How about this as a point: if the police are wanting to effect lasting and meaningful change, they need to quit trying to guilt, brow-beat or intimidate everyone else into doing what they want, and actually start addressing WHY black men shouldn’t be more afraid of cops. If, as several people pointed out, the police are shooting black men in numbers that are wildly disproportionate to their numbers, the onus of explanation lies on the police to explain why the fear and apprehension of police is unfounded, especially for black men.
I’m not saying the treatment is acceptable, but the underlying fear and apprehension is real and valid, and nobody seems to address that.
I know that if I was a black man and I was being approached by a police officer given the number of recent cases of overreaction (and long history of disproportionate punishment), I’d be doubly nervous about it, especially if they have the typical cop machismo going on as well.
I’ll go further and say that the one thing that seriously hurts the police is their immediate rush to judgement, automatic backing of the police officer, and shrill cries of “Thug!” before the body’s even cold. Talk about poisoning the well of the court of public opinion! They’d get a lot more traction with everyone else if they went along with investigations and occasionally accepted the findings. Instead, they jump to judgment and refuse to accept the findings, which makes many people wonder what the hell they want- clearly they want law and order, but on their own terms apparently.
You said that up until very recently, blacks in America lived in a situation similar to that of Jews in 1930s Nazi Germany. So maybe BLM isn’t saying it, but you are saying something rather similar.
:shrugs:
It’s probably hopeless - the thread has been Godwinized.
You know what? I think I agree with you.
There is more to it than just officer-black interaction. Someone who doesn’t get that is not contributing to the solution. There is a past history of racism in this country, and that affects the experience of blacks vis-à-vis the police. We need to take that into account. Likewise, we need to understand that there is a not-at-all past history of blacks committing violent street crimes at rates that are vastly disproportionate to their presence in the population, and that affects the experience of police vis-à-vis blacks. We need to take that into account.
Not a ONE of the people who were shot would have even made the national news, if not for BLM or people like them. It’s not the police and the majority of the population who need to convince anyone of anything in this case.
If BLM is going to get up and make a major spectacle of themselves about the issue, the burden of proof and convincing naturally falls on them to coherently explain why the situation is intolerable. And they do that fairly well, but then turn right around and undercut that explanation by automatically and blindly doing the same counterproductive actions I mentioned upthread- vilifying the cops, automatically backing the black guy, hand-waving away violent or stupid behavior on the part of the people who get shot, and focusing on outcomes instead of the chain of events that got them there, complete with dumb-ass absurdities like “<victim> was murdered for <original minor offense>”, which is not only untrue in several ways, it’s counter productive, in that most everyone else sees a guy breaking the law and then resisting arrest, and then something unfortunate coming out of that.
The burden of explanation lies on BLM to explain why that isn’t the case; in the case of Alton Sterling, the guy wasn’t even cold, and there were cries of murder, etc… when it’s looking more and more like he actually did resist arrest and did go for his gun. Same thing for Michael Brown. If that’s the case, BLM ought to offer up a mea culpa of a sort, and admit that in this case, it was justified. Anything else weakens their case in a lot of people’s eyes. And yet, they’re still holding up Brown’s shooting as some sort of police murder, and making claims about Sterling, before the investigation is even started.
Now if all of the situations were as baffling and outrageous as Philando Castile’s shooting, then this would be a much different issue, and there wouldn’t be much debate. But those sort of things are rare- most of them are either more cut and dried in the opposite way, or they’re very murky.
I’m not claiming the cops are doing everything on the straight and narrow- far from it. But at the same time, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. There IS a reason that cops are more apprehensive and on edge around black people, and that’s because statistically, they’re drastically more likely to shoot them than anyone else. And they arrest black men at a much higher rate than anyone else at all.
I guess what I’m getting at is that a higher arrest rate and a higher murder rate seems to be the fire causing a lot of the smoke around the issue, and in large part, BLM and the black community are crying foul, when police and the rest of America are seeing a community with a huge internal behavior problem with respect to criminality and acceptance of that.
It’s that acceptance of criminality, yet outrage about mistreatment for that criminality that baffles a lot of the rest of the country. Had a white guy done what Michael Brown did, pretty much everyone I know would have reacted that he was a criminal dumb-ass, and what the hell did he expect to happen if he acted like that? At the very least, a beat-down would be expected, and more likely getting shot if you go for a cop’s gun.
No, a textbook definition of question begging is to have evidence presented that phone surveys are unreliable for drug usage and then quote a phone survey to prove that drug usage rates are the same.
On prison population versus violent crime rates. The prison population numbers are not just a reflection of this years crime rates but of past crime rates as well. This is especially true for violent crimes which tend to draw the longest sentences. For homicide which is indicative of the overall trend, the black offending rate peakedat around 48 per 100,000 in 1992 and the white offending rate peaked around 8 per 100,000. Since then the black offending rate has fallen to about 20 per 100,000 and the white offending rate has fallen to around 6 per 100,000.
That’s a gross oversimplification, but yeah, that’s the real point.
It’s also complicated by the fact that cops kill white people too, and some studies say there’s no racial disparity. And of course, race is not automatically the reason for a shooting anyway. What we really need is a study of how often cops are prosecuted for wrongfully injuring or killing black victims vs. white ones. Maybe there’s one out there already.
Nobody’s arguing that it’s a good idea to resist arrest. I know you insist that this is the issue – it’s definitely one aspect of the discussion involving police/minority interactions. However, there are numerous examples of people resisting arrest that end without someone being shot. Hell you can probably find them on YouTube. The protests are about fundamental questions of fairness and race and class in society, and whether “equal protection under the law” truly exists for everyone or if it’s just meaningless text in a Constitution that historically hasn’t applied to blacks as it has to whites.
Basically your attitude is, “It’s my country; it’s up to you minorities to change and adapt to laws and systems my people created - like it or leave it.” You can think like that if you want, but it’s not really going to get us anywhere. If that’s your approach, don’t expect unrest to go away anytime soon.
I don’t disagree with this at all. That’s really all I’ve been trying to point out, and you’re right in saying that we should apply this standard to both African Americans and police officers on the street. As much as we think we know what it’s like to be someone else, we don’t. Only black people know what it’s like to be black. Only police officers know what it’s like to be police officers. That’s one reason I listen carefully when I hear comments from black police officers. They can see both sides of this.
No I said the result of a survey of a specific group that does not reflect society at whole do not extrapolate to the general population.
Unless you can provide some basis on why black people would be more likely to commit murder to to some biological function the only explanation is that is due to inequity in socioeconomic reasons.
If my black men are arrested, charged and convicted of crimes at a higher rate thus they are excluded from employment opportunities and even housing choices due to that record. Mix this with sub-standard education, access to legal justice and hiring biases and more will be attracted to extra-legal activities.
The peak in 1992 is a direct result of this disenfranchisement as extra-legal activities and or having no access to the legal system to redress grievances.
It doesn’t matter what group is put in that position, their will be a tendency to use violence. If a group has been treated unfairly by the system they will be less likely to utilize that system when they are a victim.
Also note that 86 percent of 2013 homicides involving a white victim have been solved compared with 45 percent of murders with a black victim and 56 percent of murders involving a Hispanic victim.
Even if those numbers are related to “no snitch” issues the mistrust of the justice system is the primary reason for “no snitch”.
Note how the percentage of blacks in prison for murder is not far off compared to whites but that robbery is much higher. With a difference in clearance rates by race you cannot make the claims that you made about current murders.
But the prison numbers do not tell the whole story, the racial bias in arrests, prosecution and sentencing means that a larger portion of the black population have a felony conviction. And the unequal application of drug laws has greatly contributed to this disenfranchisement.
Two percent of all Americans, or 3.9 million, have lost the right to vote, compared with 13 percent of adult black men.
But I give up, the evidence that systemic racial bias causes these issues is well established. I doubt that any debate will change your pre-conceived ideas so I will bid you a good day.
No, it’s more like “If you think there’s something wrong, then the burden of proof lies on you to show that something’s actually wrong, and the current tactics of intimidation and guilt-tripping, as well as consistently protesting police shootings SOLELY on the color of one’s skin does not prove anything, and is probably more counterproductive than not.”
For example, based on everything that’s come out, I’m still trying to figure out exactly where the cop in question was at fault in the Michael Brown shooting, other than being white, and a cop. Yet, absent something like a videotape of the incident conclusively proving Brown did something, there was ONE acceptable outcome for Officer Wilson as far as the black community was concerned- loss of his job and criminal prosecution.
That’s not justice, that’s more akin to a kangaroo court than anything else, and holding that particular situation up as an unjustified shooting, despite the US Department of Justice, the Ferguson PD, and a county grand jury all declining to charge him with anything.
Despite that, there were still calls for the revocation of his police license, etc…
I continuously see progressives citing raw numbers saying “more crimes are committed by whites” but this if this is done to try to claim the blacks don’t have a crime problem, its a logical fallacy because there are far more white people in America than black people.
What the debate is about is how the percentage of crimes committed by blacks per black person is far higher crimes committed by whites per white person, and how the proportion of crimes that are committed by blacks is disproportionately higher than their general proportion to the populace.
Yes, there are reasons the black community has a crime problem, but denying it, or trying to lie with statistics instead of telling the truth with statistics helps nothing.
The high rate of black on black killing has a lot to dow with police officers who are scared and overy quick on the trigger. They are working dangerous meighborhoods and the likelihood of mistakes happening is greatly increased because of it. It is not always intentional racism involved but there is some degree of profiling and not neccessarily unwaranted.
Exactly. The issue isn’t that black people are getting killed; it’s that cops are killing unarmed civilians, a disproportionate number of whom are black. I can’t believe this is a difficult concept to grasp.
The problem really is that BLM protests are going to make life worse for everyone especially black people. How many murders are going to happen if police are no longer willing to patrol black neighborhoods.
No, BLM protests aren’t going to make life worse – protests alone do not do that. And it’s wrong for you or anyone to suggest that simply because blacks have the temerity to complain about unarmed blacks dying at the hands of police that they are responsible for the murderous ambush on police officers.
I absolutely agree that mass violence against police officers, and the lack of public support will make more officers quit the force, which in turn will make life worse for those neighborhoods that are unpatrolled or patrolled far less. But black protests alone are not the root cause. You have cities like San Jose, for instance, where republican mayors insisted on trying to cut public pensions and benefits for officers. You have attempts to weaken their unions. You have record numbers of people in possession of firearms. You have media that sensationalizes crime and social media which acts as a surrogate for family and friendship to people who are marginalized. All of these factors make being a cop unattractive, and if being a cop is an unattractive cop for too many, that makes poor, crime-ridden neighborhoods zones of anarchy.
But it’s dangerous as hell when you have ordinary citizens buying into the idea that exercising one’s first amendment rights to free speech and (mostly) lawful assembly represents a clear and present danger.
I admit I didn’t read this thread but I did do a word search for the term straw. Has no one noticed the argument referred to in the thread title is a straw man? In other words, it’s a logically fallacious objection.
BLM is a legitimate movement. I won’t disagree that some of the people who join the protesters have taken on a mob mentality and need to be stopped, but that shouldn’t discredit an entire movement. Maybe BLM could use some ‘re-branding’ – I’ll give you that. But BLM started because of the perceptions of injustice and inequalities in society, and those perceptions aren’t going away. It’s not like we’re going to put African Americans back in chains again, and it seems pretty clear that republicans aren’t going to reduce the number of free flowing guns in this society, either, so maybe the smart thing to do is to start talking with angry African Americans rather than just telling them to shut up and stop whining.
