You are not understanding what Kimstu is writing.
You are saying race cannot have any impact if person A has no idea what race person B is. Kimstu is saying race can indeed have an impact in that scenario. You aren’t responding to that point to either agree or disagree with it. Instead, you are reiterating that person A does not know the race of person B.
I’m still curious, treis, how you know with certainty that the cop didn’t treat Gates any differently based on his race.
(1) His examples came with the someone actually observing the person. If his argument is that racism comes into play because an unseen person could theoretically be black, that’s nonsense.
(2) That argument doesn’t address my original point, which was “Gates was 100% not targeted because he was black”. If the argument that racism comes into play because an unseen person could theoretically be black, then the race of the unseen person doesn’t matter. An unseen white person would suffer from the same biases as an unseen black person.
Because there’s no evidence to the contrary, the cop was backed up by his black colleagues, and IIRC he taught a course against profiling or something similar.
Gates says he was treated differently – that may not be enough evidence to be certain it’s true, but it’s still evidence. Those other things (assuming they’re true) might reasonably reduce the likelihood one would think the cop treated Gates differently due to race, but why are you certain? How can you know with 100% certainty, zero doubt, not the single slightest possibility that you’re wrong, that Gates was not treated differently due to race? Isn’t there some non-zero possibility that the cop, even if he’s a decent cop with no conscious racial animus, might have held some unconscious biases that affected his behavior?
I’ve never said I was 100% sure that Gates wasn’t treated differently due to his race. I said he 100% wasn’t targeted because he was black.
This is substantially different than your response to the same question in your post #30. I commend you for your much more reasonable present position and response.
Oh my position that you are still treating this as “racist until proven otherwise” and that’s one of the fundamental changes we saw over the Obama years
That’s not my position. I don’t treat this incident as “racist until proven otherwise”. Glad I could correct you on this mischaracterization of my position. Hopefully two corrections of the same mistake will be enough.
Ah, I see the confusion here. In post #19 you did say “Gates was 100% not targeted because he was black”. Meaning, as you’ve now re-emphasized, that because the caller didn’t know his race then her actions could absolutely not have been based on definite knowledge of his race, which is quite true (not to say tautological).
But in post #26 you said instead “It’s 100% certain that race did not influence her”, which is what I took you up on. That is a very different statement, and as repeatedly explained above, it’s not true.
Oh please, this doesn’t reflect any change. Both can be true, it’s not 100% certain that Gates wasn’t treated differently due to his race. It’s also true you are introducing racist motivations to the arresting officer without evidence.
It’s the same thing Obama did with the statement he made after the incident. I heard Obama’s statement at the time, which sounded like,* ‘I don’t have all the evidence, or if it was because of racism, and it sounded like a tense situation. Don’t forget about racism though, even though I don’t know if it was racism. Btw, racism is bad, even if it may or may not have played a part.’*
What a stupid thing for Obama to say. The first stupid thing was weighing in at all. Obama in almost every other scenario was a brilliant speaker, but this one incident he was dumb.
Suggesting the possibility (as Gates, who was involved, did) is “introducing racist motivations”? Do you think it’s wrong to say “there’s a non-zero possibility that Gates is right about how he was treated”? Because that’s effectively all I said.
If you have a problem with anything I posted, point to the specific words I posted that you think are wrong.
It was certainly politically stupid. God forbid our first black President give his honest reactions and opinions about something that might be related to race without conducting a full political review and vetting first.
Bone: Suppose we know a Mississippi sharecropper in 1940 underpaid his black tenant. If I say that might be because of racism, would you object that I failed to present his personal diary or a collection of witnesses to substantiate my offering this possibility, and that I should have declined to mention racism until there was concrete evidence?
If not, what is the difference here? Is it your judgment about how much influence race has on policing?
It’s not 1940
Oh, right, because the racism that bathed American society for centuries was completely washed clean during the Johnson administration. Everyone knows that.
Do you consider a white person today racist until proven otherwise?
I think absent evidence of racism, introducing the idea is misguided. That there is always a non-zero possibility that racism is involved, raising the issue sans specific evidence is inflammatory.
**A: **I had a rough day at work.
**B: **Was it racism?
**A: **Uhh, no, just got tied up in meetings.
**B: **Because of racism?
**A: **I don’t think so, had some complicated issues to figure out and it was a big meeting.
**B: **Because of racism?
**A: **Dude, there is no evidence that racism played any part in today being a rough day.
**B: **But, are you 100% certain? Isn’t there a non-zero chance that racism could have played a role?
That’s how I see a lot of accusations of racism. It’s what treis responded to in post #30. The question is whether the default response should be looking for racism, or not.
I don’t think any president should be weighing in on local law enforcement matters, especially without all the facts, and especially as the situation was unfolding. That was his first mistake. The second mistake, was introducing racism, basically accusing the officer (not literally) without said facts. The whole, inviting the folks to the white house for a beer was doubling down on the first mistake.
If it were 1940, I think that could be enough evidence to explore the racism angle.
And while racism hasn’t been eliminated from police and society at large today, I think it’s fair to say it plays a substantially smaller role. YMMV whether that change is sufficient to adjust the status quo when evaluating police action between white officers interacting with black people, from it’s probably racist to it’s probably not racist, sans any other evidence.
Isn’t “probably” overstating it? Here is what Obama said:
Taken literally, he actually said nothing about the role of race in the incident. I think it’s fair to say he implied that there was some possibility of a racial motivation. Even so, that’s a pretty far cry from “probably.”
But you’re right about your YMMV. Can you pinpoint the decade in which you think it stopped being appropriate to think race may have played a role in the improper treatment of a black man by the police?
There was a black guy there who said he was treated differently due to race.
That’s evidence. I don’t think it’s proof. But considering that we’re talking about a pretty nebulous concept (did bias, conscious or unconscious, play any role in the behavior of the officer?) that, if present, would only be present within the brain-functions of the officer involved, I think the perceptions of the other guy present is worth taking into account.
So, IMO, there was evidence of racism present.
I don’t think it should be “default” either. But if there’s a black person there, and they say they were treated differently because of their race, then I think it might be reasonable to consider the possibility that they are correct.
I agree it was a political mistake, though the “beer summit” was a decent ad-hoc political repair job, allowing all parties to save face as well as present the appearance of a united front.
Out of curiosity, did you not consider the possibility that the perceptions of Gates might constitute evidence, even if it’s weak evidence, that racism may have been involved? If not, why not?
Expanding on the question of “evidence” of possible racism:
Suppose that, across the street from Gates’ house, one of his white neighbors watched the whole encounter, and then said publicly afterwards “that officer definitely treated Gates in a racist way”. Or suppose there were 5 white neighbors and 5 white strangers who happened to be passing by, but witnessed the whole encounter, and said the same thing.
Would any of that constitute evidence of possible racism?
If so, then why would the opinions of white neighbors and passers-by constitute evidence of the possibility of racism, but not the opinion of the black person who says that he was mistreated?
Again, I’m only speaking of the non-zero possibility of racism being involved (whether due to conscious or unconscious bias), not any certainty.
“Probably” is shorthand. I don’t literally mean greater than 50% I think the point of contention is what level of racism is assumed to exist without any evidence. What chance do we ascribe the potential of racism to be a factor, sans other evidence. I think it’s low, probably lower than you or iiandyiii thinks. I don’t think you think it’s 50%, though, so that was imprecise on my part.
I also think Obama escalated the situation. He didn’t say that racism was involved, but his introducing the idea was basically equivalent, in my view. It’s like saying, we don’t have all the facts around the moon landing, or what role the government lying was involved in the moon landing broadcast, but separate from that, we know the government has lied before. Is that saying the government is lying about the moon landing? No. But it’s putting it out there without evidence.
I don’t know. I suspect it varies by location, and time. In Ferguson it’s going to be different than in the suburbs of Seattle. I acknowledge that my own experience influences my perception.
Sure, then I read the story about the incident and that was enough to persuade me to dismiss that evidence.
That is literally all the time. There is always a non-zero possibility. Because it’s the case ALL THE TIME, it’s not informative at all. It doesn’t offer anything new, it doesn’t enhance our understanding, it doesn’t further conversation. It’s the example I gave upthread between A and B.