Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?
Subject: As per the title. Please put comments on racism, systemic racism, and police brutality in the US, along with the public reaction to these phenomena, here.
Note: If you are a racism denialist, please do not post here. This discussion is not intended to debate whether racism exists but why it exists and what to do about it.
Note: If you are a racism denialist, please do not post here. This discussion is not intended to debate whether racism exists but why it exists and what to do about it.
Comments (1911)
Is used it is plain
For the politician’s gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game.[/quote]
I think it's worth holding onto the idea that psychology as an industry is largely in the business of undermining any class consciousness, and supporting, in the first place the individualising and fragmenting of society, whereby poverty and unemployment is an internal psychological failure of ambition, and from there a reintegration along race and national lines and the projection of the internalised resentment onto the 'other'.
WTF? I'm guessing you meant to say psychotherapy or psychiatry right? (You'd be wrong even if you did, but would have at least a leg to stand on).
I've read some unlikely institutions being blamed for this deplorable state of affairs, but psychology....?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Origins-Unhappiness-Understanding-Personal-Distress/dp/1782202870
Psychology is neither psychiatry nor psychotherapy, they are themselves only branches within clinical psychology which itself is a branch of psychology in general. The only 'industry' around psychology in general is the academic one and its pretty unfair to accuse the entire enterprise of institutionally undermining class conflict and implicitly supporting racial division.
What recent papers in social psychology do you think have undermined class conflict?
Which prominent researchers in child psychology do you think are most responsible for re-integrating society along racial lines?
Quoting unenlightened
And therefore I am not going to answer your questions. Your disagreement is registered.
So it was on-topic to assert it, but off-topic to defend it. What a neat trick.
It's totally fair. There was a long conversation about this a while back.
The functional roll of psychology within capitalism, as an academic field and medical practice, is to continuously blame the individual, and coach the internalization of that blame, for social problems that they are exposed to.
In a sick society there can be no reference of what it means to be mentally healthy.
To be "normal" in today's society is to actively participate in the destruction of the planet and enslavement of fellow citizens around the world; i.e. orchestrate a mass suicide. The roll of psychology is to legitimize this activity and to tell you, if you start to figure it out, that maybe you need to take a chill pill.
A secondary roll is to make mad bank while accomplishing this first roll; a virtuous and "free" cycle from the perspective of maintaining the status quo.
OK, so since any long investigation of this issue would definitely be off topic, perhaps you could just point me in the direction of the research you're basing this assertion on, then I can make up my own mind.
Well, the thesis would not be supported by psychological research, for obvious reasons. The foundation of the argument is whether our system is sustainable or not; so it would be ecology that is the first thing to look into. If our system is not sustainable, then it is simply madness to continue it.
But yes, maybe a tangent to the discussion at hand, as no one is (yet) accusing the protesters and rioters of having a mental disease that the state will need to "cure"; although, I am sure the general anxiety created by the situation for the middle and upper classes, psychology as a whole, will indeed intervene whenever and wherever possible to psychologize away both their personal anxiety as well as any larger political analysis of events (that the system is not to blame, young people are just mentally ill in one way or another and "let's see how we can try to focus on constructive things like working on that quarterly report").
So, I would not say it is off topic. I'm sure there is already far more discussion in the mass media about what the police "feel" than their roll in maintaining oppressive class relations.
However, please feel free to continue the existing conversation on this topic Psychiatrys Incurable Hubris.
My central thesis in that conversation is as follows:
Quoting boethius
That's really cool! If what I'm reading is right though, you're about one of fourteen or so police departments out of roughly 18,000 who are involved in similar arrangements. And interestingly, under the order of Jeff Sessions - and hence Trump - federal oversight efforts were explicitly scaled back. And although I won't pretend to know the details, OPD reforms look like they are still ongoing. So all of this definitely seems promising, but the scale and drive to national implementation seem to have alot to be desired. Looks like Chicago PD's going your way though - as a direct response to these current protests.
Quoting Wolfman
I misworded myself. You're right - it's not words I want. Nor performance, as with police taking knees and so on (). Especially when we've seen plenty of cases where knee-taking police officers then go about gassing protesters an hour later. It's advocacy and action for the kinds of things we've both spoken about. Calls by police, for police reform - institutional change. And I get this is hard. Much militates against it. Institutional change always meets resistance from vested interests. Usually change on this scale is motivated externally (as it seems was OPD's reforms were) - and right now things are 'external' as they might possibly get for a while.
And I don't want to dwell too much here on individual cases and actions. Always my imperative is to look outwards, at structure. The stories of the officers you wrote of are terrible, and it is obviously the case that tools ought to be available to deal with extreme situations when necessary. But that extreme situations are extreme is of enormous import, it seems to me. The kinds of things that we're seeing happening on American streets are not extreme, contrary to what certain sensationalist media is saying. The protesters are not roving crowds of murderers. And the force being deployed against them is disproportionate, widespread, and, it seems - reflective of deep rooted culture and training. If the standards you hold yourself to hold more generally, quite literally hundreds of cops right now should have their jobs on the line. And that's definitely not what's being seen.
What all of this amounts to is simply - I don't doubt your experience. I do doubt that it is generalizable.
Yeah, I don't think I'd have much to add there as I think most of psychiatry is a crock of shit.
None of this, however has helped explain your or unenlightened's comments about psychology of which psychiatry is just one branch. It's akin to blaming the whole academic field of Human Biology for the malpractice of the pharmaceutical industry.
But that news is burying the lede. More horrifying still are the throng of officers - maybe 10 to 20 or so of them - who walk past this incapacitated man without so much as giving him a glance. A cop who bends down to help - after the initial assaulting officer simply walks away and out of frame - is pulled off the man by another cop, who encourages him to ignore the man with the head-bleed. He does, and also walks away. Every single one of those cops is a bad cop as far as I'm concerned. That just two officers were suspended is the story. Not that they were.
And most telling of all (@ssu):
These are not just uniforms that people are hating on.
Yes, we fundamentally agree.
Quoting Isaac
The difference is that biologists do not decide what is a "mental disease" that needs a cure (biologists in such a context have only the moral culpability, but there is no reason to doubt the intellectual tool of biology as such; if the brain chemistry is altered as desired, the tool is clearly working). Academic psychologists, at the end of the day, provide these definitions and (more importantly) the entire intellectual framework that removes all political analysis from discussion to begin with, as well as run the experiments to prove any particular "cure" for any particular "mental disease".
If the academics were not part of the problem, then they would be continuously denouncing the way their discipline is being implemented in practice and explaining why the element of politics complicates any mental disease diagnosis, much more definition. For, it is reasonable to be depressed in a self destructive society. It is reasonable to be violent in an oppressive society. It is reasonable to be schizophrenic in a gaslighting society. It is reasonable to be bipolar in an abusive society. It is reasonable to have a deficit of attention when fed a system of lies. It is reasonable to have disorder within the mind as an interpretive step in response to unjust state order without. Insofar as academics ignore such arguments, they are propagandists for state order, nothing more, and, indeed, far more powerful foot soldiers for evil than the police.
Yeah, some do. The vast majority don't. They investigate how memory is affected by perception, how noisy environments affect learning in autistic children, how social heirachy affects bias formations, how neonates respond to object permanence... I could go on. The vast majority of psychologists are not even tangentially involved in the definition or treatment of mental illness. To accuse us of being somehow complicit in the propping up class and racial segregation because we share a department is ridiculous.
I said "they are part of the problem", just like the vast majority of police who are not trying to be abusive are part of the problem if they tolerate and cover for police that are.
As for the intellectual content of psychology as such: Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are.
This is getting ridiculous. What evidence do you have that non-clinical psychologist don't speak out about ignoring environmental factors in diagnosing mental illness? And who said anything about 'covering' for them? Where the hell did that come from? Are there a large number of non-clinical psychologists who you think are somehow 'covering' for the conclusions of those responsible for categorising mental health? This is starting to sound like some tinfoil-hat wearing conspiracy nut. We're all in on it are we?
If you're having trouble with these delusional thoughts I can recommend some effective medication to take care of that.
Ah, such subtle bait and switching. Indeed you are powerful in the ways of psychology.
"Environmental factors" is not the same as "politics". "Environmental factors" is an abstraction to lead the gullible psychologist to believe that "all the bases have been covered", but they have not.
Aha! Now we see the violence inherent in the system!
Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
OK... So what evidence do you have that ""Environmental factors" is an abstraction to lead the gullible psychologist to believe that "all the bases have been covered", but they have not."?
So far you've yet to cite a single paper to support your damnation of the entire field. To properly support this position you'd need to show that at least a large proportion of non-clinical psychology papers fail to take politics into account as a factor where it can be demonstrated to be one. Since most psychology papers are about rather dry attempts to correlate reported mental activities with external stimuli, I'm struggling to see how politics would be involved. Of course, I end all my papers with "up the revolution!" in bold, but that's just a liberty of old age.
Quoting boethius
Am I going to have to call an orderly?
You won't leave it will you?
Well while I wait for the mods to hive this off to a separate thread, I'll refer you to an old thread of mine that looks at the problems both moral and structural of the science of psychology.
Quoting unenlightened
The thread is 34 pages long. You raised the issue of psychology being somewhat to blame for the related issues brought up. I gave two responses asking you to defend such an accusation and that's somehow become such an intolerable distraction it must be hived off? Is the idea we just accept your divine wisdom and move on to the next sermon?
"Environmental factors" does not consider the moral dimension of our political environment, only that behaviour and mental states do indeed depend on context. "Environmental factors" ignores the fact that the patient is able to participate in collective action to change the political conditions, and such activity will be, if justified, by definition frustrated, resisted, imprisoned, killed by the state, for which the psychologists are an agent and can do nothing of significance to help (that's not what they're paid to do).
The key question is whether the state is legitimate or not, everything hinges on this reality. To attack state legitimacy, the psychologist must deny their own authority on the subject of psychology, which at the end of the day, is completely inseparable to state authority.
And to be clear, I have no problem with any attempts to besmirch my character with accusations and implications of "mentally illness". My words remain untouched.
Indeed, I whole heartedly embrace it.
I am depressed. I am unstable. I am schizophrenic. I am bipolar. I have a deficit of coming to attention. Above all, I am the authority opposition disorder. I am a madman.
I would not only rather be found among, but be considered as exactly the same as my down trodden brothers and sisters. I would rather not only hold out my arms to the refuse of society to comfort them, but also run to their arms to be comforted.
I would rather be among the mob desperate and frantic to find a new light, a fresh breath of air, than pass the pipe of the privileged around in the ivory tower of disdain.
I'm not seeing what that's got to do with perception of object permanence in the under fives? Perhaps you could join the dots for me?
Credo!
No problem connecting the dots.
Political analysis is not only about the organization of society today, in the past, and potential future organization and what actions might go where, it is also the moral evaluation of such organization and such actions.
It is not simply a part of the "environmental conditions" that we happen to find ourselves in, but includes the moral argumentation to evaluate those conditions, where we might want to go, and how to get there.
What is reasonable to do is completely different under a illegitimate and an legitimate state. What is reasonable in terms of doubting what society claims is acceptable behaviour, much more the truth, is completely different under an illegitimate and legitimate state. Psychology does not make this fundamental and totally obvious observation from which analysis of particular situations becomes completely different.
A person killing agents of the state in a legitimate government is a deranged serial killer. A person killing agents of the state in an illegitimate government is a war hero. When the US army and co. killed all those Iraqi, Afghani, Libyan etc. state agents it is not considered deranged serial killing if those state agents represent an illegitimate government and the US army represents a legitimate government acting in self defense; those soldiers are therefore war heroes under such an assumption. When the US revolutionary fighters killed all those British soldiers they were war heroes and not deranged serial killers, under the assumption that taxation without representation is an illegitimate form of government. The Nazi's were deranged serial killers (with varying degrees of apologetics we can engage in depending on the Nazi) because the Nazi government was not legitimate, either in representing the people's will or then, if so, that will itself was not morally acceptable and had no moral legitimacy.
Evaluation of behaviour cannot be concluded without first concluding the form of government is not only legitimate (enough) but moral (enough) to justify adhering to norms promoted by that society. Such an evaluation is outside the purview of psychology as an intellectual edifice, rendering psychology, at best, a hypothetical exercise.
Such an evaluation is not only beyond the purview of psychology but beyond the purview of science as a whole.
As I have stated from the beginning of this conversation, the argument that the US government in it's current form of minority rule is legitimate and therefore all civil disobedience relative curfew and police instruction as well as looting and destruction of objects are simply criminal, can be made. I have yet to hear it, but I am willing to listen.
You didn't even mention perception of object permanence in the under fives. I was asking how the political influence (let's take your example of the legitimacy of the state) should be taken account of when researching, for example, the perception of object permanence in the under fives. Such a researcher might be gathering CR gaze tracking data in response to object manipulation. They want to report the statistical analysis of their findings. At what point do they introduce the question to the legitimacy of the state?
Roughly at the point where, we hope, they get the permission of the parents, but probably, alas, not of the children themselves to experiment on them. It is the state that allows parents that authority, or denies it to them and the state also demands of psychologists that they gain such permissions. Though it is not well enforced.
Dealing with this is a trivial extension of the argument I present.
As representing state authority in a legitimate state, psychological research is a tool primarily for legitimate government actions to inform decisions and actions for legitimate purposes. In my moral system, in a state adhering (close enough) to my moral system, knowledge of object permanence in children under five will be used to inform educational and parental support policy to ensure society as a whole is promoting the best conditions we can for our children in order to have the mental tools later, as best as we can hope, to be morally autonomous participants in fair political process.
Under an illegitimate state, psychological research is primarily a tool for further maintenance of state illegitimacy. Under my moral system, states that depart (far enough) away from my moral system, will use knowledge of object permanence in children under five to inform educational and parental support policy to dissuade our children from becoming autonomous moral agents able to understand and act to change unjustifiable social organization.
In a legitimate state (according to me) you may find long maternity and paternity leave to support parent engagement in children to help develop, in part, that "object permanence", you may find universal health care, free and fairly distributed child care and educational resources, etc.
In an illegitimate state (according to me) you may find maternity and paternity leave does not exist for the poor classes that must be kept uneducated, ignorant and docile, in part, due to a frustration of the development of "object permanence" and other skills at an early age. When an illegitimate state maintaining oppressive class relations hear's of the critical importance of the earliest years and parent engagement in the developing cognitive and social skills, it rushes to ensure such resources are distributed to the privileged classes and, whenever possible, further taken away from the oppressed classes.
Exactly the same can be said of all science.
The state is capable of manipulating any data at all to legitimise its interventions.
Should we abandoned the whole project?
If we do, what should we use instead to decide maternity and paternity leave? Should we just guess what the impact of any given policy is likely to be? Should we put it out to public vote (and let those with the loudest campaign voices decide)?. I'm not seeing the alternative to just finding out to the best of our (biased, conceptually shackled, culturally influenced) ability.
No.
The same can only be said of all academic scientists: the primary roll of mathematics, physics and engineering becomes the arms industry, the primary roll of "political science" becomes apologetics for the state, the primary roll of creative pursuits becomes entertainment and distraction, the primary roll of psychology becomes manipulative marketing, the primary roll of philosophy becomes the denial of moral courage as a component of "the good life", if not the denial of any moral truth as such.
However, other sciences, apart from academics, may form, from time to tome, intellectual structures that are independent of academics as an extension of state authority.
The physics student outside of academics does not require state authority to understand a ball dropping to the floor.
The psychology student within academics requires state authority to ever imagine being able to say: "I know what's wrong with you and how to cure you."
I'm not sure what point you're making here, unless, in addition to accusing my profession of perpetuating racial segregation you'd like to add child abuse. I expect we had something to do with the coronavirus outbreak too.
Since parents currently have the authority to dictate virtually every minute of their child's lives from 0 to 16, I'm not seeing how the child psychologist playing with them in the lab has become the bogeyman here.
Do you object if the parent takes them shopping without their permission?
OK. So the idea is that all scientific research (in academic institutions) is actually just aimed at propping up the state in some way? So how far back does this go? What's the full extent of human knowledge we must abandon as nothing more than state propaganda?
More importantly, who found all this out? Did one researcher go rougue? Are they dining with the fishes now. I've written some pretty anti-government stuff in the past, do I need to get a Cupbearer?
That's not exactly new. But generally, experimental psychology tends to be abusive in two ways; firstly most experiments involve deception, and secondly they always depersonalisation the subject by objectification.
Quoting Isaac
Actually, your contemptuous language has irritated me sufficiently now. You are the bogeyman! I'm not discussing with the bogeyman about his bogies. But child psychologists are not playing; they are serious.
I said "academic scientists" in terms of their actual primary activity, their moral culpability in maintaining oppressive structures.
Secondary rolls might be making some bank for themselves and for the purposes of unfair appropriation by the investor class.
I followed this up with "other sciences, apart from academics, may form, from time to tome, intellectual structures that are independent of academics as an extension of state authority."
My argument does not go to a dysfunctional terminus of throwing out "all knowledge" only connects the level of reasonable doubt of state provided knowledge to the legitimacy of that state. If there does exist or has existed legitimate states with truly free intellectual discussion, such conditions maybe a source of more credible information that does not trigger aporic analysis of the roll of state authority in producing knowledge.
Psychology is in a special class because it's foundational reference, normal behaviour, is by definition state controlled. Fortunately, states cannot yet control the laws of physics and mathematical deduction.
So does a magic trick, is that abuse too?
Quoting unenlightened
Do they? How?
Quoting unenlightened
What contemptuous language? When you have break from accusing my entire profession of class oppression, promoting racial segregation and abusing children, perhaps you could take a moment to quote some of my contemptuous language for my self-improvement.
I'm still not seeing the connection between non-clinical psychology and state-controlled 'normal behaviour'. Could you give me some examples of a non-clinical psychology research area which relies on 'normal behaviour' as a foundational reference?
Quoting boethius
Quoting boethius
What is not clear?
Very relevant for broader context. Some of it is on BlackLivesMatter as an international movement.
Also for the discussion about psychiatriy, relevant quote: "One of the things neoliberalism does is take social and economic problems and turn them into emotional and individual problems".
Bogeyman, Bogeyman. You are the bogeyman!
Dude, I'm doing philosophy. I'm looking at the conditions of doing psychology, and making some serious criticisms, but you are not able to begin to address them because you are busy defending yourself. You don't need to defend yourself because I'm not attacking you. I am putting the whole subject and institutions of psychology under philosophical scrutiny and highlighting difficulties and you ought to be grateful. Instead you argue about side-issues, and make pointed remarks which I am not going to trawl back and find for you because it's NOT THE IMPORTANT ISSUE. The important issues are how humans can live together more happily and sustainably, and what is preventing us from doing that. And our theories of psychology play a very central role, so if there are systemic problems, they need exposing and sorting.
"child psychologists are not playing" this you don't quote, and this is the important bit. You do it a lot; find something off centre and make that the issue.
Magic does indeed have abusive roots in the scams of the fairs, find the lady etc, and some religious deceptions. It is defanged and presented now as entertainment; we agree to be deceived for our own amusement, not for the magicians purposes. But why do I have to argue this out? why are you bringing it up? It's such a simple thing Experimentation almost always involves deception, and always manipulation of the subject. It's undeniable. It may be unimportant compared to the wonderful good that is done - that remains to be discussed. But why do we have to go all round the magic circle just to say what we all know already?
So child psychologists pretend to play. It is a deception and a manipulation. It may be harmless or it may not. In general, deception is a bad thing. Manipulation is a bad thing. It may be justified sometimes and so there are ethical boards that consider the morality of experiments. But you know this, because you are psychologist, so you know there are moral issues, and you also know there have been various abusive experiments, I'll just say "twins" for now. So how about engaging in a less antagonistic and defensive way? I'm not totally up to date, but nor am I totally ignorant or stupid.
So I'd like you to consider seriously the central difficulty that I think plagues psychology and undermines its status as a science, which is that social behaviour is heavily influenced by the prevalent psychological worldview. So a scientific view leads to treating people as objects to be experimented on. It starts with an I-it relationship (as opposed to an I-thou relationship) because that's what objectivity means. This is the view that has held sway since Freud at least, and it has pervaded society in terms of the creation of a consumer society through the development of advertising, and this lead to the political development of propaganda again as psychological manipulation. It's not, obviously, my claim that every child psychologist is Goebbels. But it is my claim that they come from the same tradition and the same (scientific) psychological viewpoint. And this viewpoint as a social whole creates an inhuman humanity. Psychology graduates go into advertising, into human resources (there's an objectifying phrase for you) into health, social work, education, and they bring and promote the values and views they have been taught. So deception and manipulation has become the norm, not exceptionally, just to experiment harmlessly, and society and people suffer as a result.
Not that there wasn't always deception and manipulation, but it wasn't scientific. it wasn't dominant.
That's a highly dubious conclusion. Your examples leave out obvious differences between the way a serial killer selects and kills victims and the functioning of an organised military. It's also not at all clear why one cannot simply study aberrant behaviour without establishing the exact moral pedigree of the rules. This might be true in certain fringe cases, where we would suspect individual moral decisions to be statistically significant. That's not the case for things like juvenile delinquency or traffic infractions.
Of course, as @Isaac correctly points out, not all psychology deals with rules and rule following either.
Quoting boethius
How does psychological research in any way represent state authority?
Quoting boethius
It's "role" by the way. A roll is a round oblong object.
Quoting boethius
You haven't justified this claim that academics are extensions of state authority anywhere that I can see.
Quoting unenlightened
I'd love to hear a justification for this. Is anyone who is an object of some study thereby objectified?
Quoting unenlightened
The permission is completely irrelevant to the experimental results.
Quoting unenlightened
No-one ought to be grateful for badly argued oversimplifications. This post is the first time you ever actually provide an argument, your protestations that it's all so simple and obvious notwithstanding.
Quoting unenlightened
As above, I disagree with that definition of objectification. By this logic, trying to guess how a person might react to something I say is objectifying them. As is trying to figure out why an infant might be crying.
Quoting unenlightened
And I suppose there is some sociological evidence to back this claim up?
Yes please, how was the Nazi's process of selecting and killing victims obviously different than that of a deranged serial killer, except for the scale?
Quoting boethius
I'm not sure why reading things is not part of your approach to text base discussion, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume there's a psychological motivation for it.
Who are "the Nazis" you refer to? Hitler, Goebbels, Heydrich or Eichmann? Wehrmacht soldiers? Prussian police officers? The answer depends.
What about the rest of my criticisms?
You say the difference is obvious, and yet you plunge directly into nuance.
I don't see where you are trying to go. Yes, there is more "decorum" in the killing apparatus of an illegitimate state, but lot's of serial killers had themselves "decorum", so it doesn't seem an obvious difference.
It is not a good idea to give a restricted definition of a word that intuitively has a broader definition. What would you call personal racism if “racism” already means “systemic racism”? A lone individual who spits another person in the face because that person has a different skin color, couldn’t be called a racist if the word is reserved for another meaning.
You may of course argue that only racism that is connected to the dominant power structure has a social impact and is worth caring about, but a word is still needed to cover the general belief that one race is somehow superior to another. What would you call someone who thinks blacks are superior to whites? If you insist that the word “racist” should be reserved for something else, you would have to come up with another word for this phenomenon, but since language is not a private thing it doesn’t make much sense to use a word no one else uses.
What you are actually doing is trying to shut out a part of a potential discussion, maybe because you think it would derail the most important debate or bring forth unhealthy viewpoints. You may be right about that, but in a free society no speech should be suppressed. It must for example be allowed to ask if black animosity against whites is acceptable.
Tools are not extensions of authority. They are tools. An extension of authority would be something that is vested, explicitly or implicitly, with an official function.
Otherwise you'll have to explain why a tool is responsible for its use.
Quoting boethius
You're being dishonest. You didn't initially bring up the Nazis or anything similar at all. You brought up military operations. That's what I was referring to.
Quoting boethius
For one obvious difference, a serial killer is a single person, whereas for the killing apparatus of a state, many different actors fulfill different tasks and make different decisions.
This strikes me as far afield and an entirely useless discussion from a pragmatic perspective. If you are able to prove the illegitimacy of the US government from a moral perspective with absolute certainty, the police will still keep doing as they are doing as will the citizens. It's not like a good solid argument is going to change the world or even change a single interaction between the government and its citizens.
As noted:
Quoting unenlightened
The way that people are brought together is, well, by bringing them together. Explaining the psychology of the situation, even if you're dead on, really isn't going to move the needle one way or the other in terms of resolution.
So, what do I propose? First some leadership from anyone, whether that be Trump, Pelosi, or just anyone. All the marching in the street, be it peaceful or in fury, does nothing but inform me of the dissatisfaction felt by the marchers, but I kind of knew that already.
As a trial lawyer, I do love me a good jury, if for no other reason than you stick a bunch of disagreeable people in a small room and you tell them that that's where they'll sit until they reach a solution. So I'd put a representative of each in this room: a Republican, a Democrat, a police officer, a business owner, a minister, a teacher, a protester, and I don't know, but you get the picture. And their task will be to set up a march and to offer a speech, and they will need to figure out what they all need to say in unison. And if they can't figure out what they all agree upon and need to say, then they'll sit in that room until they get hungry enough, thirsty enough, and ornery enough to knock on the door and let us know they've reached a verdict. Surely there is something everyone wishes to say.
I love that word "verdict." It means to speak the truth.
That's what I'd do. I do think a march with the police and the protesters side by side would move the needle. While it might seem impossible, it's hard to know. No one has actually considered it. They are more interested in saying hooray for my sign.
Again, I suggest the tool of reading to participate in text base discussion:
Quoting boethius
I am using the term "academics" to refer to the group of people in academics, not as synonymous with knowledge.
So, if you're trying to say the academic is a tool of state authority, I agree. If you are trying to say that knowledge is a tool in the hands of the academic to service state authority, I agree.
If you are trying to say the process of selection of who gets to be an academic is independent of state policy, then I disagree.
Quoting Echarmion
Again, what's with the not reading things?
Quoting boethius
We morally condemn the serial killer of legitimate state agents, we morally condemn illegitimate states and their killings and their state agents who kill.
When a illegitimate state kills a lot of people we say it is "mass murder" (i.e. serial killing, just with a difference in scale).
The nuances you might like to get into I am aware of and refer to as "with varying degrees of apologetics we can engage in depending on the Nazi". I agree each individual Nazi may not have the state of mind of a serial killer, but it is only because they are fully convinced they are engaging in just warfare on behalf of a legitimate state. Who we are not so morally lenient with are those orchestrating the serial killing and have the intellectual capacity to evaluate their actions and the system they are promoting as a whole.
However, you said specifically:
Quoting Echarmion
You are not referring to individuals soldiers who may not know better (and have been selected by the organization for this quality), but you are referring to the organization as a whole and its process of selecting and killing victims.
This process of the organization as a whole is no different in it's essential quality than that of the individual serial killer: They do it because they can and it brings them immense fascination and satisfaction.
Sounds like an excellent way of catering to the lowest common denominator and stick with the status quo.
It's completely relevant, it's the essential point of relevance in this whole conversation.
If the state is legitimate, then there are better methods available to change the policy of the state than through violent confrontation with the police, rioting, and other revolutionary activity.
If the state is illegitimate, then evaluating such illegal activity becomes a question purely of effectiveness in changing the policies and essential character of the state, despite the state not wanting that to happen.
Therefore, a legitimate state should be able to easily explain to any citizen how to engage in political processes to attain political ends, and how those processes are fair and effective if the majority of people agree.
Maybe things aren't fair right now, but a legitimate state (and the vast majority of its citizenry) can easily explain how things can be made more fair without recourse to violence; that is the whole point of democratic legitimacy.
A legitimate state has nothing to fear from its citizenry nor analysis of what it means to be a legitimate state.
US black people, and now a large portion of young people of all colours in the US, do not currently view the US government as legitimate.
It is of critical importance whether this belief is true, and therefore should be brought to its logical terminus, or untrue, and therefore explained as a misguided notion and that better political means are available to achieve changes to state policy and essential state character.
The status quo, by definition, is what is occurring right now. Right now there are protests. Tomorrow the protests will end, but the anger won't. So how is my attempt to resolve that maintaining the status quo? I suspect what you mean by "status quo" is any solution that doesn't give the protesters everything they want. My objective is compromise. The status quo is to just have the gnats continue to agitate the elephant.
Protests, like voting, lobbying, bribing (or whatever) are a form of political expression, aimed at obtaining something currently not received. The morality of the political demand is only relevant to the extent the person truly cares about such things. Typically people aim to get what they want just because they want it, regardless of any moral analysis, whether that be new tax breaks, new guns laws, or new emissions standards.
While you may be totally driven by morality, you can't just impose that motivation on the whole population. My feeling is that African Americans are protesting what is happening in their communities by the police because they are subject to that violence and they want it to end. While they do believe what is going on is immoral, it's not their primary driver. If morality were the primary driver behind these protests, you'd expect the Hispanic community to be as outraged. They're not, not because they don't understand morality, but because it's not their ox being gored.
All of this is to say, even if I could objectively show that the US government was legitimate and that the current method of policing was the only effective and proper means of law enforcement, it's not like the African American community would be at all persuaded to accept their lot, put on a smile, and get back to work.
Yup.
Quoting Echarmion
Nope.
Trying to understand an individual is an I-thou relationship Very very different to trying to measure an abstracted average five-yr-old, or whoever.
Quoting Echarmion
I quoted my own thread where I discuss this in some detail and with further references, I also linked to a book that makes part of the argument by a well respected author and with his wiki page. Nobody has mentioned any of this either to discuss, or dispute at any point. I have always regarded this as extremely tangental to the topic of systemic racism, but that certain aspects of psychology are important. If you know something about socio-political psychologies, then you will see it straight away, but I still think this is not the ideal place for a detailed discussion of the philosophy of psychology. However if someone wanted to find details of my argument or of David Smail's, the links are there. I have now given a very brief outline here, and I also contributed to the thread that @boethius linked to. So if you are interested, you can find plenty more of me and others on the history and philosophy of psychology. It's a particular interest of mine.
Quoting Echarmion
I think you can find your own evidence, but here's something to get you started. But the close connection of psychology to advertising goes back to Bernays, as you will have seen in my thread already, or not.
Is this really just a feeling for you at this point?
Quoting Hanover
Translation: "Boohoo, the oppressed classes are revolting, it's not like providing an argument that I don't have is going to get them back to work. What I do have is the whip though, and therefore should use that whip to get things back to the way I like it."
It's almost like maybe a state that asks a whole community "to accept their lot, put on a smile" is not a legitimate state, that even if there was a majority of people who wanted to oppress this community, that again, that would still not be legitimate because there would be no moral foundation to it.
I think that's true to an extent, but if you want to avoid claiming social and economic problems are mentally harmless, then the current social and economic system causes mental harm. Are we supposed to refuse to treat it in the best way we can as some kind of protest against the conditions which cause it. Are we on the verge of some seismic change if only the psychiatrists would get on board? It seems unlikely.
Im not suggesting for a moment that modern psychiatry has got it right, I'd be happy to see the whole discipline discarded and started again from scratch. But until we change the social and economic causes of mental harm, there will exist some need to try and alleviate that harm.
Ending the war is the best way to stop soldiers from dying, but you don't then go to war without a medic.
All that notwithstanding, unenlightened has made it quite clear that we're not actually talking about psychiatriy at all, but the whole field of psychology.
Quoting Isaac
Quoting unenlightened
Something about the entire field of study is somehow responsible for class oppression and racial segregation. I'm still unclear what the obvious connection is.
Yes, let's sit in a room and figure out once and for all what justice is exactly and then let's take out our hammers and forge it in place. That'll work. I know that once someone impresses upon me what justice is, no way I'll object. How could I? It's sacred justice for God's sake.
History teaches us something else:
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, but must be violently taken by the oppressed.
I've not said they should just get back to work. I said they should find common ground. Apparently that's a controversial idea. Who'd have thunk?
That was the message you derived from MLK?
It is extremely controversial, and simply wrong, in the way you present it.
For nothing in what you say is a democratic process, but rather a fictitious fairness between you and your ideological opposition regardless of the numbers of who believes what.
Did the American founding fathers get in a room and compromise with King George? Did FDR get in a room with Hirohito and Hittler and find "common ground"? Did president Bush get in a room and compromise with the Taliban, or Sadam, or Bin Laden for that matter?
When it is your class using violence to reach political objectives, it's "serious discussion", "just war theory", "tough love", "doing what it takes", "no bleeding heart liberal hippy bullshit".
Yet, as soon as other classes express their power for violence to reach political objectives, it's "woe, woe, peaceful protest! peaceful protest! Violence isn't the answer bro! This isn't the non-violence of Martin Luther King! For the love of God, listen to MLK, just listen! Partake with me in the sacred compromise in the arms of the Holy Goddess!"
Hanover, I think you might be right. Perhaps the philosophy of psychology should be discussed in a separate thread, although I still think David Smail's way of understanding the connections between macro-economics and psychological distress is worth looking at in this context. But I won't press it.
:rofl:
@Echarmion has already highlighted the majority of the problems with this completely unsupported tirade so I won't repeat the list of assertions requiring evidence which have already been highlighted. I'll just add one that was missed.
Quoting unenlightened
Is it? Presumably you'd have some evidence of this too? Though without doing social psychology I'm not sure how you'd gather it.
All you've done is presentated a story of societal decline which has psychology as the antagonist but, with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, how am I supposed to take it seriously? Should I be grateful for every story anyone wishes to tell of our decline? Was it the promiscuity of the sixties, the decline of family values, globalism, the cold war, population density, immigration, the European Union, the bankers, the Lizardmen from the centre of the earth ... Everyone and their dog has some theory or other. Am I supposed to take every one to heart and treat it as gospel? All I've done so far in this entire conversation is ask you and boethius for clarification.
Stuff like this though:
Needs to stop now. Stop assaulting peaceful protesters. How hard is that? How hard is to train police to restrict themselves to a reasonable level of force appropriate to the situation?
EDIT: Just looked back and saw @StreetlightX already referenced this.
So what are you advocating if not playing nicely? What I've seen from not playing nicely is bricks through windows and looting. Surely that's not what you're suggesting, but I don't know. You'll need to clarify.
Right, and did the Democrats sit in a room and work out the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or did they go to war? It seems like those divisions were far greater then than today, yet the non-violence thing you mock actually worked.
So, I can either accept your view that because sometimes war is necessary it's always necessary, or I can realize that sometimes the things that separate us are less than those that bind us and we don't need to go to war. And let's be realistic here, the closer this gets to actual war, the worse off for the protesters. The moment the government convinces itself there is a true existential threat, it will unapologetically eliminate that threat. The point being that my desire to reach compromise does come from a place of seeking justice and having sympathy. It's not like the US government really is against the ropes and being forced into compromise.
I think this discussion has gotten too heated. I apologize for being condescending or insulting. And I'd ask you to not engage in these little jabs either.
To adress what you wrote here:
Quoting boethius
All that seems to be saying is that all knowledge can be abused, and all people can be corrupted. Which may be true, but doesn't say anything specific about psychology. Are you of the opinion that, say, physicists should have formed a conspiracy to keep the secret of building nuclear wepaons out of politicians hands?
Quoting boethius
But how does one avoid becoming a tool, outside of simply not existing?
Quoting boethius
No, it's not independent. Academia relies on grants and funding. Privately funded studies have been cause for concern in a number of fields now. The solution would seem to actually be more state funding in academia, not less. And if relying on state funding makes you an extension of state authority, then almost all public life is an extension of state authority. The term would become so broad as to be essentially meaningless.
Quoting boethius
I indead did not read that part. Apologies.
Quoting boethius
Actually, the belief to be engaged in "just warfare" isn't even required. Lots of states of mind can lead to people doing monstrous things. That's why I think you are oversimplifying things. There isn't any one "serial killer mindset" that could be blankedly applied to any and all unjust killing. And if there were, you'd obviously need psychology to tell you that. So your very analysis presupposes knowledge you seem to reject.
Quoting boethius
Again, this is little more than a naked claim, and not a very believable one in my opinion. Organisations don't work like minds. Prima facie, organisations and minds are entirely different in their physical constituents and the way they make decisions. To argue there are "no essential differences" would require an analysis of how all the parts of one map to the other.
Quoting unenlightened
But our I-thou relationships rely on abstracted knowledge. We learn social interactions by observing, and use the abstracted knowledge of what we learn to interact with new people. In that sense, we are constantly engaged in the study of other humans, which according to you is constant objectification. But without that, none of us would be able to deal with all the relations we have to other humans. Saying that there are certain qualities of an "average human" does not deny or diminish the subjectivity of any specific individual human.
Quoting unenlightened
Of course noone is going to dispute points written somewhere in a book you pointed out (which, per the abstract, doesn't seem to be about anything like the things you are saying) or some 30+ page thread. To expect people to do so is to set yourself up for disappointment.
Quoting unenlightened
I am not disputing the connection between psychology and advertising, which is obvious enough. I am questioning to what extend the "values taught in psychology" really affect the society, which I figure would be an extremely difficult question to answer. It also looks to be a somewhat circular questions, since it basically requires us to use psychology to figure out to what extend psychology predisposes us.
Describe what that civil disobedience looks like instead of having me sort through your post history. Does it include taking liquor from stores?
And the irony of course in that today I am accused of being a dove while you proudly proclaim you're a hawk.
It seems to me that governors are actually quite concerned with the demonstrations. Hence the curfews and police repression. They wield a big stick, but in doing so they lose more legitimacy in the eyes of the people they serve.
Hence why there have also been concessions in direct response to the rebellion -- to placate the people into going home and returning things to a normal order. But the concessions so far haven't been structural changes -- they have been the sorts of things which the government should have already done, if it were applying the law fairly: indicting the police officers on criminal charges.
As small a victory as that is -- who really wants to have to destroy businesses and loot them just to make the state do their job every damn time a cop kills someone unjustifiably? That is madness. -- there are structural changes which as being brought up by black-led organizations. After all, unless you plan on using the stick, these organizations are likely the ones that can placate the crowd without using the stick.
It seems to me that it'd be better to implement those as concessions if they want everyone to return home.
I have severe anger management problems that I’ve struggled with all my life, that I’ve always defended as reasonable anger in response to genuine wrongs, even though my angry responses only ever made things worse for me, not better. Last year I started having crippling panic and anxiety problems over nothing that I could identify (everything in my life was the best it had ever been at that time), which finally made me go looking for medication to help bring that under control. It did, I think, though it took a long time and was uneven in progress so it’s hard to tell.
I say “crippling” literally, in that I was not able to function as well in pursuit of my own goals, not able to get up the guts to face the things that I was panicking about. In retrospect I see my anger problems as crippling in a different way: I could have more effectively done something about the things I was angry about if I hadn’t been so overwhelmed with rage and out of control that I couldn’t think straight.
A calm, clear, focused mind is not necessarily one that is unquestioningly accepting of everything going on. It’s just a mind that is in control of itself, beholden only to its own reason, one that can decide rationally what is or isn’t actually a problem and what the best responding to that problem would be, and then most importantly, is able to do that best response because it is the best response, rather than feeling irrationally compelled to behave differently, hiding under the covers or punching holes in one’s own walls or whatever else one’s overwhelming emotions might otherwise push one to do instead of, you know, solving the problem.
It's interesting really because I do think this is more the issue than has been discussed. The guy was white who was pushed over. This had nothing to do with race.
American police are mean as shit. It's a thing. I hear how black parents lament the fact they have to teach their children to be careful around cops, but I can't say I learned anything different. If my son (for example) told me that he stood in the path of police in riot gear and he got shoved to the ground, I would ask him why his crazy ass was in the way of police. If they say move, you move. I think they are taught to take charge like that. Is that not a thing in Europe?
Yes, nothing racial about this I know, but seeing as police brutality is one of the specified topics of the OP... Anyway, the context is the guy is old and not a threat. Shoving him to the ground is dangerous and unnecessary. So, yes, if the police say "move" then generally speaking you should move, but that doesn't justify any response to you not doing that. Also, the cop walking on and leaving the guy on the ground unconscious and bleeding is mind-boggling. I mean if you unintentionally use excessive force at least try to help your victim.
Quoting Hanover
Which is why many people hate them. In most countries I've been to it's not actually the case. And it shouldn't be. Considering most protesters are otherwise generally law-abiding, stepping all over them is stupid and self-defeating. Hearts and minds and all that. Keep the gung-ho shit for hardened criminals.
Quoting unenlightened
I've been through the whole nine pages (you can't just repost the links?). I can't find a single reference to any evidence of what you're asserting here.
Quoting unenlightened
All your previous thread says (again without much evidential support) is that psychologists are responsible for the effectiveness of advertising. Again, a very small number of people from a small branch of psychology. You're own source you later cute has it as less than 3%.
A small branch of engineering has been responsible for some of the most deadly machines known to man. A small branch of physics created the atomic bomb. A small branch of philosophy supports selfish greed. A small branch of economics supports free-market competition as a solution to poverty...and so on. Give me a single academic study which has not been used in some way to maintain or enhance the power of the wealthy and privelidged, hell even literature's implicated by your standards.
David Smail's argument is about clinical psychology, you indicted the whole of psychology. So far we've had a spurious argument about the activities of less than 3% and an argument for how the clinical side of things could be improved (much of which is being acted on, and the evidence for which actually came from within psychology).
Quoting unenlightened
Your claim...
Quoting unenlightened
I can't speak for @Echarmion, but I'm fairly confident the main sticking point is "they bring and promote the values and views they have been taught" not the fields of work they go into.
And I've said multiple times that the whole culture has to change, or that whole departments simply have to be totally shut down. No single changes like some hours of training will do the change. Changing a culture is a huge thing, not a thing a small reform will do. Let's hope that something better can come out of this, that it's not brushed aside as one of "those riots" in a long history of riots. Not to refer to "riots" would be one start, actually
And for your question, "Why is there not universal denunciation, from police departments all across the US, and promises to do better?" the simple fact is that there isn't anybody to give that. Except perhaps Trump :roll: .
Quoting Hanover
The lesson of political history. (e.g. Hobbes & Marx) :point:
[quote=Frederick Douglass]Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.[/quote]
I'm interested in clarifying concepts and not in normalizing confused usage of terms.
Since you asked me, I'll try to give you some insight into what the police were probably thinking. This comes with the disclaimer that this is an explanation of what happened, and not a justification or normative evaluation.
So at the start of the video it looks like the police are moving forward on a skirmish line. They usually do this because they want to clear out an area. I don't know why they wanted to clear out the area, but there could be many different reasons.
Generally speaking, before the line moves forward, officers give anyone in the area a number of warnings to disperse. It might be something like, "This area is being cleared out. You are ordered to disperse. We will dispense tear gas. You are being warned." This usually goes on for about 5-15 minutes on a bullhorn, but most departments want to give as many warnings as possible (for legal and political reasons if for nothing else).
After the warnings are given, the police will move forward, and anyone in their path will be pushed back. At this stage there is no talking or debating with people. The police consider everyone warned, and now they will proceed to clear the area. Sometimes people will push their luck by lingering around the skirmish line, even as police officers are moving forward. Most of these people end up dispersing at the very last moment, but some people do not. I have seen people walk up trying to give the cops flowers. I have seen people with signs reading "free hugs," walk up and try to hug the police officers, despite being given those warnings to disperse. What usually happens is police will continue moving forward whilst pushing back anyone in their way. They might give commands like, "Get back! Clear the area!"
At this point the hug people, flower people, and people who want to continue debating, get pushed back, and they usually have a sad, betrayed, astonished look on their face like, "Why did you do that to me? That's assault." The look I usually see on cops after that is like, "Man, we told you to leave."
It looks like the man in that video was a debater, or at least someone who wanted to continue talking to the police. For whatever reason he was not satisfied with leaving the area.
The cops walked forward and pushed the man. He fell down and was injured. The cop whose first reaction was to render aid and check on the man was probably thinking, "Oh shit. Are you okay?" as he went to bend down. The other cop was probably like, "Maintain your ranks. We have EMTs and nothing you can do will help him much as he's down on the ground a few seconds longer." The cop who told him to maintain ranks tells another cop to get two people away from the line, then radios for medical. Then it looks like they cuff one of the other guys with a zip tie and take him into custody.
Thanks for the explanation.
Sure thing :victory:
No excuses, but I doubt the officer expected the man to fall back completely defenseless like that. He was old and frail and couldn't balance himself or brace himself. You'd think (or hope) if it were a woman or child, the officer would have better recognized the strength disparity.
Although I completely agree with the principles of your analysis; this is not just about the police, that was just the trigger.
Indeed, ironically, the police are, in my opinion, the least of the problems in terms of state legitimacy.
When visiting the US, what is the most clear thing about the police is that the job is in anyway impossible. The war on drugs, the lack of social programs, the judicial system that makes corruption legal and police brutality legal.
As you point out, the state isn't implementing the laws it already has fairly, and if we look at those laws more closely there a long list of clearly absurd "laws" upon which no society can function. By "laws" I mean SCOTUS going through several levels of insane reasoning to create new laws directly opposed to the purposes of the law they are considering.
How is law enforcement supposed to do their part to preserve the integrity of political process if corruption is simply declared legal by the judiciary?
How is law enforcement supposed to "police themselves" if the SCOTUS declares the crazy notion that the constitution does not apply if it has not already directly been applied for the same thing in the same jurisdiction. It's impossible to even make such reasoning up as part of fictional world building.
So, there is indeed a tragic element in the current conflict between the people and police. Of the judiciary, the legislature and law-enforcement, law-enforcement maybe the least to blame and there simply wouldn't be a problem if the judiciary and legislature were doing their jobs (which is an interesting difference with the 60s where the judiciary had a "what do words mean" approach to epistemology and the legislature functioned to reflect the majority "well enough").
Certainly, the issue at hand should be dealt with as best as possible, as you are suggesting; I fear, however, because there are so many fundamental problems that the focus on police brutality, as separate from the other issues, is in a sense wasting time as so many unemployed people will simply continue to rebel until they are satisfied the state has regained legitimacy and genuinely cares about them (of course, solving police brutality would be a part of that caring).
Even on the subject of police brutality as separate the context, so many nominal crimes have been committed that without a mass pardon (such as with the draft dodgers), it may be impossible to police anyway. Everyone who partook in the looting, if they start to fear the police are "coming to get them", will simply embrace a declaration of total war with the police even if some reforms are implemented. This is the "Mexico scenario" that I and @ssu have mentioned as a possibility.
What is also clear is that Trump wants this conflict between the people and the state, and, even if there is a lull in the conflict today, it is likely the president of the United States can get what he wants.
And there is still the pandemic happening.
Quoting Isaac
Well this is what you retreat to, not your original objections. And I am content to let the disagreement stand and honour your dis agreement. I see the influence everywhere, and you do not. Fair enough.
Yes, I think they could, for reasons of prudential self-interest if for nothing else. That looks really bad for Buffalo PD :grimace:
[quote=Hanover]No excuses, but I doubt the officer expected the man to fall back completely defenseless like that. He was old and frail and couldn't balance himself or brace himself. You'd think (or hope) if it were a woman or child, the officer would have better recognized the strength disparity.[/quote]
Yeah, that's a good point too.
This is the scary part.
I'd advise people really to look at the way Fox News etc. are covering the events, just to get a feel where Trump is going. It's all about him securing his base. He does have a plan. General Mattis does speak the truth in my view when he said that this President has for three years divided the country.
Yet we should ask ourselves, as this isn't anything new, will history just repeat itself or CAN anything really new come out of this?
I remember well seeing with my own eyes, as a young child, the huge smoke clouds of a race riots in Miami in 1980, that me and my family accidentally witnessed. The riots then were a similar consequence of a black man, then Arthur McDuffie, slain by the police. (The officers were tried and acquitted for manslaughter and evidence tampering, among other charges.) Are we waiting for people just to loose focus and get interested in the next "media frenzy"? Or is Trump and Fox News etc. just hoping for a "Reginald Denny-beating" to surface that then instills outrage so and fear much that the parroted line will be "We condemn what happened to George Floyd, but enough with the rioting" and have the calls for peace, calls for getting along and calls for moving along?
And how then are the things forgotten? Only until next time as with mass shootings? Could things turn different this time?
"In New York, we have 5,500 cops in the schools. They’re unarmed but uniformed, and a visual shock for someone like me who grew up in less policed times. That’s ten times the number of school psychologists; almost twice the number of guidance counselors; and four times the number of social workers. With about 1.1 million students in the public schools, the cop/student ratio works out to 50 per 10,000, which is significantly higher than the city as a whole. And New York has one of the highest cop to population ratios in the country. This is brutalizing and perverse."
Now we read in Mike Allen's Axios product this morning:
"A bunch of big cities are rethinking the presence of school resource officers as they respond to the concerns of thousands of demonstrators — many of them young — who have filled the streets night after night to protest the death of George Floyd, AP's Gillian Flaccus reports. Portland Public Schools, Oregon's largest school district, yesterday cut its ties with the Portland Police Bureau. Other urban districts — including Minneapolis, St. Paul and Denver — are considering doing the same."
Anyone who says these protests are ineffective either does not know what they are talking about, or are intentionally lying.
For a nice summary see Tucker Carlson, unlike 99% of media sources, he dives into the numbers.
About 1,000 people are killed by police every year in the USA. The biggest group being white.
Any disproportionality of any other group with respect to their population share is simply due to how much violent crime they commit. Otherwise you'd be complaining about "systemic sexism", since it's almost always men getting killed by cops, and nobody is complaining about that.
The Guardian did a project called "the Counted" where they collected the stories of everyone killed by cops for a few years. Take a look at it.
Almost all male.
99.9% of them being stupid, reckless, threatening and uncooperative.
Even the term "unarmed" doesn't really help decipher who is "innocent" in being slain by a cop - the vast majority of those who are unarmed and die were also being stupid - like Mike Brown, trying to grab the officers gun, fighting or charging the officer, etc.
But what about George Floyd, Eric Garner etc! Surely they are evidence of racism in the police?
Nope. There were an equal number of white men, Like Tony Timpa and Daniel Shaver, killed in exactly the same kind of infuriating circumstances as Floyd and Garner.
But you don't know about them because the media chooses not to catapult their deaths onto the front pages for days until it instigates a riot.
So what's the solution? Well, States have wildly varying death-by-cop rates versus their violent crime rates. Some states have high crime rates and low numbers of police killings. I'd recommend starting there. Find the differences.
For example, New York banned the police from using dangerous chokeholds, - like the one that killed Floyd - and that may be the reason that state has fewer deaths by cop compared to other places.
A decent president would have found plausible quick fixes like that based on data from states and signed it into an execute order, maybe that would've quelled the rioting.
Absolutely do not do this.
-
Also anyone who blames people for their own deaths by hands of others is a propagandist and does not deserve to be taken seriously. Kindly rethink your life.
Insisting against the evidence that this is racial, so that you can join your political tribe and start beating your chest about it, is what has sucked the entire nation into a never-ending argument where nobody's going to listen to each other and decide on an actual fact-based solution. Even other nations are weighing in on it, based on the false premises that this is all about racism. Then we end up getting side tracked into literally every race-based discussion, about reparations, about slavery, about microaggressions. When actually there's just as many white corpses that were killed by police out of negligence or sheer malice as the black ones.
People just turn the entire issue into something to score status points out of and engage in tribal cheering over.
In fact that's what everything is. Status games and tribalism in a million irritating variations. Screw finding solutions, I guess. Any solution needs to benefit my "group" at the expense of another.
This disparity is such that in eight US cities — including Reno, Nevada; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and Scottsdale, Arizona — the rate at which police killed black men was higher than the US murder rate. And from a criminal justice perspective, there appears to be little connection between police killings and violent crime. Some cities with high rates of violent crime have fewer police killings than those with higher violent crime rates, a situation that can make police killings feel wanton and baseless."
https://www.vox.com/2020/5/31/21276004/anger-police-killing-george-floyd-protests
WhY iS EvErYoNe MaKiNg ThIs AbOuT RaCe?
What makes you and Vox writers think that population size is important?
Do you think that's also why 95% of police victims are male? Because the population is 95% male?
Your argument is that likelihood to be killed by police should be determined by population size.
Population share of men: 50%
population share of women: 50%
Fill in the blanks,
Percentage of people killed by police who are male: ___%
Percentage of people killed by police who are female: ___%.
The point is that it’s also more blacks than whites per capita, even if it’s equal numbers of blacks and whites absolutely.
If there were 20x more men than women and 95% of victims were men, then that would be equal numbers per capita by sex.
If there were 20x more men than women and only the same number of men and women were victims, that would mean women were victims at a much higher rate than men.
Likewise, since there are many more white people than black, if whites and blacks have the same number of victims, that means blacks are victims at a much higher rate than whites.
I'm pointing out the exact same thing using percentages instead of per capita figures.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Literally the point of my post, I simply said "50% men/women" instead of "If 20 times...".
This is the first time I've heard this.
I believed everyone understood why many more men die during police encounters than women, it seems I was wrong.
Is there something which, unlike population share, explains both why more men than women are killed and why more blacks than whites are killed?
Well, I said what that might be in my first post - the violent crime rate of each group.
Is the violent crime rate of men higher than women? Yes it is. ?
Is the violent crime rate of blacks higher than whites? Yes it is. ?
It seems we've found the variable we should be dividing those per capita rates by
Quoting StreetlightX
Except this is factually wrong:
"From a criminal justice perspective, there appears to be little connection between police killings and violent crime. Some cities with high rates of violent crime have fewer police killings than those with higher violent crime rates, a situation that can make police killings feel wanton and baseless."
Via the same article.
The paltry two examples you listed - Eric Garner and George Floyd - were certainly not violent criminals. All violence involved in their murder belonged to the police.
causally somehow. They’re saying that the numbers being similar DESPITE the black populations being smaller SHOWS that they are target more; the numbers targeted COMPARED TO the population number is where the “more targeted” claim comes from, and that’s why people are mentioning populations.
Exactly how is anyone supposed to believe there are 'good cops'? How? I don't understand. Because they kneel with protestors? But those cops kneeled too, the day before.
But wait a minute, he wasn’t black.
I think you know what my point is. These incidents may not be issues of race but of circumstances.
If you want. You may be right but so far I don’t think you’ve proved your point.
I don’t know. Do you? Incontrovertible truth is what we’re after, no?
It's almost like being asked to 'prove the point' is meaningless bad-faith misdirection that cannot be given any content.
I understand that if you believe racism is institutionalised in America that you find it abhorrent. Who in their right mind wouldn’t? But if that’s incorrect and we all go down that road in an angry mob then we miss the real problem and by missing the real problem, or source of the problem, then we may contribute to it.
Quoting StreetlightX
Does any of this contribute to revealing the real problem?
It’s possible that you’re playing into the hands of the real problem.
Quoting StreetlightX
Do you mean that people like me are the problem?
Have you ever considered this; that Trump voters and Sander’s voters might both be against the same thing.
Why not remove the word racism and instead say "systemic injustice", "systemic greed", "systemic corruption"?
Why not all of those?
It's hard to deny that the protests are at least achieving something. If we want to address other subsets of injustice, why don't we just do that?
Quoting Echarmion
I don’t think you’ll see much change. There will be changes in the police force because that’s the flashpoint. But the shops in Manhattan will claim their insurance and as a result they might have a better month than they might have had otherwise. But those who have a small business in the worst hit neighbourhoods will struggle to recover, some will some won’t, but that means no profits for some time.
People all around the world are hurting, but you could not claim that racism is behind it. People throughout America are hurting but again you could not claim that racism is the cause. The fact that blacks might hurt more than whites doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the result of racism.
There are groups who will not be hurt: the rich, academia, the media, religious institutions and probably a few more I haven’t considered. They have nothing to lose. Look at those who lose nothing then look at those who do. Is there a divide there? When there’s a gap you don’t fall in between the two sides, you end up on one side or the other.
Blacks may be more affected than whites, I don’t know enough to prove that one way or the other, the symptoms may take different forms with different groups, but to assume that it’s racism removes the focus from the real problem that affects all people, not just Americans but all people across the world. It seems to me that “systemic racism” would be a very convenient deflection from those who remain untouched.
Quoting StreetlightX
Which part is denying reality?
Well I think we’re going in circles now, don’t you think?
I already did.
Indeed.
Quoting StreetlightX
This confuses me. Is it poorly written or do you mean it?
That the injustice is specifically racial. But then you add but not only racial, which suggests there are injustices against blacks that aren’t racial. So whatever those other acts might be they are not racial, therefore, it seems to me, that the injustices cannot be specifically racial.
Is this what you’re directing me to?
Okay. I’ll read them a bit more closely.
For white people.
Quoting StreetlightX
“Seven of the 10 states with the highest poverty rates in the U.S. are in the South ... These areas have a long history of poverty and there are many factors contributing to it, but the most obvious are that they were agricultural economies first and foremost with light emphasis on education and innovation.
High school graduation rates for African-American and Hispanic students are almost 20 percentage points lower than for other ethnic groups ... Without the knowledge and skills required for well-remunerated work in the modern workplace, each succeeding generation of undereducated adults merely replaces the one before it without achieving any upward mobility or escape from poverty”. https://www.debt.org/faqs/americans-in-debt/poverty-united-states/
From what I’ve read the biggest contributors to poverty for all people is: low education, teen births, imprisonment and poor health.
This creates low opportunities for employment or better paid work which leads directly to poverty, which leads to breakdown of the family, crime, neglect of education, dependency and unemployment. It’s the vicious cycle of poverty.
Racism may contribute to some of this, but does it contribute to a failure in education, teen births and family breakdown? Everyone who is uneducated gets low wages or fewer opportunities.
Would blacks be deprived of access to education? I don’t know. If they were I would regard that as racism.
In response to your posts about a Marxist point of view I understand the relationship of poverty and race to class issues.
“If you help all poor people equally regardless of race, you disproportionately help black people automatically because the poor are disproportionately black.
— Pfhorrest
Who could argue with this? I don’t doubt that systemic racism existed in the south. But there seem to be real factors besides racism that have contributed to black poverty.
If I am not mistaken, school funding in the US is based on the tax income of the school district. The obvious result of that is that poor districts have little money while having higher needs (poor families can supply less homeschooling).
Now combine this with a history of segregation and housing policies that have made sure that poor black people only live in districts with other poor black people. Thus, the whole vicious cycle gains a racial dimension.
Quoting Brett
Aside from the vicious cycle of poverty, driven by capitalism, what real factors are there? The most obvious seem to be: slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, housing policy. Policies that kept wealth out of the hands of black people, imposed on the basis of race.
The idea that the police are institutionally a separate race, with a particular history of trauma is particularly interesting and relevant to current affairs. The focus on the body is in itself a therapy needed by most philosophers.
Quoting Echarmion
That appears to be true about school funding. But you would need to persuade me that the government consciously created that system to deprive blacks of an education. The OP is why is systemic racism happening? That means now. If the restrictions governments have towards education is poor policy that impacts on blacks that have found themselves in circumstances created by past actions that does not equate to systemic racism now. The policy of education budgets based on taxable income is obviously absurd, but as I said, I don’t imagine it was implemented as a racist act.
Quoting Echarmion
This is your position then, that Capitalism created racism.
I don't know when this system was set up. I doubt anyone consciously sat down and said "lets set up school funding so it disadvantages black people". Presumably, that wouldn't even have been necessary, given that there was more direct segregation still in place. But assuming they realized that this disadvantages black people, do you think that, on average, they'd have cared? I don't.
In any event, I think you're getting hung up on direct intent as a defining characteristic of systemic racism. I think the problem with systemic racism is precisely that it creates outcomes that diverge by race without relying on any mustache-twirling villians. To use a popular quote: all that is required for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.
Quoting Brett
I think that is exactly what systemic racism is like. Policies that "happen" to impact people differently along racial lines. Of course you wouldn't conclude systemic racism from a single policy. But if there is a bunch of policies that are connected to very obvious and direct racism in the past, then I'd consider that sufficient evidence.
Quoting Brett
But there were a bunch of other racist acts that led to the policy affecting people the way it is today.
Quoting Brett
No, racism is simply part of the human condition. I do think that capitalism feeds racism though.
Quoting Echarmion
Well I would call that neglect. One might call it racism if they were inclined. However, whatever it is the result is the same, which is poverty.
If someone commits to a crime like George Floyd, then they can expect force from police. In North Korea, criminals can expect a similar outcome as George Floyd.
This doesn't mean police are immune to crime, in the case of George Floyd, he should not have been killed. However, police do put their lives on the line to protect citizens from criminals. If George Floyd had been resisting arrest, then the officer's life comes before his.
As for systematic racism; that's a tin-foil accusation.
No-one but ordinary citizens are out to get blacks, which is natural when mixing races. Black Panthers exist too, there will always be tension between different genetics.
No the Government or Corporations are not racist, in fact they support the very opposite.
Will reply more in depth later but the first substantial step in abolishing racism is to abolish capitalism yes.
Perhaps the inability to engage in the racial problems of the present and having a discourse that goes in circles?
People ought to understand that nothing will change if people are successfully divided.
Quoting unenlightened
I hope that this is a 'figure of speech' and not an idea taken literally that the police is a separate race. That would sound as sinister racism to me.
It seems to me that the past dropped a very big problem on our doorstep. We, being the present Capitalist system, already had policies of neglect and abuse in place that affected people in a negative way and both failed to help those of the white population in poverty or drove others into it. When the black population was integrated into this population they represented a far greater proportion of people in poverty than the poverty stricken white population. Those policies applied to poor whites had the same affect on blacks but in greater numbers. The numbers were possibly so big that they created a worse situation for those same people, a situation they would find hard, if not impossible, to get out of.
Quoting StreetlightX
I knew that was coming.
So, let's fight poverty. I think we can all get on-board with that. Let's take the current protest, reinforce it, and make it about poverty more generally as well.
Quoting ssu
Perhaps, though I am not entirely sure what you'd refer to.
Quoting ssu
That is an important point. But unity cannot take the form of unified inaction. The line "don't divide people" can also be used to stifle protest. "why must bus drivers put their issues before anyone else's needs", "why do these black people chant about black lives when white people live in poverty too" are things I have often heard. It frames standing up for your rights as a form of division. But isn't it the case that e.g. poor white people could just as easily augment the protests with their numbers, and use the increased powerbase to tackle more general problems?
Don't. Watch the video and decide. I'm just talking telegraphically. I don't think it's sinister, I think it's dexter, that's why I'm sharing it. But you know races are social constructs, and institutions are social constructs, right? So maybe put "for therapeutic purposes" in there as a conditional modifier, and take a deep breath.
This is almost exactly right, with the caveat that the problem is not just a hangover from the past. The past did indeed drop a very big problem on our doorstep, but the present reproduces and entrenches those problems. We're not just dealing with lingering effects from the past (although that is part of the story). We are also dealing with structures that re-produce, re-instantiate and ensure that those problems handed down form the past continue to effect us in the present. Those structures also militate against ameliorating those problems. There is a present agency at work, and not simply a passivity - and that agency is political and economic.
As for the fact that these structures have the same affect on blacks but in greater numbers - or rather in disproportionate numbers - that's just what systemic racism is. You've described it in your own words! You just haven't given it a name. The vicious cycle of poverty you described does not just 'contribute' to racism. The vicious cycle of poverty is racist. Poverty is racist. And look, if the contingencies of history turned out differently, and it was, say, whites who were disproportionality caught up in the reproducing net of poverty, then that too would be racist. But that's not largely the world we live in. And yeah, of course there are poor white people - this simply means that they have every reason to stand in solidarity with poor blacks. Or poor anyone for that matter, and all with each other. Workers of the world fuckin' unite.
Bingo.
*Why Sydney? Because Australia murders its indigenous Australians unaccountably at rates even higher than the US. At least 30,000 people at these protests.
Or we could just call it poverty, and probably have a more accurate description of the problem, so we know how to address it better.
Why are people so scared about race? [hide]The answer is of course that admitting the reality of its effects means admitting that one's success in life is also profoundly owes to one's race: it threatens (a certain and very poor understanding of) one's own agency[/hide].
But what i do know is that there is a temptation to paint something in a certain light for political reasons.
And I just think words have a certain meaning, and so does racism, and from what I've read on this thread the problem seem to have more to do with poverty. This poverty has its origins in racism for sure, but it doesn't seem clear to me that this is still the main problem. And so maybe it is better to call it what it is, so we know how to deal with it.
Maybe I'm totally off base, in that case I apologies for my ignorance.
Well, what street said. There is systemic classism and systemic racism and they work together to propagate poverty. The more information we have about each and how about each works, the better we can deal with them. It's not about pointing the finger at some specific capitalist or racist pulling a lever somewhere (though that does happen), it's about admitting that society is not what we would want it to be re race and poverty and trying to do something about it. That should not be a threat to anyone with good intentions.
One thing I haven't mentioned is that concrete instances of racism are born out of this structural disproportion. People see wretched black folk - made wretched by poverty - and think: 'my Gosh, it must be the color of their skin'. And when those wretched folk do terrible things, for lack of opportunity, people think: 'it must be the color of their skin'. This stuff self-enforces and self-sustains. No one is born racist. People become so.
Crosspost!
Yes I actually agree they are intertwined... in Europe things are arguably somewhat similar with muslims, although to a lesser degree no doubt.
But maybe the point I want to make is that there used to be the kind of racism that was blatantly based on race. One was inferior based solely on the colour of their skin. Now it's more the kind of racism born out of 'induction', I think... some think blacks or muslims are inferior because they are generally poorer, have a lesser education and therefore also tend to turn to crime more often because they are poor. It's a vicious circle. So i guess what I'm saying is that this kind of racism is maybe better solved by addressing the poverty, instead of more of the same 'PC'-like measures.
"Racism is both overt and covert. It takes two closely related forms…we call these individual racism and institutional racism… The second type is… far more subtle, less identifiable in terms of specific individuals committing the acts. But it is no less destructive of human life. The second type originates in the operation of established and respected forces in society, and thus receives far less public condemnation than the first type… It is institutional racism that keeps black people locked in dilapidated slum tenements, subject to the daily prey of exploitative slumlords, merchants, loan sharks and discriminatory real estate agents. The society either pretends it does not know of this latter situation, or is in fact incapable of doing anything meaningful about it.” (Black Power: The Politics of Liberation).
If what is called structural racism is being highlighted here, it's because it so often forgotten about, or else simply outright denied. It's been 60 years since that passage above was written. We're still dealing with the same problems as if they were discovered yesterday.
“By interpreting inner-city violence and poverty as glaring manifestations of the failure of blacks to live up to American values [conservative politicians] helped create and legitimize a new form of prejudice.” That racial resentment fueled a long “period of retrenchment” that rolled back many of the civil rights movement’s gains.
Recent history, however, suggests that the current protests are more likely to liberalize racial attitudes than prompt backlash. So far, Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests have pushed whites’ racial attitudes in a progressive direction, especially among young people.
...Racial attitude shifts were larger in the places with BLM protests. Political scientist Shom Mazumder’s recent study, “Black Lives Matter for Whites’ Racial Prejudice,” shows that from 2014 to 2018, white racial resentment declined more in areas with BLM protests than in areas without them."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/05/floyd-protests-will-likely-change-public-attitudes-about-race-policing-heres-why/
How can your narrow definition “manifest systemic discrimination” be a clarification of what racism is? A lonely white man sitting isolated in his home just hating all black people and having a secret desire to see them killed, wouldn’t be called a racist according to your definition. It wouldn’t be manifest – it’s happening in secret, it wouldn’t be systemic – the man is alone, and it’s not a matter of discrimination – he isn’t doing anything.
You are effectively denying that racism can be an attitude of hatred existing in individuals. What do you gain by such a narrow definition? It would mean that if all overt instances of discrimination disappeared from the system, racism would be eradicated. But don’t you agree that something ugly would still exist? In the minds of people there would still be racial prejudice and even if it didn’t appear in the system of society, individual resentment would still be bad enough. You don’t call that racism, so I suppose you don’t find it necessary to fight against it. If it’s not visible in the system, it’s not a problem, is that so?
No, all kinds of racial resentment should be fought, so why not call it all racism so the enemy can be recognized?
Quoting Congau
These responses are a bit rabid. You keep labelling people in simplistic terms. If someone questions a definition they’re regarded as accessories to racism. This is really making me question the real intent of many posts.
Edit: a person can think what they like, it’s acting it out that’s the crime,
What do conservatives want? Usually for things to stay the same, in some broad sense. It's very difficult to get your run of the mill "conservative moderate" to actually have a clearly stated opinion on anything substantive. But they do do a few things:
(1) "I'm not pro-X, I'm anti-anti-X" - "I'm not for the continued subjugation and alienation from justice of POCs, I'm simply against what activists with those concerns are doing at the moment".
It's the same shit for every prejudice. "I'm not against black people getting the vote, I'm just against the actions the protesters are taking", "I'm not against women's suffrage, I'm just against their activists using extreme tactics", "I'm not for service providers being able to refuse service based on ethnicity/sexuality/gender, I'm just against forcing people to speak in a certain way", "I'm not for maintaining gender and racial equality in hiring practices, I'm just for employers having the right to do things as they see fit.". It's the same shit all the time.
Notice that the argument style never has to offer substantive content on the issues of the effected group. It's an effective way to gainsay any progressive point.
Also note that the argument can be applied universally to all anti-X (antiracist) political agitation while the argument's user can insist that there is some pure, imagined morally unambiguous form of anti-X action. "I just wish anti-X activists behaved in this imaginary way, then they would be vindicated". In discursive function it gainsays anti-X agitation universally, in logical structure its user need not fully commit to the idea so long as they have this ideal state of things in mind, "Yes I'm pro-X, but not like this... Not like this".
(2) "If you're for X, that makes you a stereotype associated with X"; "So you're supporting protesters' decisions to destroy property and loot, that makes you an anarchist/communist/fascist/authoritarian".
Notice that in a less inflammatory context, that would immediately be recognised as a hasty generalisation, and a deflection onto side issues; the IRL political opinion equivalent of thread derailing. Further notice that it's a terrible thought pattern for actually getting at the facts of things. It is tribalist thinking at its worst; "I put you in a box, so I don't have to listen to what you're saying about the substantive issues".
True, but this only acts as a bump along the road. We pounce on the Conservative's lack of substance by saying "well what would you do instead to improve the lot of the affected group"? They provide some supposed solution ([s]usually[/s] always the free market) and now we're into discussing the merits of each proposed solution. Which is where we should have started. So why the deflection? Because for the conservative, being anti-anti X is their only trick. Take that away and conservatism is just apathy.
This:
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/501583-majority-of-minneapolis-city-council-vows-to-disband-police-department
:sparkle:
Comrade Cotton knows whats up. American Imperialism does as much damage to the world as American police violence does to it's own people. The demolishing of both would be great.
Quoting Baden
So how does this work? Is it a steady decline in crime as the police force is slowly disbanded, or is it an overnight change. Does the police force go in one fell swoop or small steps?
Joy to the world, Bennet was fired
Yeah brilliant. Perhaps the uniforms will be a different colour. I'm sure Jeff Bezos is quaking in his boots. Perhaps next week we could have another set of country-wide riots and get them to change the logo too.
I was there when this happened, nice Mohican.
Anyone debating this is missing the point entirely. Pulling down a statue of someone associated with the the oppression of your community (or some community you feel solidarity for) is a visceral act, not a strategy. Is like a yell, or punching the wall. The only people who 'discuss' it are people who don't have that visceral reaction but are interested in making it look like they do.
Really? You think all this involves is changing the uniform colour? That's rather silly.
It was obviously rhetorical hyperbole. Has my prior posting history really given you justifiable reason to think I actually am that stupid such that you'd even need to ask?
You served the rhetoric, I returned it. Committing to disband an entire police force is a big step. It is exactly what was called for and eventually done nationwide in Northern Ireland where the RUC was replaced by the PSNI. And it worked. Maybe you're more cynical than me about these politicians' intentions. That's fine. But in principle, it's the type of thing that needs to be done. And what Bezos has to do with it is beyond me.
It takes and should take time. I don't know exactly how they'll do it but it did work in Northern Ireland and the situation is analagous in many, if not all, ways.
Mmmmm.
If the police force are disproportionately made up of racists, those with sub-concious bias, or even those whose mere appearance of bias exacerbates a problem then it a good part of the solution to disband. This was almost certainly the case with the RUC who arguably satisfied all three criteria insofar as they caused a perpetuation of sectarian violence.
None of those three criteria have been demonstrated to be the case insofar as they cause or exacerbate the racial disparity in Fatalities resulting from police activities. As far as the statistics seem to show, police fatal intervention against minorities seems to be aligned with the extent to which those minorities are likely to be involved in crime. Theres been no evidence presented (to my knowledge) that the racism of individual police officers is actually having a substantial influence on fatality rates.
The police force (like so many other institutions) is systemically racist because the consequences of its actions disproportionately affect minority groups, but this is to do with the status of minority groups in society, not some factors contained within the human element of the institution in question, so removing that element has little effect (or even no effect at all depending on what it is replaced with).
The status of minority groups in society is a a consequence of, and perpetuated by, those who have power and resources suppressing the collective power of those groups in order to maintain the artificial power of capital over collective action.
So if we want to tackle the problem, we need to remove the power and capital from those responsible (making a broad assumption that anyone who has power and capital is probably in that group).
Making this a single issue myth complete with heroes and uniformed (easy to identify) villains just makes it laughably easy for those who benefit from the disparity in power to set the real issues aside for another few years, install some paper cut-out version of a solution, and carry on reaping the reward. Hence Jeff Bezos.
I don’t if you’ve seen this. I put it up for anyone to read, including myself.
https://www.nipolicingboard.org.uk/sites/nipb/files/publications/research-on-experiences-of-new-psni-local-policing-model.PDF
It doesn't matter one tiny bit. People are dying, or being forced into slavery by the thousands as a direct result of decisions made by corporations to lower the prices on products. People are being forced into situations where they have little alternative to crime (and so meet the excessive, often fatal, violence of the police), just because they're not being paid enough by the same people.
Who gives a shit about a statue?... The people who'd rather post themselves on Facebook making some self-serving gesture than actually do what is in their power to undermine the economic problems causing such widespread and disproportionate suffering.
You're allowed to care about more than one thing you know. For example, if there were a statue of Nazi up in a neighbourhood with a lot of Jews in it and it got pulled down, why on earth would we criticize that?
I didn't criticise it. Pull them all down for all I care.
I'm criticising the scope such reification gives for people to ignore the real problem in favour of some Instagramable snapshot of a solution.
When I see people tearing down a statue of a notorious slaver and then refusing to buy any products from companies who benefitted from slavery, now or then, I'll be more content.
As it is, I see people turning up to tear the statue down in the very fucking clothing that's being made by actual slaves right now. Taking photos of it on phones whose minerals are mined by actual slaves, right now. Telling all their friends about it on social media platforms hosted by companies supporting actual slavery right now.
Right, I get that. But let's temper our expectations a little. I presume you have a phone like everyone else. That doesn't mean we should sit at home and do nothing about anything, does it?
It's really weird that I always get this kind of response when I mention these issues. You're quite happy to get people to fund and suffer the upheaval from changing the entire police force of a city but somehow you think changing phones is so hard you'd be making a reasonable guess presuming I hadn't done so. I have a Fairphone. They're not more expensive than the latest Apple. Before that I had a second hand phone. One can do the same with clothes, banking, energy, cultural activities, social media... If you'resstuck I'll provide a list.
Some cost more money (and so only available to few), but many don't even cost more, they just require giving up on a group identity (carefully crafted, of course, by the very people selling it).
Amazon were recently derided for near slavery treatment of their workforce. We could bring down Amazon tomorrow, just stop buying stuff from them. Target (to use a relevant example) have been shown to use modern slave labour in the manufacture of their clothes. Burning down the store just causes an inconvenient amount of insurance paperwork (not that I object to doing so anyway). Not buying any of their stuff, even for a few weeks, is crippling, and it's not even hard. Ethical suppliers do exist for almost all products.
All good ideas. Thanks. My only point was that for practical reasons most of us are going to be implicated in some way, whether it's our phones or whatever. But yes, there is a lack of awareness and/or will to take direct action of the sort you mention.
Wel Im glad to find someone discussing this here, because I have raised a problem with this proposal. This very much tracks what happened after Freddie Gray in Baltimore, 2015. There the police were told not to intervene in any events unless explicity asked by the victim. Within a week, the murder and assault rates tripled in all-black neighborhoods, staying at almost one a day for several years.
Thus this demand for removing police intervention, which was directly initiated by the 'Black Lives Matter' movement, killed several hundred black people, mostly by citizens of their own color. This is all statistical fact, but whenever I try sharing it on Facebook, now for two weeks, I immediately receive comments criticisms that I am a privileged white animal, followed by a series of requests to ban me from Facebook altogether. I've been banned three times now, so Ive started writing journalists directly about the problem. I used to get responses, but with the increased amount of puerile messages shooting around on Facebook, I am not sure how to elevate my concern above the noice level, especailly as I must concede, I am a white animal. Ive been told it enough times that by Rousseau's logic of truth by consensus it can only be true. Even so, even animals might be of occasional benefit to other people in some ways, and I was hoping to save some black lives here.
Have you any suggestions?
My point was more that the lack of will/awareness is not isolated from the focus on the police, the statues, the latest celebrity advocate... It is directly linked.
The reason why there is a lack of awareness is because it is not talked about, the talking points are taken up with mythological villains deliberately to occupy the narrative space so that actual solutions never get discussed. Changing buying habits (particularly moving towards lower consumptions) harms the very people who benefit from systemic racism. Pulling down a few statues or changing the make-up of the police force doesn't. It's not a coincidence. It's a deliberate attempt to dominate the narrative with something amenable to consumer culture.
The reason why there is a lack of will is because our social structures are still set up to reward indicators of group membership klike having the right phone, being on the right social media platform) and again, it's not coincidence that these very narratives are being filled with identification tokens which are conveniently of no harm to capitalists.
I don't think it's sufficient to simply acknowledge that these issues exist alongside. They'll never be talked about until there's space in the narrative for them.
I quite like tearing down statues. Let's not pretend that statues are a neutral form of speech; they're not part of a scientific discourse, they're literal historical monuments.
So what do historical monuments do? I see two functions; firstly and less importantly they are soft historical reminders - little more than an injunction to wonder, maybe someone sees a statue and finds out a bit about the past through the autobiographical detail of who the statue is of.
That past is always written though, it's always been alloy of old stories tempered with current spin therefore it's an alloy of old spin too. So the second function; they are ideological symbols; the cast body of the person stands in for the spinned old stories they're involved with; they're metonyms. But what fucker had enough power to tell stories speaking in statues and plinths? Statues are a history shaping discourse almost invariably told by the interests of the powerful. There's a statue outside Westminster Abbey of William Wilberforce; who in our popular historical myth "ended slavery".
But no statue of Thomas Clarkson; he's a literal footnote, commemorated with a small tablet in the same place in 1996; who was more instrumental in organising the British public against slavery. And even then; it's certainly not an admission of guilt in statue form that the government absolutely loved slavery and indentured servitude until the public was agitated against it, the colonies were revolting and they could sell huge "reparation" payments to the gentry for the resources they were losing (which only ended in 2015). Of all the things they could've commemorated, they choose the guy who the parliament hated until it was convenient to turn him into a symbol of their benevolence, and teach UK kids that it was the fucking parliament that ended slavery, not the slaves, not even the people. (anger not directed at you, anger directed at the UK)
Tearing down a metonym is a way of fighting the injustice in how history's shaped. Destroying shrines to unjust nation-myths is good; but it doesn't suffice.
I lived next to a poor all-black neighborhood for 10 years. While I was there, the city built a new good bank, organized two enormous concerts in the local park, upgraded the sports fields to the best in the city, built the city's only skate park, added a waterpark with spray fountains for children, started two community gardening projects, sponsored artists to spray graffiti art all over the place, installed a new perfectly paved courtyard for a weekly farmers market, free bicycles for anyone who wanted them at stations all over the area, and paid for 20 acres of new low-income housing. Other neighborhoods in the city have been totally neglected, due to escalating and increasingly violent complaints about mistreatement from Oak Park for at least five years.
Within two weeks of the new children's park opening, complete with brand new shiny slides and adventure climbing frames and everything, the drug pushers had moved in and chased all the mothers away who werent buying drugs from them. And I could say much more about it, but Ill stop there.
Frankly, no district I know of anywhere in Northern California has ever received so much fiscal investment, not even the richest districts of silicon valley, since I moved here in 1988.
I get very tired of hearing these lame complaints about 'reward indicators of group membership' and other such crap. Sorry.
That was a rhetorical question. I’m sure is against private individuals who dislike people because of their skin color, and I’m sure he would want to change their attitude. That’s why wonder why he insists on that narrow definition. For him only systemic racism is racism.
Of course you can define any word the way you want, but when you choose a definition that goes against the common understanding of the word, you must have a particular purpose. Most people would call it an act of racism if someone spat a person in the face or burned down that person’s house because of resentment of skin color, even if the incidents were individual and not connected to any social system.
Words that are in common use only mean what people take them to mean. So what is the purpose of giving this particular word a more narrow definition contrary to the common perception. Certainly it can’t be to condone certain hideous racially motivated acts by not calling it racism, so why then?
I suspect some feel that since the problem is highly complex the term signifying it can’t be simple. A fancy definition somehow seems to be needed. But no, racism is a very complicated phenomenon, but the definition can still be simple.
Ernestm, I gave one response to another thread, but seems that thread is nowhere to be found. As the subject is quite close to this, I'll respond here. (Sorry to hear about your rough time and of the typical tone deaf response you get. Guess you haven't lived in the nicest neighborhoods.)
Why is this so difficult?
"The race issue", "systematic racism" and the discourse around the subject usually doesn't go anywhere in the US as the whole discourse falls into a repeating circle where basically nothing will improve. I should add this isn't something just limited to the US, this is a more of a general phenomenon of how societies are unable to approach the problems they have. The public debate follows a vicious circle that leaves basically people on opposing sides. Many think the problems are inherently about people themselves, not factors like poverty or that the society is broken. Many of those who oppose racism still think that that it is all because of some group of people that are racists that all the problems exist. So they are looking for certain culprits, not looking at how complex the issues actually are.
A big problem is when the discourse turns into a pseudo-religious sermon: that there's a correct way to talk about the problem in the society and there's the correct response to be given, just like when the priest says something and the congregation answers. The event isn't meant to be a discussion. Anything other and you are defined to be a bad person. There's no genuine effort to improve things as in the end the debate just falls into the category that people want to blame someone. What I'm basically trying to say that we fall in the end usually to the traditional left-right juxtaposition or a similar divide and fume in our hatred of the stupidity of the other side without any will to listen.
Hence if you tell about incidents with people belonging to group X, people will at first think your a bigot or a bad person (etc.) as some racist/xenophobic populist is telling how bad group X is. That you don't share at all the view of the populist that group X are inherently inferior to others doesn't matter, people just notice that you are speaking about same kind of incidents.
If you live in a "rough neighborhood" with poverty, poor economy and social problems with presence of gangs, these issues what happened to you can happen totally without the American racial factor. You will also get similar hostility when telling about your reality, I can assure you that. You will get similar responses. Of course people can deny this and say that the skin color issue is totally different from everything else, which means that they aren't seeing the larger underlying structure of the problem.
It should be obvious that this isn't just confined to race. Don't think the the division, distrust and hate wouldn't be there even without race being a factor as being white doesn't create social cohesion itself. Humans can be always look with suspicion and hatred at others, be it the nationality, ethnicity, religion or simply class. You don't need skin color for that. Especially ludicrous in Europe is this idea of "Caucasian" meaning something. Looking at history you can easily see just how evil people can be to each other. Just look at North Ireland, the Balkans etc. Poverty, problems in the distribution of wealth and other social problems or unresolved historical tensions are the real underlying factors.
I admit that the exploitation fostered by capitalism is abhorrent and may be harder to rectify. Because the affluence we enjoy as a result of it is difficult to give up, or we are terrified of social and economic collapse, loosing our fortunes, descending into poverty and depravity etc etc. Which may result from making systemic change. What is more likely is that catastrophic events will make such change.
Firstly, I love a good statue toppling as much as the next anarcho-syndicalist, so I agree with much of what you say, but I have a few caveats, mostly related to the modern age and so if they seem a bit fusty then feel update me.
Quoting fdrake
Absolutely, I hope I was clear enough in my initial comment, but if not I'll reiterate it here - any statue representing an oppressing institution in the very community oppressed by it (or one expressing solidarity with them) deserves everything it gets. Putting one up is offensive and failing to take one down is at best wilfully ignorant of that offense, at worst just as offensive.
But...
Quoting fdrake
It's this second function that concerns me. If a statue can act as a symbol in its erection, then it can no less act as a symbol in its toppling. A statue of Wilberforce says "We [parliament] dismantled slavery". The problem is that if they can perform this function in their erection, they can do so in their toppling. Its erection says Parliament destroyed slavery - when in actual fact there are more slaves now than there have ever been. So the very same trick is committed in tearing it down. People haven't decided they're not going to tolerate slavery anymore, they tolerate it daily by their very purchases, but by tearing a statue down they get to re-write the narrative in exactly the same way that putting it up did. "We [the protestors] dismantled slavery, we must have done, look at the lack of symbol"
In the past I don't think there would have been enough of a temptation to re-write the narrative in real time (it's all very well denying history, but denying the present is a lot harder). But in the modern age, dictating reality through filtered social media images has become not only easy but the standard. I think this changes the way these symbolic actions are used, hence the hypocrisy we see.
Interesting. Many years ago I was struggling with why black Dutchmen were advocating against Zwarte Piet so vocally.
We just had a surge in right wing parties being popular and I was like, "hello, aren't there bigger issues to deal with here?"
So I think symbols are also rallying points. Destroying a racist symbol can in fact be motivating, first in the accomplishment of the goal in itself - see, we can make a difference and second, due to symbols being understood in more ways than the abstract policy, debate or speech. So more people will get it as they don't reach the insight through rational deliberation but through feeling.
I suggest you stop talking about how victimized you are because I don't believe your stories. As for the graph, if you go about reforming the police, it has to be done in the right way. You don't leave a vacuum there or criminals will take advantage of it. On the other hand, if the police do not have the trust of the communities they are supposed to protect and serve, there will be so little cooperation that, again, criminality will prosper. The idea of creating an acceptable police force is so they can be an effective police force.
Sick. Barbarism premised on presentism. It’s Year Zero nonsense. A culture that will not defend its past is unlikely to defend its future.
Who said this?
And people around him were aware:
[quote=Leo Amery]On the subject of India, Winston is not quite sane... I didn't see much difference between his outlook and Hitler's[/quote]
It's not so black and white in this case. The "crime against humanity" convictions for the Germans were based on: Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.
If you look up "Bengal famine" then by that definition Churchill committed a crime against humanity by standards they were only too happy to retroactively apply on the Germans in 1945.
Judging Churchill by the standards of some woke, effete, privileged college kids from London doesn't make any sense to me.
I don't think one opinion of Churchill is sufficient either.
It wasn’t much of a question.
You are applying present-day attitudes to a historical figure and have furnished one quote in order to pretend that was the general attitude of 1945.
[quote A culture that will not defend its past is unlikely to defend its future.[/quote]Vacuous twaddle. Perhaps it's time for Britain to invade Europe, it would be the British thing to do. The bulldog spirit and all that, what what.
I don't really see any evidence of that. The gap between rich and poor is larger than it's ever been, there's more people in modern slavery than there's ever been and both issues affect minority groups disproportionately. If we had a large sector of the population who were 'on message' then these things would be at least better than they were, but they're not.
The young buy more mobile technology than ever despite the fact that Apple, Microsoft, Samsung and Google have all been implicated in the exploitation of Congolese children in the extraction of cobalt for their phones.
The young still flock to cheap clothes shops like H&M, Primark, or Gap, all of whom have been shown to exploit child labour laws in developing countries.
Nike are as popular as ever despite a long history of exploitation.
Premier League Football clubs have been called out by the Select Committee as being woefully clandestine about their legal requirements to produce a modern slavery statement despite being identified as a high risk group, but Football is as popular as ever.
People still look around for the cheapest mortgage, the best loan, the best credit card without a second thought to the industries those banks are investing in.
These activities are not primarily the older generation, they're primarily the young. If they really are aware and care about things like equality and ending oppression why aren't they taking these very simple steps to bring about and end to these practices?
The cobalt issue alone is suggested to affect 35,000 children as young as six, and could be solved in one simple move - don't buy Apple, Microsoft, Google or Samsung phones. Instead it's been tackled in a painfully slow way by legal suits and the tireless work of charities like Amnesty over several years while kids take photos of themselves 'fighting racism' on the same fucking phones made (in part) by 6 year old Congolese kids paid less than 50 cents a day.
A mob defacing statues is not the sign of a debate but of the perverted and illiberal use of violence and force to assert political expression.
Oh, I didn't know that threads could be put into the Lounge and then not be shown at first page.
Quoting ernestm
Is somebody here saying that to you?
(Besides, this is just the typical way how to shut people: "You cannot say anything because you are X and you aren't Y, so you cannot know how it is". Wonderful way to stop interaction, btw.)
I just hope this time it wouldn't go with the same old lines as before: a new generation thinks it's on a cusp of change, but then again, as this time it's different, nobody looks just why things didn't change the last time.
This is all very possible, but it being theoretically possible is not the same as it actually happening in reality. I won't repeat what I've just written to Punshhh above, but the summary is I just don't think it's happening in any meaningful way. It's all symbol and no substance.
I don't doubt progress has been made, and will continue to be made, but there's absolutely no need for it to be made at this snail's pace, years of legal battles to get one bit of hard won legislation, years of pinning down the inevitable non-compliance, more years of political wrangling to appease those who lost out... Every single one of these inequalities is perpetrated by some company selling some product or service and every purchase legitimises their practices.
Indeed. Yet toppling statues don't change or topple usually the institutions that put them up.
Recently the Shaw Memorial in Boston was defaced in the BLM protests. The Shaw Memorial was the first civic monument to pay homage to the heroism of black soldiers during the civil war. They also vandalized a Gandhi statue in Washington. These aren't newly liberated peoples striking back at their former dictators; these are mobs as entitled and certain as they are stupid.
Every time some issue gets popular support, it usually comes as a total surprise for the career activists. Yet the otherwise passive majority can come together and be active and surprise everybody. Unfortunately the extremists always try to snatch the control or the limelight of the movement to themselves and think everybody is on their side. And this typically undermines the consensus of majority and the mass movement dies out.
The professional activists, who don't have to be the extremists at all (I should add) usually are so high on their success that they aren't humble enough and understand that only for a fleeing moment the people can show unity. The improvements, if they happen, can look small and the World doesn't change (huge dissappointment for the activists), but historically the changes can be important.
And to what you said above, people know what vandalism is.
I dont know, because these days, I dont bother reading anything after the first insult, so there's a couple of dozen posts on me now I haven't read in the last week here. I used to read them all. but it just got so repetitive, 'you are a stupid white animal, kneel before me and acknowledge my superiority while I angrily scold you with the chastisements you deserve, blah blah blah.'
I usually get to the first sentence and have a horrid vision of them peeing on their dog when they were two years old and hearing the same thing from their parents. Therapists charge alot of money to listen to that kind of thing.
Well, the objective is to dominate the issue by stopping the discussion. Here I don't think so.
On a Philosophy forum people read what you write for longer than a sentence before making up their mind just what you had to say. Yeah, not allways :roll: but at least usually they will admit it directly if they do so.
Let's hope that such scapegoating is recognised for what it is.
Also this kind of notification to the forces from the top echelon of the US armed forces is quite rare. (And note that it has been unclassified too). General Milley is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest ranking general in the armed forces:
Rarely the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has to say that the armed forces upholds the Constitution.
Trump (or someone) did finally get the message. Trump tries to paint things the typical way as he does...
In my opinion, we were very close to a formal coup, but Trump backed down.
This was certainly not inevitable, in terms of how "crazy" Trump would go as well as the US military reaction.
The US is reaping the dividends of having a history of "okish" democratic legitimacy most of the time (what is new with Trump and contemporary Republicans is that they are clearly fully intent in entrenching minority rule -- through the SCOTUS and their legal corruption and gerrymandering rulings, as well as the senate and presidency -- rather than minority rule being a temporary democratic weakness that plausibly self corrects and is credibly "checked and balances" meanwhile). So this is heartening to see, as there wasn't much way of being certain about military reaction at the start of the crisis.
Obviously Trump's "show of force" in the church was a communication mistake, as well as his "domination remark". Likewise, the general who talked about the "the battle space" was a mistake (either from Trump's perspective or then his own perspective, assuming that's what he wanted too).
Both these things not only helped lose the wider media battle over the political interpretation of looting, but were "hooks" to allow other elements of the military to declare that they do not view the American people as enemies and that's not what America is about. Extremely laudable.
I agree that retired generals primarily carried this message to avoid a formally "rogue" military.
Quoting ssu
Possibly unprecedented, would be interesting to know if there are any parallels.
Whatever the case, it was clearly Trump's desire to "dominate the streets" and be able to send in the military to do that, and it's not just retired generals with "vague insinuations", message has been pretty clear even from currently serving generals, so we do have essentially open defiance. This was the big question for me; a few individuals at the top of a command structure can make things go in radically different ways depending on their level of defiance or cooperation, and even enthusiasm.
The communication battle over "police brutality is bad sure, but what we really need is to put down these riots" seems to have ended in favour of "police brutality is still the problem, not the rioters". Demonstrating more police brutality against protesters of police brutality, and shooting members of the media, obviously didn't help the argument.
So, it seems to me the situation has returned back to the political sphere. The military nature of the issue has been deescalated, for now.
Of course, we can't exclude some new "chaotic emergency" even greater than the riots happening, but, the political problems being so deep in anycase, I think worthwhile to discuss further what a political solution could look like in the current context. So I will update my analysis in my next post.
In the meanwhile,
[quote=CNN;https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/09/us/disband-police-camden-new-jersey-trnd/index.html]
It's not the first locale to break up a department, but no cities as populous have ever attempted it. Minneapolis city council members haven't specified what or who will replace it if the department disbands.
Camden, New Jersey, may be the closest thing to a case study they can get.
The city, home to a population about 17% of Minneapolis' size, dissolved its police department in 2012 and replaced it with an entirely new one after corruption rendered the existing agency unfixable.
Before its police reforms, Camden was routinely named one of the most violent cities in the US. Now, seven years after the old department was booted, the city's crime has dropped by close to half. Officers host outdoor parties for residents and knock on doors to introduce themselves. It's a radically different Camden than it was even a decade ago. Here's how they did it.[/quote]
Is an interesting read.
Quoting New York Times
Homicide - 61.6% (probably closer to 50% due to under-reporting)
Rape - 34.5% (probably way way less)
Robbery - 29.7%
Aggravated Assault - 53.3%
Burglary - 13.5%
Larceny Theft - 19.2%
Motor Vehicle Theft - 13.7%
(source or more specifically)
Most of those rates barely scrape a passing mark - if they pass at all. Coupled with the financial oxygen that police departments are soaking up at the expense of the rest of social policy? Those are criminal numbers.
According to the Dept of Justice Statistics Division, the number of known crimes fell from >4.5 million in 1990 to <3 million last year.
That means, over the last decade, there are well over 10 million frustrated would-be criminals, because if anything, the desire to be criminal, and public support of criminals, has risen substantially, as evidenced by a series of riots and the public response since the 2012 riots, for which Los Angeles last year awarded art prizes to those making faceless depictions of the vigilante heroes killed by the police, while stores were being robbed under their armed protection.
Also, frequently criticized is the number of people in prison in the USA, which is higher than any country for the last century, including the USSR. People frequently criticize that too, without mentioning that the crime rate has fallen in direct inverse ratio. As the crime rate did fall in direct inverse ratio, reducing arrests will logically increase crime.
Wow, this is so bad. Do you know how many knights there were in Europe around 1100? About 600k or so. Do you know how many knighted individuals exist today? Probably a couple of hundred. Do you think there are now 599k frustrated would-be knights?
You went to Oxford? Fucking bullshit. Like, on a day trip?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead–crime_hypothesis
Oh look the peak of the delayed reaction was in 1990...
I have not used any ad hominem attacks on you. I have presented facts as they are for the last two decades and made reasoned deductions. You are welcome to provide your own estimate of how many would-be criminals police actions have stopped. As I also pointed out, the murder rate in Baltimore tripled to >300/year for the two years for which statistics are so far available after the Freddie Gray riots caused the police not to respond to crimes unless directly asked by a victim. This all substantiates what I have to say, and all you are doing is calling it bullshit and now insulting my education. That does not speak very well for your position either.
Percentages of police unsolved crimes is not a symptom of poor police performance because I say so.
Thats what you said to me.
Violent crime worldwide has been dropping since about 1990 because childhood blood lead concentration has been dropping because atmospheric lead has been dropping because leaded gasoline has been phased out since the early 70s. There’s a 20-year delay because those lead-poisoned kids have to grow up first before they can be counted in crime statistics.
...
That tells no one anything about what you (allegedly) did. What whoever modeled this actually did in the forecasted years is exactly as @StreetlightX accused you of.
Even though you've previously posted a graph that shows crime trends nonlinearly with time.
Enough, man.
I could spend time educating you on R^2 and forecasting, but I won't. Suffice to say; a high R^2 in an strictly linear OLS model doesn't tell you anything about whether you've correctly modeled the data generating process even in most lab settings, nevermind when you've already got good information that the process is strongly nonlinear in time.
You'll notice that within the 3 years of the crime graph you've posted, the nonlinear components of the data generating process dominate the observed trend. You then assumed a strictly linear data generating process for 4 years in a similar setting for the purposes of forecasting; which is even more problematic.
You do not know what you are talking about.
Share some graphs of crime rates in other places please, I can only find US data.
In California, San Jose rejects refunding in favor of ongoing reform bills in Congress, which is not surprising, because, the Speaker of the House is from San Jose.
Los Angeles has made a big deal of diverting $100~$150 million from the police to public welfare programs, instead of increasing the police budget by $735 million as previously planned. San Francisco has named similar intentions, but not stated specific results.
Minneapolis is reported to plan complete defunding of the police force and to be using the same model as the CAHOOTS program in Eugene, so I actually looked it up, and the CAHOOTS people specifically say they will not handle any criminal cases.
So if someone is in criminal danger, according to every fact we know now, Minneapolis plans to do nothing at all.
When Baltimore instructed the police only to respond to direct distress calls from victims, the murder and assault rates both tripled. I havent looked up Minneapolis' assault numbers, but I do know the murder numbers.
According to its homicide reports, it would be fair to say about 500 people will be murdered who the police would otherwise have stopped being murdered, of whom, about 350 will be black.
The point of all of this is that there is already a well-known explanation for violent crime dropping (in principle anywhere, but definitely in the US) since 1990, one independent of anything to do with police or guns. That is a counterpoint to your claim that it went down in that time period because of increased police in that period.
You claimed that is hasn’t gone down elsewhere. (Which it should, if it is all about atmosphere lead). I can’t find any data on trends over time elsewhere. You presumably have some, if you’re making a claim about it. I’d just like to see it.
[i]"Crime rates in the U.S. have fallen by about half since the early 1990s. A new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that legalized abortion following the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 accounts for 45% of the decline in crime rates over the past three decades.
The paper’s authors, Stanford University economist John Donohue and University of Chicago economist Steve Levitt, take new data and run nearly the same model they used in their influential — and controversial — 2001 analysis published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, where they first suggested an association between abortion and crime."[/i]
:rofl:
My actual point, before I started responding to your delusions, and which has been totally ignored, is that ~500 people on Minneapolis are likely to be murdered, who would not otherwise have been murdered due to closing down the police. That was based on prior evidence when the murder rate tripled in Baltimore, and that tripling of murder rate, was after the police were only told not to stop crime unless explicitly asked by a victim. Minneapolis is planning to do no more than send a counselor and medical evacuation team, and that, so far as currently stated, only to events that are not known to be criminal.
That means at least 350 black people will die because of what 'black lives matter' wants in the next two years.
What i said was, in my first post on the topic, when I try to raise concern about black people being killed, I am ridiculed as an over-privileged white animal with a useless education from Oxford, instead of anyone being concerned about black people dying at all.
And all of you have proven my point. Thank you very much.
As 'Black Lives Matter' has also threatened to flatten the country if even one more event is deemed unforgivable by them, it is rather uncontroversial now that it may have started with good intentions, but now is a national terrorist organization, and just like terrorist organizations do, it is exploiting naivety and ignorance as a recuitment tool, deliberately ignoring facts that are contrary to its mission, while insisting on the rules it wants, and disregarding the actual death and suffering it is causing.
And as its proponents have done nothing but ridicule the fate of those who will be murdered without police intervention, that its motives and yours have nothing to do with saving black lives, and you merely seek political power and furtherment of your own agenda, without any real concern for negative consequences at all.
Distracted by low hanging rotted fruit.
Ah, I see, well at least the cherry picking, flawed reasoning, unjustified speculations and invented stories of persecution had a purpose. Maybe we can get back on topic now.
Ok, thanks.
You shouldn't. You should probably take a break. Buy a new cat. Relax.
There is one parallel I remember. During the height of "War on Terror" when a lot of troops were fighting the war both in Iraq and in Afghanistan and at the fulcrum of the neocon power, there was an outcry from old dinosaur politicians and retired generals not to invade Iran and that the White House was planning to invade also Iran and this would be absolutely devastating. Only the talented Seymour Hersh reported then of rift between White House and CENTCOM. Later the CENTCOM commander did abruptly retire later, so Hersh might been on to something. Bush didn't invade Iran. (And let's remember: The US only attacked Iranian personnel under Trump. And when Iran responded, a huge effort was made to declare that no US personnel had been killed...and to stop the escalation.)
But I think it is clear that the armed forces does voice it's concerns and disagreement through old retired generals who otherwise aren't giving their opinions to the public.
A politricksters' "Police Fix"? (w.t.f.) C'mon, sheeple.
Only two (4 & 7) make my list. :meh:
In Latin America you have the out of control violence where the murder rates have gone way up. Honduras is a prime example. It has dealt with a huge political crisis and basically the state is losing it's ability to function. One outcome has been that people from these countries do seek shelter in the US. If I've said that Mexico is far worse than the US, then some Central American countries are even worse than Mexico.
And interestingly, there's an exception in Central America with homicide rates far lower than with the countries above: Costa Rica.
Their solution? For starters, Costa Rica doesn't have a military... :smirk:
Back to the US, a good question is what New York has done correct and where Chicago has failed?
The reason I ask is because every police department is different. If you ask me whether or not a rural police department in Montana with a population of 5,000 needs 30 police officers, a couple dozen automatic submachine guns, and armored personnel carriers, my answer is going to be no. Defund them.
If you ask me the same question about Oakland Police Department — and certain larger cities like Oakland (there are numerous) — the answer is going to be different. On paper, we have around 750 sworn police officers. Of those 750 officers, about 600 (at best) are patrol officers. If we bear in mind that only about a quarter to a third of those officers are on duty at a given time, that means there is only one police officer available for every 2,175 to 2,900 people.
Why is this a problem? Because when an officer goes off duty at the end of their shift, there are still a lot of calls for service that remain unanswered. They pile up in large numbers, and they pile up quick. Often times officers aren’t even able to answer calls that aren’t non-violent in nature because they simply do not have the manpower to do so. California Highway Patrol actually had to come in to help us with patrol functions because we were so inundated with calls. Even that wasn’t sufficient.
We are short-handed in the technician department as well, so sometimes patrol officers have to take their own pictures of a crime scene as well as play the role of a detective during the preliminary phase of an investigation (because we are short on those too). We have rape kits piled up from years past, because we don’t have enough techs to process them. This means a rape victim sometimes has to wait years to see “justice” finally realized.
Our emergency response team (SWAT) is bare bones. We have to get help from the county sheriff’s emergency response team in many situations because we simply don’t have enough people.
As I mentioned in another thread, we have one helicopter and two pilots for a city of 435,000 people. This means when the pilots aren’t available, normal patrol officers are expected to pilot the chopper.
That last one was a joke. But you can see what I’m getting at. The sheer volume of work involved can be overwhelming at times. I remember working 64-hour weeks doing mandatory overtime. That’s not healthy. That’s why eventually I made a choice between my job and my health, and I chose the latter. You can see how qualified candidates will leave their job or lateral to other police departments because of the underfunding situation.
That’s why my question is, where exactly do we cut funding? Cutting police salaries seems intuitive but it destroys an already dwindling level of morale in addition to encouraging lateral movement even more (no qualified candidate is going to do this job for less than 30 some odd bucks per hour — at least not for long). Many officers are already dissatisfied and look at these departments as a way to earn their stripes on the street just so they can later transfer to a police department in a safer city where they are treated better. Overtime salaries for many police officers can be bloated to be sure, but to cut down on these massive amounts of overtime, that would again require more officers.
I think each department needs to be looked at on a case-by-case basis, because one-size fits all solutions are rarely workable on such a grand scale.
In any case, I think there’s other places we can cut funding to in order to free up money for domestic infrastructure. How about cutting down on our military expenditure? The United States spent 732 billion dollars on its military last year, which is more than 2.8 times the amount of the next biggest spender, China (261 billion dollars). The US Navy has 11 modern aircraft carriers, while the country with the second most carriers has only two (and they are technologically outdated at that). I can go on...
One of the things involved in defunding/refunding (I going to couple the two from now on: defunding police and refunding other public services), from what I understand, is a concomitant need to scale down the scope of a cops job. That is, to lessen to workload by offloading much of it to other, perhaps more qualified resources - which would also mean allowing cops to focus on things like investigative work or even more training for actual threats. There's a piece doing the rounds, ostensibly written by a former police officer, and one of the points I think was incredibly striking was this:
(from here).
So a defund/refund call is more than just taking away money. It's about transforming the scope of what a cop should be doing, making the policing role more specialized and less sweeping, and then putting that money into alternate sources which would tackle crime at their source, rather than being reactive about it.
Also, what you said about defunding the US military is exactly on point too. If some of the city budgets for police are obscene, the share of military funding for the US national budget in general is even more so:
You may have already seen it (it might even have been linked already), but the MPD150 report provides an outline of what defunding means in terms of the effect on police departments and the replacement services they think will serve the community better. It covers a remarkably similar range of issues about the range of services police are required to attend (without proper training) to the ones you raise. It also gives a very good overview of the alternatives.
Of course, Minneapolis have only promised to defund the police as things stand, so the well-thought out recommendations of MPD150 and the the political reality of what happens to the left-over money, where the cuts are actually made etc remains to be seen.
I assume these questions are just addressed to white members of the forum? Or would you like black members to answer as well?
I have no way of knowing. But you’re right, it may mean something far different to blacks. And yet I don’t see that many blacks doing it. I’m aware of its beginnings, I assume with black football players, but in general it’s been whites who have been covered by the media.
No it’s not a rant. I want to look at the idea of symbolic acts and what they mean and what they achieve. This is a quote from Wikipedia;
Kaepernick and his 49ers teammate Eric Reid said they choose to kneel during the anthem to call attention to the issues of racial inequality and police brutality. "After hours of careful consideration, and even a visit from Nate Boyer, a retired Green Beret and former NFL player, we came to the conclusion that we should kneel, rather than sit, ... during the anthem, as a peaceful protest," said Reid. "We chose to kneel because it's a respectful gesture. I remember thinking our posture was like a flag flown at half-mast to mark a tragedy." Wikipedia.
They chose it as a respectful gesture. Traditionally one goes down on a knee as an act of respect to a leader. A. very old practise but that’s it’s origins I’m guessing. So it’s actually an act of serving. Even Kaepernick saw it as a respectful act, but I’m not sure if he meant towards the anthem, which is the country itself or those affected by racism. But in effect it was a piece of drama, which I don’t condemn. He chose a time and place to do it. It had power because of who he was, an individual alone making a stand. It’s the act of the individual. That’s where it’s power comes from.
But whites taking a knee as an organised act seems to be a little shallow. I can see that it’s an act of sympathy or solidarity, but it’s only an act. After that, what?
In a way Kaepernick put himself at the mercy of the crowd, he made himself vulnerable. That’s an action, not mere gesture. Does that seem to you to be totally different than whites going down on a knee?
What does it mean to stand for the national anthem? One stands to attention to show that one is attending to the meaning of the symbolic song, and stands ready to serve the nation.
So one breaks that tradition as a black man by kneeling, to show that one is not on an equal footing, but shows a subservient service. In this way it shows respect but also inequality. The appropriate white gesture is to stand next to the kneeling black man, awarding him the truth and honour of his inequality, and when the anthem ends, to offer him a hand up.
Respect.
Quoting unenlightened
Yes I absolutely get that. And to stand next to him, but not imitate him. When Democrats go down on at knee in the Capital then you know the gesture has been stolen.
We both know it's also "just a statue"; toppling it doesn't change any policies by itself. How I'm seeing those acts of symbolic destruction in the UK is:
(1) There's hardly any public discourse regarding systemic discrimination in the UK.
(2) Only really the Guardian regularly reports on it. The majority of the UK "news"papers are racist-xenophobic ideological state apparatuses regarding issues like this.
(3) School teaching of British colonial history either doesn't happen, or is extremely favourable to empire.
(4) A symbolic act against the UK's central role in colonialism and its perpetual whitewashing of history maybe prefigures discourse to be more amenable to reasserting the "lost history of the colonised" and challenging the glorification of empire.
(5) I realize by this point it's a slippery slope - but (4) at least acknowledges the problem and makes space for seeing current colonialism and acting against it.
If we care about the rightward shift of the Overton window, we should care about things that shift it left too.
Quoting unenlightened
Who do you mean by this? Those who are outraged at Kaepernick’s actions or those who conceal their guilty conscience by being too fervent in their protests?
Kaepernick was attempting a respectful, peaceful protest. Ya know...the kind many American conservatives say people ought to do rather than engage in protest marches that block traffic and sometimes devolve into riots.
He pretty much got fired and blacklisted as a result.
People calling for "peaceful protests" are really just saying, "Stop protesting and accept the crap we are throwing your way."
Just so it’s clear, I have no criticisms of Koepernick.
The former. I don't know enough to tell a genuine white supporter from a fake one.
But even a completely accurate picture of Britain's colonial past will be nothing more than a weak gesture if we're carrying on with exactly the same practices without so much as bad word said about it, right? So the whole argument hinges on (4). That's not a critique on its own, so much as checking we're on the same page.
It's not the slaver's statutes that need to come down first, it's Nike's display at SportsDirect, it's Apple's storefront, it's Gap's billboards... Why aren't these the targets? We should worry about correcting historical inaccuracies about slavery when the 40 million modern slaves have been freed. The current problem is obviously vastly more important.
So why do you think we need to take this circuitous route? Why not just attack modern colonialism head on. Why 'open up a space for dialogue about it' using some sideling, proxy gesture and not just have the conversation at Nike's front door where it belongs? The actual kids actually dying right now are actually dying because of Nike's actual supply chain decisions. Why the dance? They're only trainers, we're not talking about doing without bread.
So, the problem I see with "momentum here leads to progress there" types of argument is they leave a massive sociological question unanswered. Why here and not there? Why this problem and not that one?
If the answer is just chance - whatever spark happens to ignite - then we're fine, your theory probably works and we just have to wait for the sympathetic discourse to have its effect. But if the answer were chance, one would have to explain the otherwise significant way in which the popular movements focus on first world problems caused by authority or historic agents, and third world problems caused by our own insatiable need for stuff don't ever seem to be where the spark lands.
If there's a reason for this disparity, and I obviously think there is, then it is not just a matter of time, not just a matter piggybacking off related movements. Some substantial cause of the problem is not being dealt with.
And I'm not going shy away from the risk of being belittling. The problems we're talking about that are not being addressed are orders of magnitude bigger than the ones people are actually protesting about. Ten thousand times more women are abused because of abject poverty than were protected by the 'global' metoo movement. Ten thousand times more minorities are killed by unhealthy working conditions in our supply chains than will be saved by defunding the MPD. So if there is some sociological barrier, some reason why it's never these issues that gain such enthusiastic momentum, it really matters and I think it's not right, given the gravity, to just hope it crops up as a result of these related issues in the face of good historical evidence to suggest it really won't.
Quoting Judaka
I don't understand at all. You say that my narrative is harmful, but when asked to give examples of harm it's causing, you say that how I articulate myself is irrelevant. Can't have it both ways.
MERGE STARTS HERE:
Quoting Nuke
RESPOND TO THAT QUOTE WITH [hide]@nuke[/hide]
The hashtags, kneeling and placard-waving protests are the bona fides. They are the means with which to signal ones conformity. Beyond that I do not think they serve any function. People were repeating the hashtag #defundthepolice, for instance, before they even understood what it entailed. When a protester asked the mayor of Minneapolis if he would “defund the police”, he tried to confirm if that meant abolishing the police. Upon finding out that #defundthepolice in fact meant abolish the police, he said he disagreed and was booed out of the area.
These expressions resemble the “duckspeak” of Orwell‘s 1984: “pure orthodoxy, pure Ingsoc”. “It was not the man's brain that was speaking, it was his larynx. The stuff that was coming out of him consisted of words, but it was not speech in the true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness, like the quacking of a duck”.
. (Essay One)
(Essay Two)
If you want to move the Overton window any way or to do something to correct social injustices or problems, I think the way isn't to go full forward to a situation where idiotic culture wars discourse prevails. This is the way how to lose focus, how start eroding that consensus that would exist in condemning excessive use of force. To Put this in a different way, in order to erode the consensus of outrage and keep the status quo, anything that will divide people to the old lines we've seen will do the trick.
So is the best way to attack and vandalize a statue of Churchill in the UK? The talk shows will get the usual annoying people to bicker about the issue without any agreement. You know the lines.
Or how about those racist WW1 veterans:
Or I don't know, attack perhaps racist Mahatma Gandhi? Both in Washington DC and in London the racist got what he obviously deserves:
What should be done is to avoid the old patterns and the usual pitfalls. Basically keep things simple, have a simply reasonable goal and not think we are on a cusp of the World changing totally. Or then this is forgotten just like the Occupy Movement.
Tell me whether police reform is more likely now or before the uprising. The problems aren't just discursive. To the extent you believe the countries these huge protests are in are democratic, you should believe that sufficiently large merely "symbolic protest"s will have some effect.
What cynicism about the effectiveness of these protests shows, in the background, is that these people are taking to the streets because they know, like you know, they have no other voice; what political issues they care about cannot and will not be brought to the table.
If we know that public political opinion is almost entirely decoupled from state policy and we criticise protesters (rather than governments!) on that basis... I mean, should we be suggesting they arm themselves? If we're calling them deluded and ineffective for peaceful protest and discursive interventions, in a context where we know their opinions will in all likelihood not translate into any policy changes, what are we saying?
If they're totally ineffective; if Occupy was the death rattle of protest as public registration of desire being effective, this is the purge frothing out the mouth.
Quoting ssu
Personally? I don't give a damn if the statues stay up or not, it's not like anyone in the protest had a choice in the creation of the historico-political symbolism of "their own" nation.
Is it the "best way"? I have no idea. How do you expect the start of a mostly peaceful anti-racist protest movement to make a targeted change regarding the systemic colonialism-racism of the global economy. At least when they fuck up a statue of Churchhill they've got a tiny bit of a voice. The institutions they need to frustrate and attack to start combating these issues comprehensively and at scale do not even have to pretend to care about anything but shareholder interest unless it's good marketing; maybe they need to be less civil.
Think what we're saying about a country if huge peaceful protests are "merely symbolic" and are thus likely to have no effect.
I think there is a great opportunity to reform the police and it can have positive long term effects.
But one ought to focus on that. Not to get distracted into the ruinous "culture wars".
Quoting fdrake
Democracy works. If there is a will, there is a way. The real thing is about the will.
Quoting fdrake
You wouldn't give a damn if MLK monument would be vandalized? Historico-political symbolism, you know.
Quoting fdrake
Like starting from a bit of realism and humility and have reachable goals: "systemic colonialism-racism" or "tthe global economy" won't change in a heartbeat, but what you can do is to demand and have better policing and end the militarization of the police.
That could work. But then again, you can go to fight against "the global economy". You see, I think that I and you can agree on some things, but we won't agree on everything. That's how people are. Capitalize (sorry, bad wording), utilize moments of consensus.
Good, agreed.
Quoting ssu
Just what the protests want.
Quoting ssu
Too early to tell what they can be leveraged into yet. The decentralised networks that lead to these protests sparking up everywhere will likely stick around. I'm hopeful.
Quoting ssu
So I don't understand if you're criticising me or not, we agree on pretty much everything substantive. What part of our agreement is in the culture war again?
Seriously though. Really? You're willing to brand huge protests as blunted because they're part of a "culture war", that they're ultimately symbolic, and you're not wondering why their state isn't listening to them? Huge registration of intent for change is what protests are for; it's a vital democratic function. Are we in a democracy if "merely symbolic" huge protest doesn't do anything? If it isn't already enough?
The issue is that they are [i]made part[/I] of a culture war. Nobody is protesting for the release of the Minneapolis policemen (perhaps a police union, I don't know). But people can be against vandalizing the statues of Churchill and Gandhi. You have start from something, you know. Just look at how Fox News is depicting the events. There's an objective there.
Quoting fdrake
In a representative democracy it's the elections that count. Demonstrations can influence elections. Demonstrations can make someone resign, but who is elected or appointed afterwards is the real change. Demonstrations just show that a lot of people are against something or for something. But those feelings can change if the objectives of a movement change.
Let's keep in mind that there've been protests like this for over 100 years; the elections haven't done much at all. What related gains there have been were all put on the table by grassroots organising and protest.
Quoting Nuke
"As Lee Atwater, who became chairman of the Republican National Committee after helping elect Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush, explained in a 1981 interview,
Y’all don’t quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' - that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously, maybe that’s part of it."
The leftist "fantasy" straight from the mouth of a right-winger.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/06/09/neoliberal-capitalism-depends-white-supremacy?fbclid=IwAR0uElUsxC2TwUfSk6hRls3dg6GIWwxZMIH_yQVMv7lCMq5WOBf2vAFUMyI
There's our champion of the Republic.
Damn it, ya got us. Why'd Atwater have to spill the beans? He told you not to quote him! Guess us neolibs got a lot of repair work to do now.
On a more serious note, when the other side isn't just misinformed - but also have racist intentions or motivations - productive rational discussion isn't really worth it anymore. Discussion breaks down and everyone just starts trolling each other when we give up actually trying to reason with the opposition. Good, rational discussion was the reason I came to this forum and it's a part of good philosophy. It's a shame that apparently it's no longer possible when it comes to politics or one's political philosophy.
Thanks. I read the article. It was actually an interesting read, though I was left with a strong feeling that he was embellishing several of his stories. This is almost certainly nothing a non-police officer would catch, but as I was reading I wrote down a number of things that didn’t add up for me. I’m not sure if he was actually a police officer, but I wish I could find out which department he worked for, as well as the circumstances under which he left that department.
In any case that’s not really the point. Many of his observations are still apt, and I found myself agreeing with a number of them.
For instance, it is absolutely true that police officers are often expected to wear many hats, and perform some of the same functions as a marriage counselor, mental crisis professional, social worker, and so on and so forth — although they tend to be performed less competently by police officers, and on a more limited basis.
If there were a way to require officers to perform less of these functions, I would be on board with that. Though the practical implementation of such an idea would be very difficult, to my apprehension, the thought of lowering an officer’s workload (and thus raising morale, lowering stress, and retaining qualified officers, etc.) whilst simultaneously allowing better trained professionals to utilize their specialized training in appropriate situations is very appealing.
However, if you recall in my earlier post, I talked about how calls pile up, and how officers in my city, at times, only have enough time to respond to certain kinds of calls — such as those that are violent in nature, or have a real propensity to become violent in nature. If for the sake of argument we were to assume that other proposed specialized workers were able to somehow answer those other more innocuous calls, that would still leave police officers barely keeping their heads above water in regards to the other calls (i.e. they would have a very heavy workload as opposed to having an impossible one). But why have that heavy of a workload at all? If that is the case, then why not, rather than defunding a department that is already hurting, seek cuts elsewhere (like the military, as I suggested in my previous post).
Of course not all police departments are afforded the same amount of resources, nor do all police departments contend with the same level of crime or calls for service. But I do know that certain other police departments are, to varying degrees, experiencing similar problems as OPD. Thus it is my contention that any prospective defunding should be done on a case-by-case basis, and sweeping blanket legislation ought to be avoided.
Quoting Wolfman
What's weird to me is that in the US people who can afford it go and see their psychiatrists en masse on a weekly basis to deal with their individual problems but either a) don't believe in sociological and mental health issues that are shared widely in a community and therefore require a coordinated approach or b) doesn't feel any solidarity with other Americans who can't afford it to help them. End result: little money for community projects.
Meanwhile, that huge work burden for police officers is a symptom of underlying social ills. Amsterdam is probably the unsafest city in the Netherlands but it's way safer than most US cities. There are no areas in the Netherlands where I'd be afraid to go at night. None. And 18 million people are policed with 5 billion USD a year and that includes some stuff like forensics and victim care, that I suspect aren't included in the budget for most PDs in the US.
I don't believe that US citizens are inherently more violent or criminal than their Dutch counterparts, so the level of crime is something that can be dealt with differently than answering it with police violence and incarceration. That's obviously not a matter of just shifting around money.
I think part of it is how the US is very top-down in their idea of governance. Laws and rules have to be enforced, fealty to a President that doesn't really deserve respect, that sort of stuff. At-will contracts and a limited social net, causes a power-relation with your boss that causes people to take shit a Dutch person would've sued you over and won.
And the police doesn't have the time (and most often doesn't have the skills necessary) to enter into a dialogue with community members and map what they think is going wrong, and discuss possible solutions and bring in sociological, city planning and policy specialists etc. to organise and guide such process and then come up with a plan that has a real chance of success. After that it needs to be implemented, the police has to be taken aboard as to their role of course, but they shouldn't be in the lead or responsible for it as they are now.
Now if I look at some of the funding graphs, it is no wonder that even the smallest altercation becomes a police intervention, that mentally ill people get tasered for not complying with orders etc. And since police are now responsible and if it's not improving, of course the reaction will be "let's give them more money". Contrary to what would be smart, people tend to do more of the same if things don't go their way instead of changing tactics. In a crisis people do what they are familiar with (which is why every crisis now, we just throw money at it. MBS crisis? Here's a trillion. Debt crisis? Here's a trillion. Corona? Here's two trillion. As if they are all the same. But tangent.)
Quite frankly, I find it a betrayal by the police union leadership of their members to accept such incredible scope creep of the services that cops should be providing to the community.
In your view, what should the basic task of police?
Thanks for the links (I'm not always getting notifications when people mention me so I didn't see them until just now). A couple of well written pieces I think. I want to share a couple more key quotes. This first is for @Baden, who asked (of one of my previous posts), what my mention of Jeff Bezos had to do with it...
The powerful elite will have representatives from every marginalised minority with whom they can associate. There are black CEOs, women judges, gay politicians, transgender popstars... All with one glaring exception - none of them are poor. Contrary to almost every other marginalised group in existence (tribal people are an exception), the poor have no representation at all with the powerful. Any movement that doesn't put them at the heart and centre of the issue can be subsumed into the neoliberal project by just adopting the 'best-and-the-brightest' from whatever is the group-de-jour. Then the remainder only have themselves to blame.
Yes, well, I believe that counseling, in many cases, does not produce much beyond short-term cathartic effects in its patients. As to why Americans often spend their money on this? Because they can do whatever they want with their own money. Because they perhaps think that counseling will help solve their issues, or perhaps maybe they just want to talk to someone. Whatever the reason, I think most people, who think they require counseling, are too busy worrying about their own problems to worry about other peoples’ mental issues, much less ponder about coordinated approaches to addressing mental health in the United States at an abstract or theoretical level.
[quote=Benkei]Meanwhile, that huge work burden for police officers is a symptom of underlying social ills. Amsterdam is probably the unsafest city in the Netherlands but it's way safer than most US cities. There are no areas in the Netherlands where I'd be afraid to go at night. None. And 18 million people are policed with 5 billion USD a year and that includes some stuff like forensics and victim care, that I suspect aren't included in the budget for most PDs in the US.
I don't believe that US citizens are inherently more violent or criminal than their Dutch counterparts, so the level of crime is something that can be dealt with differently than answering it with police violence and incarceration. That's obviously not a matter of just shifting around money.[/quote]
You are quite right that Amsterdam feels quite safe. I’ve been there 7 times now, and I’ve never felt unsafe at night time. The shadiest thing I’ve experienced there is someone coming up to me, asking, “Coca? Coca?” and I think in many of those situations, they were actually asking me for the coca.
And yes, I agree that arresting people and incarcerating them is not the most effective way of dealing with criminals, especially considering that the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is a broken institution. Arresting and incarcerating criminals is a sort of necessary evil that, as it currently stands, has to be done for practical purposes if for nothing else (better to not have murderers, rapists, and burglars, etc. out on the streets).
In Oakland most crime is done by black people. This isn’t because black people are inherently bad or anything like that. It’s because they have had to contend with institutional racism, injustices, and socioeconomic problems that date back to the days of slavery and beyond. Sometimes people born into these circumstances (like my friend, Dre) end up becoming violent, criminal people. One of the reasons we tend to have more violent, criminal people than the Netherlands is because we have more people who grew up under the same circumstances as Dre. Most people in the Netherlands have not had to contend with these kinds of issues on such a large scale, so the crime dynamic is different.
[quote=Benkei]In your view, what should the basic task of police?[/quote]
If we were able to just enforce the penal code and vehicle code, without having to deal with all of the ancillary functions that SLX and others have brought up, that would be ideal. It’s easier said than done — and many of these functions are not easily separable from what should be the basic tasks of a police officer — but I think cops in certain departments are unhealthy, stressed, and overworked; so it’s apparent that something has to change.
Funny how you talk about enforcement.
I thought it was to protect and serve. How does that equate/translate to enforce?
Quoting NOS4A2
Like in any crisis, there's some overreaction here. First example, the radio host has not been paying attention at all the past 2 years but grounds for suspension or dismissal seems a bit too much to me. I think the former cabinet minister got what he deserved (and he apologised). The book judge (chief reporter?) is a bit of an ass; I wasn't aware virtue signalling now also included genuine protest but whatever. James Bennett is just really bad at his job - hey, let's publish a government propaganda piece as "opinion". He should've been fired a few years back. Buildings Matter, Too is pretty fucking callous. So he got what he deserved. Katai is bullshit. I don't see how he should be punished for what his wife said. His wife is a piece of work though. Damn.
But it’s all one-sided, aimed only at those who express dissent from the current orthodoxy and is guided by the whims of emotion. It’s a testament to both the weakness of the orthodoxy, and the inability of its proponents to support it.
As usual @NOS4A2 is just propagandising. Don't swallow the bait. Here's just one lie.
Quoting NOS4A2
What actually happened was:
"Tea Katai made the posts on her Instagram story earlier this week, and the Galaxy angrily condemned them as "racist and violent" on Wednesday. The posts included a photo with a caption written in Serbian urging police to "kill" protesters, another referring to protesters as "disgusting cattle," and a third sharing a racist meme."
By the way @NOS4A2 your random misleading complaints about leftists are off-topic. Go do it on the other systemic racism thread where that kind of thing is more tolerated.
I was complaining about corporate censorship, not leftists. But sorry I thought this was the low quality one. My mistake.
Feel free to start your own thread about corporate censorship. I'm going to keep this strictly on topic as there is some interesting stuff being posted.
I thought it was to protect and serve. How does that equate/translate to enforce?[/quote]
Ah no, you thought wrong then. That’s the slogan of Los Angeles Police Department — frequently misattributed to other police departments. I suspect it has something to do with Hollywood being in Los Angeles County (people get a lot of their [mis]information from movies).
In any case, enforcement isn’t something mutually exclusive from “protecting and serving,” so I wouldn’t get hung up on the verbiage. Should it come as any surprise that one of the primary functions of a law enforcement officer is to enforce laws? I suppose that language might seem overbearing or not politically correct enough for some.
It's true though. Elections do hee haw for the people in the streets. Historically too; you'd think if there was a big chance of an election changing something fundamental about institutional racism in the US it would've happened by now, no? Rather than being resisted at every step despite over 100 years of uprisings.
Guess then according to you everything would have gone in a similar way as it did if in 1860 American voters would have elected Southern Democratic Candidate John C. Breckinridge from Kentucky to be the President. (If people don't know, the former VP of James Buchanan, Breckinridge served later as the Confederate Secretary of War in 1865.)
I think you're missing the point of protest. Elections are utterly trivial in political terms because they are just a snapshot of what the electorate think at that time. One would be quite reasonable, I think, to not even bother voting if one's politics were so left-field that your candidate had no chance.
Protests are designed to change public opinion by giving the illusion of a large force being of some opinion or other. Politicians, if they want to stay ahead, can't afford to be reactive to elections, it's too late by then. They must instead predict elections. Given that the above works (protests>public opinion>election>new policy), the politicians can quite confidently cut out the middle man. If they acquiesce to the demands of what seems likely to be an influential protest, they get to stay ahead of the curve and are already in the place they need to be come election day.
It's an upshot of our democratic system that protests work, not an affront to it.
Let's keep two flavours of claims distinct;
Elections are totally irrelevant.
Elections and representative politics has a terrible track record on addressing systemic racism. To such an extent that direct action (protest, uprising) has been required for every gain on that front.
I'm prepared to argue the latter. I think you even agree with it. I'm not prepared to argue the former; as it's nonsense.
I've possibly just misunderstood what you're saying (or just read too much into it) but I can't understand how you could even argue the latter. Elections address nothing at all, they're a data gathering mechanism. In order to address anything at all we must persuade people to vote differently in an election and simultaneously persuade politicians that people are likely to do so so that they offer our preferred policies as a choice. (A third option is to persuade people to deal with some issue differently within the parameters of what is already legal/institutionalised, but that's an aside).
Either way, the actual mechanism by which politicians are given the authority to carry out their policies is not the same as the mechanism they use to determine which policies might attract such mandate. Effecting change on some issue requires action on the latter. So I think when discussing methods for addressing racism its just a false dichotomy from the outset to frame it as elections vs protests, they're not the same kind of thing.
The debate would be about the relative merits of, say, discussion vs protest, or pamphleteering vs protest, something like that, no?
I think you're missing the point of representative democracy.
Quoting fdrake
I certainly don't, fdrake!
Since it's independence my country has avoided an ethnic conflict between the Finnish speaking majority and Swedish speaking minority, it has avoided the rise of fascism and turning into an authoritarian state in the 30's (like what happened in many Eastern European new states). It also avoided it's democracy being snuffed out to be turned part of the Communist bloc post WW2, although the price was an extremely conformative foreign policy towards the Soviet Union. And the reason is that the people voted sound politicians to didn't choose the dangerous radical elements of any time period on the ballot box. The political field has changed in time: there have been numerous protest parties that eventually have made it to power and new ideological parties like the Green party, which has had ministers in various administrations and even a Presidential candidate coming second.
So no, I don't believe that representative politics has a terrible track record. Representative democracy doesn't have to evolve into a corrupt system where the parties in power just look after themselves in order to stay in power and make it's members rich and not care about the people. It hasn't happened in my country and not in the neighboring Nordic countries, hence I don't believe that somehow Americans are incapable of having a working Republic themselves. You might think I'm naive in my belief or ignorant about all the problems in the US of voter suppression or how the two ruling parties put sticks into the machine with gerrymandering and limiting those who can vote, but to argue that "elections don't matter" or that "nothing will change if you just vote" is the wrong path which will lead to worse.
If you think that "direct action" will just end in mainly non-violent demonstrations, don't forget how full your country is with weapons and how willing in the end people are to use them. And remember that people adapt to bad things that just come to be the "new normal".
Which is?
:up:
Elections are not a means by which the public expresses their views on specific political issues. They're fully consistent with a representative democracy which does not actually represent the aggregate opinions of the public very well at all (and usually they do not reflect them very well at all).
The argument I'm having with ssu (on my end at least) is regarding the historical failure of representative politics - the changing whims of the state - to make US POCs equal, except when their hands are forced or leveraged by popular movement.
Quoting ssu
Do you believe that representative politics has a terrible track record on race issues in the US? I don't really wanna get into an argument where we're weighing the effectiveness of the Finnish government against the concerns of current uprisings in the US, it seems like a shell game to me.
The question I'm interested in is: does representative democracy in the US actually represent the interests of its populace on issues related to systemic racism? At least 100 years of silence except when hands are forced through popular movement indicates that it does not.
Today Governor Cuomo signed police reform measures into law. One of the reforms I've flagged as long overdue (at least since 2014) included on my list (B)
[quote=NY Daily News, June 12, 2020]One measure grants the state attorney general’s office the ability to investigate and potentially prosecute incidents when a person dies in custody or after an encounter with a police officer.[/quote]
One down, four to go.
:strong:
Ok. First you shouldn't be so self centered and fixated just on the US. It's beneficial to look at the issue from a wider perspective to notice similarities and differences.
The systemic racism in the American continent derives from the colonial past and shows itself both in the way how a) native Americans and b) blacks and other non-whites are treated. For Latin America it could be described that the bigger segment of the populace is of Native American origin, the bigger the divide between the rich and poor is and the bigger the social problems are. Hence this is a continent wide problem.
To answer your question we first have to ask, which countries on the American continent have had a genuinely well working representative democracy? Do the people think their representative democracy works?
From last year according to pew research:
From the above (which unfortunately not depicting all countries in the continent), usually the answer is "NO" with Canada being the (sole?) exception where the vast majority of the people are happy with their democracy. The polls from Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and the US show that the majority of people in those countries are dissatisfied of their state representative democracy. Now this is actually crucial to your question, as obviously when people are dissatisfied in the system, it isn't working well. A functioning representative democracy isn't just that one can vote every few years...
So how bad is systemic racism in Canada? How many race riots have been there? You can find racism in Canada, sure, but are the problems similar to the US?
Canada abolished slavery in 1833 without a war, you know. I would argue that in a working representative democracy social problems can indeed be solved within the system.
What do you think I'm missing by focussing too much on the US when talking about over 100 years of failure of US "democracy" to represent a good chunk of the US populace, except when the state's hand is forced?
I wrote a broader perspective here a few days ago.
Because when you say that "elections don't matter" and representative democracy doesn't do anything at systemic racism, the fact is that you aren't looking at countries were that representative democracy works at least SO MUCH that the majority of the people actually are satisfied with it.
It's not the fault of representative democracy that you have problems in your republic. I do think representative democracies can work and will surely work better than those where power is taken by violence.
When you say:
Quoting Isaac
They aren't trivial. Elections are a safety valve by which we can change ruinous administrations to others and a way to show that those in power do enjoy support of the majority. If the elections are just an theatrical show, naturally democracy doesn't work. But it can work. Quite surprising to have to say such basics. Just saying.
That makes sense, so you're not really comparing methods of moving public opinion so much as saying that simply having a representative democracy hasn't historically been enough?
Why do you think that is? Is it entirely down to political gamesmanship (gerrymandering, vote rigging, electoral colleges...) or do you accept a certain extent to which reflecting public opinion isn't enough, that sometimes public opinion as it stands would not deliver satisfactory results either, there's a need to shift it?
Quoting ssu
You're missing my point. The election (the actual act) is trivial because it does nothing but reflect public opinion (in a perfect democracy) about who should represent us.
It cannot change ruinous administrations - the public no longer wanting those administrations is what changes them, elections are a bloodless and convenient way of doing that, revolutions being the alternative; but it's the mass of people wanting change which brings about the change, not the election itself.
As a means of creating that change, elections are close to useless. That's why I'm saying that comparing them to protests is like comparing apples to oranges. They're not even the same kind of thing. Protests seek to change public opinion, elections seek to record public opinion. Two different things. If all we did was record public opinion, nothing would ever change.
So we have two possibilities for positive change. (1) Human cultures are all lovely all the time and all we need are better elections so that our nasty politicians better reflect their angelic populace, or (2) Cultures can become unpleasant, in which case they need changing, simply accurately recording their preferences for representatives is not going to get anywhere. In fact it's perfectly possible that a populace might be more unpleasant in aggregate than the sub-class from which it's leaders are
drawn, in which case accurately representing them would be a bad thing.
In the case of (2) (which I think we all agree is the more likely) some action changes public opinion.
Importantly, this happens anyway no matter what we do. There's no neutral position where public opinion isn't influenced by something. Public opinion is influenced by a statue being up just as much as it is influenced by it being down. Leaving it up isn't some kind of default whereby the public are left to make up their own minds. a statue influences them one way, destroying it influences them another.
Better that reflection than no reflection. If power only changes by violence, in that society everything surely isn't well.
Quoting Isaac
And that's why democracy needs an active populace: not only voters that don't tolerate corruption or dismal performance or those in power breaking the law, but genuinely voice their concerns and their agenda to a party that drives these agenda forward. Yet how in the US could even theoretically just two parties, one right-wing (and nowdays populist) and a central left leaning party truly do this? They can't. But what they can do is to divide the people as a way for self preservation. If the voters are deeply divided and tribalistic, they simply won't behave so as above. In their hatred or fear of the other side, they will be totally OK with the "flaws" of their side. If they don't support "their cause", they will lose, so who cares about the flaws and disappointing errors. And this is why populism is bad for democracy.
Quoting Isaac
In elections political parties make campaign promises and it's up to the voters activity to check if the parties do hold these promises. The interaction with the political establishment and their voting community is absolutely crucial here.
Quoting Isaac
This is quite incredible and actually very sad to hear. What on Earth do you think election Campaigns are about? Oh yeah, getting that "Gotcha"-moment from your opponent, making headlines with either a smart or outrageous comments. Which candidate looks good. As if things like the political agenda of the campaign doesn't matter. Who the f*k cares about policy, it's boring!
Indeed a demonstration protest can focus media attention to something. A tiny group can get things rolling for their cause that way, but usually a demonstration or a protest means that the system hasn't been working well. Yet the real crucible for democracy is if that protest, a media event, can turn into either itself a political movement or a political movement takes the agenda and goes forward with it. That's how democracies should work.
https://twitter.com/Trevornoah/status/1269291643842289666?s=20
I feel the frustration. It's true that, ultimately, those communities will suffer the effects of acting on that frustration, but I come down on the anti-Target-protectionism side, since it's a protectionism of a status quo that keeps that local community in low-paid jobs making profit for rich white people. I think a bare minimum of reparation would be to clear up the mess then invest in businesses owned by local communities. It only costs jobs if nothing is put in its place.
I didn't read this before writing my other argument for improving representative democracy but check that out if you're interested.
Elections seem to me to corrupt public opinion, not just reflect it. Imagine every bill had to have a public mandate via a referendum. "Do you want lowers taxes: Y/N?" I'd actually vote N, but most would vote Y. "Do you want to overhaul the racist police system: Y/N?" Racists choose N, everyone else Y.
This would be a slow and expensive way to action public desire. However, what if you had this choice: "Do you want a) lower taxes or b) an overhaul of the racist police system?" I dare sau many who would have voted Y for lower taxes will now vote (b) against them. But a great many more who would have voted Y for a police overhaul will now vote (a) for lower taxes.
Elections corrupt by creating false dichotomies between independent goods. In fact, I would argue they do so inevitably. The most conscientious voter has to prioritise one good over another. And most voters adopt or inherit a political stance rather than actually engage, i.e. given the following choice:
1. Lower taxes;
2. Overhaul of racist police system;
3. Whatever the Republicans say is American;
4. Whatever the Democrats say is American
(2) would now get a paltry showing.
To that extent, elections do not implement public opinion, for which a more interactive mode of democracy, well within our technical capability, would be neccesary. Unfortunately, as the Alternative Vote in the UK showed, people will vote down a more democratic voting system too if the reds and the blues tell them to.
I'm unsure whether representative democracy as a social model is itself to blame. I think that our current forms of it in the political north are prone to co-option by wealthy private interests. It also looks to me that states are on a much more level playing field with corporations in terms of political power now, and we often forget this. Corps are beholden to their shareholders, corps are at least as influential between states as states, and more influential within states than their populace.
Quoting Isaac
I don't think representing public opinion is sufficient, but something necessary for a representative democracy to function. There should be vents for public opinion that are more easily leveraged into policy than the current blockade between public opinion and policy execution most of us live in.
Our political classes only consult public opinion to the extent it allows them to manage it. And let's be under no illusions here; the corpus of political influence that drives our states' policy advocacy does not come from anything to do with the majority of its people, if it involves public will at all, it arrives from on high as small concessions to the public will while being as accommodating as possible to wealthy private interests. Whenever those small concessions can be scapegoats, so much the easier; "clap for the NHS" - fund them better, etc.
I still think large civilizations require a professional educated class for their management. Our current system is a perverse form of this: to the extent that education is a filter for social capital, and wealth is a strong predictor for social capital, there will be an alignment of the interests of that professional educated class to the interests of the wealthy. To the extent that wealth is allowed to constrain and enforce advocacy, that alignment will be stronger. To the extent that failsafes and checks on such influence are eroded, that alignment will be stronger. It is therefore strongly in the interest of the wealthy to have their interests met as well as possible; it is in their interest to erode failsafes and checks, and it is in their interest to constrain and enforce advocacy.
I don't believe a representative democracy will represent any populace adequately when the interests of wealthy international actors are given much more weight by a state than their populace's own interest, or of the interests of humanity as a collective. The rest of humanity is always an externality to an economic equation. A state's representative democracy, when the populace are doing other things, should still work for them, its hand should not have to be forced by those whose lives must be spent doing other things.
Still missing the point. Elections do not cause power to change. Let's say you have a 100% committed Conservative population. You could have an election every day, nothing at all would change because the population is still 100% Conservative and so will vote in the same people. For anything to change one of two things has to happen - either the political class have to change such that they no longer even offer Conservative candidates, or the population has to change such that it's no longer 100% Conservative.
The question here is about what is going to make one or other of those changes. If you reject protest as a method then the alternative cannot be 'elections' because elections are a mechanism for recording, not a mechanism for influencing.
Quoting ssu
If we don't have such a populace, how do we go about getting one?
Quoting ssu
How do election campaigns differ from protests? If the Conservative's paint a bus with claims about brexit that's a campaign, if protesters paint a statue with graffiti, that's just vandalism. What exactly is the difference in political terms? Why must political parties have the monopoly on protest?
Do you think elections ought to implement public opinion? I'm not sure they should. Is there no extent to which we'd prefer to be lead by people who take decisions for us, rather than ask us at every turn?
That's a fair assessment, but did something go wrong which representative democracy failed to prevent, or was it some other institution's failure?
Quoting fdrake
I agree with this assessment, but I'm interested in the question of whether anything would be different (and in what way) if public opinion played a more substantial part. Brexit could not have been more direct a consultation of public opinion - no compromise manifestos, nor gerrymandering, no first past the post - just a simple measure of public opinion. It didn't go well. So I can't help feeling that we'd just jump from Orwell to Kafka if we did involve the public more in national politics?
Quoting fdrake
Completely off topic, but had to just scream at how cross this made me (the thing happening, not you mentioning it). Yeah, don't fucking clap them, pay them!
Quoting fdrake
Which do you think came first, representatives who favoured the wealthy or a populace who prefer such representatives? I mean, we could vote them out in an instant if we don't like them. I get the problems with gerrymandering, wealthy campaign funding etc. But none of that is insurmountable if we really wanted change, or is it?
No, ha ha! The argument was merely in terms of best implementing public opinion. Sometimes, like with the current BML protests, the zeitgeist is bang on, and would be best acted on with urgent reformative zeal. Sometimes, like with Brexit, the zeitgeist is just a bunch of xenophobic, generation-gapped stuck-in-the-muds fuelled by right-wing media and opportunistic Trumpalikes who are too old and selfish to care about the damage thirty years down the line.
Democracy isn't just orientated around the election day, you can demand for an elected government to start doing a better job on an issue and make it clear that things aren't good enough. That's really what a protest is about, it's about trying to get change to happen as opposed to convincing people to think like them.
It's also important to note that you don't need a majority to enact change in a democracy and just because the majority want something that doesn't mean it will happen. Protests apply more pressure per person on the government to change things than people who stay silent on the issue - obviously.
Campaigns usually ought to give more thought not only showing that something is wrong, but a specific answer what to do about it. That is the power of organized movement than a demonstration: if you take large protest the consensus is about that something is wrong. If you start asking what actually people want and what policies would work, you don't have instant consensus.
Quoting Isaac
Right on! If there's NOBODY ELSE than conservatives, what fhe f* is your problem?
I only would point out that this wouldn't happen and if it did, then I guess this population would have differences in their consertavism and still have a lot of things they disargee about. Or is your problem that your society is made up of WRONG kind of people? What's your "final resolution" to that?
Quoting ssu
Quoting Isaac
You won't get one by simply declaring that "elections don't matter" like fdrake, because people will read that literally and believe the age old lie that someone or some movement will solve it by force: just give somebody dictatorial powers and he will solve it. It never happens like that, it never has.
The will of the people simply has to be heard and be reflected in the policies implemented. It is the only way that people will agree that voting matters and their democracy works. As I said earlier, the majority in the US, in Mexico and Brazil etc. don't think their democracy works, so this is a genuine problem in the American continent.
The solution is first to be totally honest and objective of the reasons why the representative democracy isn't working. Is there voter suppression? Is there suppression of opposition parties? How much is there corruption? Are votes bought and are politicians bought? Is this corruption legalized? Can people choose freely who they vote or are they harassed to support those in power? Is the security complex and the military under civilian control, or is it vice versa? How much is there transparency in the system? Are the elections free and fair or simply a sham and window dressing for the ruling power elite? Is it democracy in name only?
Then you start fixing all the issues one after another. And never think that if you succeed in doing that, that the populace will then agree with your ideas and objectives. It likely won't: in a democracy far and few issues will gain overwhelming support, and those that do likely you will ignore them as self-evident things that are taken as granted and hence are non-issues. They actually aren't.
Democracy isn't a cure all, it's just something that works best than anything else in larger societies where you simply cannot talk about one singular community.
And there should be enough competition in the political sphere that if the ruling parties themselves don't notice that the people are unhappy about something, then another political party would milk that dissatisfaction and make start advance the issues. There's something wrong in a political system where a lot of people are dissatisfied with something and there's absolutely no response from any political party or actor.
That's what's missing.
But one could simply say that protests ought to be some thing or other. I can see the advantage of proffering a solution along with your complaint. I can't see any mechanism which ensures political party campaigns do this and prevents protests from doing so.
Quoting ssu
I didn't say I had a problem with it. I'm demonstrating how the mere existence of elections do not bring about change. Something else is required to change the population. Elections don't do that on their own.
Quoting ssu
This is not the point I'm making because we're not talking about the force actually effecting the change directly. We're talking about the force demonstrating the degree of anger. Notwithstanding that, it absolutely is the case that force has been necessary to bring about positive change. Its been required almost every time.
What you're missing is that sometimes the majority are wrong. In such circumstances, elections (even when completely fair) will just reflect this wrongness. What do we then do about that?
And I've stated right from start that with mere elections you don't have a functioning representative democracy. Stalin's Soviet Union had elections too.
A representative democracy is much more than just elections. I think this is basically clear to everyone.
Quoting Isaac
Has it absolutely?
In many cases it surely has been so that the political system has found itself in a dead end. But are functioning democracies in a dead end? I argue that they indeed can solve problems without violence. Demonstrations, sure you can have them, but huge changes can happen even without them.
Last time the Swedish revolt against their rulers was when they ousted their Danish King and elected Gustav Vasa as their king in 1523. After that, there hasn't been ANY revolution or large revolt in the country. I think Switzerland has had one small revolt in it's long history. So why do you claim that force is necessary? The fact is that democracies can bring peace to a society, where as authoritarianism is in the end founded on violence and fear.
Quoting Isaac
If that would be true, I guess those people in that country had it coming and deserve their misery. If you Isaac are right yet all of your companion citizens are wrong and total asses, well, tough luck for you.
Yet I personally don't believe that anytime the majority is "simply wrong". That view is extremely arrogant and shows the utter hubris of the person saying it. If people are conservative, old-fashioned or even superstitious and reject something that will only later become accepted, I wouldn't judge them to be "wrong" and thus voting "wrongly". Besides, what usually has happened in a situation where the majority chooses "wrong" or simply bad policies is that the political discourse has been poisoned in the country and the political system has simply poured gasoline on to a fire. And that surely can happen. Many political ideologies can and will do this, populism and communism etc. come to my mind, where not only do the ideologies divide the people to "us" and "they" right from the start, but also they promote violence and portray your fellow citizens as the enemy. I can guarantee that nothing good comes out of that juxtaposition.
Hence for a democracy to work, it has to have the ability avoid these rabbit holes or vicious circles which erode social cohesion, alienate groups from each other and disrupt the ability of the system to seek a consensus. Beliefs and views can change peacefully. Modern day political tribalism leads to a sorry state. Perhaps we don't understand just how fragile the system is and just how close otherwise unthinkable violence is as we have enjoyed rather peaceful times for long.
It never ceases to astonish me the nature of the discourse. If it's basically clear to everyone, then why have you not interpreted my posts under that presumption. Is there something about my presentation that's given you cause to think I might be so utterly stupid that I'm unaware of something which is basically clear to everyone?
The comment I initially responded to was...
Quoting ssu
...to which I replied...
Quoting Isaac
...and was told I'd missed the point. Rather that...
Quoting ssu
At no point up until your most recent posts did you even mention election campaigns. Which are not the same thing as elections. I've been clear throughout that it the the mechanism I'm talking about, not the general activities carried out during it. Elections are a mechanism for recording public opinion about which representatives they prefer in government. It cannot bring about change, it can only record that a change has taken place.
With regards to the use of violent protest, riots, looting, defacing statues. We cannot compare their merits with elections because the two are not the same type of thing - that's the point I was making. If we compare their merits we must do so with other mechanisms for creating change in public preferences. Broadly speaking - political campaigning, media presentation, debate, speech by cultural leaders, advertising, and the lived experience of political decisions (not a complete list).
It seems from your recent posts that what you really mean to compare protests to is political campaigns (which can take place in association with election, or not), so we can start again from there.
Firstly though.
Quoting ssu
So how would you characterise my position here. You certainly seem to have some quite strong contrary opinions and are using emotive rhetoric in an attempt at persuasion. You give me whatever term you'd use to characterise my view here and the fact that you'd clearly rather I thought differently, and we'll use your term, if you're not comfortable with "wrong".
I don't want to get into a massive debate about relativism, but those that seem wrong to me are "wrong" up until any time I change my mind about them. That all "wrong" means as far as I'm concerned, so it's not hubris, it's just relativism. The point is that there are, without doubt, things which one would prefer were different and in order to change them one must persuade others. If you're rejecting that very premise then we've nothing further to say.
So the question is, how is it best to present one's feelings about what should change in order to best persuade people to make that change? The point @fdrake originally made was that leaving it to election campaigning and debate has not effected the change that many people would like to see with regards to the status of minorities. Given that minorities are treated deplorably by the US (and many other countries), it is an incontrovertible fact that these methods of effecting change have not worked. Protest, on the other hand seems to have had an absolutely demonstrable success.
No one is suggesting we replace election campaigning with protest as a means of effecting change. No one is suggesting we no longer measure the effect of such change using elections. So exclaiming the merits of these methods is useless, they are not mutually exclusive, we can do both.
:death: :flower:
Wrong.
On an earlier comment before my last one:
Quoting ssu
And even before that:
Quoting ssu
And since these were both answers TO YOU, Isaac, all I can deduce from that you don't bother even to read what I say. And before that I replied to fdrake that democracies can indeed avert social problems and there's a great historical reference of this from countries where representative democracy WORKS. But that of course, I cannot ask you to have read as there's so much up on PF every day.
No, my basic disagreement with you was this:
Quoting Isaac
They aren't utterly trivial. Period. And it's YOU who is forgetting that democracy isn't just elections and campaigns and basic political activity of the populace is an adamant requirement for there to be true democracy.
I'd be happy to continue the discussion and MAYBE something interesting can come out of it, but one ought to read what the other one says. Enough with the strawman arguments against imagined stereotypes.
I didn't say I didn't care, nor can you derive that from what I said. I said that prioritising the lesser concerns of the white Wendy's owner over the greater concerns of black people dying at the hands of racist white cops is a niche way of thinking, more suitable for right-wing radio jocks than mainstream media.
I understand it would have been more convenient for you if I'd said I don't care about the Wendy's manager's hardships. I also understand that there are a certain class of people who prefer to pretend they heard what's convenient rather than what's real. I also understand that they don't tend to think as far as "other people can see what the guy actually wrote". I understand you, Ernest. I just don't understand why they named you Ernest. The irony!
Those were the 'most recent posts' to which I was referring.
Quoting ssu
I haven't even mentioned democracy. Elections are not democracy. Elections are a single event within a democracy. All the stuff you're talking about as being a necessary part of democracy is exactly the same stuff I'm talking about as being that which we should be comparing in terms of it effectiveness. The actual election is irrelevant to the question at hand, it's plays a trivial part in the question at hand. That is not equivalent to a claim that elections are trivial in any context, or that the whole democratic system is entirely pointless, which are the straw men you're attempting to make out of what I'm saying.
My main contention is that you are setting up a false dichotomy which casts a purely rhetorical aspersion over protest movements. You set them up as being opposed to 'elections' when in actual fact they are means of shifting public opinion. Which is not even the same kind of thing as an election.
To make a fair comparison we must compare them to other means of shifting public opinion, like political campaigns, pamphleteering, debates etc.
Which according to you are utterly trivial.
Quoting Isaac
That's not what you said earlier, if I've read your posts well. At least now you say that. If you say something is "utterly trivial", sorry for understanding that you mean something is utterly trivial. And on the other hand, then you say...
Quoting Isaac
So if candidates promise police reform that is utterly trivial?
I've said again and again that likely the only country in the American continent where the majority of the people are happy with their democracy is Canada (might be some Island nations there too). Being unhappy with the system is a clear sign it doesn't work. Yet to say the democracies are inherently incapable of dealing with things like systemic racism or use of excessive force by the police isn't true.
I said "Elections are utterly trivial in political terms" as in the political task is over by the time of the election, the dye is already cast the election is just to see what colour the cloth turns out.
I suspect you're a Conservative and I'll interpret any ambiguity in your comments according to that prejudice. I might be wrong, but it would be to the extent that you're actually centrist, or possibly liberal socialist. You seem to have decided (without any prior reason) to have interpreted ambiguity in my comment from the presumption that I'm probably a totalitarian dictator. Seems a bit uncharitable.
Anyway...
Quoting ssu
Firstly, candidates offering something is not an election, it's a political manifesto. An election is the collection of votes for a range of candidates. Two different things. Candidates could feasibly not offer anything and there still be an election.
Secondly, I think it is relatively trivial, yes. If there's no support for such a policy among the populace, then the candidate's offering it will get nowhere. Them merely offering it is unlikely to change the views of the populace. The populace demanding it, however, is far from trivial. If it doesn't directly get it done, then it will likely persuade one (or all) candidates to offer it as a policy. So if the two - candidate manifesto vs public demand - candidate manifesto is a fairly trivial way of bringing about change.
:roll: This is a confusing answer. What task is over and when?
Quoting Isaac
Hence if the democratic system works, at least some party will respond to it. Or then the people can form their own political movement.
Quoting Isaac
No. What just rang to ear was this attitude that elections are trivial and nothing happens without people protesting in the streets. That it has to be a precursor for any change simply doesn't show much if any trust in the democratic system. Or then you simply have come to the conclusion that democracy doesn't work in your country. I would agree that there are many problems, but is all lost so much that elections are trivial?
I dunno how to envision what's likely and what's not from the space of all possible representative democracies. The only speculative principle I can come up with is the one I already said; if a state does not tend to change its behaviour based on expressions of the public will, then that's a defeater for it being a representative democracy. That's a very strong condition; as there's always questions of speed of change and amount of public will expression involved that would make it count. If you define state response to protest as part of representative democracy, that would count.
I'm inclined to think that the default state of a government in a representative democracy should be enacting policy to achieve public will (or public interest) in order for it to count as a representative democracy. It seems to me that when a state's populace isn't in uprising, the default state tends towards serving the interests of wealthy private interests; which is problematic for calling that state a representative democracy. It's more of a "We'll fuck you as hard and as long as we can get away with-ocracy"; mixed with economic and social conditions that strongly inhibit prolonged advocacy with tractable goals from the public, that's a recipe for formal representation but little functional representation.
There isn't too much functional difference between only land owners being politicians and having the vote and only the wealthy being able to vote with their dollars + influence and constrain the autonomous policy advocacy of a state's politicians. The wealth filter on social capital politically alienates racialised groups in that regard too.
So maybe in the spirit of "a state is as free as its least free person", the default state of a representative democracy should also be to increase the agency of those groups in it which are least free. Lifting the agency of all is essentially democracy through ameliorating subjugation. If it fails to do that I'd be convinced to stop considering it a democracy... Not that they're listening.
Quoting ssu
So with the above in mind, the US state is a failure of representative democracy - IE, it isn't one:
(1) Its default behaviour does not increase the agency of its most marginalised groups; at best it sustains their agency, at worst it diminishes their agency.
(2) It takes an uprising to change state behaviour marginally and slowly; even widespread violent expression of public will is not enough for the state to get its shit together and address the problems adequately.
(3) Its socio-economic conditions render the most marginalised least able to turn their concerns into actionable policy.
And we've got the nerve to be haughty at the rioters; if we live in violence, expect us to speak in it.
The task of changing public opinion. For, me, this whole section of this thread has been about the legitimacy of methods for changing public opinion on some matter (in this specific case, riots and statue defacing as means of changing public opinion about efforts to deal with systemic racism). By the time of an election, the political campaign (to garner support for the new candidate, or the old candidate's new ideas) has either worked or not. If the new candidate or the new ideas don't get the support they need, the other guy will get into power and the politician's ability to change the course of events will be massively reduced.
Quoting ssu
Yes. If they demand it. The question here is what if they currently don't.
Let's say I'm a person who thinks we should do more about systemic racism than we currently do (I actually am, but I want to keep this hypothetical, not personal). I think people should take more action against it than they currently take. So what are my legitimate options to bring that about? Elections won't do that - they are just going to return the current state of affairs, the one I already would like to change. Political campaigns won't do that because they are focused on appealing to the very electorate I've just established are not taking as strong a stance against systemic racism as I would like them to.
(we should add in here the issues with politicians being in the pocket of big businesses and so not yielding any options even for an issue with majority support, but we don't even need it to make the argument).
I could debate, stand on my soapbox perhaps, but media attention is not distributed on the basis of strength of argument, and I don't own my own newspaper. I could write a book but can neither afford to publish nor publicise it. I could write to my MP, but he quite rightly doesn't care (he's been elected on the mandate of the very people not taking the issue seriously enough.
So what are my options? Deface a statue, occupy the street, shut down a supermarket. Now the media pay attention. Now I get a voice. Now I get a chance to persuade people that they should take this issue more seriously. Did I have any other realistic choice?
Yeah, I get where you're coming from. I think I'm most interested in one step back, what if the public's will is not even where it should be on the issue, but if the state isn't even going to find out, then I agree, that's perhaps problem number one.
Quoting fdrake
Ha! Indeed. It's a bit of a mouthful for the politics textbooks, but it has accuracy to it's credit.
I'm probably excessively cynical (I think it might have been mentioned before), but I'm just not sure I'd limit the insidious role of big business to hoarding political influence in terms only of the substance of government. They have both the means and the incentive to influence the populace to no lesser a degree. But if they succeed at that then it won't matter a jot if the system is representative or not. All it will represent is the will they put there in the first place.
But is this a historical fact?
If so, what were the widespread violent expression, no correct that, the uprising which in the end you got the Civil Rights act of 1964 and the Voting Rights act of 1965? That was started actually being pushed by JFK and yes, there indeed were protests that made JFK to respond (The Birmingham campaign and the March on Washington in 1963), but those weren't violent. Watts riots happened after the voting rights act was signed to law.
Please elaborate, I'm not such an expert on American history.
I agree that the US democracy does have problems, but I'm not so sure about that it doesn't work at all. But then I may have misunderstood you.
The majority of Americans DO support change.
Or excessive force by the police isn't the issue anymore?
Quoting Isaac
So basically what you are saying is that nothing changes in elections.
Quoting Isaac
How have you established that the electorate is not against systemic racism? You have only said that elections don't work, people aren't interested, politicians won't do anything. It might be good to explain this.
Quoting Isaac
And what would be your options in a fully functioning democracy? You are not above others, you know. If you want to change peoples thinking and influence the community, yes, you have a hell lot of work to do!
That's irrelevant to the argument. Firstly the fact that most Americans support change doesn't have any bearing on the argument about which courses of action are legitimate in the case that they don't. Secondly, it's reasonable to assume that the kinds of change some protest group might want are not the kinds of change most Americans support. Just supporting 'change' sensu lato is not enough.
Quoting ssu
No. I'm saying nothing changes in elections without a change first occurring in the electorate. The question is how to bring about that change.
Quoting ssu
Because there is still systemic racism.
Quoting ssu
Indeed. I'm asking you what that work consists in if not protest.
Neither am I. It's not like I've got any formal training in it. So you're not speaking to someone who's actually a domain expert. My exposure to it mostly comes from Wiki walks and bits of post colonial theory I've read.
I think that there was a really big organised labour movement driving it. That famous picture of the March on Washington:
Wasn't some decentralised network flashmob, it was organised. When MLK gave "I Have A Dream", in some respects he was already preaching to the converted; the members and affiliates of the huge NGO and lobbying group the Leadership Conference On Civil and Human Rights; which was a gigantic coalition of unions and human rights organisations.
JFK's and LBJ's contribution I think was legislative judo and putting in concessions to make it pass.
Remember why it was necessary; blacks already had the formal legal right to vote long before the civil rights movement in the 1960's. But there were literacy tests, a poll tax and other filters that were put in place intentionally to keep the descendents of the slaves "in their place". As an aside: those people who think formal legal equality is sufficient for equal treatment either do not realize or intentionally occlude the historical fact that the American state institutionalised allegedly "race neutral" measures intentionally to disempower non-whites; they understand the issues of systemic discrimination less than the politicians they vote for - who know how to keep it going under a cover of plausible deniability.
"We are not poison, we are simply anti not poison"
Isaac, the the whole issue of democracy is to get a majority support something, even if it is the rights of a small minority and hence an issue that doesn't effect the majority at all.
Quoting Isaac
And that change usually happens through political movements that even can organize themselves into political parties. That's how the system ought to work.
Quoting Isaac
And the question is what to do about it? How? A simple issue like to be against excessive use of force from authorities is a genuine start. You have to say what is needed to change. Or you just oppose 'systemic racism' just like a Republican opposes socialism, or better yet, cultural-marxism, which is created as this catch-all term for everything. Which naturally doesn't even imply any real suggestions what to do etc.
Quoting Isaac
Isn't this taught in school?
You can organize into associations, you can form political parties, you can join political parties and be active through them. You can run in elections in your community or so. You can write opinions etc. to the media. You can write to the Parliamentary Ombudsman here and engage with authorities directly. You can speak to members of Parliament or elected officials in the community. And also, you can hold political demonstrations. My son was this spring on the fifth grade was taught about these things.
If you think that all that above is just too complicated and it's easier to attack someone or some property to get media attention, then well, that's the way that terrorists think also.
Hmm. I did mention the March on Washington in 1963, or to be more correct to say "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom", where King did deliver his famous speech. At least that I did know about US history.
But the question is, that was peaceful, wasn't it? And king promoted non-violence in the protests. So why say then:
Quoting fdrake
I think for him it was a question of tactics? @boethius had original source stuff regarding MLK and nonviolence.
Keep in mind; the possibility of success of nonviolent actions in a political circumstance is not an argument for the necessity of nonviolent actions in any political circumstance. This is effectively an independent question of the utility of violent (against property!) protest right now.
But those political movements have to take some action to persuade the electorate. Simply existing isn't sufficient. So it seems we're back to ideas of the sanctity of property. You seem to be saying that political parties can 'protest' (called an election campaign) using their own suff, but protests groups can't protest using anyone else's stuff. So it seems to be entirely about the sanctity of property ownership. You're basically saying that the protection of private property is more important than political persuasion - because otherwise I can't see any difference between a political campaign and a protest.
Quoting ssu
I don't think the details are at issue here. I could produce a list of things I think need addressing. The point here is that my list would be unlikely to be the same as everyone else's. So I still have some job of work to do to convince others of my list.
Quoting ssu
None of this has any bearing at all on influencing the electorate. Simply offering them the option has virtually no influencing power. You have to persuade them its the best option too.
Quoting ssu
Yet more uselessness in the face of an electorate who currently do not care about the issues you care about.
The media do not publish the opinion of anyone who writes to them. They publish the opinion that suits their editorial objectives. If yours doesn't you might as well write to santa-claus. If it does then you needn't bother as all commentry will be in that vein already.
Why would your MP pay the slightest attention to you? If I wrote to my (Conservative) MP about increasing taxes, for example, all he's going to think is "most of my electorate want lower taxes".
Quoting ssu
So this is all we have left. The rest of this is just deflection. The only means of effecting public opinion available to the working class is demonstration.
The question then is simple, is the protection of private property more important than the additional attention destroying it might bring? Depending on the issue, the answer is clearly no. A couple of high street stores are not more important than ensuring that the issue of police violence is given attention.
Some footage of a totally awesome grandpa saving the life of a racist hooligan after an altercation between BLM protesters and the hooligans in London. :strong:
So was for Gandhi too: tactics. But those tactics did work. Or are you dissappointed that there wasn't more bloodshed?
Quoting fdrake
Sure. Nonviolent actions would likely not have deterred Stalin from annexing my puny country to the Soviet Empire in 1939, so yes, there are those political circumstances when the system doesn't work without violence: passive resistance didn't work, we can look at what happened to the Baltic States. But are you genuinely saying here that the situation in the US cannot be improved without violence?
I think your question comes down to just when is violence acceptable. Even in basic law there are those situations were the use of violence is allowed. My question, and I hope you manage to read to my point here: How much do you believe in your democracy to be able to function without relying to violence or breaking the law?
Using other's stuff? Oh yes, just like it isn't "car theft" anymore but "illegal use of a vehicle". :shade:
So is your argument here that you cannot make a change without braking the law? That those constitutional rights that I and you have isn't enough or what? That the existing laws are so bad, so outdated and wrong, that there is ABSOLUTELY NO OTHER WAY than to resort to breaking the law?
Now we're on the same page. But from my perspective that brings us to the start of the discussion again, I don't really want to go around the loop once more. If you read what I write as an argument for the permissibility of violence against property and in self defense against police in this instance, due to a history of failure and concessions only being forced by direct action, you'll find my argument in its intended context.
Yes. In some cases that is absolutely my argument. The population (be they politicians, wealthy elites, or just ordinary people) who just sat back and let systemic racism lead to thousands of deaths each year...those people, they're not just lacking a pamphlet on the matter. They're not just about to dismantle the institutions which perpetuate this violence as soon as they receive a stern letter to that effect. They're not going to do anything unless there's some serious threat to their comfortable status quo.
Some cases.
Right.
Isaac, I come from a country that was for some incredible reason selected this year as being the "The Happiest Country in the World" for the third year in a row. If you would know anything about Finns and the Finnish society, you'd understand why that sounds so strange and actually awkward.
Yet, you have to go only to the generation of my great grandparents and Finns were quite eager to kill each other thanks to the Russian revolution. Sometimes brothers were killing each other literally. Hence being the "happiest" country in the World now seems incredible.
Yet I don't think at all that Finns are better than other people and I genuinely believe people are the quite the same. I also don't think that the generation of my great grandparents were so much more different from us. And that is my point. If we glorify violence, if we think it's the only option and aren't careful, we really can get violence and lawlessness on a far larger scale that we ever did imagine in our now seemingly peaceful society. And people, unfortunately, will adapt to it.
The United States has enough firearms to turn this into a really bad tragedy. If you are entranced by the French "to the barricades!"-protest culture, remember that the American way is to hunker down and buy a gun. In France people simply don't have so many guns.
Your fellow citizens?
Besides, the Trump team just hopes for the protests to turn violent and the looting and vandalism to spread. That will get Republicans otherwise now displeased about the corona-virus response (etc.) to turn to their "Law & Order President". Yeah, what were they thinking in voting Joe Biden???
22,000 children are killed at work every year in positions of slavery working to produce the crap that supports our 'peaceful society'.
I'm not advocating violence, but it's willful blindness to pretend that violence isn't already happening. Its just neatly hidden away.
Quoting 180 Proof
Follow this link (and the next) and keep in mind that the genealogy of US Policing begins about 1701 with establishment of SLAVE PATROLS and continues at the end of the Civil War and then Reconstruction in 1877 with the rise of KLU KLUX KLAN vigilante-terrorists (mostly, but not exclusively, below the Mason-Dixon Line) and which, even after the demise of Legal Segregation, has culminated today in the militarization of most large metropolitan police departments since the early 1970s chiefly driven by Federal "War on Drugs" policies that predominantly target - TERRORIZE - Nonwhite & Poor urban communities.
THIS IS WHAT SYSTEMIC RACISM in US law enforcement and US criminal justice LOOKS LIKE. A day doesn't go by, especially living for years in Atlanta, that I'm not reminded that the world's largest monument to WHITE SUPREMACY is the Confederacy Monument at Stone Mountain, Georgia. Is it any wonder that RACISM & prejudice is so common in the US that kneeling in protest to police profiling & killings during the National Anthem is perceived to be anti-US "disrespect of the American flag" - especially by those who wear & wave the OLD SOUTH'S FLAG OF TREASON?
Either you are Anti-racist (Anti-fascist) or you are not. :chin:
I'm a bit late to the forum (approximately two years due to being in graduate school) however I can touch upon systemic racism and why it exists and what we can do about it. This is perhaps a topic I greatly touched upon a bit in graduate school especially when it relates to ethnic intersectionality in relation to societal equity. Now in regards to systemic racism we must acknowledge the system to which it spurs from creation since the founding of the 13 colonies (as well as abroad in primarily European societies). Clearly, in the Deceleration of Independence "all men are created equal" with the parenthesis that denotes (except people of color). Fast forward til now we still see this. I have a theory as to what we can do to change systemic racism. The direct action we can take politically is to erect politicians who have everyone's best interest including those among the disenfranchised population.
These politicians must first decriminalize drugs that have placed predominantly people of color in jails, revamp laws such as the differences in sentencing of powdered cocaine users versus crack cocaine users. Provide equitable housing opportunities starting with the banks (as there is research to substantiate the claim that banks deny African-Americans more than whites). Make university education free and/or affordable. Provide occupational opportunities for those in urban communities along with free medical and mental health. This is just the basic. Furthermore, we must implement progressive ideals that have an egalitarian end which must be the futuristic foundation of our society. However, to ultimately change any residual affect that racism can creep its ugly head in, generations must die.
What I mean by generational death is the fact that generations that have propagated racism along with those who have suffered under racism must die. The reason behind my idea is because those who were raised in a racist household and live must eventually die and those who are influenced by such individuals must die as well. To those who suffered under racism they too must die to prevent any ideas of racial retribution through dissent.
Those complicit regarding matters of institutional racism and it's residual effects/affects will remain so as long as doing so poses no threat to their own lives and/or livelihoods.
Is that a good summary?
I mean, do I understand you correctly?
Not just people of color either. It was also except those who owned nothing of financial(market-based) value. It was also except women, regardless of color. Although white women were clearly held in much higher regard than minority women, and of that, there is no doubt. Women's role in the world is still a contentious subject matter, across the board. But the point here is to support what you say, and add a bit more context regarding the framework of this nation. The Declaration of Independence also includes a key phrase...
"in order to form a more perfect union"...
That phrase is clear. We strive to form perfection. Those in power must believe that all people are created equal in order for the saying to carry acceptable conventional meaning in today's times. Those in power must believe that all citizens are to be treated equally under the law, and work to ensure that that is case when and where need be.
Who here would say that ending the influence of racist belief systems is anything other than a step in the right direction towards forming a more perfect union? We all know what's been going on. It sickens me, personally.
Quoting Anaxagoras
This, while stemming from perhaps the most noble of intentions, sets out a criterion that is literally, physically, mentally, and figuratively impossible to meet. Your aiming in the right areas, but you need to sharpen the focus just a wee bit.
Belief systems are what must die my friend. The thoughts and beliefs that some have about others get passed on from generation to generation. This includes all kinds of belief about others, racist belief notwithstanding.
Surely some of those people who were raised in racist households knew and/or learned of better, and in doing so helped others to do the same...
That, my friend, is what it takes... in part at least. It's not enough, but it's certainly necessary.
Look at the last forty years worth of generational change. The youth are ahead of the curve here!
I agree, however the beliefs are attached to the person and unfortunately generational beliefs do not change easily. As a black man myself, despite my ideals of egalitarianism I am left with the memories of my mother, father, and grand-parents of their struggle and the affect of their wariness implanted on my soul. Because of that, I'm left with the reality that I may indirectly implant the wariness of "non-persons of color" upon my potential children despite also implanting upon them the love for all humanity. with that said like I stated earlier I think my death would suffice in helping promote egalitarianism (at least hopefully) however good points.
I agree. However there is still the question of complicity despite those who do not share the racist mentality. That itself is just as dangerous as the racist mind. the recent protests have given me hope for the future in that there are multi-ethnic people champion the cause of a minority group. To see LGBTQA+ community come out in solidarity with BLM, to see whites, Asians, Muslims, Jews, Christians, nurses, doctors, professionals, and even policemen and women themselves come out in solidarity gives me hope.
The prejudices the elites maintain are revisable, editable, reformable, without dislodging the control of the elites, or their ultimate purposes of control. So, here we are today, June 15, 2020; the Supreme Court has affirmed that anti-discriminatory employment laws cover GLBT people. Does that mean that gay and lesbian people are now part of the elite? No, indeed! Other credentials are required: lots of money, the right pedigree, the right race, the right presentation, etc. I'm a 74 year old gay man. I've seen my status in society improve steadily since, say, Stonewall in 1969. But I don't have much money or a great pedigree, though I am white. I don't have the right friends in high places and my political ideas are way way out in subversive left field. No elite dinner parties for me!
Suppose tomorrow all the police departments were defunded, Trump, the Senate, the House, and all 50 states committed themselves to eliminating racism in 5 years (please don't try holding your breath) would you then be equal to the elite? No you would not. You would still need the large amount of money, the right pedigree, the right presentation, the right contacts, education, and so on. You'd still be some kind of a prole, like just about everybody else.
The elite's primary project is to remain the elite and keep the rest of us on edge with each other so we don't turn on them! They are good at this. They've been doing it for centuries, all over the world.
Do you really think there is some kind of consistent coordination amongst the super rich and politically powerful? Do Soros and Koch brothers and Putin all want the same things? Is Bill Gates in league with Xi Jinping? Are Oprah and the Saudi Prince on the same side?
Mr. Robot's a great show, but its global 1% of the 1% club led by a mastermind state Chinese hacker is a little on the conspiratorial side, as is the Illuminati. Sure, Jeff Bezos and Aliko Dangote want to keep their billions and strive to continue being successful, but that's a little different than a global effort by all the elites to keep everyone else out.
Also, they'd have to admit Trump is part of the plan.
Well, it's not far off. What I actually believe is that people become very easily drawn into patterns of behaviour (whether that's a job, childcare, or socialising) where they adopt the social norms of that group, so it's not so much about something tangible like lives and livelihoods, but something slightly more intangible, the social role in their group. But this is not a crucial distinction here. The point is that it has been demonstrated over and again (see studies by Martin&Hewstone, Burgoon and Nemeth for examples) that the persuasiveness of messages from dissenting groups is carried by the extent to which they deviate from the accepted social norms. Basically, a message carried via some socially normal means get subsumed into the existing culture too easily, it takes one resistant to social norms to snap people out of standard thinking patterns so that they can engage with new ideas.
The accumulation of material wealth is a strong social norm in most groups, so it has a strong correlation with those most interested in maintaining the structures which promote it, but I think it's the social norms, not the money that does the driving.
Did someone already answer this? Or is this some kind of mine field trap? I'll give my thoughts anyway:
Shelby Steele is one of those few critics in the black community who point out things and do make a genuine point, but unfortunately are seen as giving ammunition to racists and hence are political incorrect, persona non grata or are seen as an uncle Tom, a person regarded as betraying their cultural or social allegiance. Has every program intended to improve the situation of African Americans failed as Steele says? I don't think that is the case, but surely not all have been a success. Just to give an example (from the interview you posted), when Steele says (22+ min forward) that "White guilt is based on the terror of being seen as a racist" and later "the black leadership have become hustlers who work this white guilt", that comment would be something that white supremacists would love to use.
I personally like more for example professor Glenn Loury, who does see the similar problems yet who can be critical even about himself. He comments a lot of various related issues on Bloggingheads Tv etc, yet here's a more prepared lecture from him (1h 30min) which is called "When Black Lives Matter: On the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America", which I thought was very good. The interesting story is when he as a young economist meets black leadership and Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King jr and how Loury now reflects on that meeting in the 80's. Yes, these issues and the criticism Loury (and Steele) make isn't anything new.
Unlikely. Newspapers seem to respond to bias, not drive it. People are always looking for some external bogeyman to blame.
You can choose to read the Guardian.
The bigger issue is that in present times the media chooses what group it wants to conform. It's back a hundred years or more to a time when one class read one newspaper and the other class another, which had news totally different from each other. Just like with the social media automata chooses just what you want to hear based on your earlier choices.
Journalistic objectivity is seen to be so lame and outdated. One has to "take a side" as things are so bad today, they say.
I don't doubt you. I do not doubt that there are those in the shadows pulling the puppet strings who are the 1%. But let me ask you though, what ethnicity are those pulling those strings? Thinking about this a quote by LBJ comes to my mind:
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
Great that you don't advocate violence. Me neither.
So let's enlarge this to the scope of the World, if just 330 million in the US isn't enough. With that enlargement it comes even more complex. Yes, how do you improve the working standards in Third World countries? Well, how has it become better in the UK, Japan, South Korea and so on? I would argue that there's a guideline and we can learn from the past on how countries have improved the situation of their workforce, but perhaps this is for another thread as it's quite far from the actual topic discussed here.
And if in Ethiopia a Chine factory uses child labor in miserable working conditions, that is the reason to burn down a McDonalds in Wyoming? That will really help the Ethiopian children or what?
Or is your question about just how much blood you and I have on our hands if we have a smartphone that has lithium battery using cobalt mined from the Republic of Congo? That's the willful blindness? Am I then better than you if my smartphone's battery uses cobalt dug up from the Murrin Murrin Mine near Laverton, Western Australia? I assume they have safety regulations, even environmental regulations and decent salaries there, so have I genuinely made the World a better place? Surely something has to be done, but how do we get the change we want?
Better to use these happy Australians...
...than him?
No, but McDonald's using child labour in miserable working conditions is a reason to burn down McDonald's in Wyoming.
And if it wasn't that, they'd be getting their finance from a bank which makes money out of other companies linked to slave labour. Global finance makes most companies complicit unless they take care to avoid it.
Quoting ssu
That's certainly one of the issues, yes. If we think that we live in a 'peaceful' society where everyone has a phone which has been made with child slave labour, then yes, they are wilfully blind to the violence their society is built on. But it's much wider than that, the history of violence to minority ethnic groups and lower classes is what's allowed this prosperity, it's not a coincidence. The stress policing in America is just another example of a violent situation used to maintain the 'peace' of the more wealthy.
Quoting ssu
Well, as I mentioned to CS above, messages carried within the current social norms tend to get subsumed relative to messages carried in ways outside of social norms. So we protest. If McDonalds thinks it's OK to use child slaves to make their stuff, then a stiff letter isn't going to cut it. Burning them down might.
Yeah I see how they treated Meghan Markle
So you admit it won't help the [s]Ethiopians[/s] Chinese child labor. OK.
Do they at McDonalds think it's OK? Do you think that they are irrelevant of an media article like that appearing? So there's no other way than to burn down franchising to get the message? (Btw. the article is 20 years old, but it doesn't matter, nothing has changed in twenty years in China, right?)
And why stop there then?
Because let's remember that you had that smartphone which uses cobalt dug up by that poor Congolese kid, then perhaps your house should be burned down. Wouldn't that send even a better message to smartphone producers? That their sales would go down because people would be terrified of buying their smartphones, because some lunatics can set fire to their homes? If you don't use anti-child labor eco-friendly 'happy cobalt', your house might be burnt down. Wouldn't that just change peoples behavior!??? Remember I'm using the 'happy cobalt' mined by those happy miners adhering to environmental regulations at the Murrin Murrin mine. So, have I really made things better with my anti-child labor choices?
Oh well, at least with burning down that McDonalds in Wyoming you have likely put one franchising entrepreneur in severe economic difficulty and few low paid workers (who might be poc) out of a job because you burned their workplace down at a time when the economy is very bad and a pandemic is going around. Guess all that makes the World a better place then.
Even if you say you don't advocate violence, you sure do seem OK with it.
A happier World for Isaac:
Of course they think it's OK. They didn't accidentally use child labour.
Quoting ssu
Yes, seeing as the number of slaves is increasing, I'd say the media article might have had an effect, but a very slow and inefficient one.
Quoting ssu
According to most of the studies I've read on the matter (I've cited a few above), there's no other way than to break social norms (which usually means breaking some law).
Quoting ssu
I don't think the factors governing the global economy have changed in 20 yrs, no.
Quoting ssu
Yes, if I'm significantly associated with the act of complicity then arson is certainly one of the illegal acts likely to get media attention on an issue. But individuals are almost never significantly associated with the act of complicity. There are much more effective target which cause much less harm. Why would anyone deliberately choose a more harmful, less effective form of protest?
Quoting ssu
I don't understand the connection to the argument here.
Quoting ssu
Well yes, that's the point. You'd need some evidence to counter it, simply repeating an argument back sarcastically doesn't constitue a counter-argument.
Shelby Steele more or less says in that interview that "blacks" don't have the right value system to deal with freedom and the responsibility that comes with it, and that they only have themselves to blame for the lack of progress since the 1960s.
Typical "laissez-faire capitalist and individualist bullshit" where you're poor because you're not working hard enough. Poverty as a personal failing instead of a social problem.
I don't know when he studied sociology but either he wasn't paying attention or it was 30 years ago. I stopped reading after that.
There was a small residual scepticism about the EU, (which the tabloid media had been drip feeding for decades) which the populists, who were in league with the tabloid media, exploited. Resulting in a 52% victory for leave. Whereas just a few years earlier the levels of people who were sceptical of the EU, enough to even think about leaving it, was very few.
The liberal and the neoliberal illusion of personal responsibility which in turn argues against determinism. Last I remember, determinism has been the dominant philosophical truth about the world, but somehow it doesn't apply within liberal and neoliberal worldviews, even among liberal and neoliberals who accept determinism philosophically. In my opinion, the liberal hypocrisy at the foundation of the liberal illusion of being a free society for all people.
Because it's not less effective. Terrorism works. It gets huge media coverage and gets people truly afraid. Would you publicly use a smart phone if someone can takes a photo of you, tracks down where you live and puts your house on fire?
Quoting Isaac
Who decides that? You?
Quoting Isaac
I only tried to make a point of how ludicrous the web you create of what is complicity and what isn't. Because if a small cabal protest the use of something as complicity to bad behavior, then the question rises that what then is "good behavior"? Hence the comparison between cobalt and "happy cobalt".
And if you protest the situation of child labor in Congo, is then the answer to put an embargo on it and make things worse the 12,5 million people or one fifth of the population that is employed by Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining, because the country is such a mess that only a few mining companies dare to operate there?
Quoting Isaac
Well, I think a person that starts up a franchising business and employs typically young people (who many times have that job as their first) are people that I would support in my community even if don't him or her personally. Why the employees and the entrepreneur have to lose their jobs for a media photo op is disgusting and their "complicity" in the problems global markets is rather dubious.
I'm not so sure that he said they have "only themselves to blame" and that his argument is the "get a haircut and get a real job"-answer or some Ayn Randian libertarian response.
I see a lot of similarities here to the structural problems in class differences between poor and rich, between blue collar and white collar families which are present even if people share the same ethnicity and have the same skin pigment. Naturally there is the addition of racism and bigotry, which turns things more ugly. Yet there are a lot of the issues that are similar starting for example the attitude towards education etc.
No, I don't suppose I would. I can't think of a group of people who would want individuals to be terrified of having their lives and all their family's possessions put at risk, but at the same time be terribly concerned about the welfare of Congolese children. But yes, if there were such a bizarre group then threatening arson probably would work. Why, do you know of such a group?
Quoting ssu
It's just a sociological fact. Individuals are rarely ascribed responsibilty for actions which involves a collective, especially where there's a power imbalance.
Quoting ssu
I don't understand the question. Are you having trouble seeing why not buying your phone from a company who are willing to exploit child labour might be considered "good behavior"?
Quoting ssu
Have you stopped beating your wife?
Quoting ssu
They're making a profit directly out of the fact that the products they sell have been made using slave labour. How is that 'dubious'?
Yes, to some extent. The elites have common financial interests (and competing ones, as well), and common issues with respect to governance, taxation, and so on. Do they get together to discuss how to manage the world's populations so that they stay on top? Probably not, but as a low level prole I can only guess.
He couches it in rhetorical questions but it's pretty clear. Read the transcript. It's easier to spot bad argumentation that way.
I know a lot of groups from history like that. They are called dictatorships or authoritarian regimes. Keeping people in fear was/is a control tool for them. They differ from ordinary mobsters in that they surely have great plans for the improvement of the World, at least in their own thinking. The World is going to be a better place, if only you eradicate the capitalists / the jews / the communists whoever from society. That's how they think. Bold dramatic moves have to be taken! And they don't believe in democracy.
Quoting Isaac
Are you having trouble seeing that we use mobile phones? Or computers? You are using some kind of hardware to write on this site, aren't you? If so, then people generally ask then: "OK, if I'm not going to use this bad company (because they use cobalt from Congo), what will I do then?"
Quoting Isaac
And what's the difference then if you buy a toy made by child labour?
Are you less complicit than the young student working on the counter at the fast food restaurant trying to get some income? So you might be against attacking families that have bought a Happy-meal, but Ok with the young employee losing his or her job and perhaps happy about the entrepreneur losing his business. And all because it gets into the local news!
Right. And I'm sure for those groups such terrorist tactics probably work, at least for a time. BLM want fairer treatment for minorities, not the extermination of the Jewish race. The allies used the same tactics as the Nazis on the battlefield (shoot the enemy), does that make them basically the same? Intent matters.
Quoting ssu
Use one which doesn't use child labour. Why are you finding this concept so hard?
Quoting ssu
Yes.
Quoting ssu
Yes. The young employee's income and the entrepreneur's profit both came from the use of child slave labour. Under what ethical system are you holding their situation to be in any sense more important?
I agree. The battlefield is much larger than what we see our on home front
Because it is goddam hard and the choices are quite arbitrary! A Dutch company tries to your eco-friendly phones called Fairphones. It says it can reach 40% of the materials used would be ethically sourced or recycled (of dozens of materials used). Again, arbitrary choices about what is complicit and what isn't.
And then you could ask yourself, if a fifth of the population of Congo gets income from mining and the vast amount of this is from artisanal and small scale mining (ASM), why would you then be against one of the most poorest people in the World? Is an embargo the best way?
And furthemore:
The reality is complex, but your answers are simple and arbitrary.
:100:
How is 40% ethical sources arbitrary? It's obviously 40% better than non-ethically sourced. Are you suggesting there's some measurable disadvantages to be weighed against using child slave labour? Do they not make it in your colour?
Quoting ssu
Why would you think that continuing to support exploitative labour practices is the only way to help the poorest people in the world?
Quoting ssu
If all you've got is conservative slogans to flag-waive over there's not much point in continuing. You were previously extolling the virtues of making my voice heard via an election. Tell how choosing a political representative is a way of bringing about positive change but choosing a phone is complex and arbitrary?
We're talking about choices here - the ethical product vs the non-ethical one, law-breaking protest vs political campaigning, politician A vs politician B... How does the complexity of the world have any bearing on which to choose, all it does is make the choice complicated and difficult to see the consequences of. This isn't somehow magically less true for one option than another.
So do we just stop trying to make progress, because the world is complex. Just leave things exactly as they are just in case we break something? There's been violent protests since civilisation began, so how can you rail against them? The world is complex, you know. By 1833 we'd had 200 years of slavery and our economic system was built on it, should we have not abolished it because 'the world is complex'?
And how exactly is supporting law-breaking protest and ethical consumer choices 'simple', but opposing law-breaking protest and ethical consumer choices is not? What exactly is the complexity you're taking into account here? All you've provided is a bunch of speculation as to the possible consequences of either which is no less arbitrary than the predictions of the consequences of taking those actions.
I don't mean to pick you out, but this has getting my goat for some time. This is supposed to be a discussion forum, it's not a fucking football match. What exactly is this cheer-leading supposed to achieve?
No, they do not. However, they can and do change.
Quoting Anaxagoras
I'm wondering something here. I'll grant everything you've said here, and further state - unequivocally - that implanting a wariness is both necessary and good. Yet, this seems like something that you're no proud of... as if it is something that you do not want to perpetuate.
Until those who devalue and/or otherwise discriminate against black people are stripped of the power to negatively influence and/or harm blacks, then I would say imparting a sense of caution when navigating a life within the United States of America is not only ok, it's something to aspire towards.
Black people ought always be on the lookout for racists.
Quoting Anaxagoras
Well, I'll have to take your word on that.
Just understand that from where I sit, I've no reason to believe that. However, because you do believe that, and you know yourself much better than I, if you say your death would be better for an egalitarian society to flourish, I'll have no choice but to take your word for it.
Quoting Anaxagoras
I would concur.
Quoting Anaxagoras
It is an undeniable sign of the times. We are all fed up with it. It has no place in a society built upon the founding principles of a representative form of government.
A very complex way to exonerate immoral activity is dealt with best in the simplest terms possible. , while being a participant with whom I've been at odds with a number of times concerning thought and belief(cognition if you prefer), is acting admirably as far as I can see.
:100:
Not a football game, but worthy of cheerful support nonetheless!
Yeees! 1-1. Come on you reds!
When there isn't any real transparency, when things depends quite on the specific information you have or if you believe what companies say or not, it is quite arbitrary as does the "Fairphone" provider example tell. I believe their quite honest when the say they don't know anything about the 60% of the materials they use. That was my point.
Quoting Isaac
You opting NOT to buy certain things starting from let's say leopard skins and rhino horns is a peaceful, effective way to influence things. A great way to influence people. That wasn't the issue, it was about getting media attention by breaking the law.
The issue was if it's OK to burn people's homes who have the wrong cell phone. Or it's OK to burn workplaces of people that the franchising company behind them (which the entrepreneur and workers have no control over) has been accused (twenty years ago) of using a subcontractor that uses child labor. With the latter you were totally fine with and think the workers are complicit and deserve it, whereas the cell phone owner isn't.
I'm not so sure how complicit the low paid worker in a fast food restaurant trying to make a living is in this case. I think the worker didn't make a political statement by choosing the workplace. Besides, what many will see is just leftist vandals burning their favorite symbol of globalization and capitalism. Doesn't look smart, doesn't help. But you get a kick out of it, I guess.
Quoting Isaac
Did I say that? No. Do you think that improving artisanal and small scale mining is similar to supporting exploitative labour?? Yeah, let's ban ASM and have Chinese companies using minimal chinese labour and robots do the mining.
You should ask yourself how child labour stopped being a problem in your country? Did it come become rich woke foreigners protested about it in their own country? Or perhaps did it end because the society became more wealthy and an effort was made to educate children?
That children are put to school and don't have to work or beg for the family is an indication that there isn't absolute povetry in the society. As long as there is widespread absolute povetry, it's a no brainer that people living from hand to mouth will use children to work. It's one of the basic reasons people get lots of children in the first place. As income and wealth increases, the amount of children decreases. The real solution is for the countries to truly develop and get more wealthy so they can tackle these societal problems.
Yes, but that's no different with any other company. So you've got a company which is opaque, and doesn't know (or doesn't tell) about 100% of its sources verses one which is opaque, and doesn't know (or doesn't tell) about 60% of its sources. That's still not arbitrary, it's clear that the latter is an improvement.
Quoting ssu
It's still a choice. You're saying that choosing to protest in those ways doesn't take account of the fact that the world is complex (and is arbitrary), but choosing to protest by means of political campaign, or letter to the paper, does take account of the fact that the world is complex (and is not arbitrary).
I'm asking how the complexity of the world leads us to one choice rather than another. It seems irrelevant to me. The world is complex so we can't clearly see the long-term consequences of our actions. That goes exactly the same for either choice, so it can't be used as an argument in favour of one over the other.
Quoting ssu
I gather that, but you're not the one considering destroying his place of work, so that's OK. I am sure how complicit they are, so I don't object to the place of work being destroyed. I wouldn't advocate it (partly for the reason you later give), but I'm not opposed to it either. You can't expect other people to act on the basis of your beliefs can you?
Quoting ssu
Again, you're not the one considering it, so whether you think it helps is irrelevant. If you want to make an argument that no one should think it helps, then you'd need to present some evidence to that effect. Something like a series of campaigns which failed to progress in their objectives because of a use of law-breaking forms of protest, but in someoother country succeeded when using legal tactics.
What's offensive to many (myself included) about this attitude that we should be in the least bit concerned about the employee's wage packet, is that it shows a deep disparity in concern.
You cite the 'complexity of the world' in questioning how we should handle the issue of child labour in the DRC.
"Maybe we should boycott, maybe that won't work, maybe a political solution, maybe a legal one, who knows, it's all so complex... "
Meanwhile children as young as six are dying down mines.
But when it comes to someone's idea of what to do about it (burn down the Apple Store, for example), suddenly all the complexity is gone, there's no uncertainty allowed about whether it might work, no leeway. All of a sudden the fact that some white college kid might lose their job becomes an unacceptable risk. We can't even try that strategy, it's too risky.
Where's the unaccepability of the Congolese children's plight? Why aren't we immediately putting a stop to that. You're prepared to stamp out law-breaking protests (despite not having clear evidence of their failure to work) just because the risk to the college kid's wage packet is too great. Why aren't you extending the same principle to the Congolese children. Yes, carrying on as things are might well be better for their country in the long run (the world is complex after all) but surely it's obvious to anyone with a shred of compassion that the risk is too great.
This is where I really disagree.
Quoting Isaac
Yeah. you didn't get my point.
Quoting Isaac
Because going to some other one's country and telling them as a woke foreigner what they should do isn't the best way around. Oh yes: STOP BEING POOR!!! Arrogant righteous hubris.
Quoting Isaac
I'm so evil.
Quoting Isaac
What on Earth are you blabbering about?
Quoting Isaac
Improvements happen from inside and from within the society. Those are the things we can hopefully assist.
Disagree with what, with the fact that I am sure, or the fact that I don't object, or the fact that I wouldn't advocate it. Because all I've given by way of propositions in that quoted section are three statements about my state of mind. I'm not sure how you might disagree with them.
Quoting ssu
Well, try again then.
Quoting ssu
We're always going to someone else's country and encouraging some way of doing things. There's no naturally occurring form of trade, it's all made up. The rules of the world bank, trade deals, tariffs, UN legislation, consumer choices. Whatever we do encourages some behaviours and discourages others. The only alternative whereby we stop interfering in foreign countries is to have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with them, no trade, no tourism, no contact. Anything else will have the effect of interfering with their autonomy in some way. It's a myth of the Conservative that the status quo is some naturally occurring default position.
Quoting ssu
Let me try it this way. Here's two possible solutions to the problem of Congolese slaves.
1. Carry on buying phones as usual so that they eventually get richer and make their own laws banning the practice. Theory - industry leads to development and development leads to better living conditions. Disadvantage if theory is wrong - lots of children suffer and die.
2. Set fire to an Apple Store. Theory - the protest shows how angry people are about Apple's supply chain choices, and media spotlight embarrasses people into changing phones, Apple eventually backs better working conditions. Disadvantage if theory is wrong - an entrepreneur loses their businesses and some workers have to find another job or go on benefits.
You cannot prove either theory right or wrong, the world, as you so rightly say, is complex and difficult to predict, so they are both a risk. Both benefit the prosperity of the Congolese if they work, so they're the same in that regard. One risks the livelihoods of a couple of westerners if it's theory is wrong. You seem terribly concerned about this risk. The other risks the lives of thousands of African children if the the theory is wrong. You seem quite happy to go with a hunch on that one.
That's a legitimate point of view, but many authors disagree, so whilst it might be a valid point to argue for within the thread, it's not anywhere near agreed upon enough to render talk of the effects of capitalism off-topic. They absolutely unequivocally affect minority ethnic groups disproportionately compared to white Europeans. You could make an argument that this is nothing but coincidence, but as a state of affairs to be answered for, its pretty much the textbook definition of systemic racism.
If systemic racism didn't work through economic means, you would not expect minorities to be economically disadvantaged. The current economic system over the world is capitalism; so studying how capitalist economies deploy or manifest racism is necessary intellectual labour here.
Wrote something related to it here. The history of systemic racism is colonial history; and the majority of current systemic racism is done through international business.
Yet there's a huge difference if that encouragement is optional or if it is implemented by force. If it's optional for the country itself to choose what it wants, then we are on the right track.
Just like in the case of this thread, which about systematic racism in THE US (which this discussion with you has strayed off), it is honestly and genuinely A JOB FOR CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES to get their shit together. It's simply limited what foreigners really can do. My setting ablaze the store of a Harley Davidson or a Chrysler importer really isn't the best option to tackle systemic racism in the US.
Quoting Isaac
That makes absolutely so sense at all. First of all, neither is really a solution.
Second, how setting fire to an Apple Store magically saves children in Congo? No, the disadvantages are:
1) Lots of children suffer and die.
2) Lots of children suffer and die AND an entrepreneur loses their businesses and some workers have to find another job.
Of course option 2) might also be:
2) Lots of children suffer and die AND an entrepreneur loses their businesses and some workers have to find another job AND people vote "Law & Order" Trump to office for four more years because they are fed up with their fast food restaurants being set on fire by vandals (or this image is successfully fed to them by Fox News).
So keep playing to the tune which Trump wants to hear from you.
It's my first response in this thread. It signals my agreement with @ssu that you are offering overly simplistic responses to an overwhelmingly complex situation.
I could have simply said "I totally agree"; what would your response have been then?
What other economic system could there be, given that money, which is essential to any complex economy, in the absence of strict central control, by accumulation necessarily gives rise to capital. If there is strict central control there will be, due to the corruptible nature of human beings, an exploitative economic elite in any case, as history has clearly shown.
If you want to argue against the existence and growth of the purely financial sectors and their associated non-productive practices of "money-spinning" I would lend a sympathetic ear. Such practices ideally ought to be regulated out of existence in my view, but in a complex productive economy there is no alternative to money that I can imagine, and since it is not in the interest of the financial elites to promote such regulation of the financial sector it is vanishingly unlikely to happen.
Destroying property and resources achieves nothing; it really just amounts to the mindless destruction of property and resources. Nothing will happen without the enlightenment of the masses, and a collective will to coordinated action against the financial elites. But this seems almost impossible given that the masses mostly have no desire to be educated, and people's capacity to genuinely care about others usually extends only to a relative small number of family and friends.
Who's said anything about force? I never even mentioned it.
Quoting ssu
Why? I get that in conservative ideology the arbitrary geographic lines we draw around groups of people become really hyper-important for some reason, but why would it be limited what foreigners can do (in theory). America relies quite heavily of trade and that is vulnerable to foreign political viewpoints.
Quoting ssu
Just saying so doesn't make it the case. We're not canvassing opinion here, we're discussing ideas. If you think they're not solutions you need to explain why otherwise it's pointless us having this discussion. I already know you disagree with me, I don't need that further pointed out. I want to know why - how you arrived at your views.
Quoting ssu
I explained the theory. It's right next to the bold word 'Theory'. I thought that might be a clue. If you disagree with the theory, then again, the idea of this discussion is that I can find out why you disagree. I prefer you provide academic sources (even if only my name), but even if you can't at least some chain of reasoning would be nice.
Why is it that when conservatives are faced with policies for economic change they opine about how complex the world is, yet when faced with a social movement that's already happening, suddenly the consequences of it become crystal clear to them?
Well nothing, that's rather the point of my consternation. Are we discussing ideas or canvassing opinions? Why would I (or anyone) be the least bit interested in whether you agree with ssu or not? That's the bit I don't understand. You're not a noted expert in the field, ideas don't become more true the more people agree with them (not on the scale of an internet forum anyway), so I get that it was signalling your agreement, I just don't get what the aim of such a signal was.
This is a perfectly legitimate position to hold, but as I was trying to explain to ssu, it your opinion, not established fact. Its' neither reasonable (nor possible) for you to expect other people to act on the basis of your beliefs, they act on the basis of their beliefs. Think of it the other way round. a religious zealot thinks you should blow yourself up for the glory of Allah, would you be persuaded by the argument that they really, really believe you should?
If you want to change people's beliefs you have to, at the very least, appeal to their reasoning (and almost certainly a bunch of other stuff too). Simply telling us/them that you believe "Destroying property and resources achieves nothing" is irrelevant. If you believe that, then don't destroy property and resources. Other people believe it will achieve something, so they continue to destroy property and resources in the hope that it achieves their goals. If you want to change their belief you need to present some chain of reasoning which demonstrates how destroying property achieves nothing. It needs to be either pretty much irrefutable or it needs to come along with an alternative which will certainly change something, otherwise it's not going to have any persuasive power.
If only that were true we wouldn't have (civil) wars.
Not specifically to you but an observation of the US political landscape : I find it rather amusing how off limits violence all of a sudden is in the face of actual injustice and how happy they always are to bomb the shit out of other countries for "regime change" or based on trumped up lies.
From now on, every time a hawk proposes to go to war somewhere we should insist they should peacefully protest against that other country instead of resorting to violence.
Indeed. And if where such hawks claim life and liberty are equally important, then it follows they should insist that city authorities resolve criminal activity without resorting to life-threatening violence and incarceration... Oh wait, isn't someone already suggesting that....
Mr. Brooks' killer charged with felony murder and 10 other charges 5 days after the incident which is unprecidentedly swift for a local DA anywhere in the US.
Happened a bit quicker than the charges against the other police officers in the George Floyd case.
Good things might come out of this, even if real change will take time.
Embargoes are a show of force, mind you.
Quoting Isaac
"Arbitrary things" like the ATLANTIC OCEAN separates me from Americans so yeah, there indeed are issues that limit what I can do. :snicker:
Quoting Isaac
Umm...I really don't understand what you are saying at all, sorry. So if you burn Apple shops, children survive, but if you don't... nevermind.
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Isaac
And this is the dog whistle you hear if I talk. Rather irrelevant to say that I'm simply against violence WHEN non-violent methods do work and do work even better. I'm no pacifist, but I do think a democracy can work well enough for us if we make a concerted effort in upholding it.
Let's see how outraged you are when some right-wing extremists use similar tactics to further their dubious agenda. :roll: Because you would. It comes clear from an earlier discussion sometime with VagabondSpectre on this Forum.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
And your reply:
Quoting Isaac
So you don't believe in a fair debating space, or that laws are tried to be made or can be made for the common good. Again a quote from the earlier discussion:
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Quoting Isaac
So no wonder, as laws about property are according to you "put in place by wealthy landowners in order to apply the force of the army", property might be called theft as the old slogan from Proudhon goes. Needless to say that the lack of those individual property rights of the poor is one of the basic problems in Third World countries.
I'll think I'll end this discussion for a while to enjoy a lovely Midsummer here.
There would seem to be little or no reason to believe that looting and burning will achieve anything positive. So the onus would be on those who think it is a good strategy to show that it will, or that we have plausible reasons to believe it will, have positive results.
The only way to reliably change anything for the better is through reasoned discussion and agreement. Destruction of property and resources is inherently irrational, negative and divisive. This is so whether it were done by right wing or left wing idealogues.
I don't believe it is done for strategic reasons, in any case; it seems far more likely to me that it is simply a mindless expression of mob anger.
Violence in war, though, is designed to facilitate the conquering of territory or the subjugation of the enemy (neither of which I am arguing is justified by the way). I don't see how that applies with looting and burning, which I think is simply mindless mob behavior.
More concretely; questions of systemic discrimination are also questions of resource distribution and social planning. To the extent those things are affected by economy managing policies, those impact systemic racism. To the extent economy managing policies are affected by the constraints imposed by current economic structure, it impacts systemic racism.
The same would be true of any economic system with systemic racism, just happens this one is capitalist and the current form is very finance skewed.
Quoting Janus
What stops you from reading all the collective knowledge gained through the protests as education?
Sure, I'm not for a moment objecting to protest; I just think it is mostly self-defeating when mob emotion turns peaceful protest into violence and destruction of resources, though. I remain unconvinced that it can plausibly be seen as in any way a good strategy, or even that it is often, or even ever, motivated by strategic considerations.
I really hope the masses can be educated, that they can come to desire education, that they can come together and expel the elites forever; I would love to see that. I hate that we are all, to varying degrees, being milked by these psychopathic parasites!
But I don't expect that is the way things will turn out. Still the old chestnut " Hope for the best and prepare for the worst" remains apposite, I think. :smile:
I am working from a notion of systemic racism that is all about the American government, and the racist belief systems underwriting it. Many of those remain prevalent to this day.
That said, capitalism is a method for providing goods and services to a community/nation of people. Any and all methodology is only as successful as it's implementation, as most socialists/marxists will attest. So, if we have a capitalist based economic system that has racist people making the rules, then you will have systemic racism.
However, the same would hold good of a socialist system. So...
I am more than interested at getting to the facts of the matter at hand regarding systemic racism in American government... at all levels. However, to broaden the scope beyond the shores of the nation diverts the discussion to situations that are not as much under our control, so to speak. I'll say this...
If those in power regarding the rules for global markets(the head of states, and/or the actual authors of legislation regarding trade policy) are operating under a racist belief system, or continuing to implement an inherited racist based system, then we would certainly have a world-wide systemic form of racism.
However, and this is my basic point here, due to the nature of sovereign nations, it is not in my purview to tell them what to do. It is in my purview to demand of my government to act solely as a means to increase the quality of all American lives, or as many as possible, whenever it is possible. It is in my purview to demand a correction of clearly racist belief based policies and practices in the US.
The overlap here between capitalism and racism involves trade policies with nations who treat their own people in ways that are illegal in this nation. This would include, but is not limited to, labor laws, worker and consumer protections laws, and fair trade practices. Those are human rights issues, as are racist issues, but not all humans rights issues share the same 'contours' as the racist issues pervading the US.
A bit more of the overlap...
The historical trend is publicly available. American leaders have allowed foreign governments/businesses to offer goods and services in the American marketplace despite the fact that many of those nations treat their people in ways that are completely impermissible/illegal in the US. This is not a recent event, nor has it been partisan politics. Rather, it has been happening under each and every administration since Nixon, especially since Reagan.
Setting aside the shoddy products widely available with no legal recourse for the consumer, another result has been demonstrably and quantifiably harmful to all American citizens who could have otherwise been comfortably and gainfully employed in the manufacturing sector. Black people have always had a very hard time securing good jobs. Of that, there can be no doubt. However, many Americans have had the very best opportunity available for them removed at the hands of those politicians legalizing these trade policies.
Fast forward to today...
There is a growing movement in the sheer strength of numbers and ethic diversity of Americans who are fed up with the racism still pervading this country. That is getting better and it's doing so at an exponential rate. However, even when and if we ever get to the place where there are no racist beliefs in power, even then, poor blacks will still - just like everyone else who could be quite content holding a gainfully employed stable position for their entire lives - be faced with near impossible odds at finding one. This, of course, focuses on the plight of poor blacks as being a part of a larger group of poor Americans, and is not meant to supplant the current focus upon the much needed reform of our criminal justice system as a means for ending systemic racism. Rather, it's meant to accompany and/or broaden the scope a bit beyond that... into the not so distant future after the necessary reforms in criminal justice and policing are made. For then, we will still have the problem of economic mobility and/or earnings potential. There will still be fewer and fewer good quality American jobs available to those from unfortunate backgrounds/circumstances so long as these trade policies are not addressed; so long as corporations are glorified for turning a blind eye the human tragedy required for them to get their products to market. So long as the American government, and the corporate world remains chock full of hypocrites and those who just do not give a fuck regarding acceptable/unacceptable treatment of people/workers/citizens.
When profit is the sole motive, to hell with what's good, right, moral, and/or in the best interest of the American people. Unfortunately, that is the case. Profit is driving policy making. This is blatantly obvious when we look at the fiasco surrounding the ppe and covid19, as well as the push to 'reopen' despite our not having met the necessary preconditions for doing so that was and is still currently being set out by the foremost knowledgable experts in/from the very beginning.
Being born black in this country, is one of those aforementioned unfortunate circumstances, and will continue to be as long as the racist beliefs are allowed to remain influential in American government. However, social mobility will not be corrected by the current focus upon criminal justice and/or policing reforms.
:mask:
Wow, is that how the assignment of onus works? Based on which argument you personally find initially most plausible. You must be kept very busy indeed. Is there a phone number people have to ring to find out, or do you have a web service?
Personally, I'd have thought the onus is pragmatically an on anyone wishing to make a point to be able to support it on request, simple because that's how discussion moves forward, but OK...
The benckmark work on persuasion is by Mackie and he argues for what we might expect about majority influence (after Asch) and mood effects on persuasiveness of the message. However, that work only covers messages where persuasion was likely in the first place. So people like Martin, Hewstone and Nemeth (among others) started looking at persuasion by minority groups they found that when successfully persuaded by a minority group, that shift in view was more resistant to later reversion that persuasion by majority groups. The trouble is, with minority groups you often have the negative effect of relevance within the majority group. Petty studied the effect of persuasiveness to non-relevant populations. What he found was that whilst under conditions of high relevance arguments were assessed by their reasonableness, under conditions of low relevance, they were not. Extraneous factors played a greater role in the persuasiveness of the message.
So groups wishing to sell a message which could potentially be seen as a majority message (the 'silent majority' tag) and whose message is relevant to large portions of society are best doing so without any dissenting activity - The recent Women's March or the MeToo movement is a prime example of a success in this regard. This tactic, however, cannot work for a minority group message which conflicts with the interests of a majority group. The message will remain unpersuasive, or if it has persuasive power, the effect will be short-lived.
These groups (according to a 1994 meta study by Wood) have to show consistency, and commitment and to take swift and short-lived actions to immediately make their issues relevant to a majority interest (long-term actions breed resentment, but short-term ones increased receptivity to the message, Nemeth 2010). A single act of dissent (law-breaking) on a target significant to a majority interest (like a brand name or statue) is an effective means of engaging this relevancy.
---More important than all of this though was consistency. It came out as the single most important factor in persuasiveness of minority positions in all the studies involved. That's why I started talking about the issues with people taking part in riots against systemic racism whilst wearing, or using , products involved in systemic racism abroad. It really matters that the message is consistent.---
Quoting Janus
Research by Clifford Scott and John Dury on the 2011 riots here in the UK, plus work done on the 1960s on the Ghetto riots both show that the average rioter was not mindless, nor motivated by criminal activity. For the 60s ghetto riots, the average rioter was more likely to be of higher educational attainment than the populace in the area, less likely to have an existing criminal record and more likely to me a member of a local social-benefit organisation. In 2011, typical mob behaviour models were shown to be inadequate to explain the pattern of criminal activity in the typically small groups of well-known individuals that made up these riots (and those in Minneapolis).
None of this is to say that there's not opportunistic criminal activity, nor that violent protests always work, but that the pattern is complicated.
---Most references I only have as paper copies, or citations in textbooks. If you want to follow any up I can give you the full titles, but a quick google scholar search will find just as many articles opposing this view as supporting it. the point was not to claim that it's somehow the 'scientific' opinion that law-breaking protests work, merely to point out that it's not as obviously wrong as you make out.
Violence is the continuation of politics by different means. It's a matter of dispute resolution and therefore looting and rioting can be a means, and should be if the social institutions are incapable of change when they perpetuate injustices.
Popular uprisings have had effect not because they neatly toed the line government set out for them but precisely because of the threat that if their demands were not met, then...
:clap:
Very well said.
The police stuff, and social policy to address that mobility issue are domestic, and are what the momentum of this movement is towards in the US I think. By the looks of it the international movement is focused on domestic policies within the effected nations. I don't think it would be or should be repurposed towards addressing international systemic racism/colonialism, I simply hope that the movement gathers enough momentum and scope to "Yes, and" the international stuff; using that domestic levers can pull on international trade policies too.
I think this is wrong on both claims.
Firstly it doesn't require a racist belief system to generate systemic racism. It only requires systems which do not account for, nor rectify, previous racially motivated policies. Even then race can be a convenient tool for suppressing working class power structures so I don't agree that racist beliefs are necessary at any stage, certainly not now.
Secondly, I disagree that it is not within your purview to influence sovereign nations. We influence sovereign nations all the time. Our tourism, our trade, our development aid, our charitable interventions, our membership of global organisations (UN, World Bank, IMF). The idea that sovereign governments are the ones in charge of how their countries develop is limited even with HDEs, its bordering ridiculous with LDEs.
Quoting creativesoul
Again, I don't think this is true. Capitalist economic structures rely on an underemployed underclass to keep wages low. They then need to police this underclass, for whom criminality is pretty much the only option. Exploitation of cheap workers abroad, doesn't somehow 'rob' locals of work that they would otherwise have had because to give them that work would be to reduce wage pressure. Its possible to exploit lower paid workers abroad, so systems are set up to do so. It doesn't automatically follow that taking that possibility away will create better systems in the home country.
Quoting creativesoul
I disagree. I think the disadvantages of being born black in America are far more influenced by historical effects which place blacks disproportionately in the lower classes. Making it an issue of racist beliefs just offers a convenient way to maintain neo-liberal ideas of ignoring class struggle by deflecting the issue. As if re-education of some erroneous belief was all that was needed. It will achieve as much as changing the curtains in the oval office. If it's not blacks being disproportionately effected, it'll be women, or red-heads, or goodness knows what - because the main problem has not been addressed, which is that some underpaid underclass are a necessary component of the system. We don't solve the problem by ensuring that this underprivileged class is made up equally of blacks and whites. We solve it by removing the need for such an underclass at all.
How do you account for the cognitive dissonance that happens as a consequence of living within a racist system? If you think people are detached from the system they exist within, that is going against evidence in psychology. (washington post, wiki)
I'm not sure if I understand the question, but if you're asking what I think you're asking, then that would be a question about whether there exist racist belief, not whether they are necessary to explain the existence of systemic racism.
How does racism begin? A) With an individual's personal fears or B) with a group/family/division of society that creates a narrative of fear as a couping mechanism or mechanism of having power and control over others?
How does racism still exist? A) Because individuals keep racist beliefs even with evidence to the contrary and children of a new generation form new racist beliefs individually without any influence or B) The created racist narrative is put into a core part of society so fundamental that it becomes part of reality for children of a new generation.
If you answer A on both, that means you believe that our ideas and worldviews form individually and outside of influence from the system and society we are in. If you answer B you believe what has roots in psychological research; that we are formed by society, especially the beliefs we have and that if a core part of society has a racist praxis, even without outspoken racists within them, that system and praxis will through cognitive dissonance form behavior that isn't in conflict with that society's status quo.
It's easier to accept the status quo that doesn't threaten your own worldview and existence. It's harder for those who are content with the status quo to see problems within it than those who are affected negatively by that system. The reason many can't see systemic racism in society is that most of those who position themselves under that opinion isn't negatively affected by the status quo and gain nothing on changing it, maybe even losing something on changing it. So cognitive dissonance kicks in and biases and fallacies take over.
Only freethinkers can at a moment notice rationally be skeptical of their own status quo the moment some other perspective is presented. Most common people fall into cognitive dissonance every time they are forced to think about the status quo in a new perspective and systemic racism is a new perspective for anyone who isn't affected negatively by it. Either they deny it or defend it and in defending it they slowly form into being a racist, whether they understand it or not themselves.
I'm not sure how any of what you've just said relates to the position in your first comment to me, nor answers my question.
I claimed that racist beliefs were not necessary to either cause or sustain systemic racism. Meaning that if you educated people to the extent that they no longer held racist beliefs, there would still be systemic racism.
You seemed to suggest that such a position left some acknowledged psychological feature unexplained. I'm asking what that feature is and how such a principle as the one I outlined above leaves it unexplained.
Your last post basically outlines a common theory of racist belief propagation and perpetuation, but my point was not about the causes of racist belief, it was about the causes of systemic racism, so I'm not sure how you're relating the two issues.
It starts with a racist belief, systemic racism is the cause of that belief being put into the status quo of society. Then when the common status quo narrative of racism is deleted from society as a norm, systemic racism still exists and program people into racist beliefs.
Quoting Isaac
I pointed out how systemic racism form from a starting personal belief, then the system itself form new personal beliefs. That it's impossible to separate systemic racism with individual racist beliefs, they inform and sustain each other. While some people act racist through systemic racism without holding such beliefs, many people conform to individual racism through the cognitive dissonance that happens when living within that systemic racism.
Quoting Isaac
As they are inseparable, you cannot have one without the other. If one person is a racist and that racist belief doesn't spread, no systemic racism will continue, but if you look at history, racism has been a widely accepted norm for hundreds if not thousands of years among groups of people and it is without any logical doubt the foundation for a systemic racism that is so incorporated into society that it's as normal as breathing or eating.
Point being is that you cannot have a large group of individual racists without there forming a systemic racist praxis. And when those racists aren't there, the system of society and status quo they formed will be passed on and form new individuals who learn "how things are" through that system. The more fuzed with this system these people are, the easier it is for them to defend the system because of that cognitive dissonance they form when questioned.
But surely hope isn't enough in the face of almost complete failure to progress at anything like the speed we'd like. I don't think it's sufficient just to hope. To me, the risk of one detracting from (or worse, even contradicting) the other is too great, given the stakes. I think we'd be remiss not to explore those possibilities. But maybe you consider them sufficiently explored and satisfactorily put to bed already. Certainly I feel like I'm repeating myself a bit, so maybe there's not much more fruit to be had from this branch.
I'm not saying it is valueless to consider; I just think it's not the right time or movement to easily pivot into non-domestic issues. The focus seems to me clearly on domestic issues of systemic racism; the current lack of emphasis on the post-colonial and international trade aspects of systemic racism doesn't undermine the real chances of domestic gains.
What makes you think a racist belief is necessary to start it?
Quoting Christoffer
Right. Which would support my claim. Still not seeing the psychological effect you think I'm missing. Is there any chance you could just name it, for clarity?
Quoting Christoffer
Yes, I got that. I'm moving on to the next bit of the discussion where I ask you why you believe that, you hinted at some well known psychological principle I'm missing, but your links were to cognitive dissonance. I don't see how the existence of cognitive dissonance means that racist beliefs must have initiated systemic racism.
Quoting Christoffer
I don'tsee what that's got to do with causation. Every time it rains the grass gets wet, you can't have rain without the grass getting wet, and you can't (ordinarily) have wet grass without it having just rained. This doesn't in any sense mean that wet grass causes rain. The fact that you can't have one without the other doesn't, on its own, imply mutual causality.
Interesting how if a group of white people went out and destroyed a black owned business everyone would be upset, but if the same action were done because these white people were outraged over police brutality it's just them expressing their virtue and they the group should be praised.
I see. Did you read the articles StreetlightX posted earlier by any chance? I think they detail the issue better than I have, but it's primarily about distraction, so I guess I just disagree that lack of emphasis on the post-colonial international aspects doesn't undermine the real chances of domestic gains. I think a failure to address issues in a united and consistent manner does impact on success.
Maybe it's a different approach to localisation, but imagine if, in the middle of the BLM movement, the newspapers were full of a campaign to help give social support to the elderly, and stopped reporting on the protests. A perfectly worthy campaign, but would a part of you not feel like the wind had been taken out of the sails a bit? Would no small part of you question the paper's motives, no matter how worthy the alternate cause?
That's basically how I feel about single issue protests which don't express sufficient solidarity with the wider structural problems of they are one part.
But again, I'm open to the possibility that you think such solidarity has been adequately expressed, and maybe our difference is not one of principle but one of judgement?
By chance, I was watching an interview with Adolph Reed the other day, who wrote one of the articles I linked and by George he's a terrible speaker. Rambly and really unhelpful at making explicit what he's talking about.
But don't you support the riots against police brutality? It's just Americans doing their civic duty.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Medal%2C_order_%28AM_2018.63.1-2%29.jpg
Look carefully at the image of this still current Honour awarded to UK diplomats and political bigwigs. Yup. White angel with foot on head and neck of lucky lucky black person. And that's diplomacy justice and all good things we all can be proud of. Americans are so unoriginal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_St_Michael_and_St_George
You mean to say that a belief that invents a categorization of different people and the devaluation of people with dark skin isn't a racist belief? That is how racism in the west was formed and later put into social norm praxis and systems.
Quoting Isaac
Cognitive dissonance. Do you think you can be raised within a system of norms without becoming a product of those norms? What happens when those norms are questioned with evidence? Would you throw everything you learned out the window and conform to the new norm based on evidence? Very few do that, because of the psychological effect known as cognitive dissonance.
Quoting Isaac
I think you misunderstand what I wrote, maybe it was unclarity on my point. But the principle is that cognitive dissonance is what keeps people being and becoming racists within systemic racism that already exists. First, systemic racism forms from a racist belief that gets built into society, then if the public banish racist norms, but the system it built keeps going, people will A) commit racist acts because of that system without being racists and B) Become racists because of the system through cognitive dissonance.
Example: A white kid grows up in a neighborhood where black people have been state segregated 50 years ago and because of that, the socioeconomics have never recovered to a point where the status quo is equal. The system cogs of society keep the status quo going and black people still live in their own neighborhood with less ability to rise above a poverty line and become part of the white community geographical areas and social status. Crime rates are higher within this area and the parents of the white kid teach that kid to avoid that area, avoid black people. That kid grows up and is forming further norms based on how people relate to the systemic racism at play at the roots of social norms. The white kid learns to fear the black community and forms a world view based on those fears.
If this kid, as a grown person, learns that all of these norms are not true, that there are socioeconomic reasons for black people's situation. That there are complex issues that lead to how people behave and interact with each other etc. This person will either dismantle their world view and learn to see past the norms learned when growing up. Or this person will form a cognitive dissonance so that when being confronted with this new perspective, will defend the status quo since it's the only world that person ever lived in.
If they defend their position, they are becoming individual racists outside of the systematic racism at play. They will defend the status quo of that systemic racism and form defensive ideas to why. The further they defend, the stronger their beliefs get. If it continues growing, they might even form white supremacy ideas and believe in things like white genocide, that the critics of the system want to erase white people through mixing the population. Such a conspiracy theory is not far fetched to link to how that kid learned about segregation being normal as a kid. "Don't go into their neighborhood" "don't mix with them".
That's how someone goes from not being a racist, to being a racist through systemic racism in society.
Quoting Isaac
That is a false analogy. Racist beliefs of an individual can influence a group. That group can form rules and laws based on those racist beliefs and laws and rules gorm norms within the larger group. People growing up with those norms will live by them as the natural order, so even if the rules and laws disappear, the norms continue both in direct consequences for the group negatively affected by the racist laws and in worldviews formed out those consequences.
You use an analogy that is false because the relations between rain and grass is not the same as the relation between the individual and society.
Individuals forms society and society form individuals. If you agree to that, you should consider what I wrote. The grass analogy is like saying, Individuals forms society but society doesn't form individuals, which is false by facts of psychological research.
(But... wet grass causes rain, since the water vaporize into clouds that rain down so... even as a false analogy it fails to be false, sorry)
Also, what's going on in the USA now doesn't qualify as riots. 1992 and 1967 had riots. These are disturbances.
Ok if you don't support the "disturbances" that's fine. Your quote did imply it though.
As to whether I'm gunning for a fight... am I just not allowed to engage people who I disagree with? Should I only respond to you to express agreement? I'm sure we'd have great discussions just going back and forth telling each other that we agree with each other.
I do my best... Oh... You were talking about Reed.
I think the disturbances and the focus on them are a distraction. I think calling people, who are by far mostly peaceful protesters, "rioters", is harmful to any possible progress because to many it would invalidate the grievances of the protesters (because, unfortunately, poisoning the well is totally effective as a rhetorical device and affecting public opinion, even if it's a fallacy).
So in that sense I really don't care about the disturbances despite the personal loss it has caused for some people. I'll call that collateral damage and insist that it doesn't affect the righteousness of the cause being pursued, much as, when a bomb is dropped on a strategic bridge, we don't care about the loss of life of non-combatants.
Peaceful protests have led to barely any progress since 1967, with a decidedly clear political shift towards and outright flirting by the Republican political establishment with racism in recent years I think the sense for many is that anti-racism has actually lost ground.
Now we again have a mass movement demanding change to accomplish equality. It focuses on various sub-sets of inequality, such as police brutality and criminal justice, but also with respect to how cities and states spend their money and with respect to economic inequality that disproportionality affects black people. If things don't materially change so that US society becomes more just because the political institutions are either a) incapable or b) unwilling to affect change, then riots definitely become an option in my book and ethically defensible. Just more collateral damage.
Gosh you expend an awful lot of text explaining an argument that I neither misunderstood, nor contradicted. We can just leave out the entire chunk where you talk about how systemic racism results in racist beliefs because at this stage no one is denying that, so there's no need to waste your time trying to explain it. The issue is whether racist beliefs in turn are a necessary cause of systemic racism.
If, at one point in a culture, all people over six foot were given a million pounds. A hundred years later, there would be a systemic favouring of people over six foot. Their descendents would have had a better chance in life, they would more likely hold positions of power and probably gather geographically. The current culture might (perhaps because all children are brought up elsewhere) be completely ambivalent about height, it wouldn't mean that short people aren't still the victims of systemic heightism.
This is really important to stress because the idea that systemic racism is caused by racist attitudes turns what is a massive structural problem into trivial issue about education. As if we could solve the problem in a stroke by giving white kids more books with black kids in. It trivialises the effects of a system which mandates an underprivileged underclass.
So...
Quoting Christoffer
Yes, I mean to say exactly that. It isn't a belief at all. Inventing a categorization of different people and the devaluation of people with dark skin is a strategy, not a belief. One could invent such a system for any purpose at all, racism needn't be it.
We need to make a sharp distinction between protesters and rioters. I have no problem with protesters. I am not calling peaceful protesters rioters, I am calling those who destroy businesses and property and assault business owners in the name of this cause "rioters."
I disagree that condemning the rioters invalidates the grievances of the protesters. I hope you agree that just because someone supports X, doesn't mean that they are condoned to achieve X at virtually any cost.
I can tell you that as someone in the Air Force, we do care about collateral damage. Even if we were targeting bin laden himself (I know he's dead) we don't have a blank cheque to, say, destroy a city in order to kill him. There's a serious discussion to be had over how much collateral damage is permissible, but no one is saying that everything is acceptable in the name of achieving an objective or that the loss of life from collateral damage doesn't matter.
In any case in this scenario we're talking about the actions of individuals, not potentially imprecise bombs or possibly faulty intel being dropped on an enemy. Collateral damage implies a degree of inevitability, but we need to be seriously careful about this whether we're talking about an actual war or social change. Reasonable people agree with fighting Hitler, but disagree with some of the bombing runs - say, Dresden. Be careful in the name of fighting a monster that you don't become one yourself. This is always one of the dangers of war.
I would strongly advise using other means to achieve your goals. I think rioting and destroying local private businesses is almost never excusable - even if the system is unchangeably rotten to the core. I wouldn't have excused Jews rioting in Nazi Germany and destroying German businesses even after the Nuremberg laws were passed. It just wouldn't have been the proper response on several fronts, and I say this as someone with family killed in the Holocaust. If we're talking about targeting government officials that's a different story.
https://leejasper.blogspot.com/2020/06/john-moores-university-lack-of-action.html?spref=tw&fbclid=IwAR0go05BCJL_FxzI-FhCusXEGLJfmlaRlzliONqcdHcoVAwOhSbFNziqsGg
I don't have a lot of time so I'll just have to respond to the first part I just quoted. I have several issues with it. First, I think the effort itself is a distraction. Is it really important to know who lit up what building or is it important to understand the social and civil unrest leading up to these sorts of disturbances? I'm in favour of the latter.
Second, I'm not convinced a hard distinction can be made between protesters and rioters, which makes the effort futile - leading to endless discussions.
Third, what if all protesters were also rioters? Do we treat them as protesters or rioters? And then I get back to what got people to protest and riot in the first place and, you, being born and raised in the USA, probably see that as a purely individual choice and individual responsibility... but I don't. Protests and riots are symptoms, say, emergent properties of the system.
Much like systemic racism in policing isn't the result of devious, amoral, evil cops going out there to shoot black people with intent. Nevertheless, cops do shoot them in statistically unlikely high numbers. And a lot of that isn't something we can just blame solely on the cop doing the shooting.
In that sense both the cop and the rioter are victims of circumstances. So where you see the crime of arson, I see a crime before that, causing that arson but magnitudes worse.
If you want to propose something extreme such as that the destruction of resources will likely produce a better future for humanity than refraining from such destruction, then of course the onus would be on you to make a convincing argument for that.
None of the rest of what you say constitutes any argument to support the notion that destruction of resources is likely to lead to better outcomes. It just looks like a "I've read more than you have, so there". Give an argument in your own words for a plausible mechanism for how violence or destruction of resources could lead to positive social change, and I'll give it due consideration and critique.
Quoting Isaac
Typical of you to put words in my mouth! I haven't said it is obviously wrong; I am saying that I can't imagine any mechanism by which it could be right. Help me out and outline one, even if it is merely hypothetical (which of course it would be anyway) if you can.
So, it's obvious how peaceful protest and rational discussion and agreement (however difficult it might be to achieve them) could work, just outline some ways in which you think violence, looting and destructive behavior might help.
The American war of independence was fought to gain freedom from British rule and establish
American sovereignity, so of course it was about the control and ownership of territory.
Quoting Benkei
Sure, violence in the form of war or civil war will inevitably result if there is a relatively equal balance of power and no possibility of peaceful resolution. Entrenched and institutionalized attitudes in a society are not amenable to change by violence; you have to change the majority mind, and the majority mind does not like what it sees as mindless destruction of resources, so such a "stategy" is vanishingly unlikely to work.
Quoting Benkei
You would need an overwhelming majority of support and/ or the support of the military itself for an uprising to bring about the desired changes. The BLM movement I would say certainly does have majority support around the world, but the burning and looting I would say certainly does not, and so all it does is detract from the message.
I don't understand why it's an "either/or" scenario... why can't we find both important? I understand you might not care about a building being set on fire but you'd probably care if it was your workplace.
Quoting Benkei
The rioters are the violent ones. It's concerning that you don't seem to draw much of a distinction between people who peacefully protest and those who destroy and loot local businesses.
Quoting Benkei
That's fine and we can discuss that, but we shouldn't ignore the other side of the coin which is that people are moral agents who are capable of making decisions and possess moral autonomy. People are ultimately responsible for their actions even if the cards have never been in their favor.
Because one of them is a distraction for the other. It's good that you and I can deal with both of them as separate things and maybe not have our opinion of the goals of the protests be affected by the consequences of the disturbances but most people can't. Why do you think the first thing the government did is denounce the protesters as rioters? Not for a wish to deal with both subjects in a fair and balanced way. So it's tactical to ignore one of them because of the importance of the other in light of the tactics of the other side.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
OK. Why is that a problem in your view?
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
I guess I'm more forgiving and much more of a collectivist than you to subscribe to "ultimately". What if I poke you every second all the time? Are you ultimately responsible for hitting me in the face or did I have it coming? The US had it coming especially after voting in a racist like Trump. In that respect I consider the restraint of the black community this time around rather legendary, when compared to the reaction to the ludicrous judgment in the Rodney King case in 1992.
From whence systemic racism come if not from systems put in place by racists?
Upon a second reading, I realized that this is incoherent. Racially motivated policies are required. Here, you said as much yourself. So, either racist beliefs are not required for racially motivated policies, particularly ones that need corrected(so were unacceptable to begin with) or you're right.
Clearly, you are wrong on this matter. I chalk it up to the physicalist notion of belief that you work from and/or advocate. That's another matter altogether though. You're aware of this, I'm sure.
You've offered bald assertions. Here's a bit of common sense...
Wherever there have never been racist beliefs, there could not have ever been unacceptable racially motivated policies. Hence...
From racist outcomes. A system in which more black people are disporportionally murdered by the state is so regardless if every single government officer was an avowed anti-racist. What matters is results, not (just) intention.
I think, reading this thread, it is apparent that people honestly take up positions that they honestly believe are not racist but which have prejudicial results. And I think @creativesoul has identified the space of contention.
Identity politics is the appropriate term, although it is used as a term of abuse. Look at the medalI posted above. A white angel subdues the black beast. Of course we want to be on the side of the angels; we identify as angels. The great and the good are wearing it with pride and being awarded it for services to the nation. These people do not think they are racist. The people on this thread do not think they are racist, they think they are philosophical angels subduing the beast of error and confusion.
One's beliefs conform to one's identity. I identify as British, I identify Britain as a good country. It follows that problems must be caused by what is non British, and anything that is not like me is non-British. Anyone who criticises what is good is non- British, a traitor, and a devil. I am British, therefore I am good, therefore I am not racist. Therefore, if black people get badly treated, they must deserve it.
Things about one's identity: it doesn't have to be true, it hurts psychologically when it is attacked or undermined, it is the belief that must be defended at all costs. I am rational, therefore this makes sense, and my identity is true. Devils rarely self-identify as devils, but more usually as misunderstood angels.
Fair enough. I really don't think a couple of storefronts are that important that their destruction has to accompanied by a detailed and watertight argument. Although I'm probably at the extreme end of advocating property damage, I think what seems to get everybody on this side of the debate frustrated is the disparity in concern. Even if we just take the US right now. 2000 (mostly) young black men are being killed by their police forces every year, thousands more are being criminalised by stress-policing methods and live in conditions we should find appalling given the wealth of the nation as a whole. A group, frustrated by the continuation of this situation, despite several decades of so-called progressive attitudes, come up with a plan to tell the country just how angry they are. And Instead of think "my God, these people have been seriously mistreated", commentary is deflected into criticism of their tactics. I'm not suggesting that such discussion should be off-limits, but I do want to put questions of onus into perspective. Given the deplorable situation that's being protested, no-one is under any particular obligation to submit a full justification for their protest methods so long as they fall within the very broadest parameters - show people that there's some human beings they share a country with who have been made really angry by these unjust circumstances. Anything that might achieve that goal is de facto a reasonable course of action, given the deplorable situation they're trying to resolve.
Quoting Janus
I have given an argument in my own words. I've just supported it with evidence from social science. I'm trying to avoid the 'just so' storytelling that seems to pervade many of the posts here. "X leads to Y which leads to Z", presented as if it were just a fact of the world. We're not the first people to give this any thought. There are people out there who have investigated, analysed, sought out controls, and then gathered all that work together and compared each to he other to identify common themes. I realise it's not physics or chemistry, but it's a damn sight better than just 'reckoning' some stuff, so I'll make no apology for trying source my arguments in the literature.
Quoting Janus
Since my last attempt obviously failed, I'll have another go.
Trying to persuade people of a position held by a minority which goes against the majority interest is not the same as trying to persuade people of a position which is (or could look like it is) held by a majority and coincides with (or could look like it coincides with) majority interests. The peaceful protests or rational debates you see having successes in policy terms are of that second nature. The issue with victims of stress policing is of the first nature. People have a strong tendency to be influenced by the apparent behaviour of the majority of people in the social group to which they aspire to belong, so persuading them to behave in some way where it can be made to appear that their social group all behave this way is fairly easy (even if their social group do not in fact all behave that way - it can easily be made to appear that they do). People are very rarely convinced of anything by rational arguments. Again, literally hundreds of studies have been done on this, dozens of textbooks written about it. You don't have to believe it (there are a few radical theorists who disagree), but it's not a matter of plausibility.
So, given that there's a task of persuading people about this minority issue, and given that presenting a rational argument isn't going to cut it, and neither is presenting a new model behaviour for the social group (very few people aspire to belong to the social group represented by those affect by this issue). There has to be a third tactic. One thing which does encourage rational consideration of the arguments is dissent from social norms, it's like the shock of a cold shower waking you up, it shakes the mind out of it's routine and forces the consideration of a new norm. A very large protest might do it, a riot definitely does. Yes there's a backlash without doubt (and studies have shown that when the message coincides with majority interests, the backlash is worse than the attention it gained - the plan backfires), but at least people are talking about the issue, and doing so outside of the scripted cliches they're used to using - because something dramatic has happened outside of the experience those scripts were designed to deal with. Basically, once everyone has stopped being faux-offended at the property damage, they'll still be an issue to answer.
So having established the action needs to be visceral and dissenting, why McDonalds and Target...
This is why the systemic nature of the oppression matters. McDonalds are not innocent bystanders, Target are not innocent bystanders. They're part of a system which, by it's very nature, creates and oppresses the class of people protesting, it creates the very conditions responsible for all those deaths. It's not that all the protestors are dedicated Marxist theorists, but that they see wealth and privilege on one side of the street, and none on theirs, in a united nation, that's just default wrong. The privileged have automatically dome something wrong, just by still being privileged.
One thing people don't like is being identified as the 'bad guys'. One of the problems with protest on a purely party political scale is it maintains the illusion (seen here writ large on this very thread) that the only bad guys are the politicians, that they're entirely responsible for everything being the way it is and everyone else are just meat puppets doing their jobs. Protests without threat of violence or property damage become just a part of the system. The wealthy oppress, the poor protest about it, nothing happens, it becomes like the wallpaper, the normal backdrop of daily life. Something has to present a real threat to even make it to the discussion table.
Presenting strong emotional behaviour encourages empathy (not in the sense the term is usually used - often confused with sympathy) we literally feel their anger just because we see how angry they are. It's conflicting to feel the subject of that anger as well as the anger itself. It's why it's necessary to dehumanise the enemy in times of war, and dehumanisation is definitely one of the responses violent riots risk, but it's only a risk, not a certainty. If it is done right, there will be the dissonance sufficient to stimulate re-evaluation, but not sufficient to encourage dehumanisation. This is why I mentioned commitment and consistency. They both not only encourage rational consideration, but they work against any attempt to dehumanise.
To summarise, with messages affecting only minority interests it is necessary to perform some dissenting threatening action to stimulate rational consideration of the argument. This dissenting action often has a backlash, but in many cases the backlash is less harmful than the subsequent consideration of the position. The targets of this dissenting action need to be within the community of people who need to consider the arguments, not some distant authority, otherwise they remain irrelevant issues. Defacing statues is ideal, putting the odd brick through a window, a bit of fisticuffs...burning down a whole store is bordeline...any more than that and you'll end up being too easy to dehumanise, or face a backlash bigger than the value of the issue being discussed, but to draw the line at any property damage whatsoever, has no net value.
Systems put in place by people wanting to justify the economic disenfranchisement of a social class. Race only became the tool-de-jour because of the economic value of slavery and colonial expansion.
I didn't specify the origin of the racially motivated policies. It is without doubt that living in a systemically racist society promotes actual racism (the belief that one race can exercise power over another on the grounds of some perceived superiority). So a systemically racists society will have actual racists in it, and they will bring into law actually racist policy. If left un-rectified, these policies will perpetuate systemic racism even in a completely non-racist society. None of this argument has any bearing on the issue of how the systemic racism got started in the first place.
Notwithstanding, the above is just an historical issue. The more important issue here is that actual racist beliefs are not currently required to perpetuate systemic racism. That's important because policy at the moment erroneously focusses on education as if we could re-educate (or otherwise eradicate) the 'nasty racists' and the problem would magically go away. It won't.
Yes, for more reasons than I can list here. But to be direct, my parents never raised me to be racist nor a bigot, and that humanity is the species to which I belong. However, given the racism my parents have experienced they’ve instilled the thought in me that regardless of my own beliefs I will not always be treated as an American and much less as a human being by every white person. Due to my own personal experiences with racism it has validated that and because of that, I fear passing this on to my children.
Quoting creativesoul
Indeed.
Then that's their problem. Those people are just bad at thinking. I think it's imperative that we deal with them as separate things. No problem at all with sympathizing or supporting the protests and the message, while condemning the rioting.
I understand - in the media or just in everyday life if someone is paying an enormous amount of attention to only one side of the coin it's really suspect. That person probably has an agenda. I figure since we're on a philosophy forum we should be able to call a spade a spade.
Because a position which doesn't distinguish between protesters and rioters places itself in the same camp as authoritarians. The US Constitution guarantees the right to protest peacefully, but authoritarians regard all challenges to the state under one banner. Protesting - in and of itself - is as American as apple pie, but rioting can be incredibly destructive and often just ends up hurting those who are most already most vulnerable.
I feel like a more apt comparison would be if you kept poking me and then I eventually lashed out and punched Baden. Destroying a mom & pop corner shop or a sporting goods store is not "punching up" or "fighting the system" - if anything, it emboldens the far right and worries the centrists. Take to the polls or raise money for your candidates. Talk to local community leaders who have connections with the police force. By destroying local communities the riots are placing more people in poverty and it takes years for a community to recover.
On the subject of responsibility I just think its important for someone to take ownership of themselves and their actions. If we deny this we basically take away their personhood. In other words, in my mind you're basically treating them like a child who is not responsible for his actions. I understand that there's plenty of injustice that goes around and everyone's been damaged or hurt, but how the individual handles this is a direct reflection on their character and maturity. In fact, I'd say how a person deals with injustice/pain is probably the most defining aspect of their character.
Do you seriously think this hadn't been tried already at various points in last five years during which police brutality has just been getting worse?
This was after media coverage, two lawsuits, a series of police complaints, letters to the mayor and weeks of peaceful protest. All with absolutely no effect at all.
A few days of rioting and they had the US Department of Justice look into Baltimore policing practices and publish a report which completely upheld the protesters complaints.
Same in the 60s with the Kerner commission, same with the 1992 Los Angeles riots after which police reforms took their satisfaction rating from 40 to 77 percent.
Anyone who thinks that a stiff letter is all that's needed only has to think if they're aware of what the ghetto-like neighbourhoods are like. Those in power all know they're shit places to live, they know exactly what is happening because they've been told for years. They don't need anyone to tell them again, they need people to shake them into doing something about it.
Ok we're gonna break more windows and burn stuff down that'll get America on our side.
In any case, don't do evil so that good may come.
OK so peaceful protests don't work, political lobbying doesn't work, but they're not allowed to 'do evil' either. So the choice left to them is...
You can't just say that political lobbying doesn't work. I'm not a police expert by any means, but I know in Camden they did some reforms or in other parts of the country there have been more community-oriented approaches which were achieved through other means besides violent rioting.
And it is evil. Many Americans live paycheck to paycheck and when you destroy and loot their places of work you are effectively cutting off their livelihood.
Right, I'm not familiar with the history there, but presuming you're right, at the very least we can say that sometimes peaceful means work and sometimes they don't. The question is what to do when they don't.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Causing people some financial hardship is 'evil' is it? So the entire global industrial and banking system is evil, right? Because it undoubtedly causes some people financial hardship, by the million. Its like discussing the harm caused by poor food safety standards in 1970s Cambodia.
Target took millions of dollars more from their employees in illegally low wages, lack of sick pay and unrealistic working hours than anyone lost from the place being burnt down. They're better off without it, maybe there's a chance it'll be replaced by something with a shred of respect for basic human decency.
If every protestor concerned about police brutality joined the force, they can essentially trade current police behavior with their own. So why don’t they just do that? Because begging or threatening leadership is easier than becoming leadership. That’s a painful irony for these protesters. They are begging others for change, or committing violence against the innocent in order to threaten to change, but never do they become the change.
All you can say is that peaceful means have have not worked so far. What are even the demands exactly? I have no idea what dismantling systemic racism in the entire US actually means. Give us concrete proposals.
Quoting Isaac
No, that's not what I said. A boycott is not inherently evil. I'm saying arbitrarily destroying local businesses that have done nothing wrong is evil. If there's just cause for the financial penalty we can have a discussion about that.
I expect it'd be because police admissions wouldn't allow it (Minneapolis police psychological testing actually dismisses a disproportionate number of minority applicants), not everyone is suited to it, there aren't anywhere near enough vacancies and... Oh yeah, they might not want to. I can't believe I even wasted the time answering such a stupid question.
Quoting NOS4A2
Apart from your brilliant 'all join the police force (despite there not actually being any vacancies to fill)' idea, any other great moves they've missed to 'become the change'? Do you do motivational lectures by any chance?
One can always use 'so far' as an excuse. It's a non sequitur because it's unfalsifiable.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
I've already linked the BLM demands. Here's a link. And here's an interview with nine criminal justice experts outlining the best practice steps.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
I've literally just detailed exactly what they've done wrong, it's several thousand times greater loss of legally owed earnings than burning down the store lost.
@StreetlightX - Where's that visualisation you posted about proportions of wage theft vs larsony etc?
It’s less stupid than suggesting violence and vandalism against the innocent, which isn’t only stupid and counterproductive, but perverse and dangerous.
They want others to do it. They cannot be bothered to do it themselves. This is the going rate of activists.
American citizens are entitled not to have a systemically racist and regularly brutal police force. The US is supposed to be a modern democracy not an authoritarian state. So, the protestors shouldn't have to lift a finger, and the fact that they do is an indictment of the system not of them.
That much I agree with, save for the systemically racist part. Unfortunately I don’t think it is as simple as everyone is making it out to be. None of it takes into account the countless, unique interactions between police and citizens.
One unfortunate result of denying systemic racism in policing is it puts the blame solely on individual police officers rather than on processes over which most of them have little or no individual control, including training, police culture, policing of the police etc. This speaks to the perversity of the accusation that those who point to systemic racism do so with the intention of labeling all cops as racist. If you take the systemic racism out of the equation, all the racism we point to in the system must fall on the cops, making them more not less culpable.
Im curious if you would agree with this amendment to your last sentence:
If we take systemic racism out of the equation, all the racism we point to must fall on the racist cops and those who know about them and do nothing.
The problem is we can make that accusation with any given statistical outcome. Most people who are shot by cops are men, therefor the system is systemically sexist against men. I don’t think we can make that claim without knowing whether the police in fact shoot men for sexist reasons, rather than for some other reason. So I believe we do have to find which police are racist and operate on racial motivations, or to tackle the actual reasons why such and such a group are overrepresented in this or that statistical outcome.
Great, you finally get it.
No, because there would be a conflation with actively being racist and not trying to prevent racism. Being apathetic about racism doesn't equate to racism. But if I'm missing your point, let me know.
Well, no, it depends on the statistic you use and how you analyze it. You can't obviously draw sweeping conclusions from a single data point without some level of interpretation. And it's a strawman to suggest that that is where the idea of systemic racism arose. For example, I just provided Harry Hindu in the other s.r. thread with a statistic on drug arrests that had a whole study backing it up to show the significance of race in the disparity found.
The other point is that conscious racist motivation isn't required for systemic racism to obtain even though it is obviously there to a degree. The way the system functions is the root problem. Individual racists are important insofar as the system allows them to act with impunity, insofar as it allows environmental racism to filter through, but, theoretically, you could have a systemically racist system with no overt racists in it and just cops following procedures that disadvantaged/disfavoured minority communities.
Again, I don't know what the big block is here. The phrase is pretty much self-defining. Even Trump has recently acknowledged the existence of systemic racism, only he's tried to downplay it. But at least he's implicitly taken on some responsibility for dealing with its results on a systems level.
I think you need to look up the meaning of non-sequitur.
In any case, there already have been these transitions and reforms without massive riots so the idea that peaceful means don't accomplish anything is just wrong. If you want to extend things even further boycotts are a legitimate method. There are steps between peaceful, non-violent protest and indiscriminate destruction of local businesses.
Quoting Isaac
Ok but you're sidetracking the argument. You asked me what my position was and I basically said "X" - now you're like "Well what about A-Z? but you're not taking issue with X. All I'm going for here is X. We can talk about A-Z another time.
But racism is a belief. So without explicit racial policies, we can only search for it in the minds and expressions of a racist, not in the general outcomes of police interactions. That’s my block. For the purpose of this thread I will assume systemic racism does exist (and I believe it does in the form of “positive discrimination”), and I also believe it exists in the minds of some police officers, so perhaps to eliminate it minds must be changed instead of policies.
Well I had in mind less the apathy (but really, I think thats an serious issue in all of this too) and more in mind cops like the asian one in the Floyd murder...he should have done something and he didnt and thats a serious part of the problem too imo.
“Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.” ~Paulo Freire
"I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor[b], never the victim. [b]Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." ~Elie Wiesel
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” ~Archbishop Desmond Tutu
"The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people." ~Martin Luther King, Jr
Quoting Baden
Please go on; explain.
That I don't draw an equivalence re racism between racist cops and those who know about them but don't protest them (whether they be other cops or not and whether their neglect be due to apathy or akrasia). It's possible not to act against racism without being racist. However, you can't escape culpability. If you don't act, you are culpable, and every one of the quotes above I agree with 100%.
Quoting DingoJones
And why? Maybe he was a racist too. Maybe he didn't give a shit. Maybe both. And maybe the culture and system he was a part of militated against action. In every case, culpable. But the latter is where systemic racism comes in and where maybe the balance can be tipped against the racists and towards those who might do something if they had the backup.
Policies don't have beliefs. Positive discrimination is a policy. By your own logic, it can't be racist. Of course it's not in any case, it's reparative of racism. The idea that you can start a clean slate as soon as you dispose of those directly affected by explicit racism is rubbish. Wealth and privilege are passed down. America's wealth was built on and stolen largely from slaves and then concentrated and channeled through generations of those who made them slaves. If I steal all your shit and use it to put generations of my family in a better position socially and economically than yours, my ancestors don't get to turn around and tell yours everything's just hunky-dory now because the direct party to the exploitation is dead.
We're talking past one another a bit... I think.
While I understand the (legal culpability)need to avoid accusations/charges/claims of intention, the results are not the origen, which is what I was getting at. In order to stamp out racism, particularly systemic racism, we must identify the problem(s) and doing that requires looking into it's origens. There is no doubt that the effects of racist belief and policies remain extant. So, in that sense, the effects of racism no doubt prove the existence of it. However, in order to get a full view of those effects/affects, we must also acquire knowledge of exactly how racist belief has been legalized/legitimized - empowered - throughout American history as well as how those policies affected/effected black Americans over the centuries, particularly after the Civil War. Those effects/affects remain to a large degree... in the results - as you say. But, we must tie this all together - in a sort of causal chain of events - for that is the only way to shine much needed light upon the residual effects/affects of clearly racist belief and the policies stemming from those beliefs.
That is an eye opener(well for those who've not suffered from racism, or those who have but not known).
After one's eyes are opened, then it's up to them whether or not to do something about it.
On it's face, this is completely false. For the system itself is existentially dependent upon racist belief, as I've argued from/for common sense regarding this already. The system has as it's very structural support... actual racist beliefs. At the core...
Whether or not any particular individual currently residing/operating in the system holds racist beliefs is another matter altogether. The more important matter though, is whether or not they are willing to do anything about it.
She went on...
So this shows us that we are all aware of what's going on here. None of us want to be treated as such. So then, why and/or how is it ok to stand aside and allow others to be treated in such ways? What makes it ok to do that? Indifference towards racism perpetuates racism.
Shoot the elephant!
You lost me. :confused:
Who are the guilty?
Again, unless I'm misunderstanding you, I find no reason to suppress such belief. Pass it on, for your children's sake. It is beyond a reasonable doubt that some white people will not treat you or them with the basic modicum of respect, simply because you and they are human beings. That's the unfortunate reality of the world, and it transcends race my friend. There are all sorts of ways that people exclude others and devalue/belittle them based upon some arbitrary difference such as race, religion, personal tastes, personal values, ethnicity, socio-economic circumstances, etc.
It is important to not fall into the same line of fallacious thinking that many white racists share. They see some heinous crime being committed by a black person, and then conclude that all blacks are... pick your fallacious poison. It's wrong on several levels.
Not all whites are racist. Some will treat you and your children with respect...
...but not all. Allowing them to realize that is to prepare them properly for the world in which we live.
You lost me as to why I lost you. Maybe my definition of 'racist' is stricter than yours, but I have no intention of being down the wrong end of the pitch so the goal is wide open and feel free to score.
Is there any way to solve the problem of systemic racism without overthrowing the whole system?
And If there is not, then you are racist, or at least culpable to it, if you are not a revolutionary?
I don't think I do need to look it up, because it's probably Latin.
Either way, you inferred that one should not make a negative judgement about a tactic simply on the grounds that it hadn't worked 'so far'. It does not follow from the fact that a tactic hasn't worked 'so far' that one should suspend judgement on it because this would lead to suspending judgement infinitely as it will be in a permanent state of only having failed 'so far'. Thus you render judgement of a tactic obsolete. Do you I to look up ad absurdum too?
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Yep, we've already established that in some cases some types of reform can be achieved through peaceful means, we're talking about the cases and reform types where peaceful means seem to have failed in a timescale those suffering from the injustice feel is no longer reasonable to ask them to wait.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
No, it's not about sidetracking to some other issue. It's fundamental to your argument that the properties and livelihoods being damaged in the riots are both innocent and a net loss to the community. I'm presenting data which contradicts that notion. Companies like Target are both fully complicit in creating the circumstances of injustice being protested against, and they cause more financial hardship directly by their employment practices than the total amount of financial hardship putting them out of business causes. The amount of wages and benefits workers lose by losing their jobs there is less than the amount of legally entitled wages and benefits they lose by being employed there.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Yes. Again, no one here is denying that alternative methods exist and in some cases, for some reforms, those alternatives might work.
What's being argued here is not that no form of protest works other than rioting. What's being argued here is that rioting is one form of protest which can work and - given the scale of the suffering these people are under - the consequences of rioting are either trivial (in the case of a bit of bystander property damage), or actually legitimate (in the case of damage to the property of those partly responsible for, or complicit in, the situation).
There is a situation which causes the deaths of thousands of people a year, and causes ten times that amount to suffer injustices (this much is basically indisputable). Some of those people think they have a way of telling those in power how they feel, and maybe getting them to do something about it - they're perfectly justified in their belief that this way might work (there's good examples of it having done so), and they're angry, so they really want to let their oppressor know just how angry they are. And they're damn right to be angry because the scale of injustice is huge. You're wanting to take that away from them on the ground that a few people might have to find another job.
You're asking a whole population who've been serially murdered, abused and downtrodden, when considering tactics against their oppressors, to have as their primary consideration, the job security of a handful of workers.
You mean...
Quoting creativesoul
That's what you call an argument is it?
No. The 'effects' are racist, not merely a result of prior 'causal' racism. Racism is dead black men at dispropotionate rates, not some epiphenomenon whose real centre of gravity is somewhere else. I don't give a shit about 'knowledge'. George Floyd was not some epistemic glitch, he, and thousands like him, are dead people, not an after school fair project for you to 'acquire knowledge' about.
:fire: :clap:
:brow:
You're a bit confused, my man, missing the forest for the trees: in a nutshell - why no one should buy this used roll of toilet paper Bolton's selling.
Cluster bombs are quite complex explosives intended for a very specific targets and a specific attack method, actually. Better figure of speech would be of high altitude bombing with free fall bombs using only map coordinates. Some of the hopefully hit what you are intending to hit, others, who cares?
I think we should note just how earlier the US has avoided change and why after similar incidents for many decades now, be it in the 90's and later, same issues come up. What did happen after the Rodney King beating and the riots? What happens after the protests? I'm genuinely hopeful about police reform, but of course that "whining about broken windows" or vandalized George Washington statues IS ALREADY used as a countermethod to poison the moment and draw people away from the consensus gained in the condemnation of police brutality. Silly season is starting, so time to juxtapose the American people to two different camps. Time to divide the people. And it works, every time.
Besides, there's millions of guns in the US and you have now record gun sales, so more guns I guess is the American answer:
Your nation can always find ways to disappoint you and make things even worse.
No one needs 'consensus' about the murder of black people. It simply needs to stop. No more, no less. No justice, no peace.
Unconditional surrender.
Until then set fucking fire to everything, make everyone uncomfortable, and heighten every tension available.
Yes, that's typical what protesters do.
Did I mention about the record gun sales in your country? I think I did above.
I think it is hard...especially for Americans.
I'm sure there's more you'd like to change about the US outside the scope of BLM. Hell, plenty of people think the tax code is unfair are we going to throw rocks through windows and assault business owners until that's fixed? Also, what is an appropriate timescale? If everyone followed your idea, we'd just be in a constant state of rioting because everyone has complaints about the law and the government.
Quoting Isaac
Lets back track.
I presented a claim which was something along the lines of 'Intentionally destroying innocent local businesses is evil.' I didn't present much of an argument for it... I was just asking you whether you agree or disagree. Lets just start there. You sometimes argue against points which I haven't really made.
It's basically a conclusion which doesn't logically follow from the premises.
It amazes me how destroying someone's livelihood and in some cases personal business that they've saved up for their entire life is "trivial." It's only trivial to you because you have no skin in the game. If it was your business it probably wouldn't be trivial.
Quoting Isaac
You can be as angry as you want, it's fine. Just because I'm angry doesn't condone me punching you or destroying your business. Honestly, you learn this at like 5 years old. If you had your own business in one of those streets would you be okay with people destroying it? Honest question - they're just angry about racial injustice, who are you to deny them that expression? Would you let them destroy your home? It's just property, you can get a new one... maybe.
Personally, I find it encouraging when people respond with positive approval as well, instead of saying nothing when they agree and only speaking up to disagree. Those little emojis are a simple quick way of expressing support even when you have nothing more to add. It lets people know that someone liked what they said, even if all the substantive replies are disagreement.
It is not the absence of strict central control, but the strict enforcement of things like rent and interest (never mind property itself, but I’m not arguing against that) that leads to accumulation of wealth in few hands. In absence of those kinds of laws, having more wealth does not give you leverage to extract further wealth from those less wealthy. (And in absence of property laws at all, wealth is only ever of a community as a whole, since everyone is free to use anything as they please).
Yeah, maybe. If other methods don't work. It depends how unfair I think it is and how many people suffer as a consequence. Just because I'm arguing against "never riot", doesn't mean I'm arguing in favour of "always riot".
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
I know, it was a joke (not a very good one apparently). The conclusion that I don't need to look it up doesn't follow from the premises that it's probably Latin. You had to be there.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
The triviality or otherwise of any issue is relative. The whereabouts of my rattle was the least trivial issue around when I was 2. Compared to the issue being protested, financial set-back of a handful of individuals is trivial.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
We don't learn it when we're five, it's an enforced law to maintain discipline. Adults, of course, when they're angry with their kids can take a belt to them with impunity (or at least they could in my day). Are you suggesting that violence is never ever appropriate? Because of not, I'd can't think of a much more justifiable instigator than having members of your community murdered. If someone threatened to murder you would you ensure, in all circumstances, that you stuck to a non-violent response?
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
I'd be pretty pissed off I should think. I don't see why how I'd feel about it should come above how the community feel about their plight. Why should I ask a group of underprivileged, down-beaten protestors who've just had one of their community murdered to give a shit about my feelings here?
Those who commit violence against the innocent. The rioting and vandalism is often aimed towards people and things that had nothing to do with George Floyd in particular, nor police violence in general. This is why the riots are unjust and unjustified. It is simply thuggery.
Burn cop cars, smash racist statues, do symbolic violence against symbols of violence, yes. But wanton violence against random places that just happen to be nearby? No.
I asked earlier and don’t think I got any response: is anyone burning and looting the houses of the cops or other known racists? Or the houses of rich people generally? Or just random houses? Why is a small local business a more appropriate target than any of those? Not that I think those are all appropriate targets either, but at the very least the home of a cop or known racist seems a less inappropriate target than some random business.
I think you're seeing this too much as a tactical decision made in real time. The fact that riots work and the deliberate tactical choice to riot are two different things. The community rioted because they were angry, they looted because they wanted stuff, and had no reason at all to uphold the law. In amongst all that, there may have been some tactical decisions to damage particular properties, but maybe none at all.
So there's two issues here. Is property damage ever a good tactical decision in a protest? Is it fair to reprimand protestors for the damage they caused? To conflate the two assumes that tactical success is the only justification.
There is wanton violence against blacks who sleep in their own home, who just happen to be driving a car that one day, who just happen to be in the path of a cop with impunity. The whole fucking system is a system of wanton violence, perpetuated primarily by those with power - and people want to moralize about the powerless engaging in over-represented, media-spotlighted instances of violence against property? I guess you simply have to be the right color to perpetuate violence otherwise you get tut-tut'd by the sanctimonious who only like it if their blacks protest in just so a manner, amenable to nanny's dinner time etiquette.
There's a difference between a peaceful protest and a riot.
Property damage is indeed a tactic, but for something else than just a "protest". If you want to instill fear, escalate tensions or get the authorities to respond by violence, then destroying property is a great tactic. Yet then you aren't just talking about "protests".
[i]"Can't waste a day
when the night brings a hearse
So make a move and plead the fifth
'cause ya can't plead the first
Fuck tha G-ride
I want the machines that are makin' em"[/i]
~RATM, "Down Rodeo"
https://youtu.be/IKyVYdIkwOQ
:death: :flower:
...The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. understood the vexed relationship between black people and property. While his phrase that riots are the “language of the unheard” is always trotted out in times like these, he made a more powerful statement in an address to the American Psychological Association about a month after the Detroit rebellion in 1967.
“Alienated from society and knowing that this society cherishes property above people, [the looter] is shocking it by abusing property rights,” he said. The real provocateur of the riots, he argued, was white supremacy. Racism is responsible for the slum conditions that were the breeding grounds of rebellion. He added, “if the violations of law by the white man in the slums over the years were calculated and compared with the lawbreaking of a few days of riots, the hardened criminal would be the white man.” What to do? Dr. King was unequivocal: full employment and decent housing, paid for by defunding the war in Vietnam."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/opinion/george-floyd-protests-looting.html
Contemporaneous revision: gtfo of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Sure, and what if they wanted to destroy and loot your house after? I mean it's just the voice of the under-privileged, who are you to object?
Surely those small business owners who had their livelihoods destroyed and the businesses that they built up over the years have no valid claim against the voice of the under-class, though.
Why would they? They're angry, it doesn't mean they've somehow turned into unfeeling sociopaths. Where is this slippery slope fallacy going? Maybe we should band shouting because shouting often leads to fighting, and fighting leads to brawls...and before you know it, nuclear armaggedon. That's why they call it a fallacy. You can't argue against this action by pointing to the disadvantages of some other action without sound justification for believing one will lead to the other.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
If it's expected of the oppressed group that they suppress their anger, that they keep cool heads at all times and consider the inconvenience their actions might cause - if we're going to demand that level of compassion and moral fortitude - then we would surely ask no less of the small business owner... to say "I understand why you burnt my shop down, you were justifiably very angry and we don't always make perfect decisions in those situations, hey, it's only a shop, it can be fixed, there's more important problems to deal with".
Destroying someone’s workplace can leave them homeless and destitute almost as easily as destroying their home can, so if empathy prevents the latter it seems it should also prevent the former.
Again, this is arguing against something which is, by using the disadvantages of something which might be. Having a street protest might well delay an ambulance and so lead to great harm, should we ban them too? Hell, just driving to work is dangerous enough.
The whole point here is that people have been beaten and murdered by the hundreds. The only compassionate response to the anger that provokes is sympathy. If that anger leads to bad decisions, we sympathise. If that anger actually ends up making someone temporarily homeless, we sympathise. If that anger backfires and make people vote more right-wing, we sympathise.
At no point do we start laying into the rioters for not having the stoicism to suffer in silence whist the people who actually caused the whole situation remain unassailed.
I’m not, and so far as I can see here nobody else is either. They’re just asking for sympathy for the innocents wrongly caught up in that angry reaction, in addition to sympathy for the righteously angry people.
The point of bringing up wrecking and looting someone’s house is that we all probably agree that that crosses a line and isn’t an okay expression of anger, even if the anger itself is well-justified. You yourself suggested that only a sociopath would do that. I pointed out that destroying someone’s workplace has pretty much the same effect. (Most people live check to check and rent their homes, so losing their job and losing their home are about the same thing.) So are the people doing that sociopaths too? And isn’t that a problem if so?
I said earlier: it seems to me like wrecking a racist cop’s home is more justified than wrecking a random local shop.
Worth noting how different the US was back then too in general, btw.
MLK might be publicly and officially revered now, but are the Black Panthers too?
Fair enough, but that's not the impression I've got from any of the arguments here. The focus on the protestors is out of place. The established political and economic system is to blame for the deaths that started all this, and they are to blame for the damage caused by making an entire community so furious and desperate that they resort to rioting. Absolutely none of the posts asking for sympathy for those who've lost businesses are laying the blame with those who caused the problem, none of them are understanding of the kind of degrading treatment that leads to such acts of violence. So no, I don't share your assessment of the motives of those seeking to raise sympathy for the businesses lost.
An entire community so furious - so even the rich white kids who decide to go into a mall in an urban area and vandalize it during the riots are just....the fault of the government. People apparently don't have agency, they're just little wind-up toys to be wound up and released and whatever damage they cause is clearly on whoever wound them up. I swear you could come across a man beating a pregnant woman and you'd be thinking "god, how could the evil forces of systemic racism/classism/capitalism/etc be doing this to her!"
Serious question though: Do you apply these standards/this account to yourself. If you were to destroy a local business, would you blame yourself or something else? Plenty of these rioters are not from the community being vandalized, they're from outside.
More specifically, equal protection and treatment under the law.
Sigh...
:roll:
We're on the same side, you know?
I mean, I presume we want the same outcomes. Here, it would benefit us to recognize that our differences seem to be on a ontological/metaphysical level, which amounts - in some ways - to the linguistic framework we're using to account for racism and/or racist belief. Well, and we also differ in what we espouse to be the necessary method for realizing the changes needed... for making them happen!
you surprised me with what seemed to be a rejection of the need for a knowledge of the history underwriting today's situations...
Who are the innocent?
Fair enough, I didn't make it explicit... However, given your cognitive abilities, I thought it unnecessary...
There is systemic racism. Hence, there are racist beliefs, or policies stemming from such, contained within it. To effectively correct the affects/effects of those racist beliefs, we must identify and remove/replace the policies and/or institutions stemming from them.
I am not saying that everyone currently in government, law enforcement, or the judicial system is racist or holds racist beliefs. There, we agree. However, to claim that there is no racist belief necessary in order to have systemic racism is like saying apples are not currently necessary to have apple pie.
It's a matter of elemental constituency. Although, philosophically we will most certainly part ways here. I mean, unless one of us changes our view, we will not agree on this. You are a physicalist, or so it seems, whereas I am of the well considered opinion that the physical/mental dichotomy is utterly inadequate for taking proper account of that which is existentially dependent upon and thus consists of both...
Racist belief, racism, and systemic racism are all such things. Thus... our differences are due to our accounting practices. Our agreements are far more important here, perhaps. Although, I think that correcting the problems is much more likely to happen by first taking proper account of them.
Cheers!
It's a convenient feel-good myth that the US was 'different back then'. The most that has happened in that the forms of racial prejudice have been displaced from a lack of rights to present disenfranchisement at the level of wealth, education, housing and other places. As for the Black Panthers, they were fucking heroes and anyone who does not revere them like they do MLK ought to stop pretending they give a shit. The Black Panthers set up breakfast programs for hungry schoolchilden, provided clinics for the sick, childcare, book programs, transportation networks for the elderly and more. They unquestionably did more good at the level of concrete practice than MLK did.
Get this through your head: the US is dealing with the same problems that have existed since the end of the civil war, in many ways in worse forms, not better. More black people die at the hands of the police in the US than they did at the height of lynchings in post-reconstruction US. If the US is 'different' from 'back then', it is fucking worse along a range of metrics.
I. do. not. give. a. shit. about. belief. No one talking about 'belief' is on 'my side'. Anyone talking about 'belief' has no idea what systematic racism is and ought to go join the Klan for all the good it does.
What rich white kids are you talking about? The overwhelming majority of those protesting were from the affected community.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
This seems to be your only argumentative tactic at the moment - take a position to it's extreme and use the consequences there to suggest the position as it stands is wrong. This is such a well-known bit of sophistry it even has its own name. Taking account of the part society plays in in the behaviour of some population is not the equivalent of assuming it is entirely responsible for everything.
If the best you've got is to create strawman arguments out of taking any position to its extreme rather than deal with it at the level it's expressed, then we're done here.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Both.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Evidence?
No, you've just misunderstood what systemic racism is. Any system which disadvantages a culturally defined group who do not have the power to rectify it is systemically racist. It could disadvantage that group because those running it actually hold racist beliefs, it could disadvantage that group because those running will not correct injustices created from previous policies. It could even disadvantage that group simply by chance - random and unforeseen consequence. In each case it would class as systemic racism.
To say that systemic racism does not require racist belief is part of the definition of the term, it's not something which can be established by discussion, it's just what the term means in this context. If you want to isolate those systemic practices which do always result from racist beliefs, you'd have to coin a new term as 'systemic racism' is already in use to describe something else.
Many do agree with MLK's message in his "I have a Dream" speech. I don't think they pretend. Do they even know about Huey Newton? But feel free to think that they only pretend and don't give a shit in order to create your own inherently racist America. But luckily we have you as the righteous one. So what happened to the Black Panthers, StreetlightX? If you revere them so much, perhaps you can enlighten me, really.
Quoting StreetlightX
So nothing has happened in 155 years? Things are worse. Ok.
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Isaac
I'm just thrilled you're able to acknowledge personal responsibility. As individuals we can't really control external social systems, but we can control ourselves. Once we acknowledge that people have agency and that they are at fault for doing what they're doing.... that's really all I wanted to hear from you. I understand that there's social factors at play, but one's actions ultimately come down to that individual. Presumably, since you'd blame yourself if you destroyed and looted a local business then we can draw the conclusion that the rioters are also at fault.
Those who did not deserve the violence and vandalism—the vast majority of people. It’s why these riots are not about justice in general, and not about justice for Floyd in particular. The tearing down of statues, the firing of dissidents, the taking over of city blocks, the vandalism, the violence—this is a conformist putsch.
Now I don't usually reply to you, but this one just had me laughing out loud. Yes, rioting is so [I] conformist [/I]. They just want everyone to conform to social standards, which is why they break the social standards.
You can't justifiably, or even coherently, mount an argument that is inferred from the founding principles or dominant ideology of a particular society to neutralize the ethical basis of actions undertaken in opposition to structures that inevitably flow from the way those principles and that ideology are, in practice, expressed. You've got to zoom out and look at a broader set of human values and the overarching importance of those being fundamental to any acceptable social contract. Fundamental to that perspective is the establishment of a form of equality that extends beyond the theoretical into the lived experience of all communities and social stakeholders. So, repeated focus on injuries to the property rights of those who, for the most part, are the beneficiaries of the system under question just distracts from the real injured parties and the wider ethical injury of a society that maintains an underclass disproportionately inhabited by communities of color that it expects to obediently propagate the structures that keep that underclass in its place. And from this vantage point, the primary ethical responsibility of the individual is to oppose the wider injustice and the deficit lies in those who don't, making much more of a moral degenerate of the weasel-mouthed objector to rioters and looters than the outraged victim of social injustice who burned down the wrong building.
@NOS4A2 having nothing original, interesting or remotely sophisticated to say just pops up every couple of days to repeat the party (White House) line.
Oh I am aware. That's why I usually just ignore them. But sometimes something so exquisitely stupid comes out of the propaganda machine that I can't help myself.
An all too typical 'philosophical' stance...
That's meaningless nonsensical language use. What we are referring to existed in it's entirety prior to the name. Thus, we can get it wrong, especially regarding it's elemental constituency, as is the case with everything that exists in it's entirety prior to our naming and descriptive practices focus upon it. Systemic racism was founded upon racist belief. It consists of racist beliefs and their products. Racists made the rules, often intentionally and deliberately to disadvantage all sorts of people aside from white men.
Suit yourself. Violence gets attention.
No, that's what the word means and how it's used in academia and elsewhere. And as it can happily co-exist with explicit racism, it by no means obscures or denigrates that reality. In any case, you don't get moral brownie points just for not understanding a commonly-used concept.
Mob mentality is a form of conformity, whether you laugh or not. Flagged, as they were, by the hashtags and virtue-signalling of corporate and political interests, and the censorship of dissenting views, it is not just conformity, but orthodoxy.
Stop filling the thread with stupidity and go elsewhere.
Oh perfect...
No wonder there's been no real results based on it... Again academia is a bit lost.
I've lived it for half a century.
Fair enough. The thread was full of tripe anyway. Can’t even take a little opposition.
It's not opposition to spout thoughtless low-quality rubbish. You are just too stupid for this thread and refuse to deal with the actual OP. Others who disagree aren't and have made an effort. You can come back if you can find it in yourself to write something a five-year-old couldn't come up with.
I'm sure we agree on the egregious nature of racism, but if we don't agree on standard terms, we're just going to end up talking past each other. I can't force you to use the term in the standard sense, but it's going to be a mess of confusion otherwise. Your call.
Quoting Baden
We get it - you want equality: Who doesn't? Who wouldn't want a more fair America?
I definitely get it. Showing you my victimhood card here - I am disabled. I have a disability protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act and I can tell you that discrimination against those with disabilities is pretty rampant. Yet, you don't see us setting buildings on fire or demonizing abled people who contribute to structures of systemic blah blah blah. We have our solutions and we support each other - it's not like we're totally indifferent about things.
Quoting Baden
Yes, when you divide people into oppressed and oppressor the oppressed is justified in doing what he needs to do to even the score. Any calls to the misdeeds done by the oppressed are just products or sympathizers of the oppressive system. The oppressed aren't individuals or moral agents - they're just an amorphous, oppressed blob whose singular purpose is to dismantle systemic injustice and if they need to break a few eggs to make the omelette then so be it - they're fighting evil. It's all just black and white - no shades of grey. Oppressor vs. oppressed. Poor vs. Rich. Black vs. White. People are defined by these identities.
If you choose this vantage point, that's on you.
Why not?
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
I think we both know that's a caricature of my position. Without committing to "anything goes" (not something I've advocated either), do you agree with the following or not?
Quoting Baden
Questioner: So how do we solve systemic racism?
Conservative: Don't break any windows.
Questioner: Um, ok, but how do we solve systemic racism?
Conservative: Or do any other property damage.
Questioner: Yeah, but how...?
Conservative: You're saying burn stuff?? How dare you!
Questioner: But...
Conservative: Anarchists! Vandals! Mob! Conformists!
Questioner: ....
An attempt at a left criticism of the movements, in the spirit of the forum's old advocatus diaboli.
I will not deny the suffering of people in poor neighbourhoods. It is understandable that those within them sometimes feel the need to turn to crime. That holds regardless of the race of their inhabitants; the same held for the Irish in 1800's London, inhabiting the slums and demonised for the effects of the poverty in the media of the time. The colour of someone's skin only matters insofar as history has made it matter; and it has been made to matter a lot. If someone deprived of opportunities seeks to better their communities through politics or business, they should be applauded insofar as what they do is moral.
What is moral must be, minimally, permissible to do. I don't mean by the standards of law, I mean by the standards of morality that all people have; amplifying the agency of themselves, those around them and of humanity in general. In this regard, severe or violent action must be weighed in terms of its efficacy at addressing severe and violent conditions - and let's not be stupid about it, violence must be permissible as a bargaining tactic of last resort against an oppressor; appealing to the moral sense of an oppressor has never and will never work (pace Assata Shakur). The situation in poor communities in America is dire; powerlessness, lack of representation, racialised police violence; the same or structurally analogous issues since the early 1900's; the state has not and will not save anyone, that much is clear.
The same history that condemns the American state as continually racist condemns almost all acts of protest against it in terms of sheer efficacy; it's been the same shit for hundreds of years. Appealing to the moral conscience of an oppressor, however loudly, bloodily and on fire, so long as those actions remain merely symbolic, protest is begging a racist state to be less racist. Even the best likely outcome of the protests in their current form is the harm reduction of less police brutality inflicted upon the racialised; well fought, well won, not enough. Symbolic violence alone is a spectacle of waste.
Perhaps more organized force is required for enduring change on the level rightly desired by the movement. If you are of a more liberal persuasion, you will probably stop reading there; freely treat this as a disjunctive syllogism regarding stopping the merely symbolic violence of property destruction in the context of a recalcitrant system of racism; why cause undue harm when it merely appeals to the moral conscience of an oppressor, and thus falls almost entirely on deaf ears? It creates minor harms for the unlikely possibility of minor harm reduction.
Perhaps a reader may be thinking, "what you say is true, but the incremental gains of symbolic protest alone far outweigh the minor harm to people that destroying property does". Such a question however is flip-flopping; a standard argument that interlocutor makes goes like:
The American state is recalcitrantly racist and dealing with the same problems now as it was 100 years ago and thus violence against property is ok.
Really? When the same history finds at best minor gains, against countless murders and traumatisation of citizens by police, against the sheer weight of systemic discrimination done by both the state and the economy? And be under no illusions; without massive changes in state budgeting, a change in the American policing and legislative models, and a massive shift of the role of prison in society and industry... The same shit will be dealt with after the flames have settled.
How many more years of merely symbolic protest must be endured? All it creates is minor collateral damage, leaving the conscience of every oppressor fundamentally unswayed. The harm done so far is nothing but prayer.
Quoting Baden
Because it's incredibly unproductive and some of the those businesses we burn might even belong with disabled people. Or maybe siblings or parents of the disabled.
We can advocate for changes in legislation, but I wouldn't really count on it too much. Far better to network through other people in the community and form those connections. The best way out of dependence - and this applies just generally, not only in the context of disabled people - is getting wealth, and when you destroy local businesses often owned by those of the "oppressed" class you're really just shooting yourself in the foot. Financial independence is huge for overcoming systemic bias.
Injustice ought to be opposed where ever it is. If Jews in 1935 started destroying German shops I'd condemn that - no problem (there are Holocaust victims in my family.) We shouldn't turn a blind eye simply because someone who committed the injustice is an oppressed class, and when we do that we actually end up dehumanizing them because we're not holding them up to the same standards as everyone else.
Of course in the case of Jews rioting the wider injustice is Nazi Germany. When I say that the Jews shouldn't have done that or that the rioters shouldn't have done that that's not saying "oh bring in the tanks" or that we need a heavy handed response. I'm just saying that they shouldn't do it.
Fear works, antagonism works, discord is wildly productive.
Why is hypothetical unsourced harm more important to you than real harm done on a daily basis? Why does it weigh heavier in your considerations regarding the protests than the lived reality?
By the same token, you can think of all the hypothetical instances of police brutality agitating against police brutality and for police reform would do.
The question was meant to tease out whether you'd answer morally or strategically. I guess it's both, but especially in light of the example of the Jews in your post, I differ in that I see more options as justified morally and for those, it then becomes about strategy. So, my objections to property destruction would largely be strategic. However, I completely agree that not every target is morally permissible. I don't, for example, advocate random destruction of property where much of it belongs to members of the very community being harmed. Getting back to the example of the Jews, why shouldn't they have rioted? I think your position is extreme here. Their very existence was under threat. I would say their scope for justified counter-action was wide open. For me, based on a straightforward utilitarian and consequentialist position, pretty much everything was permissible for the Jews if, of course, it would have contributed to their safety as individuals and as a people. So, strategy aside, on what ethical basis, if any, are you objecting here? Why is it wrong? You have a dominant party aimed at destroying an oppressed minority. If anything they have an obligation to do everything possible to defend themselves, right?
Well you're all worked up!
If it works so well, when are people going to start killing each other there? Oh right, it will be put into a different category.
In my discussion with Baden he asked me a question: Why don't disabled people riot? We (I say "we" because I mentioned I have a disability earlier) haven't rioted, so the situation is hypothetical. If we were to riot there would actually be harm.
If you're asking me about real riots which ended up destroying real black-owned businesses then that harm has been very much documented. That harm is very much real and will likely persist for years to come.
And the oodles of evidence for systemic racism?
This is the kind of shit that doesn't get told when white liberal story-telling remakes the civil rights movement into a bunch of kum-bai-yah shit sprouted by MLK holding hands on a nice long walk somewhere. The activists above knew very well that this is what it would take - and what it did take - to effect change.
There already have been people killed in the protests - almost all of them by police and by white supremacists. But the fucktards blubbering about 'violence' are silent as a fucking grave about it.
I think that this is the reason just why nothing dramatic that would change the underlying reasons will happen.
The excessive stupidity just takes over.
Nobody will say: "Ok, we got the reforms we wanted." Nobody will be happy about the majority of people being against police brutality. Nope, it will go to a level of stupidity where some will see everywhere traces of systemic racism and will attack this systemic racism. So I guess soon burning the US Flag will be an act of protest against systemic racism and then flying the US flag will become a microaggression and racist.
The bottom line. Things will get even more stupid.
Don't threaten me with a good time.
When one aspect of systemic racism is disproportionate levels of violent state oppression against a given community then, failing other methods, more organized force can be justified in my view. The level of violent force justified being proportionate to the level of oppression and the accuracy of the targets. In the most extreme case, for example, with the Jews in the 1930s, not only imo would have they been justified in assassinating leading Nazis (if they had the capacity) but inflicting civilian casualties too if strategically beneficial. A less extreme case would be the Republican struggle in Northern Ireland where Catholics weren't under genocidal threat, but were, similarly to blacks in America, denied fundamental fairness re jobs, housing, and political franchise and were being murdered on the street by British armed forces. Here, targeted violence against occupying security forces and officials was justified in my view, but not attacks on civilian targets. I won't comment on the present situation in these terms in case I'm accused of some form of incitement, but I'll say this if, when getting down on a knee, you are not only ignored but treated with contempt, you take it to the next level and if that's ignored you keep going to the limit of what can be justified in context and nothing is a priori ruled out.
At least I have said that the response from the right should be noticed. Fox News is in full swing of the culture war, that's their shtick. The rigth-wing extremists do have their proven tactics: lone gunmen actors who buy that self loading rifle etc. When they don't be members of some movement, there's no movement to be put on the FBI terrorist list.
You do have record breaking number of fire arms being bought just now.
So if you think violence works... well, there is a negative aspect of that. Just saying that countries can always disappoint you.
Yes, their obligation is to defend themselves, and their existence is threatened. The Jews are very much at war here. There is, however, a just war tradition both in Judaism and Christianity which speaks to the necessity of differentiating between valid and invalid targets.
Don't get me wrong, there's an argument that everyone and everything on the opposing side is a valid, legitimate target. Lets imagine a 10 year old German boy in 1940 who goes to a corner store and buys a pair of shoes. Maybe the tax goes to to the war industry. Maybe even in 4-5 years that boy could be fighting in a Nazi uniform. There's a case to be made here for killing him if we're going by purely utilitarian grounds.
Still, the cost for indulging in this 'total war' or 'win by all costs' scenario is that you turn into the ******* devil. This kind of thing happens in war, but at the end of the day that 10 year German boy is really no different from a 10 year old Jewish one. When it comes to rioting, simply the fact that a German business exists doesn't provide grounds to destroy it. Destroying businesses can leave people homeless or unable to afford food or crucial medication. I can condone the destruction of certain German businesses but there needs to be sufficient reason.
American symbols like the flag or anthem don't have a sacred right to survive in perpetuity. They either represent Americans as a whole or they don't. And that's up to Americans and the various communities among them to decide. It's not long ago that the confederate battle flag was not seen as racist enough to be removed from Government buildings, but now it largely is. Shit changes.
If you're not prepared to be disappointed, and if you're not prepared for a massive reaction by Fox news-types, then you don't understand anything about anything.
So you think Americans will be divided by the use of flag? Putting the flag up on your home is a sign that one accepts systemic racism?
I'm fine having a discussion about that, but what we're talking about now is the rioters and their own personal moral responsibility.
I said this earlier with Baden: Even Jews in 1935-1936 wouldn't have been justified in destroying local German businesses (ones unconnected with Nazism) because even in war there are valid and invalid targets.
Quoting ssu
I can see this being the case. Honestly, my point was that even if the rioters concerns are valid - and I have no problem with body cameras or better training for police or independent commissions going over police reports - there are appropriate and inappropriate ways to go about trying to achieve reforms. Even if the rioters consider this a war there are still valid and invalid targets in war.
Oh that's how you see it? Did I say that? You genuinely think that?
(Again, great moderation...)
I will respond to you: No, I don't think any piece of material, or statue or holy place is worth one single human life. Yet I do think we can value things what are our heritage. But that you juxtapose it so is a bit odd.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Watch out that you don't get banned.
I'd like to see them ban me for that I'm Ashkenazi Jewish with family killed in the Holocaust.
Humanity is something we can easily forget. We adapt perhaps too easily to things we shouldn't.
Quoting fdrake
It is possible to radicalize your position as not sufficiently left.
Most of the existing political forces, leaders, big corporations, and the media have embraced the notion of systemic racism. Likely, they are not going to bring the necessary change in the American state. And, they won’t tolerate the emergence of the independent political force.
That was a bad joke from me. They won't ban you. I trust in these guys.
Anyway, I'm off for now.
And in 1939, 1942 or 1944? When exactly was it justified for them to attack the society murdering them with impunity?
No, I don't think so. Me blaming myself and us (as a society, or community) blaming others are two different things. Once we act as a community (you said 'we') we have to accept that we're as much part of the problem as the rest, because we're judging it at a community level. They can all blame themselves, and I bet plenty of them are doing so, but the only thing for 'us' to do as a community is ask "how the hell did we let things get like this?".
I don't know. It's possible. You'd have to ask them. But to me any flag is only as important and valuable as it's recognized as being so across different sectors of society as well as within them. If there's a schism on that then, yes, they'll be divided.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
I know you said you're Jewish, but even if you weren't I think I would see the general point of principle even though I thoroughly disagree with it.
Was it the society or was the Nazi regime that was murdering them with impunity? If it's the entire society you should have no problem carpet bombing German cities which had no connection to the war effort. If you believe it's the Nazi regime you'd probably discriminate a little more and we can have a conversation over what constitutes a valid target.
Quoting Baden
Do you take the consequentialist view then?
Pretty much. I don't accept that targets like property or even civilians are absolutely out-of-bounds in a conflict situation, especially the one described where an entire people is under threat of being exterminated. The severity of the possible consequences justifies a proportionately severe response. But I'm not against certain rules applying to conflict per se.
E.g. on this:
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
If that would have stopped (or contributed to stopping) the holocaust, I would have been all for it. Done purely for punitive reasons, no.
Quoting Baden
Just to be clear I'm not saying this either. I am saying that intentionally targeting civilians is wrong. Industries directly contributing to the war effort are valid targets. Civilians will always be killed in war.
Quoting Baden
If I can recall the bombings were done to destroy the morale of the population and to cower the enemy into surrender. Who knows maybe it helped in some marginal way by removing tax payers.
Quoting Benkei
When I was younger I agreed with this, but in reality it would have just likely driven the German population closer to the Nazis and the Nazis would have heavily publicized it and used it as proof that the Jews were intent on destroying the German people.
From a moral angle I find pretty bad. It's not a crime to be a German civilian in 1942/1943. There's just such a large scale of guilt here ranging from babies and children up to the planners of the final solution and indiscriminate bombings of civilians group essentially don't acknowledge this scale of guilt. If we wish to apply morality to war at all that project should begin with the distinction between civilians and combatants - valid targets and invalid targets. Otherwise war is just murder and soldiers are just murderers.
I suggest that you guys look into it a bit closer...
I'm saying that racist belief is necessary, and is always an element within systemic racism, or institutional racism if you prefer. Isaac is disagreeing, and you seem to be in agreement with his take...
Do some homework.
It's important to keep what I'm saying in mind because doing so is necessary for changing some people's minds about it, and understanding others. Put it this way...
The breadth of the scope of diversity; the cross cultural teamwork; the many different united under one cause - to rid the nation of racism - did not come about from violence alone. Could not ever have done so. Rather, it came about as a result of shared belief. A shared rejection of devaluing another because they are black, of believing that it's ok to do so...
Yeah, you guys have fun... you're the boss here. I'm out.
I'm living it. I'm changing racist minds, and have been throughout my life. I've got a very good handle on the way things are and they way things work. I've helped by broadening the coalition in everyday real life... You guys do not even live in the States, so for all I know Street has some ulterior motive for wishing America to implode. Certainly fits what he's advocating here...
I've got better things to do, and will...
Thanks for the writing space, and you're welcome(assuming someone actually figures out what all I've done here). It's all yours... but it's really not.
Fuck police violence, and fuck all cops.
May these protests get infinitely 'stupider', forever.
And may people who, in the face of the above, worry about 'microagressions' or burning cloth, go straight to the ninth level of hell.
"Race is a social construction; racism is a function of social behaviors and relations. Racist ideologies are not the cause of systems, institutions or actions that perpetuate or exacerbate racialized inequality – they are produced to justify and legitimize these states of affairs. In other words, the actual practice of racialized group-making and inter-group competition is more fundamental than the popular discourses and ideologies which frame them. Yet many contemporary antiracist efforts -- especially among highly-educated, relatively well-off, white liberals – focus primarily on ‘hearts and minds’ (beliefs, intentions, attitudes, feelings), symbols and rhetoric. Antiracism has largely shifted from a sociological project (focused on institutions, behaviors, the distribution of resources, etc.) into a psychological one. Even sociologists seem to be increasingly adopting psychologized frameworks for understanding.
...Awareness of systemic racism does not cleanly translate into actual behaviors that reduce inequality -- neither does supporting racial egalitarianism through words, beliefs or feelings. Indeed, among the primary beneficiaries and perpetuators of systemic racism today are whites who are already convinced of their privilege -- who both understand and lament the disadvantages people of color face. It is precisely these convictions that blind them to their own role in reinforcing racialized inequality, thereby pushing them to look externally to identify culpable parties (i.e. the problem must be the ‘bad’ people who say, feel, or believe the ‘wrong’ things about others from historically marginalized or disadvantaged groups)." (my bolding)
https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/wd54z/
They're people. Some are horrible. Yet we don't condemn all people as a result. Regardless the sentiment and fact the incident behind it is open and available is just as strong a rallying cry for free speech, independent media, and related values in general including law and order. And the goal should not be against one specific place but rather the world itself.
Maybe there is a problem. Cops are authority and it is a fact that weakness, true weakness, no matter how big or strong an individual is, naturally seeks power. Inadequacy seeks adequacy. The purposeless seeks the purposeful. A larger problem would be authority in a system that denies all of these things including accountability. Maybe it's not. We wouldn't know!
Exactly. I've always found the just war tradition a convenient excuse for murder. There's an intent behind the theory that's laudable but it's practical implementation has been one of cynical abuse.
The only worthwhile rule to remember is reciprocity. Don't do unto your enemies what you don't want them to do to you or your people. Which is why nowadays it's perfectly fine to torture American soldiers since apparently subsequent US regimes have condoned it. But I digress.
I'm not sure in any case if it makes sense to apply just war doctrine to a situation like this. A group of people is slowly murdered and looted with impunity, it's "enemy" is the society they live in and are supposed to be a part of. It's all rather academic since a majority of people in the US seem to be ready to embrace some of the changes necessary.
Even so, let's take the examples of the Jews in 1940. Your argument that it wouldn't be effective isn't an argument against the moral right of the Jews back then to bomb and burn buildings indiscriminately as they were murdered indiscriminately by the State apparatus supported by the German people; either actively or by doing nothing.
And there's a parallel there with modern times in that it isn't enough to not be a racist but to be actively anti-racist. It wasn't enough not to be a Nazi but to be anti-Nazi. That's the only way to stop racism.
I took this example up as this is one way an artificial division or juxtaposition of "the people" can be done in the "culture wars". I know, perhaps it seems not to be the correct thread, but the reason why I mention it is that it's these kind of small issues that actually will be used in the public debate. And these small issues then chip away from a true consensus about the bigger issues at hand. Think of it as noise that has the ability to separate us and loose focus. Because my simple question is: the US has been here many times, so why hasn't much anything happened before?
Symbols that are intended to be unifying are deliberately made to be divisive. When you say "any flag is only as important and valuable as it's recognized as being so across different sectors of society as well as within them", you also give the reason just why flags are and will be attacked. And there's several reasons why.
Just like kneeling when the national anthem is played was made deliberately by Trump an issue (which I find absurd, because kneeling is far more polite than just sitting down), earlier the same shtick was used by the older George Bush when he tried to ban the burning of the flag (which was shot down by the supreme court). Both actions were intended to get a response from liberals and for conservatives to notice how different liberals are. Unfortunately it doesn't end there. Naturally the extreme right wants to own such national symbols and try to make the absurd claim that they are the only ones defending such symbols. As if there weren't leftists/centrist or others who do love their country. And in a macabre twist the extreme left is an ardent supporter of this view that indeed yes, those symbols of national unity aren't symbols of unity at all, but racist and fascist symbols of the extreme right. As, of course, the state represents basically fascism. Yet when you think of it, it's obvious that extremists are against anything that has unified us. That the symbol has been unifying is an obstacle for their agenda.
And that's why I think flag burning could be the next small issue that the media takes interest. Or that the next absurd thing will be that "flying the national flag is racist, because you show your approval of the inherent racism of the US state". Such nonsense can get noticed, because both on the left and the right there will be people that will be pleased with that absurd line if it would catch the public discourse. I hope it doesn't.
As for the whole 'unity' shtick - those who say peace when there is no peace say nothing at all.
Oh the irony in liberal leftists being a cause of rather then the solution to systemic racism.
"Alternatively, consider schooling: New York City swings decisively “blue” yet has one of the most racially-segregated school systems in the entire country (Harris & Fessenden 2017). There is a widespread perception among elites that education deficits are the primary driver of inequality – rather than the relationship working the other way around (Hanauer 2019); there is also widespread support, in principle, for public schools. Yet few relatively well-off whites in New York City send their own children to their zoned public school (Douglas 2017). Many send their kids to private schools that charge tuition of tens-of-thousands per year but nonetheless market themselves as social-justice oriented institutions
(Robin 2015). Others send their children to elite public schools, often outside their residential zone. These parents tend to vigorously oppose attempts by the city to increase students of color at these schools – be it through reserving places for low-income and/or minority students (Hylton 2018), including
considerations of race or income in admissions, or reducing importance of standardized tests in admission decisions (Ali & Chin 2018). Granted, this opposition is not usually grounded in antipathy towards blacks or Hispanics, but out of a drive to see their own children succeed (albeit, even at others’ expense). Yet this is, fundamentally, how systemic racism operates."
I found this to be especially revealing and also very recognizable. A lot of systemic inequality probably flows from this alone... social networks that are build up in schools are probably one of the key factors that determine professional succes later on.
It's hard to see how you would solve this though, I don't see people voluntarily choosing not to try to give their kids a head start in life....
There's no irony friend. You're just uneducated on the distinction between liberals and leftists.
The article is helpful in providing some concrete tips for praxis.
Yes, I remember that you were our angry Australian.
I'm quite sure a holocaust won't happen soon either in your or my country or in the US. Sorry if I annoy with the talk that civil wars should be prevented and that the underlying issues causing them can be tackled another way. In the US there's a lot of talk about everything ending up in a civil war, but I gather that the richest country in the World still has a long way to go in ruining their country before that outcome would be inevitable.
And I believe that terrifying someone into submission usually doesn't work, sorry.
People and their freaking kids. There should be, simply because there is, nothing special about their own child compared to a neighbors or even some kid halfway across the world for that matter. It's the cancerous, parasitic atheist mindset that when you die you cease to exist in any and all forms. So they desperately try to prolong any idea of themselves through reproduction. They push not only all their failed dreams, pursuits, and expectations on them but all their regrets, fears, and mental complexes on them as well. It is abuse in its purest form. Those who seek to be first, shall be last. And even that is only because I don't have a proper say yet.
Then you don't know history and should probably stop talking. When the ruling class get scared, that's when massive, systemic change happens - everytime.
Ok the article spoke of left-leaning, which is mostly liberal in your mind I presume... and not the true left.
The tips could probably make a difference, yes. The problem is that I don't see people voluntarily choosing to do so because there is a real cost to it. The article states that it is sort of a collective action problem, and I think that is a good way of looking at it... which makes me think that you needs some government intervention probably, or some incentive to change those behaviors.
You think people favoring their kids is a consequence of atheism... or of any sort of ideology even? You don't think there's some biological component to it, so that trying to change that behavior will be an up-hill battle?
Yeah, it is absolutely a collective action problem (but then again all politics is!). I do think state action can play an important role (part of what you're seeing happening in the US right now is a total failure of state policy), but politics can't stop at the edge of government - it also needs individual leadership, a diffusion of ideas, money and funding, and so on. Ideally, working symbiotically with each other. The incentives are indeed skewed right now. Systemic racism requires systemic solutions. It cannot come (just) from good-willed individuals. If you have the time, there are some really interesting proposals peppered throughout this talk which is among the most astute analyses of the current situation I know. I linked the bit where race comes into explicit discussion. Basic message: race needs to be thought together with political economy or not at all.
Perhaps. If "my" kid was switched at birth.. well, you can see from that as I wouldn't know it's psychological more than anything. Yes?
Physiological, perhaps. Characteristics of both without being exclusively one or the other
Yes sure it's mainly psychological, but that doesn't mean that it is that easily changed. Like, I don't really believe in the Peter Singers of this world that say that proximity should play no role in moral considerations. The affects we develop for people we know in person play a role in motivating us to be moral in the first place. I don't think you can just do away with that without losing something that is essential to it.
Who gets scared is the question.
You think the ruling class gets scared about some riots? And that massive systemic change is going to happen?
As for what's going to happen, who the hell knows. Politics is a risk. Things could get worse. Things will probably get worse. But if that change doesn't happen, things will get worse. That one's a given. Meanwhile I'm going to tell everyone worrying about star-striped fabric to go fuck themselves.
:smile:
I didn't know it was 1789.
Wait a minute,
it isn't!
Most of your responses in the thread have been a long form version of that. "It can't be like that now, it's not then!"
Well, it seems that many people think that they are on a cusp of a massive Earth-moving change.
Don't you hope for all their hopes to come true?
Their hopes or our hopes?
Is there someone for racism? Not here, not many out there.
Is there someone for more inequality? Again no.
It's easy to see what the problems are, more difficult to say what exactly works for the most complex questions.
You will never get a socially conscious racist to defend racism. It will always always always be a reaction to negate any specific anti-racist thing.
Quoting ssu
You will never get a socially conscious politician to defend inequality. It will always always always be a reaction to negate any specific equalising measure.
Do you need someone in a position of authority to brand America with a KKK hood in order for you to see it as systemically racist? And in order for your hope for it to be less racist to swamp the tiny number of property destructions compared to the size of the uprising?
Apparently you don't know it's 2020 either.
All these efforts to consign problems to the past ('it was bad back then but now everything's better!') are just feel-good story-tales designed to draw attention away from the present state of crisis. Any honest grappling with what is going on now takes as it's starting point the recognition that the crisis is contemporary and the that crisis is current; not some hangover from the past.
The Just War comparison is not a perfect comparison. I adopted it because I was trying to give an opponent an extreme benefit of the doubt (e.g. even if we were at war with the US...) because I know I see things different from those on the far left.
Quoting Benkei
Yes, I argued that it wouldn't be effective but I also made the moral point. There's a scale of responsibility among the German population that needs to be taken seriously and we don't take this seriously when we just treat them as one amorphous blob to be murdered because of their society and complicity.
Quoting Benkei
In the case of Nazi Germany being anti-Nazi was a serious, serious risk. You're not just risking yourself, you're risking your family. The anti-Nazis in Germany went above and beyond in regard to moral duty, and IMO it's not realistic to ask everyone to behave like that in a scenario where you're under the thumb of a totalitarian regime. Don't get me wrong, it's wonderful that anti-Nazis behaved like that and risked what they did but in many cases it was downright suicidal.
In the case of race today I consider myself a non-racist. I think racism is stupid. I'm not entirely sure what anti-racism is, but I get the sense that they tend to be pretty vocal. Frankly, as a lighter skinned person, I think my job is just mostly to listen during discussions on the those topics. If I see actual racism I'm happy to call it out, but it can be difficult to know in some cases.
Yet you might learn something from the past before thinking that this now everything is so totally different. For starters, perhaps you should ease with the bombastic righteous hubris of declaration like the following:
Quoting StreetlightX
In fact, they aren't.
Few people handling the social media pages of politicians in their PR teams having to weigh in their tweets isn't equivalent of "the ruling class shitting their pants". Those making their livelyhoods out of the media circus will naturally be all hyped up, but that isn't everything.
And who are then negating anti-racism or equalising measures? Is there some negating anti-racism here?
What exactly can we learn from the past to understand the meaning of the current protest?
We cannot rely on 1789, 1917, or 1968 events to acquire some reference for a better understanding. Even the Occupy movement of 2011 was completely different.
:up:
It's not about the meaning of the protests, it's just what happens afterwards. When the media focus and our focus is turned somewhere else and when in a few years similar issues rise again.
As I earlier said, as a young boy I saw the huge smoke clouds (which were btw never shown on TV) of "race riot" in Miami in 1980, that was all too similar story: the police killing an African American, Arthur McDuffie and then the police officers being acquitted. Then riots, National Guard called in and 18 deaths reported. Forty years ago the same story, so one can ask what has happened in forty years? I think one important issue to note is how is it that for decades similar events create similar outrage, yet then lead in the end the same issues repeating themselves again and again...
This picture doesn't capture how large the smoke clouds were:
Yes, the OWS was cleared away in the middle of the night in November without any media present in a coordinated operation and then it disappeared after 2012. You can argue that it was different. Well there were similarities...
Occupy Chicago demonstration in 2012:
However George Zimmerman shooting Treyvon Martin in 2012, the victim that President Obama said could have been himself 35 years ago, is quite similar and has links to the present namely with being the start of the BLM movement. (If you ask me what systemic racism is from me, I'd answer acting president Obama's answer tell a lot of the systemic racism.) And then came Ferguson.
What happened after that? Well, various reports and task forces like President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing etc. And now we have Trump's police reform.
Do these help?
Yes, especially if the reforms genuinely lead to supreme court rulings and true change. But if it just leads to new committees and just new people being put on the pedestal of being "movement leaders", the systemic aspect won't be changed. Changing a whole legal system is a daunting task. Doing something about systemic inequality is another. If we just create a new lithurgy how we talk about these issues, there's no real improvement. If we think that now everything will change, we will only fool ourselves.
And the basic reason is that if you don't know the history, you'll make the mistakes as before.
https://youtu.be/AJmD3Pi0SQo
Maybe begin with the fact that the Minneapolis police department is basically getting gutted and is getting reset from scratch. Or that cities like LA and NYC - cities with some of the biggest and most well funded police departments in the states - have both enacted reforms to both policing and presecutorial processes. Or that numerous other police depratments and banned chokeholds, revised body cam and 'no-knock' raid policy. Or that both republicans and democrats have put police reform on the table of their policy agendas. Or that the murderers George Floyd have now been charged with murder, and the murderer of Breonna Taylor has at least now been fired, and is under FBI investigation. Or that police are getting out of schools all across the country. Or that companies are seeing - just as they did after metoo - reckonings with racist workplace or otherwise toxic workplace culture like like both the NYT, The Philly Inquirer, or Bon Appetit. All sorts of cultural reckonings like the banning of confederate flags at NASCAR, the admission by the NFL that their handling of Colin Kapernick was botched. CHAZ in Seattle - however long it will last before the powers that be look to crush it - has provided a safe place for the homeless to sleep without being subject to 'police sweeps' for the first time in years. The humongous shift in perceptions and acceptance of BLM and racial inequity among American whites. The general shift in the overton window that's leading the displacement of establishment politicians and wins for people like Jamal Bowman in NYC (against whom even Hillary Clinton tried to weigh in). The longer term effects of these shifts in thinking is probably incalculable. I could go on.
So don't tell me about not knowing history when you're completely ignorant of the present. Is the above enough? No, nowhere near. More is needed, far more, and people need to keep pushing, and especially against those like you who have no clue what is happening yet feel qualified to talk on the matter. The only clowns in the media circus are people like you who whine about 1789 yet can't say a goddamn word about the present.
I agree with you.
Quoting ssu
Quoting ssu
So what do you think of the current situation? Will be there the significant improvement of the systemic problems? What could make the current protest unique is the broad support of the mainstream media, the considerable part of the political elite, and big corporations. I do not remember any similar cases in the recent history. You can compare it with Hon-Kong. Or, the Yellow Vests Movement in France was brutally crushed by the government, completely backed by the media and the political establishment. The question is if the media and the elite intent to deal with
the problems, or 'they will turn their focus somewhere else'.
Quoting ssu
As far as I know, OWS's message was 'we are 99%'. That meant that they tried to establish
a kind of the alternative democratic community, able to involve the whole society. What is the message of the current protest? What is the implicit meaning of 'Defund the Police'? Does it
intent to demolish the existing institutions?
I don't think so, well not really anyway, they will want to do just enough so the whole system doesn't crash. That's their interest, to keep a system going that disproportionally benefits them. In that sense, those who don't condemn the violence do have a point... only real threats to that system will prompt a real reaction.
Why not just go after policeman or government officials as opposed to random small business owners if you're fine with violence? If you're fine with violence and you hate cops then why aren't you advocating violence there? Kind of makes sense for you to be anti gun control here.
And no, I actually think the protestors should be armed to the teeth. It's one of the few things American cops seem to respect, primarily because they are little bitches who only ever prey on the defenceless - as all bullies do.
I've already said I'm on board with certain reforms. I've wanted to end the war on drugs for years. Even if the situation with blacks in America were a billion times worse and black people were being threatened with literal extermination that group remains accountable for its actions. When we strip people of accountability, we strip them of their humanity.
Why. Why the hell does 'that group' become accountable for its actions and not the whole of society? Are you suggesting they're a completely causally isolated group, because that would be an absurd claim.
I meant that group as individuals.
Responsibility primarily rests at the individual level. I'm aware there could be external factors, but in the end you need to own your actions. There are mitigating factors, for sure.
But you do care about humanity so I guess that makes you a good person. You care about all of humanity. You're right to an extent though, I think it's impossible to care about humanity as a whole. You don't know them, and some of them are complete monsters. At the end of the day I care about individuals getting what they deserve.
Again, no you don't. You care about some individuals getting what they deserve. There's nothing principled about your 'care'.
So far, it is too early to make any predictions. Some people noted that one of the tangible results of the ongoing protests is the intensification of political correctness. All in all, it could function
as an efficient vehicle of symbolic violence. As a result, the establishment may successfully manipulate the public opinion and suppress any serious discussion and critical discourse necessary for resolving systemic problems.
If there's injustice I'm happy to speak out about it. But I also realize the world's not black and white and that injustice/unjust violence should be condemned where ever it is whether it's from police, black-on-white crime, black on black crime, white on white, white on black, from ANTIFA, from the far right.
You don't get it. Police violence doesn't shatter my worldview. I've already condemned instances of police violence but you don't condemn violence coming from "your" side."
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Uh huh...
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Why? We've just established that there are external factors, so that the activities of some sub-group, result from a combination of the choices they're given, the resources they have to hand and the decisions they make. Why, apart from the fact that it conveniently fits your neoliberal mythology, have you then given primacy to just one of those factors?
It's all meaningless "distraction" violence until someone throws a brick through your business or house or you get mugged.
I'm not sure why he's condemning or speaking out about any kind of violence, surely it's just the responsibility of the violent actor? We're all primarily responsible for our own actions, you know! Only to paraphrase Orwell, some are less responsible than others, apparently.
Quoting Isaac
Because it's what grounds western civilization - it grounds our legal system and the entire notion of the individual in society. I don't know Isaac, for all I know responsibility rests entirely with random neurons firing in our brain. In that case, there's really no such thing as good or bad people. Nobody is to blame here - not poor black rioters nor rich white supremacists who spend every minute of their existence plotting how to screw over minorities.
How are we suppose to judge someone if we don't believe in self-responsibility? If people are just the sum of their influences and environment, why even allow them to vote? What's the point?
Indeed, last time I got punched I took full responsibility for leaving my face in the way of his fist, I just don't know why these snowflakes don't just man up and pre-emptively barricade themselves!
Really? So your argument for why you think it should be that way is "that's the way it is". Conservative philosophy in a nutshell.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Oh, ...I don't, know...with an iota of compassion maybe?
It's good that it's not about you. It's not even about individuals, either. It's about groups. If an angry black man mugged you and left you lying in the street it's nice that you can at least acknowledge that this is all just a "distraction" and that it doesn't really matter. Individuals don't matter, group dynamics do.
Quoting Isaac
No, my point is that it rationally grounds western civilization. You need to work on your reading comprehension, no offense.
You can disregard self-responsibility, I don't care, but you end up, rationally speaking, in a very different place. We are on a philosophy forum after all.
Quoting Isaac
Are you compassionate towards Jeffrey Dahmer? Bundy? There are people who had compassion towards them - young women, mostly. They understood these men.
Sure, nobody can predict the future. But any systemic solution to the systemic problems would have to involve some kind economic rearrangement and redistribution... intensification of political correctness is just more cosmetics that don't go to the heart of the problem. And I just don't see them voluntarily going against their (economic) interest.
And Western civilisation is built off the back of slavery, genocide, and material expropriation. Not sure why anyone should give a shit about it.
You said it grounds western civilization, you neither mentioned, nor presented any argument that it did so rationally.
It's not my fantasy. I don't have anything against you personally. I don't even know what you look like so I don't know how I would fantasize about that.
I'm asking you consider a hypothetical because hypotheticals can be helpful. It's not a crazy hypothetical either. It illustrates my point.
Are you suggesting that we have absolutely no means at our disposal to assess the degree to which someone's actions are constrained by their circumstances? That, when faced with the starving child stealing a loaf of bread and the bored celebrity shoplifting a pair of sunglasses, we have nothing to tell the difference in responsibility between the two?
Like, when a discussion of systematic racism veers into a discussion of ... Jeffrey Dahmer? Like, why the hell are you even here? All this is trash.
[Cross-posted with Street]
Ok, it's nice to know that you'd consider that if you or a family member were assaulted by an angry minority who was angry about racial injustice that it would just be a distraction. Thank you.
Isaac claimed that the grounds for judging someone, in, say, a court of law should just be compassion so I was responding to that. There were plenty of Bundy fangirls out there who had plenty of compassion for him.
Again, this is not about me or your fantasies. Stop, or simply shut up.
You did make your point about being against violence several times. Now, can I ask you: Why is systemic racism happening and what can be done about it?
Again, it's not a fantasy it's a hypothetical. I can't fantasize about you because I have no idea who you are. I'm just taking your ideas to a logical conclusion.
There's an asymmetry here which you've acknowledged. Violence conducted by cops or whites towards blacks matters, but violence conducted by minorities towards business-owners or whatnot - is just a distraction. I'm just demonstrating that premise with a hypothetical.
All I want to hear is "it matters."
...in a discussion about massively fatal systemic racism.
Fixed it for you.
No - your posts, in this thread have been a distraction. They are single-minded and seething in hypocrisy.
Quoting Isaac
No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm happy to acknowledge mitigating circumstances. Not everyone who commits a crime is a monster, and the case of the starving child is completely different from the celebrity.
In order for someone to retain their humanity we need to regard them as an independent, moral agent capable of making their own decisions and being held responsible for them. Otherwise you're just denying something that's core to them.
EDIT: In the case of low IQ individuals we often do strip them of their agency and this is controversial, but it does make sense to me. It's still sad though.
If we're going back to this topic and I've stated this before but I do support police reforms - better training, body cams, independent agencies going over police reports - those are all fine. I've also opposed the war on drugs for years now. End the war on drugs now.
Right, so in the case of victims of years of systemic racism, what does that acknowledgement consist of? It's not sufficient (having established mitigating circumstances are to be considered) to simply use that binomial decision to justify whatever level of mitigation you feel like. You must separately justify the degree to which you absolve, or even just sympathise with, people due to those mitigating circumstances. Having acknowledged mitigating circumstances you still have every choice available to you from "had a gun held to their head", to "had every opportunity in the world to do the right thing but still acted like a git".
Exactly - it needs to be judged on an individual, case-by-case basis. I do feel bad for someone who never had a father due being arrested for pot or something stupid.
Keep in mind this extends far beyond systemic racism - white people or asians have problems too. Maybe they're ugly or short or have a weird voice or their mother never paid enough attention to them etc. These are all unique, individual things to that person.
I agree with you. There are different attempts to frame the current protest. One of them is that we indeed deal with a revolutionary situation that could lead to the fundamental systemic changes. In contrast to this narrative, the establishment has tried to be ahead of the events so far. It provides the protests with the media and the public opinion’ support. Yet, a few revolutions, followed by the drastic systemic changes, started from the elitist upheaval. The ongoing event can acquire its own dynamics and get out of any possible control.
I don't see why, especially when that's not possible. There are some mitigating circumstances that can be said of virtually all the protestors. The biggest being that they are more likely to to be killed by their own police force than average. That they are more likely to experience poverty than average, that they have fewer opportunities than average, that they're more likely to be in poor quality housing than average, that they're more likely to be given long sentences than average...
I'm sure some of the protestors were allowed to watch more television than others, or whatever, but why do we need to even give a moment's thought to trivial intra-group differences when there are such glaring and abundant mitigating circumstances which affect virtually the whole group.
Why is it impossible to judge someone as an individual? Some % of the rioters are white, and some % of them are from decent economic backgrounds. There's literally video of Logan Paul, a multi-millionaire youtube personality, going through a mall in Phoenix with other rioters. It would be a pitfall to lump everyone together.
Support from majority of the people to do something about the issue has made the the media and politicians respond to these issues. Even from Trump we got a "police reform". But I'm not so sure how dramatic the changes will be in the long run. Some here think there's a huge transformation underway, yet I'm not yet sure about it. It's positive though.
There surely will be some improvements, but the real question will the police culture change dramatically change? The so-called Blue wall of silence or "blue code", which makes these things difficult to change and the police unions. For example, after the Rodney King beating (and the following L.A. riots) resulted in the Christopher Commission (headed by later secretary of state Warren Christopher) to produce a following findings:
The commission highlighted the problem of "repeat offenders" on the force, finding that of approximately 1,800 officers against whom an allegation of excessive force or improper tactics was made from 1986 to 1990, more than 1,400 had only one or two allegations.
This was in 1991. In just one large US city.
As there isn't one uniform police department, but many, the reform process is a complex one. Also now when an economic depression is likely underway, the big problem is if the US can get violence and homicides generally to continue to decrease as has happened now.
And has LAPD improved from the 1990's? That's a good question and I don't know the answer. Then in the 90's it was majority white, but now white policemen are a minority in the force. One article put it this way few years ago:
So the question is, how many police departments will be battling old demons in 2030?
OK, so that's Paul Logan judged...next. You've got another ten thousand or so to go.
I hope you realise how extreme the people you're debating in this thread are.
Baden and StreetlightX are batshit crazy leftists who say all kinds of stupid nonsense, Benkei is possibly even worse and Isaac seems no better. I mean you probably already noticed this by how they're giving you grief about saying random, unrelated people shouldn't have their lives ruined because people are angry about systemic racism.
These people don't think about things in terms of individuals and talking about things in these terms will get you nowhere here.
Oh as if you read what I write?
I've persistently said that good things will come out of this and things have improved and the one of the biggest issues here is that there is a consensus here, the vast majority Americans do think that excessive force by the police is problem.
However if I then state that we have been here, we have had similar outrageous acts from the police, there have been various committees inspecting these incidents and police reform have been implemented yet these things happen, for some reason you get quite angry and tell me it's utterly irrelevant and I'm crazy.
:clap: :up:
However I wouldn't say their batshit crazy as then there isn't any reason continue any discussion. I do believe in the intellect of people in the PF, even if they have totally opposite views to me (which even that usually isn't the case). This issue gets tempers up and is prone to make people misunderstand others. However if on this site discussion is impossible, that's really an ominous sign of the times we live in.
Has it occurred to you yet that you're the most racist, classist, sexist, hateful poster on the forum? Nobody brings up race more, nobody brings up gender more, nobody brings up class more than you. Nobody prejudices against groups like you, nobody characterises people by their groups like you.
There's no reason to be charitable towards you just because you claim about the real issues. Same as there's no reason to be charitable towards people who burn and loot shit or beat or kill because they claim to care about the real issues. You can deludedly praise yourself while participating in the same group-based prejudicial bullshit that constitutes the problem, however, people shouldn't be wasting their time taking you seriously.
Each of them are different. StreetlightX is absolutely not worth talking to and you have 0% chance of making any progress with him.
The others, I don't know well enough to say, however, I think it's less about the forum and more about the people participating in this thread.
"I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured."
Your arguments are those of the 'white moderate' who wants 'peace' - in your case, 'consensus' - for its own sake - a 'greater stumbling block than the Ku Klux Klanner'.
Good. I don't want charity from people like you. I want you to seethe and writhe and bitch.
Quoting Judaka
Worth a chuckle. But let's get back on topic.
From page one, people have been condoning violence and you still have people condoning violence so has this thread ever not been talking about that?
What's absolutely obvious is that the US has a long list of unaddressed, systemic problems and social issues. There's either no progress on solving many of these issues or they're getting worse.
What's also obvious is that US policy disregards public opinion and there's a long history of that.
So yes it's pretty sad that groups like BLM are leading the charge on any issue but if the group was ideal it probably wouldn't make any difference. If the people dedicating their lives to making a difference aren't then us who discuss things on the forum definitely aren't.
Nonetheless, can't really ignore the leftist echo chamber who get stuck debating only the very worst of their ideologies because that's all they ever get challenged on. You can make any thread and make some good points and say some smart things but then you'll let slip some "white males" and the thread is done.
We'll see how well you stay on any topic that isn't about leftists condoning violence or leftists talking irresponsibly about groups. You'll get challenged on your bullshit then you'll debate it and you will never discuss anything of substance. Anyway, I'm out.
:yawn:
Prejudicial? Please, spare me.
You can't be honest with yourself and what this thread is. That's fine, I didn't expect to make an impact.
When I described the systemic issues in another thread, you agreed with my characterisation, and that the problems were incredibly severe and hard to shift. You still said I should be dismissed entirely. I don't know what to make of that. You agree the problems are severe, you agree that official channels have failed racialised communities in America, and by the looks of it you broadly agree with what tangible solutions and police redressals are being demanded and enacted.
Despite that, the overwhelming majority of your posts on the issues have been to condemn protesters doing property damage and to condemn the "crazy leftists" who are talking about the problems you agree exist rather than placing almost all the emphasis and attention on the actions of rioters.
The entire point of frustration is that you are placing all the emphasis on the actions of rioters, not on the problems. Despite alleging to want to discuss the problems leading to the riots.
It's a performative inconsistency which is extremely frustrating.
Congrats, you have achieved the necessary level of radicality for admission to the crazy batshit leftist club. @fdrake Mm, there's a sop thrown to the obvious problem and then every other effort made is to block conversation on dealing with it.
I disagree.
Consensus isn't about giving up, not faltering away from your objectives. It's not equivalent to compromise or upholding the status quo. Consensus is the true objective for real change to be successful. You want real change? That happens when there's a general consensus on what ought to be, what is wrong or right, when all those annoying people who otherwise don't agree with you do agree on a certain issue. That's true change. The left and the right will surely remain, yet on what they can agree on can and will change. That should be the objective.
Or you think you can just defeat the other side? You think that the other side can be terrorized into silence, that they fear so much to be silent? Nonsense, democracy will ensure that there will be voices both on the left and the right always. Peace, prosperity and successful policies won't eradicate the divide either. What works is when the other side accepts your point as his or her own.
Or do you think that cannot be reached? Oh we can change.
A conservative would hold earlier the view that the king or emperor has the power because it was given to him by God. And they would quote from the Bible:
And do conservatives believe today in this? No. The above quote isn't from the "Founding Fathers" or any constitution. I could give example how leftist and socialist views have also changed, but I guess that would anger you too much.
Yeah, I engaged Streetlight because I was bored yesterday. I usually don't engage him, but when I did originally engage him yesterday it was just to try to flush out his own position as opposed to actually arguing with him. I wouldn't waste my time with that.
I had fun though. He's a quick responder and he's not stupid. It was kind of like talking with an antifa member; as long as you manage your expectations when it comes to an actual, productive conversation and don't get too hostile with him it should be kind of fun. He's not a dumb guy he's just an extremist.
I've also somehow been having productive conversations with Benkei lately.
I don't think I've talked that much about the rioters but I think I've been pretty consistent.
I don't think that public opinion in the US is the problem, if we had many posters here defending police violence then I would be likely to ignore our differences and argue against that with you.
StreetlightX actually posted an interesting MLK quote about the "white moderate" who is almost more of a problem than the overt racist even though they agree in principle.
My view of this thread is that the overwhelming majority of posters here already recognise there is systemic racism, recognise the need to do something about it. For me to spend my time talking about how there is systemic racism and there is a need to do something about it any more than I already have would be pointless.
For me, the leftist is like the "white moderate", you agree in principle with the same things that I do but your approach is a problem. So I have talked about this problem.
Quote to me the poster who is defending systemic racism or who is denying it exists and I will happily argue with that person with you.
As for starting a discussion on an issue of substance, you see posts here and there of people who are trying to do that but it's lost in the "offtopic" debates which are over 90% of the posts here.
Unenlightened is already a known crazy leftist, no need to invite him.
Fair enough, I don't think there is any hope for Benkei either but good luck.
And there was me trying to be a gun toting right wing libertarian!
I moved all of that to the other s.r. thread, which you should know about since you've posted there.
Quoting Judaka
Laughable. It's you who don't know what the topic is and are proposing we "happily argue" here about stuff I made an entire separate thread for. Also:
Quoting Judaka
Yes, your posts have been pointless and off-topic and you won't be missed. Goodbye.
(In case it isn't obvious, the thread is primarily aimed at people who care about the problem and seek to offer an analysis of it and solutions for it rather than those who don't care and exclusively want to complain about the negative side effects of the popular response or crazy leftists or ANTIFA :scream: etc etc. You can go post on the other s.r. thread for that.)
I'm well aware of your separate thread and fdrake is literally talking about a discussion we had in that thread. But yeah, you got me big time, totally rekt.
A good part of the population base their ideas of what ought to be on 'how things are'... which is the same as saying they will only change those ideas if they are confronted with changes in the world. So if nobody does anything to change things, they won't change their mind... and consequently nothing changes.
I thought so too.
It's a bit of a tangent but since you're coming now from the individualist side on these topics I'm wondering about how some things works in your moral framework. What do you make of the right to self determination?
So are you suggesting that the media have no influence, that discernable structures of subjugation have no influence on children growing up, that existing laws don't affect how people behave, that social roles don't influence opinion...because otherwise it's evident that changing any number of those thing will have the requisite impact on opinion. There's simply no need to convince each person one-by-one using rational persuasion. They don't even need to agree mostly. Once you've set up more egalitarian structures the next generation will be more egalitarian.
Quoting ssu
The left and the right of what? All you're saying here is that opinion won't ever be homogenous. The homogeneity of opinion isn't relevant, what's relevant is the qualities of the average around which it diverges.
Why think that seeking a consensus is doing nothing? Why think it wouldn't mean trying to change views?
So nobody has to persuade you? You just go with the flock or what?
Quoting Isaac
Many issues like income distribution as a political issue go far longer than just few hundred years and do go somewhat along the lines of what is considered politically left and politically right (remember the Gracchi brothers from the Roman Republic). I don't think the political juxtaposition will disappear.
I think at some point dialogue doesn't do much, that is when your basic premisses are totally different... no amount of argument will change that, because those basic values are not a matter of rational argument or dialogue to begin with.
EDIT: If someone aligns his ideas on how the world is (say for example a conservative) he won't change his mind bases on ideas about how the world should be (otherwise he would be an idealist or progressive), he will change his views if the world changes.
We usually believe that our basic premises are totally different, and we believe our own strawmen depictions of the other. Some people want and have to see their fellow people as enemies. Populism is a great way to do that.
Of course the alternative for political dialogue is violence.
Huh? No, the objective is that black people aren't murdered by cops in public on film - among other things. Not these shitty meaningless slogans that are made for kindergarten children.
I am, as has been pointed out, a 'batshit crazy leftist' and yet my government is lead by the political equivalent of Benny Hill, so no, nobody had to persuade me. They just had to use the usual tactics of lobbying, media dominance, bribery and lies.
Quoting ssu
My views are a product of my mental activity and my environment. Why would it be either/or?
I've been pointed out to be far worse.
Quoting Isaac
Now there's an underestimated/underappreciated comedian, perhaps too sexist for these times.
Quoting Isaac
That's a great start. Especially the mental activity.
Sure, but it's not merely a wish for antagonism. There are real differences, in temperament... and also in societal position. Seeking a consensus only works if interests and basic values at least align to some extend I think.
And even if we were to try to look for a consensus between two opposing sets of ideas, it's by no means clear that a compromise between those sets is always better than any of those sets separately. To give a dumb example maybe, would Apple sofware and Microsoft sofware be better operating systems if you were to mix them together as a compromise? I don't think so. In compromising maybe you avoid some tensions, and that can be a reason, but you probably also lose some of the integrity that a certain set of ideas has as a self-contained whole.
Wow, you mean to go back to the subject and not go on replying to your bombastic yet confused "consensus is poison" views? Fine.
So is talking about "US police using excessive force" OK or does that anger you too much? Can with systemic racism also be mentioned systemic inequality, systemic povetry and crime? Police training, policing strategies? Or is talking about them a sign of avoiding the issue or hidden racism itself according to you?
Seeking consensus doesn't mean inherently mean compromise. I think your view here is that if you make something in the democratic process and find a point that the majority can agree to do, usually it's some kind of compromise. What I referred here to "consensus" is something different. There is a consensus that openly racist views and classic racism, not just bigotry, isn't tolerated. Hundred years ago it really wasn't so.
I think you're missing the point ssu is trying to make. Of course you need consensus. It's precisely why, despite good beginnings you say this:
Quoting ssu
I suspect, you're not sure because you're not sure there's consensus in enough governmental bodies to make an effective and lasting difference. Or that the momentum that's causing a lot of people to change their opinion, or maybe not so much change but to have the white moderate majority finally speak up, will get lost.
In any case, I think we can agree that far reaching reforms of police that is supported by Republicans and Democrats alike is better than such reforms only being supported by Democrats. Or that it becomes an identity politics issue and as a consequence automatically marginalised.
Okay, but that consensus about classic racism wasn't reached by merely talking to eachother. It was the result of a hard fought battle, and not only metaphorically.
I have no idea what you're babbling about here.
I don't care about either democrats or republicans, both of whom can all drown in the ocean for all I care. And no, we really don't need consensus at all. MLK, at the time at which he gave give much-loved-by-kumbyah-types 'I have a dream speech', was one of the most despised men in America - had approval ratings in the low 30s or something. After he was murdered, cities across the US broke into riotous rage, which culminated in the civil rights act of 1968. And the year before in '67, the 'long hot summer' of riots, equally destructive, culminated in LBJ's Kerner Commission to acknowledge the role of deep social inequity as a cause of the riots. You don't need consensus. You need them to shit their pants so they do what they must despite not wanting to.
There was no 'consensus' between segregationist America and blacks - the segregationists simply lost, they were beaten and vanquished (not counting the re-embodiment of segregation along economic and geographic lines). Apartheid in SA did not disappear because of 'consensus' - it disappeared despite consensus, because the white population was under international attack and shaming. No one cried for 'consensus' when they bombed the fuck out of Berlin and liberated the Jews from camps. Fuck. Consensus. Consensus is in every case a retroactive fairytale, told to soothe and prevent further action. You don't wait for consensus - you drag it out of people kicking and screaming when they can't do anything else. If the democrats and republicans 'reach consensus' it will have been because they could not do otherwise.
Or part of the so-called "Culture war". To portray this as being part of a "culture war" is the way to try to marginalize this (and as you said, identity politics). Fox News is all over it. Yeah, I know, it's watched just by old people, but old people tend to vote and what they have their focus on the next elections.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
That's true, but those times are really far away. You don't have eugenics departments in the university anymore.
Let's think about the present. According to Pew research center:
Others might disagree with me on this subject, but I think change can happen peacefully on the matter. How this majority view is used to reform the system is the big question.
Quoting StreetlightX
I genuinely believe you don't, Aussie.
Fuck, yeah. :cheer:
I think street is bang on about consensus. Sometimes it needs to be forced rather than reached.
No, the problem is systemic racism now. And like with overt racism, I don't think a real solution to this problem will come from dialogue alone.... some pressure is needed for that it seems to me, in one form or another.
Majority view that there is systemic racism, is not the same as a will to do something about it, especially not if doing something about it will cost said white people something.... which I think it necessarily will since the problem is in part economic.
Quoting Benkei
I support it. If, by virtue of the discussion, we're just talking about groups I'll deal with groups but it's not my ideal method. I deal with individuals whenever possible. If we're talking about macro-level issues like international relations we do need to shift lenses.
:chin:
Something something these people only speak the language of private property and lives are otherwise meaningless something something.
So it starts with a test for unconscious racial bias, which you can find online if you are interested in your own possible bias. Having established that most of the class had some bias, they were separated into a white group and a non-white group. It was immediately obvious that the non-white group were at ease talking about race, ethnicity and culture, whereas the white group were uncomfortable.
There is an inversion that takes place for whites, whereby when race is the topic, they are suddenly at a disadvantage. When the children do the privilege walk exercise, everyone starts to see how the disadvantage that has been inverted operates in favour of white folks every day. It is upsetting to realise.
Well it's crap I know, but actually this is the real issue, because it's not a problem of minorities, only for them. So how are we going to convince what appears to be a majority of people on this site for intelligent people, that their attitudes are the problem? How can we convey to them that the fantasy of white history as the global benefactor is one they can survive losing, that white privilege, like male privilege confers only a false sense of superiority, and that only a properly level playing field makes the game worth winning?
[quote=Bob Dylan]Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking I had something to protect
Good and bad, I defined these terms quite clear, no doubt, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then I'm younger than that now[/quote]
That's exactly what the whole argument about systemic racism is trying to avoid. The idea that it's white people's attitudes to blacks that's the cause of the problem. Something nice and 'culture-friendly' that we can sort out with a few kindergarten lessons and some well chosen children's books. Not something like the consistent failure to do anything about housing, employment, healthcare, social care... All of which are policies responsible for the systemically racist injustice, plenty of which are as ignored by rich black CEOs as by rich white CEOs.
We need to get away from the idea that inequality among the underprivileged is the problem, it's not, its just a description and a function of it. The problem is that the category exists at all.
False dichotomy, I'd say. Why is there a consistent failure to do anything? Because there is a very strong commitment to the notion that there is nothing wrong, and if there is, it is all those lefties and others banging on about race. And for fuck's sake let's not pretend that black CEOs are a big problem here.
No. I think it's because a lot of powerful people are making a lot of money out of the underclass, a necessary component of any capitalist system. The fact that they can then use their media, lobbying and society influences to come with post hoc rationalisations for why things are that way is secondary. Stress policing (the current focus) is a necessary consequence of an underprivileged class, incarceration is the 'final solution' to a class of people given little option but crime or nothing. Equalising the race of those affected is not the challenge.
Quoting unenlightened
I never even mentioned the scale, its the focus I'm talking about. CEOs {wealthy and powerful} are the problem, the underclass are the victims. Framing it as white men are the problem and non-white women are the victims is missing the point, and in danger of thereby missing the solution. Systemic racism is (should be) just about pointing out that this division disproportionately puts blacks (and women, since you mentioned them) in the underclass and whites (and men) in the CEOs {the wealthy and powerful}. It should not confuse a description of the problem with the identification of the solution.
It isn't secondary at all. If it was secondary, they wouldn't bother. The problem is social and psychological, and both aspects are equally important. Teaching people to recite platitudes without changing politics is futile, but trying to change politics without changing minds is impossible.
[quote=unenlightened]I condone violence. Stand your ground, wimps! Someone violating your human rights? See the bastards to their graves pronto.[/quote]
This got me accused of being a crazy leftie, but it was intended as a parody of right wing extremism - presumably because the context was 'rioters' rather than 'businesspeople defending their property rights'. It is a very natural hypocrisy that CEOs like to teach, and I like to try and unteach, because it is part of how the inequality is maintained in a democracy.
I understand, what concerns me is do we refute, one at a time, the stories told to excuse the existence of an underclass, or do we just dispute the story that there should be an underclass at all. This is the concern of many left-wing commentators, that disputing the 'race' narrative deflects from disputing the neoliberal narrative.
Why can't we dispute both? I think, the identification of perpetrator/victim groups outside of economic or political enfranchisement just creates a deflection. The wealthy or the enfranchised might well be in one of the victim groups (so that's him/her absolved of all responsibility), if not then they get to absolve responsibility by a sufficient display of contrition. And why would they do any more? These are people who can walk right past a homeless person and buy some plastic piece of shit they didn't even need. They can perform the most astonishing feats of self-excuse. It's important that we keep the most urgent issues in their face, not provide them with fully-formed excuses to avoid them.
Yes, people not endorsing or condoning looting and violence obviously is the huge attitude problem they have here. The reason, I guess, has to be their utter ignorance about the issues at hand thanks to their white priviledge, their false understanding of history and/or their hidden racist tendencies they have not have had to come to terms with. No other reason can exist, right?
"Feldman found that “the rate of police killings increased as census tract poverty increased,” with the level of police killings in the highest-poverty quintile more than three times that of the lowest-poverty quintile. In layman’s terms, you’re overall more likely to be killed by a police officer if you’re working-class or poor. Given this country’s long and continuing history of intense racial oppression, it’s little surprise that black and Latino people are more likely to live in high-poverty areas than white people: Feldman observes that “median census tract poverty was 9.4% for whites compared to 18.7% for black and 16.8% of Latino individuals.”
The paper then examines the relationship between poverty quintile and police killings across racial demographics. What Feldman finds is notable: the correlation between poverty and susceptibility to fatal police violence that exists for white people is much stronger than for black and Latino people. In other words, white people who live in the poorest neighborhoods are at high risk of getting killed by a police officer, but black people are at high risk everywhere.".
The full report, for anyone who wants the details.
Definitely worth reading.
That's not remotely what I am saying. What I am suggesting is that there is a disparity between the condemnation of violence in defence of the human right to fair and equal treatment, and the support of violence in defence of property rights. As you are so clearly a man of peace, no doubt you also condemn the use of violence to defend property rights, in which case you will support and applaud my efforts to point out the need for even-handedness in these matters, so as to minimise the tendency to violence.
You should forget the Native Americans. And there's how the systemic racism shows itself.
As for the police killings, even if more whites are killed, for African American proportionally twice more are killed. For the police to use force is far more likely in an encounter with an African American than with a white person. In a country with more firearms than people the police basically behave as engaging with a possible Taleban fighter. This creates a culture were the police responds with force. Add short training times and distrust in the police and you have many underlying problems.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/veryann0yed/status/1273466022528348160[/tweet]
That's good.
Quoting unenlightened
Is it really? I'm not so sure about that. It think that there's a difference between people here rejecting violence and looting and right wing commentators instilling fear of looting and violence with the objective to divide people (for the elections). The latter are the real problem, not the people with ideas similar to PF.
Quoting unenlightened
Coming from a country where you simply DO NOT get a licence for a firearm for personal protection and killing a burglar would likely get you yourself in court, I'm not at all a fan of the "If you step on my lawn, I will shoot" thinking. But I can assure you that I'm not a pacifist, far from it.
The US is a country that has already a huge security system enlarged after the "War on Terror" there just waiting to pick a "credible threat" for it to tackle. I do worry about the situation IF it would get worse. Yet the cities aren't burning, so no need to be too alarmist. Similar rioting happens in France all the time and still Paris is a wonderful city.
No. the real real problem is the unfair and unequal treatment of people and the violation of their most basic human rights. People talking on PF is no problem at all, as long as it has no effect on anyone's behaviour. But what people think does rather tend to inform their behaviour. That is why such a lot of money and effort is spent trying to get people to think a certain way. Are disputing that my rightwing meme was condemned as a left wing meme on this thread? Do you not see the implications? What's your beef?
The person who misunderstood your post was Baden who is clearly leftwing, I called you a leftist because of past experiences.
I believe we’re both on the same page it’s just my words perhaps are just constructed the wrong way or my meaning is somehow escaping through my efforts. I guess what I am trying to say is that by imbuing racial caution, and because society may never get to the point of being egalitarian I am afraid that I could instill some sort of mental “self-fulfilling” prophecy.
For example my mother, well, I want to say most black parents in the inner city teach their children how to conduct themselves with regards to law enforcement. Now, notice I said “most” because I know there are a few outliers. Naturally, instead of being instilled with the sense of protection and trust in police, it was mostly instilling in me a sense authority and fear. Because of the early experiences of black people dealing with the police, there is that caution, mistrust, and dislike.
Similarly I am very careful around whites. And yes, like you said not all are racist and I am well aware of that, but my experiences not only outside the internet but on the internet. Whether it’s video games, social media, or discussion boards I am continuously bombarded with the realization that I am not seen as a human being but as a less than desirable.
You should look up Jane Elliot’s brown eyed blue eyed study
That's extremely cool, and I have absolutely no objection to being called a leftist. However, the matter having been brought up, it would be interesting to see what the fair-minded rightist has by way of a justification of violence, given that destruction of property or seemingly any contravention of the law by way of resistance to murderous oppression by law officers is unjustified. Care to have a go?
Why don't you try figuring out why the only recourse has become violence and work backwards.
I done seen it a while back and forgot it again. But it's kind of obvious isn't it? Well obviously it isn't at all obvious, 61 pages un-obvious. And the determined resistance to acknowledging the truth is just that people like to think well of themselves and especially that if they have any privileges, they are justified and deserved.
It's completely obvious, so no effort is required. It's even spelled out in my challenge to you that you have not accepted. The law is enforced unjustly. There is no legal recourse, and folks don't want to be the next arrested corpse.
Why is there no legal recourse and what would a legal recourse look like?
Start responding yourself. When is violence justified?
Before I would ask myself when an act of violence was justified I'd ask if it achieved its aim. After all, how can violence be justified if it's pointless or even counterproductive? Aimless violence is hard to justify.
So you have no principle beyond might is right. Congratulations, you have achieved low-life status.
Quoting unenlightened
If the problem is with the state/the system why not go after them as opposed to random private businesses?
Hit em where it hurts, not where you get annihilated. Kind of like you don't punch your opponent's gun, but their face, even though the bullets come from the gun. Fuck me, and I thought i was the wimpy pacifist type round here. You lot are just so pathetically naive.
Now, judging by the amount of videos on YouTube from different people titling it “Morgan Freeman solves racism in 30 seconds” clearly these videos and their high volume of thumbs up, I’d have to subscribe to the thought as Jane Elliot would put it, is that whites who are uncomfortable discussing racism and the issues that afflict minority communities are totally in agreement with Freeman because it takes away the realization that it exists and that the systemic oppression that extends from white supremacy.
The usual defense to deflecting in discussing racism and systemic oppression usually is followed by
“There is no racism we had a black president”
“There is no racism there are multimillionaire black athletes.”
“There is no racism because there are successful Indian politicians.”
Ironically how 1% of talented and successful as well as rich black athletes tends to be tantamount to no racism. Or similarly, how successful politicians of color equates to somehow there is no racism or systemic racism. This ultimately goes back to what Jane Elliot says in a posted video by a member here that because whites are privileged, they’re incapable of perceiving racism through the eyes of the other because in their mind they think we’re all equal “if I can be successful and apply myself so can you” type of attitude.
I wholeheartedly disagree with Mr Freeman here. I cannot simply ignore something that is both blatant and indirect. I too face racism everyday in my professional career. Some people teach their kids racism and those kids grow up in positions of power that can affect the latter generations of people of color.
Words can hurt you know? I did try to give you the opportunity to say something intelligent.
I don't need your help, but the condescension is amusing.
It's probably more correct to say that you won't be helped by my help rather than saying you don't need it.
That video does describe how to resolve the race problem. Also, it doesn't say that there is no racism now.
That solution just doesn't mean like some in this thread demand it be taken to mean that the social issues surrounding systemic racism can just be ignored. Or that the economic and social issues caused by systemic racism just magically disappear because you stopped highlighting race.
Of course, it's obvious that you wouldn't agree with it but to be fair, you're a full-blown racist? You treat people entirely different based on their skin colour and you admit it freely.
In your analogy you imply that a local business - say, like a sporting good store or a shoe store - is part of the opponent (you liken it to the face of the opponent.) So just to be clear you're saying that these stores are the enemy, or at least a part of the enemy.
And where did you get that idea?
Quoting Judaka
No I don’t. I am wary of some whites sure because I’ve been treated differently in my history. That doesn’t mean I am going to treat all whites as if they’re my enemy. I let all individuals have the opportunity to hang themselves.
That's cool, I got it from other threads, I'm glad you let individuals have the opportunity to hang themselves.
Do you think systemic racism is mainly caused by a large percentage of the population believing in white supremacy? What prevalent social or economic issue do you think the US is doing a good job of solving right now that isn't related to systemic racism?
Yes. private property is not a natural phenomenon, it is an institution that is a major, indeed frequently dominant part of the state. As is amply demonstrated by the way the troops are called in to defend it. The state does not say, hey it's a private matter, don't bother to call out the cops.
All right, cool, as long as you're being consistent.
Part of the untaught history that Jane Elliot talks about in the second video above is the way the industrial revolution was funded by slavery - we tend to hear how the white man did it, and not so much about the black necks he was standing on at the time.
“We have been taught that ignorance and hate lead to racist ideas, lead to racist policies,” Kendi said. “If the fundamental problem is ignorance and hate, then your solutions are going to be focused on education, and love and persuasion. But of course [Stamped from the Beginning] shows that the actual foundation of racism is not ignorance and hate, but self-interest, particularly economic and political and cultural.” Self-interest drives racist policies that benefit that self-interest. When the policies are challenged because they produce inequalities, racist ideas spring up to justify those policies. Hate flows freely from there.
... “You can be someone who has no intention to be racist,” who believes in and fights for equality, “but because you’re conditioned in a world that is racist and a country that is structured in anti-black racism, you yourself can perpetuate those ideas,” says Kendi. No matter what color you are."
https://theundefeated.com/features/ibram-kendi-leading-scholar-of-racism-says-education-and-love-are-not-the-answer/
Quoting unenlightened
Quoting unenlightened
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Quoting unenlightened
Seems to me, and do correct me if I'm wrong, that you are talking about two different things whereas BC is talking about the same issue.
I wonder why I am so hard to understand. Can you perhaps let me know what two different things I am talking about and whether or not one of them is the same thing that BC is being consistent about? That will make it easier for me to correct you if you are wrong.
Sure, sorry for responding a day later.
To be nonchalant of other people if they are private business owners because they are more easy targets (while trying similar tactics to the actual object of the protest would be more riskier) sounds strange, when you say it's all about human rights and equality. Talking about being against unfair and unequal treatment and supporting the basic human rights. Well, basic human rights are usually divided into civil and political rights, but also economic, social and cultural rights.
Well let me take it somewhere else, where it might seem less strange. Like Vichy France. There is a National government of sorts, that is collaborating with the Nazis, and your average boulanger wants to get on with baking and selling bread as best he can, and protests his innocence.
But from the point of view of the resistance, there is no neutrality; you are part of the resistance or you are a collaborator. And the boulangerie may well be blown up as a diversion, to kill a few German customers, or simply to disrupt the ordinary functioning of life that is serving to transport and annihilate certain sections of the populace. A price worth paying.
Of course things are not that bad, but it is a judgement to be made, how bad they have to be before Joe Public's private property becomes part of the battleground. How many corpses does it take before your property is at the disposal of the resistance?
This sounds good.
Quoting unenlightened
Yes. My options are a) continue as a civilian or b) take part in the resistance or c) try to join the Free French under DeGaulle somehow. If I choose b) and arm myself and start shooting at the first German I see, I'll be an illegal combatant. Hence if I get caught, I can be taken to the nearest forest and shot (with the ease that people can get banned here :snicker: ) and my execution won't be a warcrime.
Quoting unenlightened
Question: does this apply to children? How about invalids or old people like Bitter Crank? If the resistance decides to plant a bomb using a local six year old boy, Maurice, and an old timer like Bitter Crank posing as his grandfather and both aren't so hot about it, can they be shot as collaborators? Because there's no neutrality! Their dead bodies will surely bring the message home to others that there's no messing around with [s]the Spanish Inquisit[/s], sorry, the French Resistance!
Quoting unenlightened
When Americans here start saying that it is really so bad, then I'll really get worried where the US is going.
Quoting unenlightened
Do they come to me and ask: "Bonjour monsieur! We've noticed that there are many Germans shopping in your bakery so if you don't mind, we'll blow them up while they are inside your bakery! Yes, mon ami, you or your employees and your ordinary customers might be killed too, but, it's war, vive La France!"
And now I don't think it's even war. Yet actually your question is simply when should I take the law into my own hands?
There might be reasons for that, certainly, but is it really necessary on this occasion? StreetlightX surely thinks so, who I think is at another continent (or a foreigner in the US). Yet I've noticed a massive outcry right from the start in the media and a response from even politicians. Do you think that NOTHING would have happened if nothing would have been burnt or looted? The only thing that has been strange is simply that those that have mentioned that burning and looting private property isn't good have gotten flak on this thread. I think the rioting has been a side issue here and has been more of the talking point in Fox News. Besides, I'm not seeing the American cities burning, so is this not even a current issue.
Are these Iraqi people a) protesting American invasion or b) rejoicing the downfall of Saddam Hussein or c) doing something else?
Let me put it this way: if the law is that black people are slaves, or that black people are not allowed to use the same facilities as others, or that Jews have to wear a star and live in the ghetto, or some other inhuman and immoral law, then not to resist or protest or break the law is immoral and indefensible, and to seek to protect one's property at the expense of those who oppose and resist is doubly indefensible. Thus spake the Lord.
"New York’s City Council approved an austere budget early Wednesday that will shift $1 billion from policing to education and social services in the coming year, acknowledging protesters’ demands to cut law-enforcement spending but falling short of what activists sought.
The vote by the council came at an extraordinary moment when the nation’s biggest city is grappling simultaneously with a $9-billion revenue loss because of the coronavirus pandemic and with pressure to cut back on policing and invest more in community and social programs.
...The police department also would give up control over security of the city’s public schools, a function the NYPD took over from the Department of Education in 1998. The city has about 5,300 civilian school safety agents. De Blasio said details were being worked out, but the Education Department would train the agents. Money would go instead to education, social services in communities hit hard by the coronavirus and summer youth programs for over 100,000 people."
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-07-01/new-york-billion-dollar-cut-nypd
The 1b figure is fudged (by about 500m even, according to some figures) if details are taken into account, but this is the kind of shit direct, collective action helps facilitate. More.
I think both approaches should be reconciled with each other. I'm not going to deny individual autonomy but there's a point for me where collective pressure is such that I don't think punishing individuals makes sense unless they actually had power to influence events. So we sentenced Nazi leaders but not Nazi soldiers. It's not as if the BLM movement is actively encouraging riots; compare that to a President who was actively encouraging shooting US civilians.
At the same time it (property damage) is used as a distraction by those opposing change. So how we deal with it also becomes a tactical issue.
And in a way, people that voted for an obvious racist are complicit even if they didn't vote for him because of his racism, they allow the system to exist where such a person is not only electable but actually became the president. That is a betrayal by citizens of their fellow black citizens. Enough to deserve to possibly get your house burned down? Probably not.
But the reverse is there too. Those that were betrayed and are discriminated against. Enough that in anger they might burn or loot buildings, or even in desperation? Apparently. So I can't condemn it and for tactical reasons I will defend it (by deflecting back to the actual issue). I also, maintain that the threat of violence is a viable method to affect change and private property is not an absolute (pace unenlightened above).
Dutch budget for the entire Netherlands: 6.1 billion USD (today's exchange rate) per year until 2022. NYPD was 6 billion and will go back to 5 billion USD. 17.3 million people in the Netherlands vs. 8.4 million NYC residents. US figures for police budgets really are astronomical.
Where does this stuff even come from? Just the other day you had a black athlete saying he wants 20 million dollars a year or "he ain't playing". I mean. That's really just another day in the USA for ya. Not even a thing.
I feel like we might be talking past each other here. When I say I support self-determination I'm saying that, in general I support the right of "a people" to freely choose their own government (implying statehood) and to have that statehood be free from external interference. So, I would support the creation, of, say, a Kurdistan. It comes down to protecting ethnic minorities and the idea that we can't just rely on our neighbors to keep us safe.
Quoting Benkei
Punishment/judicial procedures and moral responsibility are two different things. There are plenty of shitty, terrible people who we would never put on trial or punish in any type of formal way. There are also decent people who commit crimes who we need to punish. I support reconciling the two approaches as well. Any reasonable approach should. We did punish German soldiers who committed actual war crimes (then again plenty of those who did commit war crimes got off scot-free) but in the post-war period the West had an interest in a strong West Germany and we weren't about the lynch the country for its past crimes and punish everyone with even a trace of connection to the Nazi party. Hell, even Israel established ties with West Germany in the mid 50s.
If BLM isn't encouraging violence/rioting then I'm fine with BLM if that's truly what they stand for. I haven't looked into the BLM movement that much... it seems like there are a ton of different perspectives on it and I'm just not interested in digging too much into the weeds here. If it's just about non-violent resistance/protests and police reforms then that's fine in my book. I definitely support some police reforms.
Quoting Benkei
On a philosophy forum we should be able to call a spade a spade. I get that there's a tactical/rhetorical/political element to it.
Quoting Benkei
I just don't buy this. On one hand many of the businesses they destroy are minority-owned businesses and businesses in poor areas. I think many of them are opportunists who see disorder/free stuff and think they can cash in. In any case even if you are legitimately angry you're still shooting your own community in the foot.
How do people in Hong Kong protest the Chinese authorities by burning their own property down? Why would the store owners be the culprits there? You genuinely think that Beijing cares about that?
There has happened huge losses for democracy and freedom just now in Hong Kong and in Russia, and people here are disgusted about someone daring to say that looting and destroying private property isn't the way, even if they totally agree on the issue and have no problem with non-violent protests. That's crazy.
(Besides, are there huge riots in the US anymore? I'm sceptical about this, I think the vast majority of the protests have been totally peaceful and they have made their mark.)
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
:up:
So many questions. Why not pick North Korea? People in Hong Kong protest as best they can, and I am not going to second guess their tactics, any more than I am going to second guess protestors in the US.
Quoting ssu
No. But some people seem to be terribly exercised about a couple of incidents. Otherwise, we could let the property damage thing go and focus on the real topic of what to do about systemic racism. I am defending the principle that damage to property is traditional and justifiable form of protest that has worked to change things for example in the case of the suffragettes. and in the anti apartheid movement in the UK. It's a way of making justice an economic issue, and economic issues always get attended to.
Direct action and using violence has worked. Creating economic losses has surely worked. War works. Someone's freedom fighter is another one's terrorist, as the saying goes. Just remember when you say something is "traditional and justifiable", using that method then is so also for someone pushing an agenda you vehemently oppose.
No it isn't. Why would you think that? Violence to promote injustice is not equivalent to violence to end injustice. That's ridiculous.
Besides, what African Americans have given to the United States is that they have pushed the Union to truly live up to it's ideals and core values that the country was founded on. For many countries their constitution is just letters in a formal paper that has no resemblance to reality and no meaning other than being an empty lithurgy, which the country's citizens likely have no idea of even existing. Not so for Americans. Some cannot be more equal than others, only in George Orwell's famous depiction of the Soviet Union they can, but not in the United States.
African Americans did not achieve the ending of segregation through a violent revolt, but through the Civil rights movements using nonviolent resistance campaigns, which indeed was so successful, that the country took the movement as part of it's own cultural heritage to be cherished and remembered.
Today that push for a more just US that would live up to it's values even better could be continued with opposing police brutality and the whole legal system, or what has become of it. Nonviolent means will be far more effective means to do this in a deeply polarized country bursting with guns and which is hell bent on transforming into a police state from a justice state as a huge security apparatus already exists in the country.
I hope you are right, but your post in general sounds like wishful thinking and fantasy national virtue. I very much fear there will be a blood bath, because economically it will suit the monied class.
There's only a few options here:
1. the people don't have a just cause, so they do not get the support they need and nothing changes and they're caught (RAF);
2. the people don't have a just cause, but they are part of a fascist state that supports or condones it nonetheless (KKK terrorism, Apartheid beatings and killings);
3. the people have a just cause, but they do not get the support they need or the State apparatus is too strong and nothing changes and they're caught (HK protesters);
4. the people have a just cause, they get the support they need, change is affected (race riots of the 60s).
Where does your reciprocity fit in? If we're against change but we're in category 3 or 4, we are on the wrong side of the divide. Tough luck. History will judge us. I also find it rather unlikely to happen any way. Or are we know going to pretend justice, equity and fairness are such ethereal concepts that, for instance, HK protesters should have a nice rational debate with the PRC because the PRC actually has a reasonable position?
What the majority of people actually think about the perceived (in)justice matters more than any property rights in that respect. A society that perpetuates injustice cannot cherry pick to have some of its rules respected; they're all contributing to injustice as they regulate the system in which the injustice is upheld, perpetuated or caused. Burn it down if people prefer order over justice. Society doesn't deserve to exist and people have no right to safety if they deny it for others. In your view slaves wouldn't be allowed to destroy their masters crops and house. In fact, there's a moral duty on their neighbours to burn the place down if he doesn't listen to reason. The fact their neighbours don't act, make them fair game.
Now, these are more extreme examples than what is currently happening in the US but the categorical opposition against property damage is just wrong, both ethically and historically it should be rejected. And no, this is not a defense of opportunists, obviously. However, if corporate America and half of the politicians think "taking a knee", no longer casting "white people" to voice "black cartoon characters", or no longer having "master bedrooms" and all the other symbolic bullshit happening is "making a difference" then they sure as hell deserve a molotov cocktal through their window at some point.
What's worse is that these law and order types love their boycotts and sanctions, which indiscriminately affect entire societies and cause tremendous economic damage and death. Less visible than a fire. Just look up how many kids died in Iraq due to lack of medicine resulting from the sanctions. But that's perfectly fine because it respected property, right? In reality, they might as well have torched the hospitals. The ethical equation doesn't change here, only the imagery does.
An economic depression doesn't suit the monied class. It's a statistical fact that during economic depression and downturns income inequality narrows (meaning the rich aren't getting so much as before). Of course that statistical narrowing of inequality is meaningless as when poor people loose their small income, it matters far more than a millionaires losing 20% of their income.
A bloodbath? The issue was far more explosive in the 20th Century as there really was existing laws on segregation and overt political opposition. Let's remember that Eisenhower had to deploy the army to ensure that local authorities abide with the rulings. And in the end the country did experience high level political assassinations.
Now look at how peacefully the CHOP/CHAZ was cleared. Where's the huge outcry about the eviction? If there was a huge outcry about it, it isn't reported on mainstream media. And did the police face opposition or sniper fire? Of course not. The protests are basically non-violent: nobody is willing to take lives and give their life away if necessary as in a true conflict situation or war. We just tweet these days very angrily, luckily.
Which does tell about the situation (if it really has gone that way). First the mayor of Seattle was talking about "the summer of love" referring to the site, which I find a bit condescending, but then it seems that the turn came when the protesters dared to protest at her house in the middle of the night, so soon came the order to empty the area without Trump getting involved at all. Which shows just how much "on side" the democratic politicians are with the protests. Likely officially the reason was the homicides that happened there, but I tend to think disturbing the mayor was the key.
And sorry, but I fail to see the US at the cusp of a civil war, even if things can get worse in America. The incoming elections likely are very nasty and I think that in the following political turmoil lives are going to be lost, so it's pretty gloomy. That people start to roam the streets in vigilante groups and start shooting each other is a possibility, even if it's unlikely. Hurricane Katrina is a good example of how thin the line is.
(Yes, it can get ugly. Picture of an incident in New Mexico last month where a vigilante group faced of protesters.)
And are they ineffective?
Quoting Benkei
Is it really the race riots? I think the vast amount of legislation ending segregation and Jim Crow was given before the worst riots, which were sparked by the assassination of Martin Luther King. You should tell us why my understanding that the Civil Rights movement was mainly non-violent resistance is wrong.
Quoting Benkei
Hence the focus of the protest has to be focused on real issues and actual legislation, not the "culture war" stupidities.
Quoting Benkei
UN sanctions on Iraq and Saddam Hussein's regime are a bit off this topic in my view.
Too early to tell. But with all the symbolic victories and limited, coordinated efforts to resolve the underlying issues, it may very well be it will once again be ineffective. The effectiveness of both peaceful protests and violent riots has been limited in the US.
Quoting ssu
How many race riots were there during Jim Crow? Oh yeah, quite a lot. There was a relative quiet spell after the war until the early 60s. In the 60s the first riots started in 1963, before the first draft of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act and before the assasination of JF Kennedy. Kennedy initially wanted to stay out of the "civil rights mess" and it was only after the escalation in Birmingham in May 1963, civil rights got on his to-do list. There's a riot that directly influenced the leader of the nation to do something about the underlying causes.
It was Lyndon B. Johnson who had the Act passed in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act wasn't passed until 1965. King was assasinated in 1968. Most of the riots were the year before (the long hot summer). But yes, riots also broke out after his assassination.
Quoting ssu
Off topic? Why? Because sanctions have proven to be so effective to cause regime change? Oh wait, they don't. And as if Kim Jong Un, Saddam and all the other "recipients" of the sanctions live(d) lives of less luxury? Oh wait, they didn't. Does it cripple entire countries' economies and kill people? Yes they do.
It does the exact same thing as a riot and tries to affect change too. The moral calculus is the same but somehow burning down a building is worse because of "property rights"? You've got be kidding me. I do hope we are capable on a philosophy forum to discuss ethics without relying on the law, which has fuck all to do with justice to begin with. As any lawyer worth his inflated fee should know.
EDIT: Riots in the 1960s, by the way, were because Southern racist pricks refused to adhere to the 1954 SC decision in Brown v. Board of Education that concluded racial segregation in education was unconstitutional. So for nearly 10 years the State stood by and did mostly nothing. It wasn't until June 1963 that Kennedy actively started intervening.
:up: The civil rights movement was wrought end-to-end with violence and it's threat, and anyone who thinks otherwise has had their history whitewashed and sanitized.
Oh but it does. Read The Grapes of Wrath
It depends how it's managed. 2008 was a record profit year for many. As is this one.
Yes, who cares about economics when we have great literature. Just like during wartime, only a few mass wealth even if depressions are times when capital changes ownership.
Quoting fdrake
Usually the best year is when the economic downturn begins. I doubt 2009 was so great.
Shit. You really don't have an argument do you?
Hmmm...
Suicides on wall street aricle doesn't seem to be about the lower class. It might even support your point.
Did you read the article? It exposes the myth; it didn't happen. Of course some people with money lost out, but mainly, the little people lost their homes and livelihoods and 'the banker is the man who gets it all', as documented in the mere fiction I cited. But by all means look up the stats on wealth distribution through the last recession, to check.
I believe you. :grin:
Why don't we do that:
Here's statistics from the last economic downturn, the so-called Great Recession / Financial Crisis:
Notice what happens to the wealth of the top 10% between 2007 to 2010? It comes down. This small and as I stated before, statistical event, happens when stock market and housing prices go down. But it's a passing moment. The Gini index measures wealth inequality and you can notice the small drop when the country goes into economic recession (which officially happens later when the change has already happened). Once the bottom is reached, the unemployed stay unemployed longer, but asset prices start to rise anticipating the coming economic upturn.
Et voila.
A dip for the wealthy hits a lot harder than a dip for the poor. That's what your statistics don't show you.
Which is shown with the gini coefficient or the gini index, as I stated.
And the real question is, when has this income inequality gone down? It has you know, in the US from at least 1850 to 1960.
And to understand what that gini coefficient means (if you didn't read the link I gave) it is that if everybody has the same amount of wealth (true communism), it's 0 and if Bill Gates has everything and everybody else nothing, it's 1 (or 100, if we use percentages). And of course the history is that dirt poor farmers and urban dwellers have gotten more prosperous since 1850 in the US, but then after 1960 or so wealth hasn't been distributed is similar fashion as before. Yet with income inequality you have to take into account actual absolute povetry. You see, if Bill Gates moved to Finland the gini coefficient/index would spike up, but we wouldn't be worse off from that.
And the reason for that, as I was trying to say, is for the same reason that men are killed 7 times more than women DESPITE populations of men and women being the same.
The group with the higher violent crime rate ends up having a higher death by cop rate per capita, because they encounter police more often in a violent context.
This is data on cities and states - that's not the same as the relationship between the violence of a group of people and their rate of getting killed by cops.
Cities and states have laws and procedures which affect the way police behave. A reason why a city with a high violent crime rate but a low police kill rate may be that the high level of violence in that city has caused people to adapt, for example by adopting regulations like banning certain chokeholds, or simply just police becoming more experienced with subduing violent people. The same reasoning applies on a state level. Likewise, a city or state with a low violent crime rate can have a high police kill rate, if those police aren't inducted on how to handle bad situations and they're allowed to do whatever they like to bring people under control. Then, when an uncooperative (or even cooperative one like Floyd or Tony Timpa) suspect comes along, the situation can result in a death. In either of those two scenarios, higher rates of violent behavior from an ethnic group or sex resulting in a higher rate of being killed by police is still perfectly consistent with the trend you are pointing out with cities bucking that same trend.
Woman who called cops on Black man birdwatching in Central Park faces charges
Melanie Schuman, Theresa Waldrop; CNN; Jul 2020
Amy Cooper Faces Charges After Calling Police on Black Bird Watcher
Jan Ransom; The New York Times; Jul 2020
There is something refreshing about this. Denial of privilege. That "enough is enough already".
I'd (personally) temper my balefire on the offender a bit, but hopefully this will tell the privileged to f__k off.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/melodyMcooper/status/1264965252866641920[/tweet]
What causes that? Lobbying?
It is fair to fear immigration if you have different skin color to the immigrants, as they might over populate; this is anticipating future racist attack and defending yourself. If you choose to hang your head to this - I ask that you don't - the right wing is the cure that you're asking for.
This is the very definition of racism - discrimination based on skin color.
And with regards to your sight, I didn't say the wrong words.
What?
I thought that you would be able to discuss racism with a greater understanding of the concept. A more adult association.
I'm not sugar coating the term race or using it to insult; though the policies on race may insult you, it possibly can be taken seriously, but I'm not performing the mysticism to suppress race mixing tensions, no.
Race - ism, like Tour - ism, the nature of tourists, is the nature of races.
The mere concept of racism, wouldn't be too graphic for your senses, without additional insults that may bring you down.
The US has a problem in adopting social programs as they are seen as outright socialism and the preference is that various voluntary organizations giving charity is enough. Anything "collective" done by the government reeks of socialism. In other countries programs combating poverty and alienation are seen as smart ways to prevent crime, but not so in the US.
Quoting StreetlightX
A quick condescension into personal attack following a rather sly introduction of a straw man is never a good sign.
Rhetoric drivel is unimpressive, especially when coming from someone in charge of ensuring people do philosophy according to some conventional norms. Fallacious retorts do not qualify as acceptable rejoinders.
Here's one suggestion, do with it what you may...
Get what you're talking about right to start with. You're conflating your imagination with reality I'm afraid to say. What you've called a 'pet theory' is one that you clearly do not understand, for if you did you would be forced to admit the sheer brute strength of the justificatory ground supporting it. It is it based upon knowledge of what all thought and belief consist of. But that's just a red herring to begin with... your diversive attack on what you mistakenly think about my position, I mean. Your opinion of that does not matter.
Racism is belief-based.
Systemic racism as well as it's affects/effects are the result of codes/laws written by racists(those with racist belief systems), and as such it founded upon and/or borne of racist beliefs. That is the case whether you like it or not. I'm not alone here either.
My 'pet theory', as you say, has the broadest possible scope of rightful sensible meaningful application, since it is based upon our knowledge regarding what all thought and belief have in common such that having that commonality is precisely what makes them thought and belief... racist belief notwithstanding.
My advice to you is to acquire some knowledge of what all belief have in common... then... and only then will you be able to know what makes racist belief different from all other kinds of belief. Simply put, if you do not know what all belief have in common such that that commonality is what makes them belief to begin with, then you cannot possible know what racist belief is. If you do not know what racist belief is, then there is certainly know fucking way for you to know what institutional, and/or systemic racism is.
I'm capable - thanks to my good ole pet theory - of perfectly and clearly explaining the inevitable role that devaluing another person based upon race has to do with the current problems with the American justice system as well as much of what passes for common 'understanding'.
More particularly speaking, since you seem to basically misunderstand the position I'm advocating, I'll put it in elementary terms. Racism is; as exactly, as narrowly, and as broadly speaking as possible, when an individual devalues another individual and that devaluation is based upon the fact that that other individual is, or sometimes is at the very least believed to be... X(insert racial descriptor of your choice. Currently, it's black).
Systemic racism is based upon, it is an extension of, an entire history of individual beliefs about what ought and/or ought not be done when concerning black Americans. These range from all the early segregation laws, through Jim Crow laws, through local, county, and state laws regarding what black people are allowed to have when it comes to the freedoms, rights, and benefits that are supposed to be granted to all United States citizens... blacks notwithstanding.
All codified systems of what we ought or ought not do consist of - in very large part at least - of moral belief... albeit the penned variety. Systemic and/or institutional racism are the result of those beliefs concerning what we ought to do about black people being turned into the law. Perhaps it is better put like this... Institutionalized racism is the result, the consequence, of racist beliefs being practiced everyday by those powerful enough to write the rules governing the behaviour of American citizens... again blacks notwithstanding.
The position I advocate for is at direct odds in many important respects to conventional psychology... just so you know. Understanding the belief aspect is imperative to widening the bridge upon which the coalition fighting for the basic rights of black Americans walks across... together.
A program about the fight for women's suffrage explains what women of color did in the fight for the right to vote and what White women did to exclude them because they did not want racism to be a competing issue.
We could all contact our schools and our school boards requesting updated history books that include the efforts made by native Americans and people of color to manifest a better reality that is compatible with the values of democracy. By working together we can have a stronger democracy than the one we have now.
Seems to me that doing that does nothing to end racism and it's residual effects/affects.
Thank you for the offer, but I have to politely decline.
I would suggest that you re-read the post you originally replied to. The answer is there.
Another thing...
There's no causation being attributed. It's a matter of elemental constituency and existential dependency. It's a bit more helpful to think of it like ingredients... not causality.
Apples do not cause apple pie. Racist beliefs do not cause systemic racism.
Are you saying that there is no such thing as racist belief or systemic racism?
That would be a problem.
You want to pretend there are no apples, where clearly there are apples.
Or to put it differently you're suggesting that we should stop talking about unicorns because there's no factual basis for them. Next time I see a picture of one, I'll call it a horny horse.
Call it xenophobism or discrimination, people are still going to do it based on how other people look.
Also, come to think of it. I take issue with that as well. It has always been a social construct.
That's a misuse of the analogy. Racist belief and systemic racism. Both exist, The latter is existentially dependent upon the former. The latter consists of the former. The former doesn't just stop existing because it's based upon a notion of categorization that is currently unsupported by genetics and the science involved. Nor does the latter.
The thrust of your approach here misses the boat entirely.
This is perhaps the stupidest comment I've read about racism in a long while. If true... then you... are almost certainly vicious. Come to think of it, your suggested approach will and has do/done more harm than good. If and when racists change their language use, they'll still be racist and nothing changes except a minimized ability to identify them. Your approach could be used, and actually has been, by people like Richard Spencer, Richard Nixon, Donald Trump, and many others who are racist despite not using the term "race"...
Yeah... as I said. No thanks.
Please reread my post that you initially replied to. This time look for your answers regarding what racist belief is, what racism is, and what systemic racism is...
All those answers were offered up front.
You've invoked the term "race" as something to focus upon. I'm not interested.
The whole "let's be colour blind" our "let's not talg about race" is totally useless and in fact makes it harder to resolve the consequences of current and historic racism. To be anti - racist requires you to understand what racism meant and what it still means today to be able to formulate effective policies against it. A policy "let's not use the word" isn't going to resolve anything except for making people stupid and unaware of the extent of historic and current racism. So, indeed, in my view you're part of the problem.
Very well said
Thank you. Hoping this finds you and yours safe and well.
Cheers!
G_ang
O_f
P_utin's
M_oscow
A_ss(et)
G_overns
A_merica hatefest:
Quoting 180 Proof
Jacob Blake.
https://amp-theatlantic-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/615616/?amp_js_v=a3&_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQFKAGwASA%3D#aoh=15983533601410&_ct=1598353373298&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Fideas%2Farchive%2F2020%2F08%2Fjacob-blake-shooting%2F615616%2F
Louisiana - TRAYFORD PERRIN. 11 shots. d.8/21/20
48 hours to reload.
Wisconsin - JACOB BLAKE. 7 shots. (paralyzed) 8/23/20
For instance, in the Netherlands you do not get to fire your first shot at a suspect unless your life or that of another is in immediate danger. An officer is allowed to draw his gun before that, but only after other means of escalation of force were used (baton, police dog, pepperspray). He's allowed to fire a warning shot but not allowed to shoot at the suspect unless there is immediate danger to himself or another. Note: never in the defence of property.
Every instance where the firing of a gun by a police officer results in injury (no matter how small) will be investigated by an independent branch of the Department of Justice (the police are part of the Department of Internal Affairs). If there's any doubt about the correct usage of the gun, his weapon is confiscated until such time as the investigation is over.
What I see, is some fucknut who can't handle being ignored losing his shit. I wouldn't be surprised if he beats his children or wife whenever they disagree with him.
And is it me or are there now vigilantes shooting protesters in Kenosha?
On paper they do. There certainly aren't any career penalties for violating RoE policy where there aren't any for police violating the criminal code.
If there are, that wouldn't surprise me. Or even shock me.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/420051 (from 2020)