[Mr. Vega]

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?

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, but Ferguson deserves a whole thread's worth of attention.

[666maslo666]

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.

[swashmebuckle]

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.

[Hellzed]

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.

[Bobboau]

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.

[Hellzed]

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.

[Sandwich]

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?

[666maslo666]

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.

[MP-Ryan]

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.

[Goober5000]

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.

[Hellzed]

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.

[SypheDMar]

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.

[Dragon]

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.

[karajorma]

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.

[Phantom Hoover]

I'm curious about the mechanics behind this one — was it another case of a colluding prosecution deliberately throwing the case?

[Mr. Vega]

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 as well.

[Mr. Vega]

Uhh...guys? Anyone hear about The Game Awards tonight?


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?

[Mars]

The police in Team V Team mode are so OP - they're the only one's with guns. 

[Mr. Vega]

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.

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.

[Mika]

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 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.

This jump kick 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 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.