And there you have it. This is what Trump’s White Trash Nation clings to along with their pretty guns and their phony Christianity. It doesn’t matter if 99% percent of these protests have been lawful. The Trumpscum will use the lawlessness to justify their bigotry. To justify their racism. To justify their utter worthlessness as human beings.
Trump’s ass in your mouth is bad for your health, scumbag.
You aren’t very bright are you? Fascinating how you make racist insults that won’t even get noticed by the powers that be yet supposedly white folks have this all powerful privilege that keeps the rest of the whole world in chains unable to do a damn thing. Weird.
I am surprised you are here posting when you could be at Target and Dollar General crawling through the smashed windows to update your wardrobe.
You don’t believe that.
Truth hurts huh, little boy. Are you crying?
Your summary of the situation is wrong. George Floyd’s death was obscene and completely emblematic of the way blacks and POC are treated in the US. They earn less money. They have fewer job opportunities. They are less likely to have medical insurance. They have less access to healthcare, and the healthcare they can access is often over-burdened and unable to fully serve their communities. They are less able to build family equity, because they have less access to things like home ownership. They have less access to education at all levels. And on, and on.
Of course the protesters know there is a pandemic. The vast majority are wearing masks. They have also reached their personal limits for the racial injustice and systemic inequities that exist in the US.
These protests may have started because of George Floyd’s murder, but they have evolved into the country vehemently stating “No more”. We must do better.
It doesn’t matter if 99.99% of gun owners are law abiding citizens. The liberals will use that .01% to try to justify more useless and ineffective gun laws.
You know how calories don’t count if it’s a holiday? Well, it’s sort of the same principle.
I do believe we now know what’s jammed and where.
When I was in the army, we were taught what do to when you find yourself in the middle of an antipersonnel mind field. It involved a lot of freezing in place and poking and marking, but there was one major caveat: if you find yourself in a minefield and come under fire from the enemy, the only thing to do is to* pretend the minefield doesn’t exist*, advance and take the enemy’s mine-free ground from him.
I think that’s sort of where America is right now. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.
So you feel it’s really really important and worth the risk. Likewise, the religious right thinks going to church is really really important and worth the risk.
So what risk is being averted? What outcomes do you expect from these demonstrations? What will be different after them that wouldn’t be different without them? Specifics, please. I mean, if you are willing to risk amplifying a goddamn global pandemic for this, you must have a pretty concrete set of demands and specific desired outcomes, yes?
Because as I see it, these will be the actual outcomes:
In terms of actual change, the only one I’m seeing is the partial defunding of police departments. That will result in inceased crime in precisely the areas populated by the poor and minorities.
All of the ‘change’ that will result from this will hurt cities and especially the people you are purporting to help. And that’s true even if the protests didn’t kick off waves of new Covid illnesses in those same communities. If it does, these protests will backfire even worse.
White flight isn’t a result of civil unrest. White flight happens first, in America’s history. Take my grandparents old neigborhood called Gresham on the south side of Chicago. It goes like this: First, black people move into the neighborhood. Then white people flee, leaving the poorest and those with the least opportunity togeher by themselves. Eventually, the pot boils over and civil unrest is the sure way to make your voice heard. White flight is at the beginning of that cycle, not the end. And unfortunately for America, since the 50s it has been occurring as a cycle.
To an extent, a fair point. But only to a small extent.
The difference being, of course, not going to church won’t kill a person. It can still be important, but it’s not literally a life or death thing. Also, especially in these times, “going to church” can be accomplished in other ways, such as online.
Unwarranted and often illegal police violence, on the other hand, can and has literally killed people. Multiple people. For decades.
So, ok, I am willing, for the sake of the supposition, to submit that this is a difference in degree rather than in kind.
Are you submitting that attending church in person in defiance of lockdown orders (rather than attending online or some other form of fellowship) is, outside the abstract and into the specific, equivalent to literal deaths and injuries in the dozens and probably hundreds or thousands? Because that seems to be what you are equating. And, if so, I don’t mind saying you subscribe to monstrous, abhorrent views and are not a good person.
Actually, there’s something important you missed in your summary that actually supports your point even further.
Between blacks moving into neighborhoods and whites moving out, what you also had was, in many cases, white rioting against African Americans who attempted to rent or purchase homes in white neighborhoods. Cities like Chicago saw significant numbers of white riots in the decade or so after World War II, except they were not as widely reported by the press at the time, and rather than quell the riots, sympathetic police often stood by and watched them happen. Arnold Hirsch does a good job of talking about this is his excellent book, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago 1940-1960. For a comparable, and perhaps even more comprehensive study of Detroit during the same period, addressing many of the same issues, see Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit.
Say the words “urban riot” or “race riot” and most Americans think of the conflagrations of the 1960s, starting with Watts in '65 and expanding dramatically in 1968 after the assassination of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. But there were plenty of urban race riots before that; it’s just inconvenient for many Americans that the rioters happened to be whites in Northern cities doing their best to maintain a segregated society. As Sugrue’s title suggests, his book argues that the black riots of the 1960s were not, in fact, the cause of America’s urban crisis, but a result of longer-term social and economic forces that pushed many African Americans to the breaking point.
It’s just the beginning, but Minnesota has just banned choke holds from their police procedures. Also, other officers are now required to intervene when an officer is misbehaving. Cite.
Seems like a pretty big fucking deal, and it wouldn’t have happened without the protests.
Thanks for the links, I’ll check them out.
I never said a word abiut ‘white’ people. I said the middle class leaves, both white and black, leaving behind onlh the poorest people - white and black. The poorest classes in the cities are disproportionately minority, but not exclusively.
This flight of the middle class has been going on for decades. In Detroit, the collapse of the auto industry destroyed middle class jobs, and many of those workers were black. Many of them left.
There is a viciius cycle at play. When the middle class leaves, they take the tax base with them. Services degrade, infrastructure crumbles, and middle class flight accelerates. As even more leave, abandoned homes and lawless streets make the situation worse, until you have downtown Detroit or inner city Baltimore.
And the neighborhoods that tend to be damaged or destroyed in riots are disproportionally poor neighborhoods. Antifa, the people who appear to be driving the worst of the violence, are disproportionally wealthy, white and college educated.
Finally, the political goals of the rioters (not necessarily the honest protestors) are far left, cultural and economic Marxism. If they get fheir way, the damage will make Covid look like a picnic.
Where is your evidence of this? According to ABC news:
Hi! Please provide a cite that Antifa is driving the worst of the violence, and that they are disproportionately wealthy and white. Also, please provide a cite that the goals of the rioters are far left, with cultural and economic Marxism as their political goal.
Thanks!
ETA: Partially ninja’d by Blaron.
The goal of the rioters who tore up the head shop near my workplace was to score a bunch of pipes and expensive blown-glass bongs. I doubt those guys had politics in mind.