Public opinion should ***never ***play a role in determining guilt or innocence.
That’s a false corollary. Racism is bad, but why should some innocent third-party storekeeper see his store wrecked and looted? He had nothing to do with police brutality.
“We’re going to protest racism by smashing innocent people’s property. If you object, it means you think property is more important than the lives and safety of an entire race of people.”
I think the issue there is more about the media and politicians deploring the riots while completely ignoring the motives, before, during, and after.
And public opinion may not have a proper role in determining guilt, but sometimes it’s the only thing that propels a defendant into the justice system to begin with, and that’s not always a bad thing.
(And why did autocorrect want to capitalize "justice "?)
There is also evidence that criminals lie on a regular basis.
There is evidence that criminals abuse, rob, assault, and murder their neighbors for years and get away with it.
Peaceful protests in Baltimore might have resulted in the same charges but I guess we’ll never know.
I beg your pardon? The hell you say. Most of us are very unhappy with sports hooligans and sports riots. We hold them in even lower regard than riots over injustice, as there isn’t even an ostensible purpose to them. Sports rioters are rotten stupid stinking thugs, and should be dealt with to the full severity of the law.
Who has said otherwise? This is absurd. At very least, a straw man argument ought to have an actual straw man!
That is a good point (though I still think that many sports rioters are treated differently/more lightly, especially in the media — they take a more “oh, silly jocks; boys will be boys” tone from what I’ve seen). It was one I was thinking about as I was writing the post, but ignored the nagging thought.
I freely admit I may have misinterpreted the point others were trying to make when they brought it up; I’ll read more closely next time to see.
Wow, just freaking wow. Let’s play a game. I will get you five unique cites for the “thug” label for every one you can produce when fans are rioting over a game or some other inconsequential thing. Deal?
Shenanigans.
There is a definite difference in the use of words for these events. Black people rioting over systematic abuses by police are called “thugs” while white people rioting over a fucking pumpkin festival or sports game are called “partiers.”
Sometimes violence is justified.
Should the blacks there meekly accept another few decades of police brutality and discrimination?
Of course people are going to paint them with a broad brush if even one business was looted, but the looters are a minority of the people. I don’t care about the looting, it will happen, as it has been posted, for sporting events or some other big public celebration/demonstration. Its not unique to blacks and so I couldn’t give less of a shit by the reporting, I know the majority of them simply want equality and an end to police violence against their neighborhoods.
Given the history of police violence against blacks, does anyone think that if the officers were guilty, they would really be tried and convicted of a crime? That’s the same question the OP asked but this time directed towards the other side.
It reminds me of the 1992 LA riots after the Rodney King verdict. If there were no violence, does anyone think that any of those acquitted policemen would be retried and the trial moved out of white Simi Valley? Through the violence, we got some justice, and while it won’t help any of those people hurt during the violence, the majority of people were not rioting and wanted it to stop. Violence, physical confrontation, and breaking the law are sometimes necessary to shift pervasive inequality
Move the goalposts much? You said we “yawned” at sports violence. I said no, we don’t: we consider it extremely bad.
Now you want to go somewhere and count instances of magic words. I made no claim about that.
When a violent mob destroys a stadium, we do call 'em thugs, and a lot of other uncomplimentary words too. And we certainly don’t yawn at it!
Where is the double standard? Who has come out and said, “Oh, that’s okay” about the sports violence depicted?
(Also, a bonfire is not quite the same thing as setting fire to a shop of a house. Some of those pictures are only of street bonfires. Those are illegal, but they aren’t violent.)
Awesome. So I’m sure you could find me a couple of news articles with the media doing just that.
I’d greatly appreciate it.
Is there? I looked up a few of the stories, and the articles were rarely shy in calling them riots, or the people as vandals, looters, criminals, hooligans, etc. (admittedly, I couldn’t find any that used “thugs”).
At least one of them included a racial component:
‘Celebratory riots’ creating crisis on campus
"College men are becoming sources of violent behavior. This is fitting into a whole pattern of college students becoming violent, particularly young, white males.
by destroying other citizens property? and putting their life/safety in danger?
I said no such thing.
Yes, that was me. Probably not the most accurate wordage I could have used.
Anyone who believes violence doesn’t work is insane, I refer you to the history of the world.
A possible analogy: you begin experiencing a sharp pain in your abdomen. It persists and grows worse. So you seek medical attention and discover you have a serious health problem. Now that it is discovered, it can be treated. And once the problem is treated, the symptom goes away as well.
Rioting can be like that. Like pain, it’s not a good thing. But it can call attention to a more serious situation that is the true problem. And by resolving that problem, you eliminate the cause that motivated the rioting.
Unless you’re rioting over the outcome of a sporting event. Then you’re just being an idiot.