Wow. Your cite is googling “Holder is a racist”? You’re right–that cite doesn’t matter to me, unless at some point I need evidence of the laziest cite in the history of humanity.
I looked at how he handled “the whole Ferguson thing.” And I looked at the report. Citing them as evidence that he’s a racist is like citing C. Everett Koop’s report on the effects of tobacco as evidence that C. Everett Koop causes cancer.
You misunderstand me, apparently. I think everyone who is participating in this thread, defenders, quibblers and posters, should at the very least read the highlights of the report, and probably the entire report.
This is a totally sound methodology. I say that if the top google hit for “X is a racist” says that X is a racist, then we should believe it.
That is because American RWs are fighting a cultural rearguard action and they know it. It is not so much that they would actually defend racism as that they feel in their bones it is a thing they should get to keep, and that any effort to fight it is part and parcel of everything else they are fighting against.
I strongly disagree – the way he handled the “Ferguson thing” and the report seem totally appropriate and reasonable to me. What’s wrong with the report? What do you disagree with in it?
I think you recognize that this is as weak a cite as Googling “Eric Holder is not a racist”.
This just seems like Hannity talking points or something. Isn’t it possible that he’s just operating honestly from some very different points of view?
That’s okay – my post was a bit of a tangent anyway.
It wasn’t jokes (or it wasn’t just jokes). It was people honestly saying interracial dating was wrong, and honestly saying that black people were less capable in certain ways (or that Jews couldn’t be trusted). They weren’t joking or laughing – this was part of “rational” discussions about politics or anything else.
See post #224. For a very long time, racism was simply part of American culture. Everybody knew that blacks are mentally inferior to whites; most blacks probably believed it too, having been told so all their lives and hearing no words in contradiction. The one uniquely American form of stage entertainment ever invented is the minstrel show.
Agreed, that’s something else, but you also mentioned jokes so I thought I’d bring it up. I was thinking of the types of jokes cited in the report (page 72) as evidence of bias in the FPD. It’s possible that the senders of such jokes are in fact bigots, but IMHO it’s also possible that they’re just people who find some humor in jokes which play on offensive stereotypes (or who think other people might find them funny).
The same way that someone who attends a KKK rally might just be someone who likes to set things on fire and wear white robes, right?
Sure, everything is possible. But what is more likely?
If it were just one or two incidents, hand-waving would be appropriate. But the weight of evidence here is crushing.
Top Google hits for magellan01 is a racist. Clearly, it must be true!
Those “jokes” are more utilizing offensive stereotypes than “playing on” them, IMO. The “best case scenario”, IMO, is that such folks are just indifferent towards bigotry, whether or not they are bigots themselves.
This, of course, ignores the fact the that the police reports following the riots indicated that only two citizens of Ferguson were arrested among the rioters. The people actually looting and rioting were not citizens of Ferguson, although you seem quite willing to blame the community as a whole for the actions of others. Meanwhile, it might be a good idea for many of the cops to leave, to be replaced by competent, professional police instead of the several, (many?), officers who participated in the various shakedowns of the back community discovered by the Department of Justice.
We do not, at this point, know who fired at the police, last night, so any assumption that that was a Ferguson citizen is also premature.
That said, EVERYONE needs to back off, stop commenting on other posters, stop throwing around epithets, and stick to the actual discussion of the DoJ report.
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Oh, please, yourself. Yo are really citing Limbaugh who is making up his own story just to get the dittoheads to chant “Yeah!”?
His whole all the cops in the country do it regarding traffic fines ignores the documented evidence that the police and courts, while going after black drivers, had a habit of giving out warnings instead of tickets to white drivers and the courts quashing the tickets that were handed out to white drivers.
It does matter to me that Limbaugh promotes the hatred he does. I matters more to me when his lies are submitted as “evidence” in a debate.
It might be a better and simpler idea to dissolve the Ferguson PD and let the county police take over.
Actually, I don’t see why there should be any police forces below the county level in this day and age.
Nor any governments below the county level, for that matter. Let everyone follow Jacksonville’s example.
Searches should occur when there’s a reasonable suspicion. Being black is not a reasonable suspicion. From the FBI report, page 65:
Your assertion appears to be incorrect. The Missouri law cited in your link does not allow officers to demand a person identify themselves unless certain criteria are met. Riding in a vehicle does not meet that criteria.
You link led me to a link to the Missouri law in question, and it doesn’t say what you seem to think it says; I helpfully bolded the pertinent sentence:[
](http://www.moga.mo.gov/mostatutes/stathtml/08400007101.HTML)
Monstro was eminently reasonable. I just happen to disagree, or at least question the premise.
I’ve already given one reason to question it: one one expect that cities that would probably be less racist would have better arrest records; they don’t. This could be countered by an example of a city with a good arrest record but so far none have been found. That doesn’t prove anything but it is, for now, a data point.
Another is this: the arrest rate for males is much higher than females. Does anybody rationally suggest that cops are the reason for the discrepancy, even to a small degree? Why, then, is the arrest rate for black males definite proof of racist cops?
I’d just like to see better evidence. Maybe we’re missing some other cause.
Maybe it’s lack of education and poverty that lead to a culture of nihilism. Maybe it’s price society pays for white privilege. I dunno but I’d prefer we not latch on to a convenient cause because it’s easy.