I’m not a neurologist and I cannot speak confidently or authoritatively on this subject. It is my understanding that human emotions originate in the brain and are in all likelihood associated with a specific electrochemical state which one’s body translates or executes as the physical and psychological feelings we associate with that emotion. It is possible that in the future our understanding of how the brain works will evolve to the point that we can identify the specific electrochemical state which induces happiness or suffering, but as far as I know we have not yet reached that point.
Young black men commit vastly more violent crime than any other group. Including whites, Latinos, old black men, and so on.
No, it just shows you’re incapable of following an argument. Whether you admit it or not, it’s an uncontroversial fact that young black men in the US are vastly more violent than anyone else. Your dislike of that fact, and refusal to talk about it, says nothing except that you’re a moron.
So, when have black people been interned based solely on their ancestry? When have they been moved to reservations? When have their been attempted (and sometimes successful) genocides of them?
I am a liberal. I believe strongly in the principle that a person should have the right to live their life as they desire so long as their doing so does not actively harm another person without their consent.
This is a position which, historically speaking, is an aberration, and it is one which can only exist in the presence of a government which is strong enough to command obedience of its laws upon people who insist that those laws are wrong and that they therefore have the moral authority to disobey them. When governments are weak and powerless to stop dissenters, the people who suffer most are invariably those whom a strong government would be better able to protect - ethnic and religious minorities, women, non-heterosexual-cisgender people, the mentally ill, and so on. These people need the protection of a greater power, both directly and indirectly, because it is also only through the existence of a stable and powerful government that intellectualism and tolerance can thrive.
I recognize that strong governments can also be wrong, and that the same power that serves to liberate can also be used to enslave. I oppose the unlawful resistance of bad government, in spite of this, because I recognize that my beliefs are in no way objective, and I can not possibly prove to someone whose views are opposed to mine that they are scientifically wrong and I am scientifically right. Therefore, if I assert that I have the right to disobey a government because it has enacted laws that I believe are wrong, then it follows that people who I believe are wrong have the right to disobey a government I believe is right. And down that path lies nothing but the incessant civil war, anarchy, and strife which plagues much of the Third World to this day, the end result of which is that everybody, whether or not I believe they’re right or wrong, is worse off.
I have, on this board. The poster called Omg a Black Conservative is (or at least was - it’s been a while since I’ve seen him discussing the issue) as determinedly anti-abortion as Smapti is pro-cop, as just as willing to brinkman away all civil rights to that end.
There’s lots of people like that. How do you think they staffed Auschwitz? Those weren’t run by robots; they were run by people like Smapti.
There’s a lot of folks whose worldview is simply “Authority is right because it’s right.” Smapti is, if anything, just honest and unfiltered about it; there’s other folks I know, and folks right here on the SDMB, who are pretty much the same but know enough to not quite come out and say it as frankly as Smapti does.
And to what extent are young black men actually more violent, as opposed to being more likely to be arrested (and added to the statistics) when they are, where non-blacks would get a warning or never have the cops called on them in the first place?
Differential minotrity contact doesn’t explain disparities in violent behavior. Indicators of socioeconomic disadvantage do. Even accounting for SES, the judicial system disportionately arrests, sentences and incarcerates African Americans.
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, you astonishing half-wit.
Also: Shorter Steophan: I’m not racist, there’s just something about black culture that makes black men more violent.
(Maybe if he said it out loud to himself, he would be able to hear it.)
Fucking liar.
Perhaps the bots need to start another thread
I like to see cops kill blacks – am i a racist? Is there racism in Amerika?
Meanwhile, I’ll help with one example: The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 (passed 20 years after Civil Rights Acts eliminated racism in Amerika 
) mandated a minimum sentence of 5 years without parole for possession of 5 grams of crack cocaine while the same penalty applied to powder cocaine only for half a kilogram or more. Why the 100:1 disparity? Powdered cocaine was a drug of choice for middle-class whites, while crack was used primarily by blacks.
Liberalism: “a political philosophy or worldview founded on ideas of liberty and equality.”
Now, which part of believing that it’s right for a slave to behave is to obey his master do you think corresponds to liberty, or equality.
You know why the problem won’t be solved? Because vile fucking idiots such as yourself are so very keen to blame an issue with deep seated historical and social causes on “black culture”. Nah, can’t be generations of poverty, prejudice and a two tier society, it’s purely their own fucking culture, right?
Of course, when repeatedly asked just which part of this culture you see as being the cause, you clam up completely, because you’ve got precisely fuck all. Not even so much as a Rush Limbaugh level “it’s all that gangster rap those blacks listen to”.
I really would like to know just what parental issues you’re carrying to be so abjectly “White authority is good, blacks are bad” in your worldview. A white policeman can shoot unarmed people in the street, on video, and you’ll defend that to the very hilt. A black kid is killed for fuck all reason, and that’s fine, because after all them blacks are just violent by nature, that policeman had to defend himself.
You need to take a long fucking look at yourself in the mirror, and if you come back with anything other than self loathing and a desire to improve you’re not doing it right.
I feel it’s incumbent on me to remind people who are talking about racism with Steophan that they are dealing with someone who believes “Blacks are subhuman” is a neutral statement to make.
A clueless nutjob, in other words.
None of those things actually happened, at least after 1865.
If I were racist, I’d be saying there’s something inherent to black people that makes them more violent - you know, like was often said in the past. That you’re too stupid to see the distinction is your flaw, not mine.
When none of the other groups subjected to poverty or prejudice react in such a way then yes, right. As for a two-tier society, that’s not something that affected any young black men, having ended 50 years ago.
Gangsta rap is clearly a symptom, not a cause.
I want to see more black authority. I want black people to join the police, and police their communities. I want them to vote - Ferguson according to statistics in one of the other threads had a turnout in the teens. I want to see members of majority black communities standing for political positions in those communities, not imported politicians (of whatever colour). They need to, in short, stop fighting the system and join it. Maybe democracy isn’t perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better than not being represented at all.
But guess what? Black policemen are as likely to have problems with violence from young black men as any other ones are.
If anyone looks in the mirror and doesn’t have a desire to improve they’re doing life wrong. That’s one reason I spend so much time arguing with people who disagree with me. I’m not going to sit in a fucking echo chamber to feel right all the time, I’m gonna get my views challenged. And if they’re shown to be wrong, I can change them. Happened due to things I read here and argued elsewhere to do with transgender issues, to pick one big example recently.
Thanks Steophan for clarifying your rascism. I’ve been sick to death with your protests of innocence.
You know why the discussions you are in end up with people shouting racism at you? Because you say hugely rascist things, you twat.
The part where I believe slavery shouldn’t be practiced in the first place.
Thanks!
Anyway apparently it’s ‘black culture’ that’s to blame. Why would black Americans even have their own culture? How did that happen? Would they not just assimilate into the mainstream American culture with all things being equal the great land of opportunity? They just want to be difficult?
You’ll have to provide a cite for this, not that I don’t agree that Native Americans were treated abominably.
The bolded part (my bolding) is a bullshit assertion.
Hundreds of years of slavery (and associated daily rapes and brutality) followed by a century of near-slavery (and associated brutalization), segregation, lynchings, Jim Crow, housing discrimination, employment discrimination, criminal justice discrimination, mass incarceration, and various other forms of oppression, brutality, discrimination, and unequal treatment are absolutely comparable to the vile treatment of Native Americans. Yes, the Native Americans were treated abominably – and statistically in terms of crime stats, education, economic stats, and other markers of well-being, they are at or near the bottom. African Americans were also treated abominably – and statistically in all these markers of well-being they are also at or near the bottom.
It’s not just a coincidence that the two groups that were treated by far the worst (in different ways) in America, Native Americans and African Americans, are also at or near the bottom in various indicators of well-being.