Violence in Baltimore

[TLDR20]

The entire report, much like almost all data available, is misleading. It lacks context and it lacks enough information to draw any conclusions. To be blunt: so what if XXXXX were the most likely to be killed? We don't know the contributing factors, only raw numbers. If someone said...F-16's were more likely to crash than B-52's. Fine. Whatever....but WHY? Engine failure? Pilot error? Poor maintenance?

If someone said "XX% of decedents died while resisting arrest. YY% were black, ZZ% were white..." then we'd have a more complete picture. "XX% were killed by an officer with less than 5 years of experience." Now we can look at trends. The data needed may be too granular but without it we're just spewing "black vs. white" crap when it could show meaningful trends that allow our society to fix the problem. Otherwise we're stuck on race and furthering America's racial divide...and that helps no one and solves nothing.

Because statistics like this feed into the idea that there is equivelency in the way blacks and whites deal with/are dealt with by the police, when in reality there isn't.

 

[TLDR20]

http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/story/28925497/police-woman-makes-threats-on-facebook-to-kill-cops

"Police released part of her post to FOX 5. In it, she says “all black ppl should rise up and shoot at every white cop in the nation starting now.” Police said later on Dickens wrote, “I thought about shooting every white cop I see in the head until I'm caught by the police or killed by them. Ha!!!! I think I can pull it off. Might kill a least 15 tomorrow. I'm plotting now.”"

Do you have any fucking input? We aren't a news aggregation site, if you don't have commentary let the big boys talk.

 

[nobodythank you]

Because statistics like this feed into the idea that there is equivelency in the way blacks and whites deal with/are dealt with by the police, when in reality there isn't.

Of course there is not perfect equality. We are human and prone to flaw. However, as Free mentioned, there must be context and data to paint an accurate picture. The assertions being made are inaccurate. Are blacks discriminated against at times? Absolutely. Are whites? Most definitely. The issue needs to be focused on discrimination of all kinds, race, religion, orientation, ect... Not a focus on black vs white which is, I believe, the main issue among many members here based on what I have read.

 

[TLDR20]

Here we go again..... Nearly every time something like this happens, the "poor victim" is anything but. Yet there is a perpetual conversation of systemic racism, despite a lack of hard evidence. It's circumstantial, anecdotal, 2nd/3rd/4th/whatever hand stories, etc. And god help you if you're white and attempt to weigh in on the conversation on the opposite side of the "victim". Well that's ipso facto proof of racism right there! Explain how it's any different to automatically dismiss any argument from a Caucasian person based solely on the fact they're Caucasian and therefore can't understand how much the Man is oppressing everyone. You know what doesn't help get your paper any closer to inside the can? Standing on the corner selling drugs. Repeatedly.

First of all I haven't seen anyone defend the "poor victim" I don't know if he was innocent, or a poor victim, but I know he was denied medical care after being detained by the police, which is a fucking no-go. Who cares if he recently had spinal surgery, or what his criminal record was. Once he was in the care of the police, they had a responsibility to get him timely medical care if it was required.

If you want to read into the things I said that much man then go ahead. I don't think anyone "automatically dismissed any argument from a Caucasian person based solely on the fact they're Caucasian...." No one did that, I am white, Amlove is white, I think most of the people posting here are white, so no one is dismissing anything. What I did say is that often people have a difficult time talking about things like racism and privelege because they become personally offended at the idea of it. Then within a few posts a perfect example of what I was talking about was provided for me by Ranger Psych, who explained in detail how he was most certainly not privileged and he doesn't care about race.

Lack of hard evidence?

Here is a link to definitions of terms that relate to the topic: http://www.aspeninstitute.org/sites...t/docs/rcc/RCC-Structural-Racism-Glossary.pdf

Notice that we are not talking about individual racism, or even perceivable stuff. But it is there.

Here are things that speak to the systemic problems we face in just the sentencing of people convicted of crimes.

http://www.sentencingproject.org/template/page.cfm?id=122
Read any of the vignettes or articles, they all say similar things and point out the same trends. If you are black you are more likely to get heavier sentences, you are more likely to spend the entire length of your sentence in prison, and you are more likely to be convicted in the first place. Are there variables? Of course, but across the entire nation, in both states and in federal cases the results are the same.

If you like charts here are a few that will point out some of the means of systemic racism.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/02/civil-rights-act-anniversary-racism-charts_n_5521104.html

As to hard evidence, there is no smoking gun here, the way our system has been set up from the very beginning has been an issue. The past is important because many of the rights blacks and other minorities have today have been borne out of that past. My parents were alive when schools were segregated, that past is alive and well. Institutions, and deeply laid feelings don't disappear because a law was passed, they are still there and they fuel current actions.

 

[TLDR20]

Of course there is not perfect equality. We are human and prone to flaw. However, as Free mentioned, there must be context and data to paint an accurate picture. The assertions being made are inaccurate. Are blacks discriminated against at times? Absolutely. Are whites? Most definitely. The issue needs to be focused on discrimination of all kinds, race, religion, orientation, ect... Not a focus on black vs white which is, I believe, the main issue among many members here based on what I have read.

Right, the way it was presented as in "whites are even more privileged in being killed by police..." is what got my response. Because as has been shown that is not true.

 

[nobodythank you]

Right, however the way it was presented here on this site was without the proper context. I think that has been provided now.

LoL context in which direction?

I know he was denied medical care after being detained by the police, which is a fucking no-go. Who cares if he recently had spinal surgery, or what his criminal record was. Once he was in the care of the police, they had a responsibility to get him timely medical care if it was required.

I believe to the point of the original conversation this bears reinforcing because it is the most important point to the entire thread that crosses racial lines. If it did happen to him (I say if because the final report has not been released and so far much of what we know is speculation until the official report is released), it could happen to any one of us.

EDIT: Now let me finish my damn midterm!

 

[amorris127289]

Yes Sir.

In support of my other post, learn and follow the rules and these riots are pointless. I posted a comment earlier. I was sharing an article someone sent to me.

You guys were arguing over the "black lives matter" and the race topic. When there are people plotting to kill potentially innocent LEO because of the color of their skin. I am sure there are corrupt cops, but what about people like the woman in the article I shared, or in the video I posted earlier of a woman dancing on the American Flag, the flag that drapes the coffins of soldiers that were killed trying to defend this country and those that live in it. Yes protestors have the right to burn and mistreat the flag but should that not be the topic of discussion? Stand for the nation that you guys took the oath for. Follow the laws set forth by the nation and it would be better off. I hate how someone posts something Like the woman who stomped all over the flag, but then when you read comments on the post there are people saying dumb N***** rather than calling her a terrorist to the nation.

 

[racing_kitty]

Because the US is a racist bagodix that needs to be rebuilt, Bolshevik style... /sarc

 

[amorris127289]

I cannot speak on how things are in the bigger cities, I live in a small city now and grew up in the military so race was never an issue around me and being from a younger generation than you admin(I assume) so I never saw the segregation issues. It was always due your job and everything else would be taken care of.

 

[TLDR20]

Because the US is a racist bagodix that needs to be rebuilt, Bolshevik style... /sarc

I know your post is sarcasm, but it gets at a good point. We are so divided here in the states that if you say something different than the views of others you are immediately a socialist/communist/progressive windbag, or the fascist/neocon/racist. However there is a lot of gray in the world. Many of us fall somewhere in the middle on many of these issues. I personally hate that there are people destroying their communities. I also hate that there is video of a cop shooting an unarmed black teen in the back as he runs away. I don't think there are easy solutions to the problems that face America today, but I think writing things off as not problems because you can't see them is one of our biggest issues. I have been trying to point that out, but I am neither the smartest, nor the most articulate. I know my writing style can come across as smug or accusatory, but I have been here long enough that long time members should know that, and y'all obviously don't mind as I was regularly elected to site leadership:) It is good to have a dialogue, and I am a member of this site for topics like this that go on for pages and pages. They often get very interesting.

 

[Dienekes]

Racism definitely exists in America. How do I know? I am from Louisiana. My high school flag that we flew at all football games and generally throughout the year is a confederate flag(apparently that is racist in some circles). I would bet money I've probably heard the n-word more than any black person. The old people and farmers around here are especially racist and even use the n-word when casually talking to a black person, Ex: "Hey n-word, go grab that wrench". Yep, heard the guy say it. My grandfather even said that he wasn't going to my cousins wedding because "She is marrying an n-word". That guy is Cambodian. None of these are of the Neo-Nazi or KKK type. I can't speak to that type of racism.

I said all that to establish my credibility on the subject. Now, if you talk to these people about why they are racist, they would say two things: That the majority of people on welfare are black and that minorities have a privilege in the system. I won't speak as to why about they welfare because I don't have any evidence. Ex: My high school math teacher approached the class with a very large STEM scholarship to LSU. I asked where I could apply, and she said it's only for women and minorities. I said that's bullshit. She being a woman got pissed and exclaimed about white male privilege. Well I failed to ever see any of that privilege because to my knowledge there was never any similar scholarship or any scholarship period that was only available to white males.

This affirmative action stuff, which is essentially reverse racism, is one of the main reasons that racism exists today. I wasn't around in the 60's or 70's so I don't know why people were racist then, but today it is because of this stuff. When companies have a quota to fill for minorities, that perpetuates racism. Ex: Talked to a guy who got an internship in engineering. He told me he got that one from attending the Society for Black Engineers career fair, not the regular career fair. Same goes for schools. When I have friends with 4.0's that are very involved on campus worried about not getting into med school because med schools except a disproportionate amount of minorities, that perpetuates racism. Ex: I have a white female friend whose grandmother is from Spain so she checked the minority box because she is 25% Spanish even though she looks like the whitest girl you've ever seen. She attributes that to her getting accepted, not her 4.0 and ridiculous resume. That is a fucking problem.

Next, is the news, and you all know it is a problem. My racist friends always complain about how the news only shows a story about a black person getting killed because he is black. they then search all these stories about white people getting killed that never make the news. That perpetuates racism.

You want to know how to defeat racism? Stop talking about it. When we get past this affirmative action bullshit, and the news quits attributing everything bad that has ever happened to anyone to racism, that is when you will see racism wither away and die. When everyone gets treated equally by the "system", and no one mentions race about anything, then it won't exist.

 

[Board and Seize]

And now I'm hopping the fence.

@jroberts1187 and @amorris127289, your recent posts are walking talking examples of 'white privilege' - whether you're white or not. As dismissive as I am of the so-called social 'sciences', there is a huge body of scholarly work that is the product of some very bright minds on these topics.

When you dive into a discussion like this, do yourself a favor and at least learn what the terms being used mean. Maybe even look for the historical context. You guys are are trying to counter arguments, cool. But the very tactics you are using support the other side! Privilege, in this context explicitly refers to members of a structurally reinforced majority being blind to the plight of the structurally repressed minority. So you don't see it. So you think AA is reverse racism. Bully for you. But guess what? These attitudes are exactly what the SJW's are referring to when they talk about privilege.

Anecdotal evidence does not suggest a trend. Correlation does not suggest a causation. If you've been lucky enough to avoid racially charged situations so far, that's great, but don't confuse your experience for that of millions of people living in radically different circumstances than yourselves.

RACIALISM != RACISM (That's 'does not equal' for the non-math/computer nerds out there). If you don't know what I'm talking about, educate yourself. Guess what, this decade is already being defined by the new social justice / civil rights movements. Pretending that problems don't exist just because they don't affect you does not make them go away.

I'm not trying to be a dick. I'm not trying to say that you need to doing a mountain of research before engaging in the debate. But for the love of pete, please don't become a living, breathing strawman of your own position!

 

[CDG]

First of all I haven't seen anyone defend the "poor victim" I don't know if he was innocent, or a poor victim, but I know he was denied medical care after being detained by the police, which is a fucking no-go. Who cares if he recently had spinal surgery, or what his criminal record was. Once he was in the care of the police, they had a responsibility to get him timely medical care if it was required.
Agreed. I am certainly not arguing that him being a career criminal means he's not entitled to medical care. However, do you not agree that it fairly significantly changes the storyline if he was recently coming off spinal surgery and was at a drastically higher risk for something like this, which makes it much more unlikely he was the victim of police brutality? Negligence and brutality are different issues.


If you want to read into the things I said that much man then go ahead. I don't think anyone "automatically dismissed any argument from a Caucasian person based solely on the fact they're Caucasian...." No one did that, I am white, Amlove is white, I think most of the people posting here are white, so no one is dismissing anything. What I did say is that often people have a difficult time talking about things like racism and privelege because they become personally offended at the idea of it. Then within a few posts a perfect example of what I was talking about was provided for me by Ranger Psych, who explained in detail how he was most certainly not privileged and he doesn't care about race.

I think the white privilege argument is vastly overused. Name one job closed to a black male with the right qualifications. We have a black president. We have black doctors, lawyers, entertainers, policemen, firemen, military members, and the list goes on. So where is the "white privilege" that is preventing black men from being successful in life? Your reference of your sociology professor's metaphor was interpreted by me as you advocating for the idea of white privilege as a dominating factor in today's society. Examples like RPs serve to discredit that theory, yet they are dismissed out of hand. I didn't see personal offense in his post, I saw frustration at the idea that he'd gotten somewhere in life only because he was white and had the advantage of white privilege.


Lack of hard evidence?

Here is a link to definitions of terms that relate to the topic: http://www.aspeninstitute.org/sites...t/docs/rcc/RCC-Structural-Racism-Glossary.pdf

Notice that we are not talking about individual racism, or even perceivable stuff. But it is there.

Here are things that speak to the systemic problems we face in just the sentencing of people convicted of crimes.

http://www.sentencingproject.org/template/page.cfm?id=122
Read any of the vignettes or articles, they all say similar things and point out the same trends. If you are black you are more likely to get heavier sentences, you are more likely to spend the entire length of your sentence in prison, and you are more likely to be convicted in the first place. Are there variables? Of course, but across the entire nation, in both states and in federal cases the results are the same.

If you like charts here are a few that will point out some of the means of systemic racism.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/02/civil-rights-act-anniversary-racism-charts_n_5521104.html

As to hard evidence, there is no smoking gun here, the way our system has been set up from the very beginning has been an issue. The past is important because many of the rights blacks and other minorities have today have been borne out of that past. My parents were alive when schools were segregated, that past is alive and well. Institutions, and deeply laid feelings don't disappear because a law was passed, they are still there and they fuel current actions.

I read through the links as well. In rebuttal:

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/conspicuous-consumption-and-race-who-spends-more-on-what/

http://washingtoninformer.com/news/2013/sep/18/blacks-have-little-show-hard-earned-dollars/

http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2001/inequality/

As you said, there's no smoking gun. However, the system is, IMHO, not nearly as inherently racist as some claim. It's not racist if you spend more of your money on status symbols than the white family down the street and then can't afford to send your kids to college like they can. It's not racist if you can't get a job because you dropped out of school, so a white guy who actually graduated gets it instead. It's not racist that white people recovered from the recession better because they invested more and therefore offset their losses at a higher rate once the stock market rebounded. Feelings have nothing to do with it.

ETA: I don't disagree that racism exists. What I do disagree with is the stated prevalence and influence of it in 2015.

 

[TLDR20]

I read through the links as well. In rebuttal:

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/conspicuous-consumption-and-race-who-spends-more-on-what/

http://washingtoninformer.com/news/2013/sep/18/blacks-have-little-show-hard-earned-dollars/

http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2001/inequality/

As you said, there's no smoking gun. However, the system is, IMHO, not nearly as inherently racist as some claim. It's not racist if you spend more of your money on status symbols than the white family down the street and then can't afford to send your kids to college like they can. It's not racist if you can't get a job because you dropped out of school, so a white guy who actually graduated gets it instead. It's not racist that white people recovered from the recession better because they invested more and therefore offset their losses at a higher rate once the stock market rebounded. Feelings have nothing to do with it.

So you are admitting the system is racist, just not as much as some claim, I'll take that.:)

 

[CDG]

So you are admitting the system is racist, just not as much as some claim, I'll take that.:)

Lol. I am admitting that the system is not perfect. I don't think anyone can argue that it is. I am not admitting that the negative issues affecting the black community are because of a racist system.

 

[Centermass]

And now, we have the the evil NG, who have been receiving support from the community. At least, from some segments of the Baltimore community, until the criticism of those deeds began to flow. So much for unwavering support.

Whole Foods Feeds The Oppressor

Read the follow on comments. Just goes to show once again, there's no shortage of stupid people on this planet.

Whole Foods has since removed the post.

 

[TLDR20]

Fucking people

 

[x SF med]

We burned, looted and demolished our neighborhood, but a company is evil because it fed the people that are trying to mitigate any further damage we might do... the evil oppressors are stealing food out of our children's mouths because we forced the shut down of an entire city and we rely on the city to feed our kids....

Logic? Where is it?

 

[racing_kitty]

We burned, looted and demolished our neighborhood, but a company is evil because it fed the people that are trying to mitigate any further damage we might do... the evil oppressors are stealing food out of our children's mouths because we forced the shut down of an entire city and we rely on the city to feed our kids....

Logic? Where is it?

Logic is a tool of white privilege, so shut your white male privileged ass up.

 

[Dienekes]

And now I'm hopping the fence.

@jroberts1187 and @amorris127289, your recent posts are walking talking examples of 'white privilege' - whether you're white or not. As dismissive as I am of the so-called social 'sciences', there is a huge body of scholarly work that is the product of some very bright minds on these topics.

When you dive into a discussion like this, do yourself a favor and at least learn what the terms being used mean. Maybe even look for the historical context. You guys are are trying to counter arguments, cool. But the very tactics you are using support the other side! Privilege, in this context explicitly refers to members of a structurally reinforced majority being blind to the plight of the structurally repressed minority. So you don't see it. So you think AA is reverse racism. Bully for you. But guess what? These attitudes are exactly what the SJW's are referring to when they talk about privilege.

Anecdotal evidence does not suggest a trend. Correlation does not suggest a causation. If you've been lucky enough to avoid racially charged situations so far, that's great, but don't confuse your experience for that of millions of people living in radically different circumstances than yourselves.

RACIALISM != RACISM (That's 'does not equal' for the non-math/computer nerds out there). If you don't know what I'm talking about, educate yourself. Guess what, this decade is already being defined by the new social justice / civil rights movements. Pretending that problems don't exist just because they don't affect you does not make them go away.

I'm not trying to be a dick. I'm not trying to say that you need to doing a mountain of research before engaging in the debate. But for the love of pete, please don't become a living, breathing strawman of your own position!

Apologies, I guess my debating needs work. I was trying to convey that racism exists because people believe the grass is greener by providing examples, and posit that removing those things that initiate racist feelings would remove the racism itself. As in attacking the root of the problem. What do the members here see as the reason racism exits?