The Problem with Black Lives Matter

Bro, you got me wrong.

"ZealotX wrote: But I'm not talking about racially profiling future police. I just want them to get fired if shown to have racist views on the basis that the community should have a reasonable expectation that they will be policed equally and fairly, maintaining the presumption of innocence."

If you stop for a second you will see that you CANNOT "show" that someone has racist views without them doing an "action" that expresses those views. I'm not interested in changing how everyone thinks or feels. That's not possible. We have been down ALL roads before. So please understand this. I have personally been involved in black empowerment and all my (personal) solutions are about economics. I am personally not a fan of marches. However, there is only so much that can be done when you have an external force constantly on the neck of your community, constantly threatening your life. So I understand the protests and hearts of the protesters and I am actually surprised that people are finally responding and finally seeing what we've been saying was there the whole time. But it's like white society literally looked at us like we were crazy or liars; like we would ALL (millions) lie about how bad the police were in our community. Now you see, not only a man get murdered in broad daylight, but also even how elderly protesters are getting pushed. Come on... And if they do that to an elderly white man, just imagine what they would do to a young black man at night when they can all get together and tell the same story and its their word against his. Just imagine that. Because they lied and said the old man tripped. And clearly you can see he was pushed. Clearly, cops were aiming at reporters and hitting cameramen. So who's lying? Who?

I was emotional when a cop thought I was robbing my own church when my father and I went in response to the alarm going off because we lived close by. I was emotional when the cop put his knee on my back and handcuffed me on the pavement like I was some kind of animal. It hurt. And I definitely would have gotten arrested if my father hadn't shown up. But that was a long time ago. When I was more recently given home detention where I could have easily lost my job and income, even though I should have been out on bail, I was pissed, but not in the same way. I had already made up my mind that the answer was that we needed to build our own economy because we would not be equal until our money was.

I know that a lot of racists aren't going to change. I know that isolated white communities often produce racists because they never have real (regular) experiences with black people. Therefore, they can be a sort of fictional construct crafted by the media and their perception in pop culture. They don't like rap music. Hey, I don't like most of it either. I listen to reggae. I'm not stereotypical in any way. I now live in a predominantly white neighborhood but still have at least a few black families on my street. All my neighbors seem nice. America can be nice.

I over heard a drunk guy saying something racist, more than likely directed at me, but hey... that's his OPINION. You are entitled to that. If you secretly hate black people, seems like a waste of mental energy, but that's fine if that's your choice and its not infringing upon my rights, liberty, or my pursuit of happiness. Now when my kids get told to go back to the cotton fields and other overtly racist garbage at their school, yeah it upsets me that they have to go through that, but that's their parents speaking, and their more isolated community speaking.

(cont'd)

And yes some of those kids might grow up and apply to be police officers. I don't want them to be denied because of what they said when they were 14. But if they have to take some kind of bias test involving threat level detection from black people, if they fail, then no, I don't want them serving in a community where black people can be victimized by their representation of law and order. They're there to protect and serve. If they act like a gang then the gang needs to be policed. And it seems like there was a time in which officers were afraid of Internal Affairs. That no longer seems to be the case.

In that case you need non-combat trained civilians who are armed with psychology degrees and social worker, to respond to many if not most of the calls, paired with a regular police officer. That person should deal with the "talking" part of the job and decide if the threat level warrants the combat trained officer to get out of the car while they fall back and record.

At the same time police forces need to be de-militarized because guns are a form of power and when you give them tanks and assault rifles you're teaching them that this level of force is sometimes necessary. And if THAT (military) level of force is sometimes necessary (or why else would they be allowed to buy it) then lesser levels of force are more necessary in many other situations. You don't bring an assault rifle to a knife fight. It makes it into a gun fight. Giving cops certain weapons changes the mentality. The problem is that we think that because they have a badge and uniform that they are trustworthy. Black people know they're not, that they LIE, that they falsify reports, that they plant evidence, and we so often have to take bad plea deals to serve some time just so that we don't end up doing hard time for crimes we didn't commit but that society thinks we're guilty of. African Americans are also 50% more likely to be innocent than other convicted murderers and spend longer in prison.

https://research.msu.edu/innocent-african-americans-more-likely-to-be-wrongfully-convicted/

"In addition, the report, officially titled, “Race and Wrongful Convictions in the United States,” found innocent black people are about 12 times more likely to be convicted of drug crimes than innocent white people."

"“Of the many costs the war on drugs inflicts on the black community, the practice of deliberately charging innocent defendants with fabricated crimes may be the most shameful,” said University of Michigan Law Professor Samuel Gross, the author of “Race and Wrongful Convictions in the United States” and senior editor of the National Registry of Exonerations."

We're not, as a community, as criminal as people think because of how often charges are flat out fabricated to boost numbers and make more money off our community, keeping us in and out of court. We're not several times more likely to be innocent or killed accidentally. That's racism!

Police have to stop being treated like an endangered species made of porcelain. Police lives matter. So do black lives. But police are trained to protect themselves first and foremost. If they're scared they think that's cause enough to shoot. That isn't the same bar for the rest of us. So if they lie and say that they, even though they have guns, tasers, batons, handcuffs, and sometimes vests, and backup, that they were scared, that's all they need to commit and get away with murder. And juries act like their badge prevents them from lying or that the law is so sacred to police officers that they wouldn't ever commit perjury. If you're that scared then you're in the wrong line of work!

Romanticized duty or not, THEY ARE NORMAL PEOPLE.

However, many normal people in positions of power allow that power to go to their heads. I have a boss like that too. Many people do or have in the past. Power and authority get abused all the time. That's why we have multiple levels of power and authority. But when the higher level almost always uses their power, not as a check and balance, but like an OG protecting his corner boys, then the system doesn't work. You may see a cop disappear after one too many complaints but he is probably simply working in a different precinct now. And they can regularly clean up their own records of misconduct. This is not normal. If you work at McDonald's and get caught spitting in the food they don't move you to a different store. You get fired.

Workplace laws don't mean a d-mn if no one reports you or if the one person who might think for a second about reporting you realizes that other people will lie and say it didn't happen and that they will be picked on and bullied for ratting out their fellow cop. That's why the whole bad apples argument falls on deaf ears. Because everyone else around them enables it and allows it to continue. Again... it's all about improper behavior. If you listen to the Mark Fuhrman tapes this is not just idle talk from a racist, but rather how his racism informed his performance. Racists don't just muse about racist ideas intellectually when they have a badge. They look for opportunities. And if they're hostile towards whites because their normal disposition is already that bad? Then when a black person looks at him wrong on the wrong day, that's all it takes. And if we can prevent terrorist plots, why not this? Why not domestic terrorism against black and brown people?

So yes, profiling no, but testing, yes. Testing, retraining, bringing in civilian leadership, defunding (doesn't mean taking all money away), changing the rules of engagement, banning choke holds and pressure that cuts off circulation, etc. Why did they think they were allowed to pepper spray protesters because of something the protester said that wasn't a threat? In other words, legal use of first amendment rights. And once they grab you... that's when they can then claim you're "resisting arrest". Everyone saw that, right?

cont'd

But think about this. You're a black person minding your own business. Cops get a tip about a "tall black man" in the area. You happen to be a tall black man too. As soon as they see you walking they jump out, one pulls a gun and the other starts yelling commands at you. Before you can figure out what's going on (because they feel no obligation to tell you) they're grabbing you and roughing you up (if they haven't already shot you).

Your body's natural reaction is to protect itself. So guess what happens when your hands or arms move to intercept what you think might be a blow? And again, you don't know what they're responding to or what level of force they already think is needed. So your little hand or arm movement is instantly taken as provocation; as resisting. And then they immediate feel like they have to subdue you because that's what they're trained to do. Every human being has a natural in-born fight or flight response. Guess which one you're allowed to do with the police? Neither. And even if you have no weapon at all, they can still say you kept resisting and they were scared because omg, like you have the strength of 10 men, so it's like they had to kill you. It was either you or them... and their families. (not yours. just theirs)

Encounters like this happen all the time and even police cameras have funny ways of malfunctioning or being turned off right before the police so something wrong. This should be considered premeditation. The law needs to have different standards to allow police to do their jobs but the law cannot grant blanket immunity for every cop who has dreamed of being James Bond and having a license to kill.

I can and want to talk about solutions all day, but the biggest hurdle, again, isn't the solutions. It's getting people to recognize that solutions are needed. It's getting people to stop blaming black people for the way that they are policed. You have to appeal to people's morality and their humanity in order for that to happen. Some people are members of the choir and don't need that and I'm sure that's where you are. But others aren't there. They're not in the choir. They're not even in the congregation because they have mildly racist ideas about black people and think that the crime stats confirm those ideas and that police are just doing their jobs, putting down violent black people.

Some of these people you wont convince because they's just plain racist to the point of hatred. But others have racist ideas out of misunderstanding, false information, propaganda, right wing pundits and talking heads. "The System" as we call it, doesn't just work against black people, but also white society too. It's constantly playing a cultural war, trying to make the majority less tolerant towards the minority. When they tell you George Floyd had a criminal record, it's not an accident. It's so you wont feel sorry for him. It's so you will see him as more of an animal that was put down. White supremacy always has a non-physical lynching that goes along with the physical lynching so that the people doing the physical lynching feel like they're doing the right thing. THIS IS THE SAME mindset, empowering the mechanisms, that were used against women in Salem during the Salem witch trials.

Think about it.

What is it that allows society to look on while an innocent woman is murdered right in front of them? You have to convince people, or at least raise enough doubt about her innocence. Establish her guilt first as an assumption and them make her prove her own innocence. But if you don't like what she is... there's really nothing she can say to convince you and it's "oh if you survive the drowning then we know you are indeed a witch". How backwards... how do you intellectually justify murder by saying, if we can kill you (as a test) then you might have been innocent? For the black man, if we're chocking you and you survive, doesn't it prove how dangerous you were that so many officers had to hold you down and one actually had to put his knee on your neck?

It's the same. You can say "I can't breathe" but there is really nothing you can say that is good enough when it's not about who you are, but "what" you are. And women were expected to support their men, calling women JUST LIKE THEM witches and lying about them being in league with Satan. Similarly black people were treated as though if we didn't support society's lynching of us that it was because we are "in league" with the criminal element; that we're all "bad apples". Funny... 40 million black people and only the police get to have a few bad apples. For racists... all 41.4 million... are bad. This is bigger than the police and yet... you will only hear me advocating against racists in positions of power. But... this can including people who get to make hiring decisions at a public company, prosecutors, judges, loan officers, landlords, etc. Against some of these, my solution is economic because we shouldn't have to depend on people in these positions. But for "public servants", elected or appointed... there has to be a standard.

We are mostly in agreement, but where I think we probably differ is that from my perspective you have to root out racism from the higher offices down to the lowest, because it can be hard to detect and prove. So you have to have sufficient processes and reporting and transparency to remove the "hood", so to speak, from white supremacy. Until you do that the racists, like hackers, will keep finding different doors and opportunities to inflict damage against the black community to keep us from equality and the American dream. But if every AMERICAN can't have that dream why should they get to have it? Meanwhile, the black community would greatly appreciate your support and if you can't support us, please, at least don't fall victim to white supremacy programmed propaganda, and attack us and our organizations trying to fight this, on their behalf. Please and thank you.

Yea, which is why I've kept explaining that ensuring the narrative shifts away from race and to discriminatory action (in this case 'Police brutality') will have a greater reach and leverage and greater change. It's not so much about education, as racist folk are not ignorant about it they are just bigoted about it... so making the narrative more relevant to more people means the bigotry looses its foundation in those who have it and can more easily be dislodged and die out within the bigot.

Adder wrote: Yea, which is why I've kept explaining that ensuring the narrative shifts away from race and to discriminatory action (in this case 'Police brutality') will have a greater reach and leverage and greater change. It's not so much about education, as racist folk are not ignorant about it they are just bigoted about it... so making the narrative more relevant to more people means the bigotry looses its foundation in those who have it and can more easily be dislodged and die out within the bigot.

Unfortunately, I have to disagree. There is a bounty of evidence online that shows a deep ignorance of history with regards to race, precisely because the only ones talking about it are racists and those impacted by them. We talk to people all the time who don't think the Civil war was about slavery, don't know about when the racists switched from Democrat to Republican, think Lincoln was always in favor of freeing the slaves, etc. People think they know about racism because they heard of MLK and George Washington Carver and because they hear random things during black history month. This ignorance is so reinforced by our system of education that black students have to go looking for information about their own history because its not taught in schools. People are finally, right now, not turning away from race. And THAT is why changes are happening

You cannot fairly expect people to be subject matter experts in your particular type of suffering... it's impractical for everyone to give it the same attention you consider it deserves. If it is more about the nature of action then the reasons for the action, then you'll find that it becomes more relevant to more people because more people can relate to it from their own life and lived experiences. And no I'm not arguing for ignorance. Basically, IMO, it's also easier to normalize worldviews around common positive values then force a particular worldview to make an example of bad values.

Adder wrote: You cannot fairly expect people to be subject matter experts in your particular type of suffering... it's impractical for everyone to give it the same attention you consider it deserves. If it is more about the nature of action then the reasons for the action, then you'll find that it becomes more relevant to more people because more people can relate to it from their own life and lived experiences. And no I'm not arguing for ignorance. Basically, IMO, it's also easier to normalize worldviews around common positive values then force a particular worldview to make an example of bad values.

Okay let's use Jews as an example. Jews were hated and oppressed. Did you see Schindler's List? I was moved watching that movie. I don't know about you. I definitely wasn't a subject matter expert (not sure why you think anyone is requesting that. seems odd). But I could empathize with what they were going through; because of what was happening to them. And honestly, I know TOTJO is not synonymous with Star Wars and don't want it to be but at least everyone should be familiar with the mythology and familiar with the likenesses and history the underlying story and cultures are based on. Because obviously, the nazis are woven into the fabric of Star Wars.

That being said, why did we feel for the rebels? Why didn't we side with the empire? Were we subject matter experts? Or did we just FEEL? Did we just connect with Luke and Leia and gasp at the morality or lack thereof that allowed the Empire to destroy an entire planet, looking for the rebel alliance? You didn't have to be a wookie to care about Chewbacca. You didn't have to be a robot or an ewok.

So close your eyes and pretend that you see storm troopers kneeling on the necks of cute fuzzy brown ewoks. And whatever you feel, that's what we're asking for. And like V said, in V for Vendetta,

"If you feel as I feel"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IyuK069I-w

I loved this speech; especially as it casts blame fairly upon everyone, including the citizens that have allowed the government to commit these acts of injustice. This is part of the reason African Americans often don't have closer relationships to whites. Why does it have to happen to you in order to feel it? But when a person's dog is injured or threatened... well... sometimes its easier for people to feel empathy and compassion.

V: if you are looking for the guilty you need only look into a mirror

V: People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.

Jewish people were fought for, received reparations, received their own state. The allies fought for them. And trust, when anything even smells antisemitic Jews are all over it and people start passing out denunciations and condemnations left and right and you know it. We've all seen it. And it's important because as much as the allies fought to help right the wrongs of the nazis, the hatred of the nazis remains and if you let that go unchecked and unabated... history may repeat itself.

The hatred against black people is important because unlike Jews, African Americans are not wealthy and not in a position to protect themselves the way that Jews are able to protect themselves from Nazis today (The KKK hates them too). If the criminal justice system even dreamed of oppressing Jewish people, with all the Jewish people who are in positions of wealth and power, the world would stop spinning that day until the threat was taken out. In many ways, oppression against black people has never stopped and often people must be shamed into hiding their racism and at least pretend to get along. But then they put on badges and met after dark wearing white hoods so you couldn't see that they were cops and judges.

Racism has continued to this day because of the efforts to LIMIT the scope and view to just "infractions" that can be explained away by numbers and statistics. But it hasn't died because racists have power and the ability to get away with it. You have to take that power away and how do you know who to take it away from?

Someone shouldn't have to become Hitler and give the extermination order before someone lifts a finger to stop them.

Sorry, I'm not sure how that is in reply to my point, but you did quote me so..... it's not limiting the scope, its expanding the scope by including all groups suffering the same type of discrimination.

And to me Star Wars is a deep metaphorical structure, but Rebels didn't destroy the Deathstar because it was an Empire installation, they destroyed it because it had, and was attacking them. That logic might not stand up within the wider fiction, but I don't view the fiction as gospel so it needn't.

But I can play I guess.... I guess your suggesting the extent of feeling for different people was only proportionate to the awareness of that groups existence. Which I think is what your trying to say about being aware of the victim to feel for the victim. OK, but how much, and does that counter a manifest threatening action they might undertake? Being different, or part of a victimized group, or even an enemy group, does not mean all action against it is discriminatory. Lawful conduct should be proportional, distinct and necessary and race, gender, sex, ability etc really shouldn't come into it much at all if at all.....

Sure yes, when I said subject matter expert it was an exaggeration but how many times has a 'awareness of the history of black slavery' been thrown around to cite 'white ignorance' on this matter! I'm on the other side of the world and I've seen footage of it quite a bit. Knowledge is relative to experience and prior knowledge, which is more often then not going to be higher on both counts for African Americans then the rest. But there'd be levels of awareness; starting from the most simple of knowing African Americans exist, moving up to does one know they were victims of slavery, and then increasing in complexity through the historical details and contemporary manifestations of it among them and the rest of the community as a result. It really should require very much awareness at all to know enough to know racism is wrong, so the problem of racists seems to be not in the awareness but in the personification of the suffering, hence my point..... for IMO you don't achieve that by making other people suffer.

This is part of the reason African Americans often don't have closer relationships to whites. Why does it have to happen to you in order to feel it?

Huh? I don't quite get what you mean.... 'whites' don't need to experience something to feel something. That would be a bizarrely racist thought to have let alone say, so feel free to clarify if you like. I could presume that its part of your apparent point about what I'm calling 'awareness', but then it would seem that you might be arguing for making 'white' people suffer discrimination to end discrimination from 'white' people.

To be honest I'm sort of tired of the whole labels, people are not white or black. You can always find people who are mostly more of one then the other, but its all mixed. Racists make a point of it, because it serves their bigotry, but for everyone else its just people. If a community has a culture which they associate to a 'race', then that is fine... but it serves no purpose to think everyone else thinks that way. I'd rather just judge people on their actions, not their appearance... and no that does not mean I don't see color.

Oh, did I forget the Jews.... to me I identified with the human suffering of them, not the Jew suffering. Same way I identify with the suffering of black people etc. Doesn't take much subject matter knowledge at all, basically none for me since I (and most people I know) extend my empathy beyond humans.

Adder:

And to me Star Wars is a deep metaphorical structure, but Rebels didn't destroy the Deathstar because it was an Empire installation, they destroyed it because it had, and was attacking them. That logic might not stand up within the wider fiction, but I don't view the fiction as gospel so it needn't.

Um... sorry. Can't agree there. According to one of my favorite movies we saw how the plans for the Death Star got to the rebellion in the first place and how people fought and died just so that Luke knew where to fire those two proton torpedoes. Of course this is not about Star Wars trivia. The point is that the Death Star was recognized as a threat because of what it was and represented and whose hands that power was in. As soon as the empire was established all the power that used to be represented by the PEOPLE (we the people) was usurped and coopted by authoritarianism. And this often takes the form of making people so afraid that they believe that whatever you are doing to protect them is justified. The rebels; however, knew what was happening and what it was turning into. That's why they started as the resistance and later became the rebels. Similarly, we as a society, should always resist the slide into authoritarianism and fear and hate, before we all find ourselves on the other side; getting tear gassed while asserting our first amendment rights.

If you wait until after the death star shoots you, it's too late. You can't then prosecute them for destroying a planet because they'll just be like "where is the rebel base" until they've destroyed every threat and then they'll say "we have brought peace to the galaxy".

So the point is, that if we know racists are in positions of power we need to get them out. If they want to be a gas station attendant, I'm 100% cool with that. A judge? No. I don't even mind if they make a ton of money making parts for airplanes because at least the airplanes they're working on will be used by everyone and they wouldn't have a means of targeting a racial group through that job.

Sometimes I feel like Mace Windu. It's like if you see what's happening, and that thing that's happening is not going to hesitate to destroy you and use whatever power they can not just for personal corruption but for corrupting the whole social order, why not try and stop it? In the case of Palpatine it really was too late to go through regular government channels because he had already taken them over.

Adder:

It really should require very much awareness at all to know enough to know racism is wrong, so the problem of racists seems to be not in the awareness but in the personification of the suffering, hence my point..... for IMO you don't achieve that by making other people suffer.

You may be confusing me for Jane Elliot here. In no way have I ever stated, at any time, in any location, that I wanted other people to suffer. What I want is the end of racism and white supremacy and the fair and equitable restoration of justice upon those impacted. If you rob a bank for 5 million dollars, and a court finds you guilty, can you really get upset when the money is taken back? If you're suffering as a result of being "robbed" of this money you stole... is that the same thing as the suffering of those you stole the money from?

I don't want anyone to suffer. But there has to be consequences for hurting people. Otherwise, if there are incentives to hurt people and no consequences for hurting people then people will simply continue to hurt people. Even with consequences, people hurt people. So why would they stop when there are no consequences? I don't know. Maybe you mean something different by "making people suffer". Maybe I'm taking this in the wrong context. If so, please elaborate.