/11/25/7281165/darren-wilsons-story-side). Does that deserve a response, a very loud, angry response? Damn right it does.
And yes, property destruction is pointless, but property is also just that, property. It's nothing compared to life of a kid.
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Looking through some of the documents and with NPR's analysis shows me possible flaws on both sides. Racial bias on the part of Wilson, and then possibly false testimony on the part of Dorian Johnson (He states that Brown was killed from behind while running away, autopsy shows that he was not). On the whole, seems like a big mess, probably fault on both sides, and just another day really. As for the riots, I only got the vibe that serious rioting happened in Ferguson itself which was rather expected.
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I have no doubt that a number of witnesses lied so as to paint Wilson as cold blooded murderer. But there was no account more absurd than the one Wilson gave to the Grand Jury. Regardless, the prosecution didn't even try to hide that they threw the case.
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Riots?
Oh, I thought it was a lead up to Black Friday
(I've honestly been out of the loop in regards to news around the globe or of our closest neighbour)
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The jury heard a lot more evidence than anybody who was not in that courtroom, and the justice system says that what they decided is right.
The actual truth, whether it matches the decision or not, is not what the jury is there to decide.
And it's certainly not for people who were neither present at the incident or at the trial to judge.
The riots are just stupid.
When there are people in other parts of the world protesting and rioting over real, actual problems, these idiots are destroying things for no reason.
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The riots are just stupid.
When there are people in other parts of the world protesting and rioting over real, actual problems, these idiots are destroying things for no reason.
I'd say that blatant displays of institutional racism is plenty reason for a good old riot.
Certainly a better reason than, say, winning a football match (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/violence-mars-san-francisco-world-series-celebrations/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter). Or celebrating Pumpkins or something (http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/19/us/new-hampshire-pumpkin-festival-riot/index.html?hpt=hp_t2). Or having a party (http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/04/06/299913190/deltopia-spring-break-party-morphs-into-riot-in-santa-barbara).
And yeah, the Ferguson riots are about "real, actual problems".
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The jury heard a lot more evidence than anybody who was not in that courtroom
That's precisely the problem. They shouldn't have heard that much evidence, this was not meant to be a trial.
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I'd say that blatant displays of institutional racism is plenty reason for a good old riot.
Good reason for protests, maybe. Full blown riots where innocent people need to fear for their lives and property? No.
Certainly a better reason than, say, winning a football match (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/violence-mars-san-francisco-world-series-celebrations/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter). Or celebrating Pumpkins or something (http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/19/us/new-hampshire-pumpkin-festival-riot/index.html?hpt=hp_t2). Or having a party (http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/04/06/299913190/deltopia-spring-break-party-morphs-into-riot-in-santa-barbara).
Never implied that those are any less stupid.
And yeah, the Ferguson riots are about "real, actual problems".
Some of the rioters may have been rioting for a reason they feel is right and cause they see is good, but probably the vast majority of them now just got caught up in the mob mentality, and probably close to 100% of the idiots who are breaking and stealing don't care why the riots exist, and were just looking for an excuse to break laws and get away with it.
EDIT: Trial or not, right or not, legit or not, we don't know. It happened. Whether the riots are justified or not, also doesn't matter.
What does matter, is that many rioters are causing a lot of damage and making a lot of people feel very unsafe. That is wrong, no matter what else happened or didn't.
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Across the US? Are there any riots outside Ferguson?
I dont know enough about the shooting itself to have an informed opinion about the verdict, however one thing is certain - looting and burning buildings is not going to help their case, only damage it (along with their neighbourhoods). Especially the trashing of the very store Mike Brown robbed before the shooting - that was a disgusting thing to do. Where were the police or national guard? That store is an obvious prime target that should have been protected from the start...
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If the police in Ferguson were competent, we wouldn't be in this mess.
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I dont know enough about the shooting itself to have an informed opinion about the verdict, however one thing is certain - looting and burning buildings is not going to help their case, only damage it (along with their neighbourhoods).
Problem is that peaceful protests do not work.
Especially the trashing of the very store Mike Brown robbed before the shooting - that was a disgusting thing to do.
Except that Brown did not actually rob that store. There's even video of him paying for whatever it is he got there. (http://anarcho-queer.tumblr.com/post/95033296517)
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Institutional racism and increasing militarization of the police. Those are the two issues at trial here. It shouldn't be about either Brown or Wilson. I don't care if Brown was a "thug" or an "amazing human being", I don't care if Wilson was a "racist douchebag" or an "incredible cop". I won't be able to know one thing or the other with all the information and misinformation regarding that subject.
What everyone should be concerned about is whether if this institutionalized racism is a real thing or not, how it is happening, and how best can we address it. I've read contradictory statistics surrounding this. What everyone should be concerned about is how the policemen in America is looking more terrifying than any american soldier in Afghanistan or Iraq, how they have tanks and so on, how they are so trigger happy that they kill 12 year old kids on the spot for having toy guns on their hands.
To waste time discussing Wilson is a waste.
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how they are so trigger happy that they kill 12 year old kids on the spot for having toy guns on their hands.
To waste time discussing Wilson is a waste.
I agree that the focus should be on institutional racism and the militarisation of the police. So bringing up a similarly divisive case is not the best way to keep the focus on the subject you want. Especially given that like in the Brown case there are differing points of view and video evidence of him pointing the replica gun at the police officers who shot him! (http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/26/video-tamir-rice-shooting-police-peace-loving-boy)
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Especially the trashing of the very store Mike Brown robbed before the shooting - that was a disgusting thing to do.
Except that Brown did not actually rob that store. There's even video of him paying for whatever it is he got there. (http://anarcho-queer.tumblr.com/post/95033296517)
This is the first time I have heard such claim. Even his friend confirmed the robbery.
I dont see him paying for the stuff in that video. It does not have enough resolution and the angle is bad, so even if he did pay, it wont be visible. But we can clearly see him grabbing a lot of stuff and the clerk going after him when he tries to leave. And thats not the whole video, its conventiently cut off before the physical alceration. Here is the whole video with the aftermath:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2z5-H8NSGA
Problem is that peaceful protests do not work.
I dont think violent ones will work. If anything, they will cause even more harm.
The only solution to police brutality is through legislation - perhaps mandatory body cameras streaming everything to the cloud so it cannot be deleted by the cops themselves.
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Especially the trashing of the very store Mike Brown robbed before the shooting - that was a disgusting thing to do.
Except that Brown did not actually rob that store. There's even video of him paying for whatever it is he got there. (http://anarcho-queer.tumblr.com/post/95033296517)
This is the first time I have heard such claim. Even his friend confirmed the robbery.
I dont see him paying for the stuff in that video. It does not have enough resolution and the angle is bad, so even if he did pay, it wont be visible. But we can clearly see him grabbing a lot of stuff and the clerk going after him when he tries to leave. And thats not the whole video, its conventiently cut off before the physical alceration. Here is the whole video with the aftermath:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2z5-H8NSGA
That is gruesome, especially given how The_E's link is all enraged on how the "Ferguson Police conveniently forgot to publicly release this part of the footage". Jesus ****ing Christ, call about Kettles and so on. I guess when there's a cause to fight, who cares about the truth? The extreme left is shooting itself in the foot for all I have seen here, by pretending this guy was just an angel that got obviously shot because white supremacy and so on. Why the constant stretching of the truth? The plain truth is bad enough, now the left is just giving people arguments to dismiss the bigger issues with a straight face.
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how they are so trigger happy that they kill 12 year old kids on the spot for having toy guns on their hands.
To waste time discussing Wilson is a waste.
I agree that the focus should be on institutional racism and the militarisation of the police. So bringing up a similarly divisive case is not the best way to keep the focus on the subject you want. Especially given that like in the Brown case there are differing points of view and video evidence of him pointing the replica gun at the police officers who shot him! (http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/26/video-tamir-rice-shooting-police-peace-loving-boy)
Of course these are all divisive cases. I don't think the cops are bad people, so I'm sure they both killed Wilson and this young boy without true malice. Why do you think it being "divisive" is relevant anyway? The problem here is militarization and trigger happiness. It's also to do with the wider gun culture of America. Should the cops have behaved differently? I don't know, you tell me. All these ghastly cases seem to come from one single country, so I would imagine that other countries happen to solve these issues in a thousand times better way.
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This is not the only country these things happen in. It's just the one where they most frequently get made into (inter)national news. Those crazy, gun-happy Americans, amirite? :rolleyes:
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Must I have to post statistics here that prove my point beyond any reasonable doubt? Because I have work to do and basic knowledge of the world really bores me.
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Well, I think Turks in Germany probably face many similar problems to what blacks in America face. Just not getting shot, which is kind of a big one.
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As someone who grew up in St.Louis their entire life I can tell you the issue is more about the cops being nepotistic selfrighteous entitled ****s than racial tension. Not that there is no racial tension (honestly it's more class tension, but class is divided strongly along racial lines), but the Cops are 'I am the law' assholes and they do cover for each other. They may have been totally in the right here, but I can guarantee you we'll never be able to know one way or the other, though if the FBI (or some such) gets involved we may be able to tell if there was a coverup.
But at least Ferguson has cops, at least Ferguson isn't East St.Louis, where Escape From New York was filmed.
but the question I have to ask is why are they burning down their own neighborhood, if they really wanted to get back at the rich white land owners they'd be throwing molotovs at the Bentleys of Chesterfield, Creve Coeur, or if they really had balls Ladue.
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but the question I have to ask is why are they burning down their own neighborhood, if they really wanted to get back at the rich white land owners they'd be throwing molotovs at the Bentleys of Chesterfield, Creve Coeur, or if they really had balls Ladue.
Tear gas is flammable.
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I'm not sure what you are implying. are you saying that all of the businesses torched were part of a police conspiracy? I mean I can buy that the cops destroyed evidence to protect themselves, but I just get an amusing mental image of the local fire chief knocking on the door of the local police station with an axe in his hand and a look on his face with about 30 other firefighters lined up behind him. "Commissioner! We shall have words!"
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Prior to joining the Ferguson police force, Darren Wilson was on a force at Jennings, Missouri that was disbanded and replaced after receiving numerous allegations of corruption and excessive force. We just can't get rid of these guys.
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I'm not sure what you are implying. are you saying that all of the businesses torched were part of a police conspiracy? I mean I can buy that the cops destroyed evidence to protect themselves, but I just get an amusing mental image of the local fire chief knocking on the door of the local police station with an axe in his hand and a look on his face with about 30 other firefighters lined up behind him. "Commissioner! We shall have words!"
Ehr, NO?
I am just saying that the police also has a hand in making things escalate, not just the protestors.
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Prior to joining the Ferguson police force, Darren Wilson was on a force at Jennings, Missouri that was disbanded and replaced after receiving numerous allegations of corruption and excessive force. We just can't get rid of these guys.
Why was he allowed to join at Ferguson, then? Perhaps the problem is at recruitment level. This kind of person should have not been allowed to join the police. Especially not after being found guilty of any sort of conduct unbecoming a policeman.
Honestly, I can say both sides are equally guilty. Last time I've heard of the case, the whole deal with the shooting itself played out more like an unfortunate accident. There was a petty thief, an armed policeman, a huge misunderstanding and a short, tragic fight. It should have ended there, with the policeman punished, the family compensated and storeowner given his stolen stuff back. Now, though, both sides are pulling increasingly implausible evidence, strange videos and various odd arguments (he paid for the stuff at the store, then pulled a toy gun at the policeman? And there's a video evidence for both? Just why would he, short of being DA-worthy idiot?). Personally, I'm not inclined to believe either side. The way the situation is developing is just appalling. What happened to the old "Protect and Serve" motto? This is what police is for, they're not supposed to be infallible, but also not free of responsibility for their mistakes, either. If a supposed "police force" neither protects the people nor serves them in any way, then why not disband it altogether? Most Ferguson cops are no "true" policemen, as far as I'm concerned, they're thugs dressed in police blues (or MARPAT, when they drop the pretense). As for the protesters, their hooligan-to-activist ratio seems about the same as policeman-to-thug ratio in Ferguson PD.
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The worst are those comments everywhere in the nets saying that he got "what he deserved" because he was obviously a thief. Since when should anyone accept a society where judge Dredds are navigating through the streets killing everyone for the smallest crime they pull off?
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I just want to add a little something on behalf of law enforcement personnel everywhere. I've been in situations where you're dealing with a populace that is generally hostile and potentially dangerous to you. In such cases, behavioral cues are huge, but there's also plain bald statistics that people like to dismiss if they happen to have any racial connotations.
For example, the 18-35 demographic is far more likely to participate in unlawful, violent acts than the 35-55 demographic. Simple fact of life, stupidity of youth, etc. I don't think anyone would have much issue with that statistic.
Here's another one. People of ethnic group ABC are statistically more likely to not pick their dog's poop up than people of ethnic group XYZ. Perhaps it's a cultural thing among ABCers... they do tend to live clumped into their own neighborhoods and not intermingle with the XYZians, after all. However "racist" it may be, this simple fact can and will guide my actions - I see an ABCer waking their dog down the street towards my house, I'm going to keep a close eye on them to make sure they pick that **** up. Not because I hate ABCers, or think they're inferior, but because simple statistics show that that's the wise thing to do if I want to keep my lawn turd-free.
Bringing this back to law enforcement personnel, they deal with potential life-threatening situations on a daily basis. They probably don't want to die our even get injured themselves, so they'll do the wise thing (typically) and be more wary of those ethnic groups who STATISTICALLY-SPEAKING are more likely to cause them harm. If you want to pull the racist card in such situations, look first to the statistics before you go blaming the people.
Now, let me close by saying that what I just wrote may not apply whatsoever to the Brown/Wilson incident, because of this history of past behavior or that video evidence... I don't care because I'm addressing the general topic of racism in the police forces overall, not this specific case.
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Now, though, both sides are pulling increasingly implausible evidence, strange videos and various odd arguments (he paid for the stuff at the store, then pulled a toy gun at the policeman?
I believe you are mixing up two recent shootings here..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Michael_Brown
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Tamir_Rice
lol!
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The jury heard a lot more evidence than anybody who was not in that courtroom, and the justice system says that what they decided is right.
The actual truth, whether it matches the decision or not, is not what the jury is there to decide.
And it's certainly not for people who were neither present at the incident or at the trial to judge.
The riots are just stupid.
When there are people in other parts of the world protesting and rioting over real, actual problems, these idiots are destroying things for no reason.
This is exactly the problem. Techdirt (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141125/10311629249/ferguson-grand-jury-decision-proves-system-still-works.shtml) does a good job explaining what is so stupid about the hearing.
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I just want to add a little something on behalf of law enforcement personnel everywhere. I've been in situations where you're dealing with a populace that is generally hostile and potentially dangerous to you. In such cases, behavioral cues are huge, but there's also plain bald statistics that people like to dismiss if they happen to have any racial connotations.
Not sure exactly what you're advocating for, but the acceptance of racial profiling is the complete opposite of what is needed here. Racial profiling is a direct cause of these riots and should be condemned, not justified. The problem is law enforcement (along with the rest of the general population) being conditioned to treat blacks like criminals.
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I'd like to see national standards for police training and practices. In addition is it possible to reduce the escalation of a conflict, say instead of going for the gun, use a stun gun or a I-can't-remember-the-name-of-the-pole-thing-used-in-martial-arts while still maintaining a reasonable level of safety for the officer in question? I believe being a police officer is not just another job, and that taking on that duty entails more risk than what is the norm, and that an officer must be willing to take risks to his/her own personal safety to do the job. Rather than focus on the safety of the officer at all costs.
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Not sure exactly what you're advocating for, but the acceptance of racial profiling is the complete opposite of what is needed here. Racial profiling is a direct cause of these riots and should be condemned, not justified. The problem is law enforcement (along with the rest of the general population) being conditioned to treat blacks like criminals.
Oh please. The definition of racism these days has been blurred and diluted to the point where it can be (mis)applied to virtually anything. Allow me to clarify things for you.
Statistics - both impersonal (what we read about / see on the news / hear from other people) and personal (what we ourselves have experienced) - guide behavior in all living things. For example, domestic cats statistically have positive interaction with humans, and thus are typically not afraid of us. Garbage cats statistically have negative interactions with humans, leading to their being wary and fearful of us.
For humans, negative experience is called "learning the hard way". Touch a fire -> get burned -> obtain valuable survival behavior that fire damages us and shouldn't be touched. We're not being racist against fires (let's ignore the issue that fires don't have a "race" to begin with). We're acting out of preservation of our own lives based on past experiences - each time we touched that fire in the past, we got burnt, so based on statistics, it'll probably happen every time we do so in the future - and it's likely that it will happen no matter which fire we touch.
There is a word for behavior that ignores statistics such as past experiences and blindly attempts again and again to touch fires, thinking that perhaps this time it will go differently even though nothing else has changed: insanity.
NSFW (language):
Now, there's a fine line between allowing such statistics and experiences - whether they are based on a person's race, age, behavior, clothing, or whatever - to inform our behavior in potentially dangerous situations, versus discriminating against a person with no cause to do so.
Let me give you an example from my actual, daily life. I live in Jerusalem. We have neighborhoods that are predominantly Arab, Jewish, etc. Based on statistics, I'm not going to wander through the Arab neighborhoods willy-nilly. Statistically, Arabs have been more prone to violence than other ethnic groups in Jerusalem (especially recently). So my avoidance of those areas of the city is not out of racism, but the desire to preserve my life and well-being. Now, all else being equal (quality, etc), I have no problem whatsoever with buying from Arab vendors vs Jewish vendors in the market across the street from my office. To date, there has been no reason for such behavior - no spates of poisonings or anything like that. So to discriminate against Arab market vendors just because they're Arab would be racism.
Do you see the difference here? Racism is discriminating against someone for no other reason than their race. Learning from past experiences isn't racism - it's sanity. When those past experiences show that the people engaging in negative behavior all wear pink poodle fur hats? Well, maybe the pink poodle fur hats are mind controlling the people to do bad things, and maybe not, but either way - you'd do best to steer clear of pink poodle hat wearers if you want to avoid their negative behavior.
Also, I'll tack this on here even though it should probably be integrated into my post somehow, but I only just thought of it. That learning from statistics and past behavior thing actually has two factors, not just one. I mentioned one factor, the "who", but the other factor is the situation itself. Example: Pink Poodle Hat person walking down the sidewalk towards me, brandishing a butcher knife? I'd be pretty wary. Change the situation though, and have Pink Poodle Hat standing in his meat stall at the market brandishing a butcher knife? Significantly less threatening.
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And now for a blatant case of prosecutorial misconduct. (http://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/11/27/7298711/ferguson-grand-jury-mistake)
Before Wilson testified to the grand jury on September 16, prosecutors gave grand jurors an outdated statute that said police officers can shoot a suspect that's simply fleeing. This statute was deemed unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in 1985; the court ruled that a fleeing suspect must, at least in a police officer's reasonable view, pose a dangerous threat to someone or have committed a violent felony to justify a shooting.
Prosecutors, who had full control of the evidence presented to the grand jury, took more than two months to correct their mistake, O'Donnell said. The prosecutors on November 21 — just three days before the grand jury reached a decision — gave the correct standards to the grand jury. But as O'Donnell explained, the prosecutors didn't specify what exactly was wrong with the outdated statute — and they didn't even clearly say, after they were asked, to the grand jurors that Supreme Court rulings do indeed override Missouri law.
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Not sure exactly what you're advocating for, but the acceptance of racial profiling is the complete opposite of what is needed here. Racial profiling is a direct cause of these riots and should be condemned, not justified. The problem is law enforcement (along with the rest of the general population) being conditioned to treat blacks like criminals.
Now, there's a fine line between allowing such statistics and experiences - whether they are based on a person's race, age, behavior, clothing, or whatever - to inform our behavior in potentially dangerous situations, versus discriminating against a person with no cause to do so.
The big problem with your reasoning is that the criteria you are likely to pick to build statistics (or recollections of your past personal experiences) are social constructs, not physical laws.
You know that fire burns because it's hot and your skin cells can't handle it.
You know that Black and Arab people are dangerous because ... ?
If you accept racial profiling under the assumption that it will help law enforcement, you are willingly ignoring causality, and thus taking the risk of hurting a lot of innocent people who are part of the group(s) you have selected as your main target(s). (and I'm not even bringing up Human Rights...)
Strange thing: in many places around the world, and especially in the USA, there is a huge bias towards considering "race" to be the most relevant.
There is also a strong link between police discrimination and other types of discrimination : who would want to hire, or just hang out with someone who is part of a group known to be targeted by the police forces ? A sane person wouldn't want to be associated with the "wrong crowd". A sane person wouldn't want to live in a neighbourhood where the main access point happens to be a police checkpoint because a majority of the people living there have the "wrong" skin colour.
Whether you like it or not, racial profiling is a huge incentive for everyone (business owners, landlords, everyone else...) to build a more segregated society, and the only reason to support that would be... well... plain, old, racism.
So yes, supporting racial profiling makes you a racist, sorry for that.
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Tear gas is flammable.
Tear gas is slightly flammable; it must be heated first, with a flash point >200°F. The organic solvent used to aerosolize it may be flammable; the solvent used in the Waco Siege, dichloromethane, has similar flammability to the tear gas itself. The propellant may be flammable; the ignition source would need to be near the nozzle.
or a I-can't-remember-the-name-of-the-pole-thing-used-in-martial-arts
A baton/nightstick?
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So yes, supporting racial profiling makes you a racist, sorry for that.
You're jumping to conclusions here. There is a huge difference between arbitrary prejudice based on, say, skin color, and very much nonarbitrary one based on one's past experiences with a group. If a correlation between race/ethnicity and, say, violent tendencies exists, then it would be foolish to ignore. This says nothing about whether is's a casual relationship, some sort of common cause or simply bad luck on their part, but the fact that this sort of correlation exists can not be denied.
Think about it, just how do you know that fire is hot and burns? It is precisely because you experienced it. A theoretical physicist might explain why, but even if you're in the middle of the desert with no scientist in sight, that doesn't change the fact fire burns. A caveman would be clueless as to why, and will not be able to explain it like you did (he could create a myth about it, though). Same thing with racial profiling. You know that Black/Arabs/whoever is dangerous, because you've seen them being dangerous (at least, as far as their districts go). Now, if you're into that kind of thing, you might want to find out why is that so. There is a very good explanation for why both of those groups are the way they are (I won't delve into psychological portraits here, but it's likely been explained by psychology experts somewhere). It is important to remember that and not attempt one's own explanation, as a myth arising might be very harmful in such situations, and will lead actual racism when people start making predictions based on it.
Of course, as with all "soft" sciences, exceptions are plenty. A well educated Arab student at an Israeli university is unlikely to be actually dangerous to anyone, and in fact will likely be appalled at how the average lower-class Arab acts towards Jews. There's much more to profiling than race. Here, we're mostly talking young, generally lower-class people. In general, in this group, black people are disproportionately represented among criminals. In a similar vein, black people also seem overrepresented in the American lower class in general, which is where most petty criminals come from. As such, when encountering a young black man dressed in a hoodie, I'd definitely be vary of him, even though I don't have anything against black people in general.
This kind of profiling is not entirely unjustified in many cases, but using only race as a criterion would be racist. Using it alongside other criteria (class, age, sex, etc.) is reasonable. I certainly haven't heard of any incidents involving an old black woman, for example.
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So yes, supporting racial profiling makes you a racist, sorry for that.
You're jumping to conclusions here. There is a huge difference between arbitrary prejudice based on, say, skin color, and very much nonarbitrary one based on one's past experiences with a group.
No there's not. It's racial profiling, and it's disgusting to even contemplate that the color of someone's skin should lead to suspension of the concept of innocence until proven guilt. This is literally the exact same concept that is even the problem in this situation, and which continually leads to misconception that someone who's skin is a darker color than another's is more likely to commit a crime.
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There is a huge difference between arbitrary prejudice based on, say, skin color, and very much nonarbitrary one based on one's past experiences with a group.
There will be no difference for the people you are going to discriminate based on what you understand as their group.
Let's imagine you're in the USA, and you get mugged by a group of white people.
Whether you are black or white, are you going to start discriminating (or only get prejudiced) against white people in general ? Probably not, because in most areas white people are a majority, with economic and political power (I'm saying not that all white people have money and power, I'm saying the ratio is statistically in favour of white people), so you can't afford to discriminate.
That makes white people privileged.
The only reason you would start discriminating against black people after being mugged by black people is not the "bad experience" in itself, rather, it's because you can afford it : they are a minority group, and socially, it will not cost you nothing to do so.
Of course, you can only do it because you believe in race representations, so that makes black people "wholly other", different from yourself at a fundamental level.
Again, this is racism.
If a correlation between race/ethnicity and, say, violent tendencies exists, then it would be foolish to ignore. This says nothing about whether it's a casual relationship, some sort of common cause or simply bad luck on their part, but the fact that this sort of correlation exists can not be denied.
That would be a job for social scientists. I don't think your average Joe (or even some random policeman) can safely use these notions in real life without huge risks for minority groups.
Social scientists are trained to avoid some of the worst bias, and don't always succeed. I wouldn't trust random people with this, especially if it's a part of the decision of using force in a tense situation (or not), or even doing some "stop and search".
There is a very good explanation for why both of those groups are the way they are (I won't delve into psychological portraits here, but it's likely been explained by psychology experts somewhere). It is important to remember that and not attempt one's own explanation, as a myth arising might be very harmful in such situations, and will lead actual racism when people start making predictions based on it.
Precisely, this. Racial profiling is a tool. But a very bad one. In a racist system, it can only be used in harmful ways, and that will only make racism stronger because people don't understand statistics, that's a fact, and will jump to conclusions about individuals. People will make up their own myths of racial superiority from the numbers, it's unavoidable.
My point is that it shouldn't be a part of profiling at all.
This kind of profiling is not entirely unjustified in many cases, but using only race as a criterion would be racist. Using it alongside other criteria (class, age, sex, etc.) is reasonable. I certainly haven't heard of any incidents involving an old black woman, for example.
Good for old black women. Tough luck for young black men.
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Sandwich, I think you are making a big mistake comparing your experiences in Israel to the situation in America. Israel has been in a war along religious and ethnic lines over who controlls the entire region ever since it first came into being. As such, there is an argument to be made of a person of *other ethnicity* to be a symphatiser for that cause. I personally think it completely sucks (because of reasons outlined by Hellzed and Scotty), but I get why people would feel that way.
The situation in the US is not even remotely comparable. The US has always been very extreme in it's racial profiling (would Israel round up everyone of palestinian descent when they are at war with Gaza? Because the US did exactly that with the Japanese), and the situation of blacks is not the result of a pointless war, but simply of a nation hanging on to it's slavery and racial discrimination for far too long (You are still required to fill in your "race" on official documents, interracial marriage was not allowed until 1967, that sorta thing).
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Whether racial profiling is good or bad depends entirely what action are we talking about. Police officer being more wary around blacks, lower class people or young males? That is justified. Completely ignoring statistical differences between groups of people is dumb.
Police officer being more inclined to shoot at blacks because they are black? Not justified. Because actually shooting at someone needs a concrete reason that does not directly depend on ones race (altough it may correlate, too).
Anyway, I feel like racial aspect of this tends to be overstated. The techdirt article says that indictments against police officers are very rare, while indictments against ordinary people are extremely common. Thats where the huge difference lies. There are lots of white victims of police brutality that did not get justice. Remember Kelly Thomas?
Police corruption and justice system corruption is the main problem.
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Can you really not see how being more wary around black people pretty much automatically leads to being more inclined to shoot black people?
Of course these are all divisive cases. I don't think the cops are bad people, so I'm sure they both killed Wilson and this young boy without true malice. Why do you think it being "divisive" is relevant anyway? The problem here is militarization and trigger happiness.
The fact that it is divisive is very important if you want to keep the discussion on track. If you really the focus of this discussion to be police militarisation and institutional racism there are certain subjects you should really, really avoid mentioning. You complained about the fact that people were not discussing the subjects you consider to be important and then threw a conversational hand grenade into the conversation. That could very easily have gone off into a tangent about whether the Rice shooting was justified or not.
Basically if you're going to complain about people discussing the effects and not the cause, don't bring up another effect.
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@666maslo666 : So, would you be ready to have policemen stop and search you on a weekly or monthly basis, because of your ethnic group ?
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@666maslo666 : So, would you be ready to have policemen stop and search you on a weekly or monthly basis, because of your ethnic group ?
Dont the police need some reason to stop and search someone?
Would I be ready to be regarded with more waryness than women or old people? Yes I would. Extrapolating from that, I would be OK even if it was based on my ethnicity.
Can you really not see how being more wary around black people pretty much automatically leads to being more inclined to shoot black people?
It may be so in some cases, but it doesnt change the fact that it is still reasonable to be more wary. The line should be drawn somewhere in-between, ignoring race completely means ignoring a factor that does exist statistically.
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Dont the police need some reason to stop and search someone?
Yes they do. But these reasons are usually wide enough so that they can stop and search anybody, at any time. Stop and search abuse cases are pretty much never investigated, because it is seen as a minor issue.
Would I be ready to be regarded with more waryness than women or old people? Yes I would. Extrapolating from that, I would be OK even if it was based on my ethnicity.
You may understand that this will not only be with the police :
- some employers will not want their image to be associated with people that have high chances of being searched
- same issue with landlords
- people on the street won't know if you are being searched or arrested : if you wouldn't feel humiliated by a group of strangers watching you as if you were a criminal, good for you.
It may be so in some cases, but it doesnt change the fact that it is still reasonable to be more wary. The line should be drawn somewhere in-between, ignoring race completely means ignoring a factor that does exist statistically.
As someone already stated in this thread, being innocent until proven guilty is one of the basics of the rule of law, and not being discriminated against is one of the most fundamental human rights.
We are individuals and we do not bear responsibility for what other people of the same group may do, especially if this group is defined on arbitrary criteria such as "ethnicity" or "skin colour".
That's also a good reason for "racial statistics" to be used only in universities to try and understand social issues, but never by police forces that can (most of the time) only work on a variety of individual cases.
You obviously have a very hard time identifying with people of colour and minority groups (and that's understandable if you're from a very ethnically homogeneous country), so I think you have no clue what it is to be discriminated against on a daily basis.
A simple example of white people being discriminated against for ethnic reasons would be central/eastern Europeans in western Europe.
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Whether racial profiling is good or bad depends entirely what action are we talking about. Police officer being more wary around blacks, lower class people or young males? That is justified. Completely ignoring statistical differences between groups of people is dumb.
Police officer being more inclined to shoot at blacks because they are black? Not justified. Because actually shooting at someone needs a concrete reason that does not directly depend on ones race (altough it may correlate, too).
This.
Also, I think I was fairly clear in my post, but perhaps not - I'm on my phone and can't check easily right now - I was talking about what constitutes racism, which is not to be confused with racial profiling. In my mind, racism is bias against someone for no other reason than their race. However, if past experiences have proven that a certain demographic are significantly more likely to behave currently, and I can tell if a person is part of that demographic from afar, then ignoring that factoid and not being more wary around them is insanity.
I'm not saying that such things should be put into law. I'm saying that they already are simple common sense. And yes, it sucks if you're a law-abiding member of that demographic, I can't deny that.
I guess all I'm trying to say is that I can sympathize with those people who risk their lives on a daily basis dealing with exactly this situation - do they do some internal demographic profiling and listen to common sense telling them to be way around certain people, or do they stand steadfast against any kind of racial profiling and treat each person as equal until proven otherwise?
I guess when put that way, it comes down to if statistical probabilities can be used, not to prove someone guilty for heaven's sake, but to inform law enforcement officer's levels of caution. Ideally, said caution would never transfer over to offensive measures (shooting), but would only enhance defensive measures. Not sure how that could work out in reality though.
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Can you really not see how being more wary around black people pretty much automatically leads to being more inclined to shoot black people?
Of course these are all divisive cases. I don't think the cops are bad people, so I'm sure they both killed Wilson and this young boy without true malice. Why do you think it being "divisive" is relevant anyway? The problem here is militarization and trigger happiness.
The fact that it is divisive is very important if you want to keep the discussion on track. If you really the focus of this discussion to be police militarisation and institutional racism there are certain subjects you should really, really avoid mentioning. You complained about the fact that people were not discussing the subjects you consider to be important and then threw a conversational hand grenade into the conversation. That could very easily have gone off into a tangent about whether the Rice shooting was justified or not.
Basically if you're going to complain about people discussing the effects and not the cause, don't bring up another effect.
My point is that people will tend to discuss divisive cases precisely because they highlight the differences of opinions regarding cultures and values between people. Clear and shut cases are clear and shut, and they don't advance any discussion. My point about trigger happiness and the 12 year old case is that in a much lesser trigger happy society this would never happen. It's not about how the kid was being an idiot or an asshole by scaring people off with what appeared as being a true gun. When I say that it "doesn't matter" if it's divisive or not who was "in the right" or not, is not to dismiss any particular case, but to say that the discussion of whether the policemen were in the right or not is absolutely irrelevant. In either case, two needless deaths occurred. That's the only thing we should focus. How to remedy that, I don't know. Body cameras? More gun control? Condemnation of a gun culture? Having the police sell all military equipment? Have a good discussion on why the black community is so prone to violence? IDK, you tell me.
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You may understand that this will not only be with the police :
- some employers will not want their image to be associated with people that have high chances of being searched
- same issue with landlords
- people on the street won't know if you are being searched or arrested : if you wouldn't feel humiliated by a group of strangers watching you as if you were a criminal, good for you.
I dont agree with landlords or employees discriminating against people due to these factors, thats quite serious. But I also dont mind being a target of increased waryness compared to other groups when on the streets. As long as it is not over the top. Assuming there is a statistical reason, I wouldnt blame them.
It may be so in some cases, but it doesnt change the fact that it is still reasonable to be more wary. The line should be drawn somewhere in-between, ignoring race completely means ignoring a factor that does exist statistically.
As someone already stated in this thread, being innocent until proven guilty is one of the basics of the rule of law, and not being discriminated against is one of the most fundamental human rights.
We are individuals and we do not bear responsibility for what other people of the same group may do, especially if this group is defined on arbitrary criteria such as "ethnicity" or "skin colour".
That's also a good reason for "racial statistics" to be used only in universities to try and understand social issues, but never by police forces that can (most of the time) only work on a variety of individual cases.
You obviously have a very hard time identifying with people of colour and minority groups (and that's understandable if you're from a very ethnically homogeneous country), so I think you have no clue what it is to be discriminated against on a daily basis.
A simple example of white people being discriminated against for ethnic reasons would be central/eastern Europeans in western Europe.
I dont consider being a target of increased police interest to be discrimination unless there is also some police misconduct, not if it is statistically sound. If there is a misconduct motivated by ethnicity, then that is another matter entirely and I am strongly against that. There are lots of gypsies in my country so it is not too homogenous, and similar logic applies to them.
As for eastern europeans in western europe, with the possible exception of eastern gypsies they may not really be more likely to be criminals. Thats one of those prejudices that may not hold up to scrutiny. But assuming it did, then I wouldnt blame the police for more waryness around them.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/philipjohnston/3674251/Immigration_and_crime_the_real_results/
In conclusion, all I am saying is that it is unreasonable for ethnic differences to be completely ignored, if they have a statistical basis. If it is a correlate of crime then the police should take in into account on the streets. But actual police interventions should always be based on objective reasons, not ethnicity.
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"Fun" fact : gypsy or not, in western Europe, all eastern Europeans are often considered to be the same group. Why would you insist on a "gypsy exception" ? There's a common geographical origin, and to most western police officers (who don't know any Slavic language, same for Hungarian and Romani), the different accents will sound just the same.
It makes a perfectly valid group.
Also, "stop and search" is already a police intervention.
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Whether racial profiling is good or bad depends entirely what action are we talking about. Police officer being more wary around blacks, lower class people or young males? That is justified. Completely ignoring statistical differences between groups of people is dumb.
Police officer being more inclined to shoot at blacks because they are black? Not justified. Because actually shooting at someone needs a concrete reason that does not directly depend on ones race (altough it may correlate, too).
These things are not separable. Racial biases run very deep, they can't just be switched off when they're unjustified.
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I dont consider being a target of increased police interest to be discrimination unless there is also some police misconduct, not if it is statistically sound. If there is a misconduct motivated by ethnicity, then that is another matter entirely and I am strongly against that. There are lots of gypsies in my country so it is not too homogenous, and similar logic applies to them.
You seem to operate under the assumption that the police is a mostly benign force for order, with racist asshats being the exception to the rule.
This may not be as accurate a mental image as you may believe.
Racial profiling doesn't tell you anything important. Putting the behaviour of the profiled under a microscope, regardless of whether or not they have ever or will ever commit a crime gives you a distorted view of reality; Criminals from social groups you are not profiling will more often than not be seen as exceptions to a rule that only exists in the minds of the observers (and, vice versa, Criminals from the profilled group will appear to justify continued surveillance).
As for eastern europeans in western europe, with the possible exception of eastern gypsies they may not really be more likely to be criminals. Thats one of those prejudices that may not hold up to scrutiny. But assuming it did, then I wouldnt blame the police for more waryness around them.
Think it through: The police puts {ethnic group} under extra surveillance. The surveillance reveals {x} crimes being committed by members of {ethnic group}. {Ethnic group} is then seen as harbouring a larger-than-average number of criminals.
There's a logical error in that progression. See if you can spot it.
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"Fun" fact : gypsy or not, in western Europe, all eastern Europeans are often considered to be the same group. Why would you insist on a "gypsy exception" ? There's a common geographical origin, and to most western police officers (who don't know any Slavic language, same for Hungarian and Romani), the different accents will sound just the same.
It makes a perfectly valid group.
I highly doubt that they are considered the same group, since gypsies dont look like white Slavs at all (more like people from India). And white Slavs look almost exactly like western Europeans. You might have a point about the same language (altrough I know that gypsies often use their own language), but I think that looks is far more relevant when it comes to street police profiling than language.
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Think it through: The police puts {ethnic group} under extra surveillance. The surveillance reveals {x} crimes being committed by members of {ethnic group}. {Ethnic group} is then seen as harbouring a larger-than-average number of criminals.
There's a logical error in that progression. See if you can spot it.
I am aware of that. This kind of bias may account for some differences in crime rates among ethnicities. Does it account for all of it, or even most of it? I dont think so.
There are also victimization studies (asking participants whether they have been victims of a crime in the past x months and to describe the offenders - regardless if the crime was reported or offenders caught) that take police bias entirely out of the equation. These can be used to find societal correlates of crime to guide the police profiling without the fear of such distorting feedback loop. AFAIK, such studies are mostly in line with the statistics from arrests or convictions.
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At crowded bus stops or metro stations, you often hear people before seeing them, and accents are a very good way to distinguish people in a very diverse environment. As racial profiling is forbidden by the French Constitution (but that would be the same in Belgium and UK...), police has to use language and nationality instead of race.
I can sense you disagree with being considered as part of the same group as Romani people ? Well, that's my point : you don't make the rules, and they are highly dependent on how you are seen by the majority group in your country of residence. You have no voice, no power over this process, and when it has a direct impact over your own quality of life, of course it will look wrong to you.
And yes, it sucks if you're a law-abiding member of that demographic, I can't deny that.
Yes, it sucks. And I'm never going to accept the status quo : every single racist society should accept change, or be burnt to the ground.
These categories don't reflect anything else than what the dominant group considers as relevant (often what they fear, like violence, associated with what what they consider as "other", like skin color, accent, cultural habits...).
You can then be as scientific as you want, and fill up these categories with exact, verifiable numbers, it will always tell you more about how the dominant group shaped their society than violence amongst minority groups. Statistics 101.
If you are still not convinced, take a look at this : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_people#Definitions_by_country
(hint : nobody agrees on what an "asian" is)
In a modern, diverse, society racial profiling tells you nothing, except that you live in a racist society.
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However, if past experiences have proven that a certain demographic are significantly more likely to behave currently, and I can tell if a person is part of that demographic from afar, then ignoring that factoid and not being more wary around them is insanity.
Factoid is not synonymous with "little fact", it means (and I quote from wikipedia) "a questionable or spurious (unverified, false, or fabricated) statement presented as a fact".
/pet peeve
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I'm going to be a massive hypocrite for this post and go line-by-line because I think this is one of the very few instances where it's actually warranted.
Whether racial profiling is good or bad depends entirely what action are we talking about. Police officer being more wary around blacks, lower class people or young males? That is justified. Completely ignoring statistical differences between groups of people is dumb.
Police officer being more inclined to shoot at blacks because they are black? Not justified. Because actually shooting at someone needs a concrete reason that does not directly depend on ones race (altough it may correlate, too).
This.
Also, I think I was fairly clear in my post, but perhaps not - I'm on my phone and can't check easily right now - I was talking about what constitutes racism, which is not to be confused with racial profiling. In my mind, racism is bias against someone for no other reason than their race.
This is literally what you're talking about though. Profiling an entire group of people based on their race in order to seek out higher incidences of criminal behavior. You can dress it up however you want, but it's still racism.
However, if past experiences have proven that a certain demographic are significantly more likely to behave currently, and I can tell if a person is part of that demographic from afar, then ignoring that factoid and not being more wary around them is insanity.
No. Ignoring that fact and not being more wary about some random stranger you see on the street is basic civilization. Rule of law is a significant part of what makes modern society function. Suspecting that a person who is young and black is more likely to commit a crime while you're watching is an easy out into automatically assuming that a nervous young black person has committed a crime because they're acting suspicious - when the real reason they're nervous is because they're being stared down by law enforcement for no ****ing reason. It's the worst brand of circular logic, and it's disgusting.
I'm not saying that such things should be put into law. I'm saying that they already are simple common sense. And yes, it sucks if you're a law-abiding member of that demographic, I can't deny that.
Then don't ****ing do it.
I guess all I'm trying to say is that I can sympathize with those people who risk their lives on a daily basis dealing with exactly this situation - do they do some internal demographic profiling and listen to common sense telling them to be way around certain people, or do they stand steadfast against any kind of racial profiling and treat each person as equal until proven otherwise?
They do it the latter way, because the former is institutionalized racism.
I guess when put that way, it comes down to if statistical probabilities can be used, not to prove someone guilty for heaven's sake, but to inform law enforcement officer's levels of caution. Ideally, said caution would never transfer over to offensive measures (shooting), but would only enhance defensive measures. Not sure how that could work out in reality though.
Generally it works out to ethnic group x being discriminated against by police for the simple reason that they are part of ethnic group x. I don't know how much more clear I can make this. This attitude is a very significant part of the problem over in Gaza/West Bank. If you demonstrate that you don't think an entire race of people are inherently more likely to attack you than anyone else (as opposed to a government), those people are not going to like you. No ****.
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If you demonstrate that you don't think an entire race of people are inherently more likely to attack you than anyone else (as opposed to a government), those people are not going to like you. No ****.
The problem? As far as I've seen, they are. There are cases where discrimination is not "for the sake of it", but is motivated by very real reasons. This is what Sandwich is talking about. While there is more to the dangerous demographics than race, but it's the first thing people notice and there's plenty of correlation. It's very hard to convince an average person not to use a "rule of thumb" regarding race, especially in generally lawless areas where such a rule might even be lifesaving. While not exactly racism, I tend to give anyone dressed in football club colors a wide berth, for the exact same reason (football hooligans are a big problem in my city). It doesn't matter if one is actually a peaceful fan or a hooligan, the latter is likely enough to warrant precautions. You could accuse me of discrimination on this basis, but I (and everyone who lives in the city) would consider this common sense. And it doesn't matter that the colors are (unlike race) not "permanent". Were football clubs divided among ethnic/religious lines, like in Glasgow, I would likely look at those as well (at least on people otherwise looking likely to be hooligans).
The line between common sense and racism can be very thin indeed, especially in places like Israel (but in the US too, in certain places). This also makes clear-cut racism very hard to uproot in such places, because the advocates will fall back to such borderline cases to distract attention from clearer examples. It's very easy to start associating unwanted behavior as inherent to the race instead of a certain group of people who just happen to be of a particular race.
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One of the worst problems is also that fear of accusations of racism preventing the police force from doing their jobs.
See: UK and all the ****ing shenanigans that have occurred in the last decade.
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That's another problem entirely. Overdoing "political correctness" can be just as harmful as forgoing it altogether. It's a problem in general, and is often a side-effect of a large-scale "equality movement". Indeed, it seems that once such movement achieves its goals and winds down, die-hards will usually keep trumpeting "it's not enough!" long after they've achieved equality. While equal rights are great, it's important to note they're not the same as giving the previously discriminated group privileges over the majority.
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While there is more to the dangerous demographics than race, but it's the first thing people notice and there's plenty of correlation.
You don't notice "race". You notice a set of physical attributes, make them fit in the social construct you know and identify as a "race", and induce probable cultural traits.
"race" happens in your mind first.
It's very hard to convince an average person not to use a "rule of thumb" regarding race, especially in generally lawless areas where such a rule might even be lifesaving.
Again, this "rule of thumb" is called racism.
In Europe, places where you would get killed for talking to a random stranger on the street are actually close to non-existent. Even "dangerous" neighbourhoods are not that bad.
Most of my friends know about their white privilege, and don't need such a "rule".
Please give one example of a post-WW2 equality movement that has achieved full equality yet ?
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The problem here is that we do not get to decide how other cultures are portrayed, and, in pretty much every case, neither do the other cultures.
As a quick example, today in the UK, a soldier was jailed for having built a nail-bomb that the Police found during a search when they were not even looking for it..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-30247980
The article also notes that the soldier was associated with 'Far Right Politics'.
If that man had been a different colour, had his extremes been in a different direction, how much more prominence would this story be getting?
It's not anyone's fault directly, it's true that people work too hard to live up to their own stereotypes, it's also true that when they do so, the Media are more than happy to point fingers, which only serves to strengthen the stereotype that people think they have to live up to, and so round it goes...
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Prejudices don't only happen by themselves due to irrational racisms alone, Flipside. They tend to to sum correlations of behaviors. They are not determining specifics, but generalities. And that's the problem, obviously, but still this coming up of singular counter examples as evidence that the wider prejudices are false is not intelectually honest.
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It's very hard to convince an average person not to use a "rule of thumb" regarding race, especially in generally lawless areas where such a rule might even be lifesaving.
Again, this "rule of thumb" is called racism.
I think we have come to the root of our disagreement.
Racism in its original definition is a belief that races or ethnicities are inherently (genetically) superior/inferior. That belief is demonstrably wrong - and thats the only reason why I disagree with it. IF it was true that some races are genetically inferior, there could be nothing wrong with advocating racial segregation (not genocide of course), in fact, it could be the right thing to do (depending on the degree of difference).
Modern left is trying to redefine the term racism to basically conflate it with "culturism" - a belief that different cultures or ways of life are superior/inferior, or a belief that different ethnicities are currently superior/inferior in some quality, but only because of their present strong association with a specific culture - a non-genetic cultural association that can and probably will change over time.
Trying to conflate these two concepts is wrong, because the premises are entirely different and only superficialy similar. Disproving the former does not disprove the latter. The latter "racism by proxy" does not depend on the premise that the differences are genetic and correlation is enough for it to be valid, no need for causation. If you want to disprove it, you need to attack the correlation itself, not causation. Or you need to show that even if its true, guiding yourself by it will still bring more harm than good - that is indeed a very valid argument in many situations, but good luck trying to persuade people to that when it comes to the matters of life and death or personal safety.
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Thing is, look at how completely wrong almost every stereotype of 'First Nationers' in the US is, and almost every single one of those stereotypes comes from Media, mostly in the form of films. I'd say that pretty much the same thing applies to Africans and Caribbeans, almost every stereotype that exists about them was originally dispersed through Media, from The Black and White Minstrels to Blacksploitation and onwards, the roots of it are all there.
I'd not like to hazard a guess on how much 'reflection' is going on, as in Media gives a sensationalized view of a culture, which leads to members of that culture starting to follow that 'new' norm. It's a psychological trait that isn't unknown and is deliberately used in things like marketing all the time, however, it gets dangerously close to the 'media affects behaviour' argument, which I don't think it does, but it can affect attitudes and does all the time.
All I can really say is that a Stereotype is something that, whilst based on things that at their core are true, still doesn't explain why they are true.
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Oh definitely. It's very complex, especially because the media is so important at conveying those same stereotypes. It's a ****ing mess. Having said all that, I also find the usual stereotype of the white supremacist racist douchebag who is always destroying minorities' way of life with their superior imperialistic mindset just absolutely overplayed. People just feel entitled to be racist against whites because we are the privileged majority. And however you may feel about that right, I don't think this obession with oppression and revenge against this "Bad Big Other" who is "Screwing You Over" is actually accomplishing anything other than more and more balkanization, more racism, more inequality, more hatred in general.
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You don't notice "race". You notice a set of physical attributes, make them fit in the social construct you know and identify as a "race", and induce probable cultural traits.
"race" happens in your mind first.
It doesnt matter what you call it at all. The very fact that people look differently and this correlates with certain behavior is enough. Human brain at its core is a big correlator. Race, skin color, age, gender, dress style, all are valid targets to use in its correlations. In fact this process is at the very basis of evolved intelligence! x implies y. Which is why completely ignoring the connection between race and crime, assuming it is statistically real, is dumb.
Now we may talk about where we should let this correlation influence our policies and where it is discriminatory to do so. But if you are going to call every person who is more wary around blacks racist, then such position cannot be defended. You are asking people to shut their brains down.
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I think Scotty pretty much said it all in his post at the bottom of the last page, but for those maintaining that Black Americans should be treated differently from White Americans because they are statistically more prone to violent crime, please take a moment to consider that the history of race relations in America is overwhelmingly a story of white-on-black violence, not the other way around.
Asserting that blacks are more violent than whites is being complicit in the states' supporting/ignoring/forgiving the vast majority of white-on-black violence here over the past 300 years. That is a completely ahistorical perspective, and it's at the heart of what the riots are about.
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Now we may talk about where we should let this correlation influence our policies and where it is discriminatory to do so. But if you are going to call every person who is more wary around blacks racist, then such position cannot be defended. You are asking people to shut their brains down.
They're being wary around someone based on their skin color; this is inherently racist. Pretending this is not the case is really asking people to shut their brains down.
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Modern left is trying to redefine the term racism to basically conflate it with "culturism" - a belief that different cultures or ways of life are superior/inferior, or a belief that different ethnicities are currently superior/inferior in some quality, but only because of their present strong association with a specific culture - a non-genetic cultural association that can and probably will change over time.
That doesn't change anything for people who are discriminated against. I don't give a f*ck if people have "good reasons" to discriminate, if it's about supposed genetic differences or supposed ties with a different culture.
A system that discriminates directly or encourages discrimination, hence creating second class citizens who don't have the same rights (even basic ones like... not being discriminated against, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Art. 2) is unacceptable to me.
I don't have to "disprove" any statistic correlation, because it's not about statistics, and it has never been.
It's about (international) law, and the ethics behind it : a human being is not a number when it comes to their individual rights. After WW2, some people chose to believe humans have an essential dignity that cannot be taken from them, and I think they were right (mostly because we all know what happens when a country starts stripping people from their dignity and treating them like numbers). Ethics are a self justified framework, one can never prove it's right or wrong. We can only acknowledge the effects, and trying to use "science" to to determine who should get more/less rights has proven costly in human lives and useless suffering.
Call me self-righteous if you want, I think there's a clear moral high ground here.
Also, if I'm not clear enough yet, even if some human group was proven to "inferior" regarding some arbitrary criteria defined by the dominant, they would still be humans, with the exact same rights and dignity.
Oh definitely. It's very complex, especially because the media is so important at conveying those same stereotypes. It's a ****ing mess. Having said all that, I also find the usual stereotype of the white supremacist racist douchebag who is always destroying minorities' way of life with their superior imperialistic mindset just absolutely overplayed. People just feel entitled to be racist against whites because we are the privileged majority. And however you may feel about that right, I don't think this obession with oppression and revenge against this "Bad Big Other" who is "Screwing You Over" is actually accomplishing anything other than more and more balkanization, more racism, more inequality, more hatred in general.
When you look at the sad state of minorities pretty much everywhere, I'm not absolutely sure that's so overplayed.
I'm still waiting for serious cases of white people who couldn't get a job or a house because of their skin colour (I think affirmative action is not a good idea, but no one has ever seen some white guy's life completely destroyed because of it). As the dominant group, white people don't need special politics to reach equality, that's obvious.
Violence against white people from minorities ? It happens as individual reaction from some thugs. It's not an ideology, it's rarely a thought reflex, it's not an institutionalized system : in the end, it's not racism, it's a by-product of a segregated society. Violence caused by poverty is much more intense inside discriminated groups. Most often from the same thugs.
What's strange is a how progress towards equality is seen as "revenge" only by people who are part of the privileged group.
EDIT :
But if you are going to call every person who is more wary around blacks racist, then such position cannot be defended.
Thank you for the good laugh. You made my day. :D
Honestly, what's wrong with your logic ?!
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now this is a better use of energy then burning down your own neighborhood:
http://www.stlamerican.com/news/local_news/article_a021f116-773d-11e4-828e-fba99a32213d.html
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Oh definitely. It's very complex, especially because the media is so important at conveying those same stereotypes. It's a ****ing mess. Having said all that, I also find the usual stereotype of the white supremacist racist douchebag who is always destroying minorities' way of life with their superior imperialistic mindset just absolutely overplayed. People just feel entitled to be racist against whites because we are the privileged majority. And however you may feel about that right, I don't think this obession with oppression and revenge against this "Bad Big Other" who is "Screwing You Over" is actually accomplishing anything other than more and more balkanization, more racism, more inequality, more hatred in general.
When you look at the sad state of minorities pretty much everywhere, I'm not absolutely sure that's so overplayed.
I'm still waiting for serious cases of white people who couldn't get a job or a house because of their skin colour (I think affirmative action is not a good idea, but no one has ever seen some white guy's life completely destroyed because of it). As the dominant group, white people don't need special politics to reach equality, that's obvious.
Violence against white people from minorities ? It happens as individual reaction from some thugs. It's not an ideology, it's rarely a thought reflex, it's not an institutionalized system : in the end, it's not racism, it's a by-product of a segregated society. Violence caused by poverty is much more intense inside discriminated groups. Most often from the same thugs.
What's strange is a how progress towards equality is seen as "revenge" only by people who are part of the privileged group.
Thanks for misreading everything I stated. That is always so rewarding when it happens.
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I'd like to point out that as far as I've seen, it doesn't look like anyone here thinks that anybody is superior or inferior to anybody else, especially not because of idiotic differences such as skin color (heck, one could argue that when it comes to physical feats, blacks are often better than whites). Instead, the argument being made is based on past behavior of certain people, and how we deal with any correlations that exist between the people doing the misbehaving and a shared common element between them. Ignore the correlation? What if it helps save lives? Does a person's right to not be racially profiled trump another person's right to live in safety?
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Yes, having the state collectively punish and oppress entire groups of people because some of them might commit crimes is really wrong. It's also a really good long term way to make sure those people do go on to commit lots of crimes because they will grow up in an environment where it is clear that the state is working against them, so the security argument for profiling is pretty bunk.
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Who are you replying to? I didn't say anything about the state issuing collective punishments.
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jfc his point is that the 'reasonable measures' you're defending amount to nothing more than collective punishment
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Does a person's right to not be racially profiled trump another person's right to live in safety?
Really? You want to talk about racial profiling saving lives and people living in safety because of it in a thread about an incident where racial profiling was a factor that led to a man's death? :wtf:
Look, the human brain is a fantastic pattern recognition device, and as a result, racial profiling is probably inevitable. Race is one of the most easily recognizable characteristics of a person, it's no surprise that people remember it, and assign meaning to it based on past experience. If you, private citizen Sandwich, want to live your life based on those patterns and ideas, fine, do so. That's your right, and who knows, it might even keep you safe than if you didn't.
But, when you stop being a private citizen, and become Police Officer Sandwich or, perhaps be in your case, Occupying Soldier Sandwich, you absolutely can not allow yourself to think like that. People in positions of power (and the authority and weapons granted to cops and soldiers puts them in such positions) have to think past such notions, and restrict their ability to inform their actions, because of they don't, the inevitable result is the entrenchment of those beliefs in society, with all the associated problems that they cause, for the profiler, the profilee and society at large.
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Does a person's right to not be racially profiled trump another person's right to live in safety?
Really? You want to talk about racial profiling saving lives and people living in safety because of it in a thread about an incident where racial profiling was a factor that led to a man's death? :wtf:
Look, the human brain is a fantastic pattern recognition device, and as a result, racial profiling is probably inevitable. Race is one of the most easily recognizable characteristics of a person, it's no surprise that people remember it, and assign meaning to it based on past experience. If you, private citizen Sandwich, want to live your life based on those patterns and ideas, fine, do so. That's your right, and who knows, it might even keep you safe than if you didn't.
But, when you stop being a private citizen, and become Police Officer Sandwich or, perhaps be in your case, Occupying Soldier Sandwich, you absolutely can not allow yourself to think like that. People in positions of power (and the authority and weapons granted to cops and soldiers puts them in such positions) have to think past such notions, and restrict their ability to inform their actions, because of they don't, the inevitable result is the entrenchment of those beliefs in society, with all the associated problems that they cause, for the profiler, the profilee and society at large.
Yep. If the long term effects of profiling are effectively increased racial segregation, doing it isn't going to make you safer, regardless of whatever in-the-moment logic you can use to justify it (let's pretend here we can actually trust the statistics).
BTW: I can see this turning from using Israel as an example into a discussion on Israel, especially with a certain political debate currently ongoing (http://www.timesofisrael.com/whats-in-netanyahus-jewish-state-bill/), but Ferguson deserves a whole thread's worth of attention.
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They're being wary around someone based on their skin color; this is inherently racist. Pretending this is not the case is really asking people to shut their brains down.
Lets say there is a woman on the street at night and a group of men are going the opposite direction. Is it sexist if the woman feels more uneasy than if it was a group of women? Maybe it is, maybe it is not, depending on your definition of sexism.
Is it reasonable and would I blame her? Yes it is and I would not.
The same holds true for race or any other characteristic.
A system that discriminates directly or encourages discrimination, hence creating second class citizens who don't have the same rights (even basic ones like... not being discriminated against, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Art. 2) is unacceptable to me.
Universal declaration of human rights is of course speaking about equality when it comes to human rights. It does not apply to "thought-crimes" such as being more wary around someone.
I agree with most of what you write when it comes to actual police actions, those should be color-blind. But not when it comes to where they aim their attention. Either we agree that police officers should use correlates of crime to help guide them, or we dont. Race or ethnicity being no arbitrary exception. And of course we do agree with that.
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A woman walking down the street alone isn't wielding the authority of the state and isn't doing anything that could be interpreted as hostile. Her not wanting to walk past a group of men might be based on sexist assumptions, but it's her choice as a private citizen and she isn't harming anyone by taking a route that avoids them.
A cop in his police cruiser following a black kid around is a completely different story. The power dynamics are reversed, there is a pursuing action rather than avoidance, and the clear message it sends is that the kid is suspicious and has to be reminded of what happens if he steps out of line. This creates the perception that cop isn't there to serve and protect the kid, but rather to protect other people from him. You don't need raging white supremacist cops (though there are some of those too) to create enormous hostility between police and disfavored groups, all you need to do is exactly what you and Sandwich are suggesting.
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Lets say there is a woman on the street at night and a group of men are going the opposite direction. Is it sexist if the woman feels more uneasy than if it was a group of women? Maybe it is, maybe it is not, depending on your definition of sexism.
Is it reasonable and would I blame her? Yes it is and I would not.
The same holds true for race or any other characteristic.
I agree with swashmebuckle, there is a power dynamic at work.
A woman avoiding a group of men is an unfortunate consequence of living in a sexist society (street harassment is pretty common), while a white person avoiding black people on the street is a racist behaviour.
These two behaviours may look the same, but you have to look at the bigger picture : who is being discriminated against on a massive scale ? Who are the dominant, who are the minority ? What is a sane reaction to oppression, what is going to make sure a segregated society will persist ?
You can't just ignore the power relation.
What happens when a white woman avoids a black man on the street would be (and actually is) a pretty interesting debate among some feminist and anti-racist groups. This is complex, but disagreement inside political groups doesn't inherently proves the whole movement wrong (like scientists disagreeing on a theory doesn't proves "science" wrong).
Universal declaration of human rights is of course speaking about equality when it comes to human rights. It does not apply to "thought-crimes" such as being more wary around someone.
I agree with most of what you write when it comes to actual police actions, those should be color-blind. But not when it comes to where they aim their attention. Either we agree that police officers should use correlates of crime to help guide them, or we dont. Race or ethnicity being no arbitrary exception. And of course we do agree with that.
There's no such thing as "thought-crimes", we rarely know what's really happening in someone's mind, shouldn't even try to know or control it, and that's an absolutely essential rule in a democracy.
Publicly advocating for an idea is a completely different thing : it has consequences (and that's why the few states that actually learned something from WW2 have hate speech laws. These are a bad solution, a stopgap, but they are not as bad as the consequences for not having them.).
Keep repeating people that being wary around black people is a perfectly valid state of mind, and don't worry about the rest. Soon, you'll get full-blown racist policy making, because it works in people's belief system.
There's no such thing as "mild racism" (only a few thought processes) or using racist tools (like racial profiling) without creating more racism and a segregated society.
Think of racial profiling as chemical weapons. Chemical weapons are a tool, helping you win the war, because it's pretty good at killing people, with great psychological effects on the military and civilians. It also helps with enemy hospital saturation. It's good if you want to keep winning the war.
If you want peace, it's not exactly as good, because you will still suffer from the consequences for a very long time (dangerous ammunitions everywhere, heavily contaminated battlegrounds, specific, dreadful disabilities caused by these weapons, risk of terrorists using them against you if you lose control of the stocks).
Not using racial profiling is a political choice. A choice between a racist society where the dominant group will feel safer and a less racist society that will be safer for everyone.
EDIT : I think Sandwich may agree with me about hate speech laws, since in France it's currently the only thing stopping some people from saying publicly, on TV and newspapers that Vichy was "not that bad". Well, if they say that kind of stuff, they have to face the consequences.
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oh, my god you actually compared your postmodernist bull**** to science... I have heard that from Creationists and Scientologists and think I am actually going to be sick this time.
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I didn't say doing politics is like science, I said that people disagreeing inside a group you see from the outside as a "block" is not a valid point to prove this group wrong.
Creationists would say : if some scientists disagree about precise dates, number, theories, it proves that science is wrong and they are right. I think this is completely wrong.
I would never say right wings politics are wrong because there is more than one right wing party.
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But, when you stop being a private citizen, and become Police Officer Sandwich or, perhaps be in your case, Occupying Soldier Sandwich, you absolutely can not allow yourself to think like that. People in positions of power (and the authority and weapons granted to cops and soldiers puts them in such positions) have to think past such notions, and restrict their ability to inform their actions, because of they don't, the inevitable result is the entrenchment of those beliefs in society, with all the associated problems that they cause, for the profiler, the profilee and society at large.
True. There's a big difference between private citizen viewpoints and precautions, and those taken by official representations of governing bodies.
One last devil's advocate argument from me on this topic, I think. Does racism run both ways? For example, is it racist for a business run by black people in Ferguson to prefer to hire only blacks? In other words, in a situation where blacks are the majority (or Palestinians, or gays, or any other group usually viewed as the minority), is racially-motivated behavior also considered racism?
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A woman avoiding a group of men is an unfortunate consequence of living in a sexist society (street harassment is pretty common), while a white person avoiding black people on the street is a racist behaviour.
This is a weird thing to say. People walking on the street are not influenced by power relations such as who holds political power. This avoidance behavior is due to fear for personal safety. We could even say that it is blacks who hold the power in this case. The situations are almost perfectly analogous and since you seem to be fine with one but not with the other shows your bias.
There is not just one kind of power, this stuff is so fluid and it very much depends on the situation who has power over who and it can be even mutual. Stop treating it like some kind of scientific law of opression, because then it leads to such absurd conclusions.
What happens when a white woman avoids a black man on the street would be (and actually is) a pretty interesting debate among some feminist and anti-racist groups. This is complex, but disagreement inside political groups doesn't inherently proves the whole movement wrong (like scientists disagreeing on a theory doesn't proves "science" wrong).
haha, the fact that this is some kind of a problem in those circles shows how detached from reality they can be. Opression olympics anyone? Truly, an opression singularity! Back in the real world, what happens is that the woman may get a bit uneasy due to the presence of a man (statistically men could be a threat to her) and then gets a little bit more uneasy when it is a black man (since blacks are often percieved, rightly or not, as a threat too). The black man may also get a bit sad since he may recognise that he is percieved as a threat.
Keep repeating people that being wary around black people is a perfectly valid state of mind, and don't worry about the rest. Soon, you'll get full-blown racist policy making, because it works in people's belief system.
It is arguably a slippery slope, true. But slippery slope is not a very good argument. I just dont like it when people are demonised for what is ultimately also a natural and rational behavior. Which a certain degree of racial profiling is as long as crime rates among races differ.
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I have a few thoughts on the topic generally:
1. Racial profiling, when used by law enforcement or the state and its other agents, is at best useless and at worst a combination of institutionalized racism and self-fulfilling prophecy. When you target one portion of the general population at a rate disproportionate to the rest, you are naturally going to find that certain behaviours are higher among that portion of the populace. Increased scrutiny leads to increased detection. This is a no-brainer. If law enforcement in the US in particular spent as much time looking at the trading and personal behaviour of Wall Street professionals as they do stopping and frisking black people, they would naturally find a much higher rate of crime among Wall Street professionals than everyone else. Now, take into account the fact that, in the US, blacks have a much higher rate of poverty and a much lower rate of education than the general population, both factors which correlate strongly with crime - or rather, with behaviours that society chooses to criminalize (there is a lot of good work done on how many laws don't actually criminalize behaviours among the middle class, but turn nuisance behaviours that the middle class doesn't want to see into crimes limited to the lower classes). So, if you look at a poor, undereducated population with a much greater rate of scrutiny than everyone else, chances are you're going to find a much greater rate of crime in it. It's a false correlation.
2. Grand jury systems have been eliminated in basically every country but the US for criminal prosecution. There's a reason for that, and the Ferguson case illustrates it. They operate entirely at the whim of the prosecutor's desired outcome (look up and read Scott Greenfield and Ken White's blog work on this) and they indict, or not, as the prosecutor sees fit. They are a convenient distraction for prosecutorial accountability, and the US easily has some of the worst accountability for prosecutorial misconduct in the democratic world.
3. Darren Wilson may, or may not, have been justified in shooting Michael Brown. Figuring that out is what a criminal trial is for. However, the United States virtually never prosecutes police officers, virtually never convicts them of wrongdoing, has qualified police immunity in many circumstances, and has a ridiculously low acceptable threshold for use of deadly force by anyone, ESPECIALLY the police. Even had a criminal trial found and weighed all the facts, I have zero confidence that it would render a just verdict (legally appropriate given the terrible legal environment, yes, just, hell no - either way).
4. Riots are a terrible way of expressing justice gone awry. Unfortunately, the US has a long and sad history of demonstrating that public violence and destruction are really the only major way in which one can get results in a system in which the deck is quite literally stacked against everyone but the few who finance the lawmakers and effectively make the laws. I don't condone the rioting and destruction, I think it's counterproductive, but I understand where its coming from. I also note there was a ****load more handwringing about the rioting than the fact that the police just shot and killed a 12-year old in Ohio with a fake gun after ZERO discussion/de-escalation.
The United States needs to have a serious conversation about the way the country as a whole does law enforcement and legal justice, because its system is easily one of the most unfair in the democratic world if you truly want justice, a sad fact especially considering that some of its comparators still use inquisitorial systems with no adversarial due process checks. Seriously.
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Here's some news from a positive angle that will hopefully counter some of the tension of this thread:
http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/nation-and-world/black-residents-protect-white-owned-store-ferguson
Black residents protect white-owned store in Ferguson
...
Jordan, 37, was one of four black Ferguson residents who spent Tuesday night planted in front of the store, pistols tucked into their waistbands, waiting to ward off looters or catch shoplifters.
Jordan and the others guarding the gas station are all black. The station’s owner [Merello] is white.
...
At times, Jordan and his friends were joined on Tuesday night by other men from the neighborhood, also armed. None of the men was getting paid to be there. They said they felt they owed it to Merello, who has employed many of them over the years and treats them with respect.
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This is a weird thing to say. People walking on the street are not influenced by power relations such as who holds political power. This avoidance behavior is due to fear for personal safety. We could even say that it is blacks who hold the power in this case. The situations are almost perfectly analogous and since you seem to be fine with one but not with the other shows your bias.
There is not just one kind of power, this stuff is so fluid and it very much depends on the situation who has power over who and it can be even mutual. Stop treating it like some kind of scientific law of opression, because then it leads to such absurd conclusions.
I don't think my conclusions were "absurd" : push the logic of "avoiding people who you think may be dangerous to you" a bit further, keeping in mind the current state of our societies.
Will women avoiding men on the streets lead to whole streets and urban areas where men are not welcome any more ? Probably not.
Will white people avoiding black people on the streets lead to more segregated areas ? I think you already know the answer.
As always, there will be some exceptions to the general rule, but this is most often true. Consequences are political, even when this is only about small, everyday behaviours, even when this is unintentional.
haha, the fact that this is some kind of a problem in those circles shows how detached from reality they can be. Opression olympics anyone? Truly, an opression singularity! Back in the real world, what happens is that the woman may get a bit uneasy due to the presence of a man (statistically men could be a threat to her) and then gets a little bit more uneasy when it is a black man (since blacks are often percieved, rightly or not, as a threat too). The black man may also get a bit sad since he may recognise that he is percieved as a threat.
Do you know any political movement that doesn't need internal debate to get its ideas structured ?
"Opression olympics" are indeed a problem, and that's why thinking about intersectionality is important nowadays. It's not an abstract debate, it's about listening to people who are confronted with these corner cases in their everyday life, and make sure we wouldn't advocate for a change that would have bad consequences for them.
That's usually how I can tell if I'm going to listen to what a feminist or anti-racism group has to say : are they able to restrain from going against other minorities rights to advance their own agenda ? If the answer is yes, then I'm interested in what they have to say.
It is arguably a slippery slope, true. But slippery slope is not a very good argument. I just dont like it when people are demonised for what is ultimately also a natural and rational behavior. Which a certain degree of racial profiling is as long as crime rates among races differ.
That's what History is for. History doesn't repeat itself, but it can give you a pretty good idea of the mechanisms at work, and where they can lead. Racist policies such as racial profiling are not a good starting point for a society that's supposed to value freedom and equality (some countries should really drop their constitutions as fake advertising...).
And as you are so interested in numbers just take a look at this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#Racially_motivated_hate_crime
(I still think it's not about the numbers, but I'm trying really hard to help you understand the issue; also, to keep it simple I'm not going to question how these statistics are produced or how racial categories are built)
Hate crimes in the USA : "70% were composed of anti-black bias". I'm not sure I even need to comment on this.
For the other "non-race-motivated" crimes, which are probably a majority, if crime rates are high in what's defined as the back racial group, that means some black thugs may target indifferently both black and white victims. Given the US are a segregated country, a majority of these victims may even be black. I don't have the rates in mind, but I'm pretty sure it is holds true ( EDIT : here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#Comparison_of_UCR_and_NCVS_data )
So allow me to seriously question the "rationality" of racist behaviour (I would also question what you consider a "natural" behaviour around other people), because as opposed to sexist violence, black-on-white violence bears no specific statistical significance.
When you advocate for racial profiling, you are actually advocating for a policy that will hit ("real life" consequences of racial profiling are unavoidable) a lot of potential victims exactly as hard as perpetrators, only because of their race.
This ends up being collective punishment for what is mostly black-on-black crime, with no actual short-term or long-term benefits for any other group, including white people.
You seem to understand why being treated as an individual, responsible for their own actions, is important in a modern democratic society, so I don't understand why it's so easy for you to deny it to black people. Or I do, and this is getting scary.
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Here's some news from a positive angle that will hopefully counter some of the tension of this thread:
http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/nation-and-world/black-residents-protect-white-owned-store-ferguson
Black residents protect white-owned store in Ferguson
...
Jordan, 37, was one of four black Ferguson residents who spent Tuesday night planted in front of the store, pistols tucked into their waistbands, waiting to ward off looters or catch shoplifters.
Jordan and the others guarding the gas station are all black. The station’s owner [Merello] is white.
...
At times, Jordan and his friends were joined on Tuesday night by other men from the neighborhood, also armed. None of the men was getting paid to be there. They said they felt they owed it to Merello, who has employed many of them over the years and treats them with respect.
Thanks Goober! I just about got to the end of the thread feeling like a powder keg, but that brief really helped. :)
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Well, it's a good thing that there are still decent people left around that place. Nice to see some good news for a change.
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Well, time to drag the conversation back down then.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/12/video-of-police-brutality-can-only-do-so-much-nypd-chokehold-cop-not-indicted/
So a policeman chokes a guy to death, whose crime was allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes, using a prohibited choke hold, is videoed doing so, with audio clear enough to repeatedly hear the guy repeatedly saying that he can't breathe.
And a NY grand jury don't think he did anything criminal.
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I'm curious about the mechanics behind this one — was it another case of a colluding prosecution deliberately throwing the case?
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I'm curious about the mechanics behind this one — was it another case of a colluding prosecution deliberately throwing the case?
Sure, it's possible, but there are other reasons (http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/eric-garner-chokehold-staten-island-grand-jury-indict) as well.
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Uhh...guys? Anyone hear about The Game Awards tonight?
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B4JFTLZCMAAEECO.png:large)
I'm hearing that the theme song in the video contained these lyrics:
"don't you hold your hands up/don't you take a stance"
When does the Michael Brown DLC come out?
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The police in Team V Team mode are so OP - they're the only one's with guns. :p
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I'm starting to think if the truth gets out this will become one of the worst scandals in American history. Right up there with the murder of Cheney, Schwerner, and Goodman, purely because of the scale of the coverup. (http://www.buzzfeed.com/mikehayes/st-louis-prosecutor-says-he-knew-witnesses-lied?bftw#.hiZ1MRMW8)
For those of you who don't read through links on principle, the prosecutor knew there were witnesses who corroborated Wilson's story who he knew were lying, but he let them give their testimony to the Grand Jury anyway - including one witness who he knew was never there - and never told the jury that he had evidence that would cast suspicion on them.
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Well, time to drag the conversation back down then.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/12/video-of-police-brutality-can-only-do-so-much-nypd-chokehold-cop-not-indicted/
So a policeman chokes a guy to death, whose crime was allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes, using a prohibited choke hold, is videoed doing so, with audio clear enough to repeatedly hear the guy repeatedly saying that he can't breathe.
And a NY grand jury don't think he did anything criminal.
In this case, it seems to me that the officer who did the "choke" is very likely innocent. The choke did not last long enough nor do I believe that to be the cause of death. The choke from that position when applied to windpipe starts to make a gurgling sound as the windpipe gets narrower and narrower, giving warning for the person doing the choke (been choked several times myself - and done equivalent chokes myself). Blocking of the neck arteries doesn't seem likely either given the short time and the position, and requires more of a pressure shock to cause a cardiac arrest. He is conscious after the hold is released and pushed against the pavement, and if consciousness was lost due to choke, he wouldn't be talking later.
The actual cause is more likely Eric being forced on the ground with several officers pinning him in a position that makes his breathing difficult, compounded with his medical condition.
However, I can't comment on the applied force since the video shows him in an agitated state to begin with, nor do I say the police did nothing wrong. However, the grand jury's decision about the officer who did the choke is most likely correct. Not sure about the rest, though.
I've seen several videos of US police being accused of police brutality where I didn't see the brutality. This video here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrYgjPGgNnc) raised some eyebrows about police brutality. I wouldn't call any of the physical actions by the police in this video police brutality, seems quite professional to me. What I don't know again is whether this kind of meeting can be illegal to begin with, but I suspect the police will not do something like that without a reason. The bad thing about these alleged brutality videos is that the drown the actual cases where actual brutality happens - like this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8ZechD0qiY).
This jump kick (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0uOYLta4So) from a Russian police, however, starts to approach that in my list. Though I have to say that the de-escalation of the situation was also very quick, which makes me wonder whether the police made the right choice. The jump kick is inherently more dangerous move as if loss of consciousness happens, the perpetrator will fall head first to ground, which is a dangerous situation.
Nevertheless, part of me is saying that since the US police seem to operate alone, it makes it understandable they are scared and jumpy.
EDIT: Here's a take down (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99FGXG22cts) of one guy complaining about breathing difficulties from our country. The reason for the "good quality clip" is because this happens when a filming crew is with the police.