Trump Consciousness

Andrew, wow.

You make many, many, many compelling points and arguments. Your personal story too... that you shared it (and I understand the challenges you seem to have overcome).

One of my character defects is that I seem to be so easily convinced of something sometimes... and with this recent insanity I had concluded that 400 years of enslavement and then covert systematic and institutional racism is the true, underlying factor in the explosion we see now. But I am seeing it from a long term POV and I was convinced that it is deep in the system which implants it into the institution of criminal justice as it exists in America.

But I read every word of your post and I completely see the point
Another thing too is the School Choice issue. My experience is that everyone except "dug in," "die hard" liberals want it! My experience is that even though a most of the American black community actually want it, their so called representatives (the Democratic Party) vote no, no, no on it each and every time. They resist it at every level of government whether that be local, state or federal. The reason? So they keep the teacher's union happy, get their votes and remain in power. The Democrats protect the teachers union.

What do unions do? Well, the original reason for unions was to prevent exploitation. But in the case of the teacher's union, the pendulum has swung so hard that it protects salaries that governments can't afford and inhibits natural competition for teaching jobs that should be filled based on competency, not protection. And so because the governments have to pay these saleries, as well as the massively overpaid "administrative" branches in these public school systems, all sorts of other corners are cut or... when they aren't, massive taxation (property taxes) kill struggling families... and still they get crappy education!

If ever there is a way to dig out of a hole, it is through experiencing a better education system.

It seems this issue is also systemic and, at this time, held that way by Democrats sadly.
Indoctrination works best on younger minds.
I wish I was being hyperbolic. I’m in my 40’s, in school I was taught both sides of a story most of the time.
Look at this current expert Tim Wise. See who he is advising and his recent appearance on CNN.
Current! White children need to be abused to make up for black abuse? That to me, in more gentle terms is a “mean girl” equivalence. Putting others down doesn’t raise others up.
How can I trust academia now? which flows into media which is mostly owned by 5 companies which have large backing from communist country’s.
Experts like Dr Debra Soh have been forced out of academia because they won’t abide by misinformation. From her I learnt that Asians are subjected to harsher standards of acceptance into college. That’s where this equality stuff gets twisted. If I need medical advise in the future from a younger person I’ll now probably choose an Asian male over anyone else.123DA6C1-523A-4D16-8982-5D5EA98D98AD.jpeg
 
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I don't think that is unusual in situations where the goal is to minimize risk. That may not make sense to people who think, "how are they minimizing risk when the man died!", but in hundreds of previous situations where the exact same method was used, no injury resulted from it. They may not have had reason to believe that death was a possible outcome. Also, easy for you to say while sitting in an armchair typing into your computer. Second-guessing the work of a police officer is not something I would trust anyone to do with any measure of accuracy who hadn't worked as a police officer himself for enough years to understand the kind of situations they encounter.
He was already subdued and then he put his knee to his neck...look it up. Many officers around the nation have criticized this technique.
 
He was already subdued and then he put his knee to his neck...look it up. Many officers around the nation have criticized this technique.
Whenever I see the word "many" in front of a class of person in an argument of any kind, I know it can be ignored as a fallacious appeal to authority. What is left out is whether any of the "many" are right. It is entirely plausible that there are issues where only one in a billion people knows the correct or true answer to a question and others where all but one would know it. In matters related to expertise like this one, you can count on large numbers on both sides of an issue and details that neither side is aware of that would affect their opinion.

With that in mind, I will accept for the sake of argument that "many police officers around the country" have criticized the technique. I also know that those Minnesota officers were trained to use the technique and were told when to use it. From the available data on the case, it looks like they followed procedure. Saying that the procedure is bad is moving the goal posts because that issue is irrelevant if the officers were doing what they had been trained to do. Also, like most things of this nature, you are likely looking at a difference of opinion among professionals. Clearly some in law enforcement thought the technique was perfectly fine or it never would have found its way into print.
 
Chris7 has been utilizing many of the trained techniques of an internet troll, the specific type that is driven by Marxist ideology and sometimes folks like this are paid.

There's an "ignore" feature at this forum. ;)
 
Chris7 has been utilizing many of the trained techniques of an internet troll, the specific type that is driven by Marxist ideology and sometimes folks like this are paid.

There's an "ignore" feature at this forum. ;)
I used to police that kind of thing on this forum back before I started my PhD. I still do sometimes but am a bit looser in this thread because it isn't about parapsychology. That said, the form of intolerant skepticism found in the parapsychology threads is nothing compared to what can be found in political threads from adherents to a certain party. For that reason, I think this topic, Climate Change, Covid-19, Evolution, and even abortion are all valid topics for exploring the meaning of true skepticism vs. the "scientism" we see in its place all too often.
 
Whenever I see the word "many" in front of a class of person in an argument of any kind, I know it can be ignored as a fallacious appeal to authority. What is left out is whether any of the "many" are right. It is entirely plausible that there are issues where only one in a billion people knows the correct or true answer to a question and others where all but one would know it. In matters related to expertise like this one, you can count on large numbers on both sides of an issue and details that neither side is aware of that would affect their opinion.

With that in mind, I will accept for the sake of argument that "many police officers around the country" have criticized the technique. I also know that those Minnesota officers were trained to use the technique and were told when to use it. From the available data on the case, it looks like they followed procedure. Saying that the procedure is bad is moving the goal posts because that issue is irrelevant if the officers were doing what they had been trained to do. Also, like most things of this nature, you are likely looking at a difference of opinion among professionals. Clearly some in law enforcement thought the technique was perfectly fine or it never would have found its way into print.
I've researched this alot and I have yet to see any officers or training officers say that officers learn this technique in training.
 
Can you think of a scenario where those statistics don't represent the real problem?
I agree but what is the real problem?
Just racism?
I wish it was that simple as that’s learnt behaviour & can be changed. (I know there’s examples of people like David Duke, who can’t be helped without a major divine life lesson.)
I think it’s deeper. “Show me the child at 7 and I will tell you the man” Aristotle quote, I think.
It’s still true today.
As a past guest Conner Habib said, modern society is disconnecting from spirituality.
I see a lot of “Role models” as vapid materialists or degenerates. (My niece showed me teen vogues twitter recently. That perfectly demonstrates how our youth is being sexualised and indoctrinated.) Throw in violence, lack of parental time & guidance, drugs etc This is the issue that needs to change. But it’s bigger than politics.
 
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I had learned that Minneapolis is one of the few places that has this outdated technique. I read the article you posted and it seems to me that the officer did not follow the guidelines. He was already handcuffed and subdued so they weren't in danger and there were other options...ie there's four of them. I don't think his defense will hold up.
 
I had learned that Minneapolis is one of the few places that has this outdated technique. I read the article you posted and it seems to me that the officer did not follow the guidelines. He was already handcuffed and subdued so they weren't in danger and there were other options...ie there's four of them. I don't think his defense will hold up.
Your opinion has been noted and this topic has been exhausted for the time being. That is, the issue of the neck hold. Since you have nothing new to say about it, I'll look forward to comments about something else from you in the future.
 
He was already handcuffed and subdued so they weren't in danger and there were other options...ie there's four of them. I don't think his defense will hold up.
I suspect that it is easier to say that if you don't have to face large, violent men, possible in a drug induced frenzy. I guess you could still head-but, and bite, and even spitting might be considered an attack at the moment.

David
 
You've got three questions here. I'll deal with them in order:

1) The term PoC (for "Person of Color"): I don't like any terms designed to designate race, particularly those who are descended from Africa, because the terms either don't make sense or are offensive to the people they are applied to.

"Negro": an old fashioned term, meaning "Black" in French. It is offensive to some people described this way.
"Black": as far as I can tell, this is less offensive to people described this way than any other term, making it my preference. However, if "black" is meant to approximate a fair description of skin color, it misses the mark for over 99% of the people I've met who would be described as "black". The darkest skin I've ever seen on a person was an Indian (from India). His skin could be mistaken for black. I've seen dozens of Indians whose skin color is so dark (no higher than 50 on a 256 point scale of luminance) that shadows are hidden by their skin color. I have seen photos of Africans that appear to have such dark skin but photos for publication are almost always manipulated, particularly contrast, so I prefer to trust my observations of people I've seen in person.
"N----": I won't spell this one out because it is so offensive that I won't speak it aloud or write it out. It is a corruption of "Negro", pronounced with a slur. Oddly, there is a subset of people who describe themselves this way without being offended. I'm offended by it, even when people use it to describe themselves.
"D----": Another offensive term, this one somewhat archaic, refers to "dark" skin. This is more accurate than "Black" and its variations because it is more likely that someone described this way will have darker skin than someone not described this way but that isn't always the case. My sister with a suntan is darker than many people who would be described like this. I've also met people whose skin is lighter than mine in the middle of winter who would be described like this, and those who I mistakenly believed were Caucasian.
"Colored": Read literally, this one is funny in a grammatical sense. Everyone has a color to start with, so a "colored" person would be someone who has been "colored" to change their color into something else. This clearly isn't the intended meaning but it is what I think of when I run across the word used to describe a person. The intended meaning is yet another reference to skin color but is inadequate in two ways. The first is that everyone has a color, so saying that someone is "colored" doesn't distinguish that person from anyone else. Second, the word "color" can be translated as "hue" and all humans have very similar hues in their skin. There is a range but it is extremely narrow. All human skin, barring those who have turned blue from ingesting silver, is a variation of orange. It is normally a low saturation orange, differentiated by luminosity, where some are lighter than others, depending on how close to the equator their ancestors lived. Some are a slightly yellower orange, others slightly more red, but neither are red or yellow. They remain orange but with a shift in either direction. I don't like this term because it is inexact, ungrammatical, and people described this way sometimes find it demeaning.
"Person of Color": This term, the one you used, has all the defects of "colored" in addition to sounding pretentious. It's like saying that the person is special or unique due to their connection or relationship to hue.
"African": No problem with this but there are Caucasian Africans descended from European settlers so it doesn't differentiate very well.
"African-American": This has the same problem as "African" and the additional problem that not all people described this way are African, American, or descended from either. They might be Jamaican, Aborigine, or even Swedish. This term doesn't bother me as most of the others because it isn't usually considered offensive by the people it is applied to and it does describe a large number of those it is applied to accurately. These days that may not be a majority, because it works best with people whose families have lived in America for over a hundred and fifty years and those who have immigrated to the US from Africa of their own will more recently.

There may be other terms but these are the ones that came to mind this morning. Of the lot, my preferred terms are, "black" and "African-American". Both are inaccurate but they seem to be accepted by the people they are applied to and there seems to be general agreement that they are not offensive. Despite this, I find constant references to race offensive. I prefer to think of people as people, just as Morgan Freeman said on this subject.

2) Your second question is whether I believe there is systemic or institutional racism in America or the American police force. My answer to both is "no". If I thought either was true, I wouldn't hesitate to denounce it. That said, I believe those claims are not only false but outright lies by people who should know better (and likely do). The lies are believed by their victims. They are victims of the lies because the lies persuade them to behave in a self-destructive and sometimes criminal manner. That in turn creates the potential for the lie to become true, by stimulating fear of one race and then pitting two or more races against each other. Your example of "where there is smoke, there is fire" is fitting but not in the way you might think. Sometimes, and these days it is increasingly the case, it is computer-generated. There are people who profit in various ways from racial strife. This was true in Booker T. Washington's day (which is why he complained about it) and it is true today. It does no one any good to perpetuate this myth and does considerable harm.

There is considerable research on the subject of systemic racism in the police force. Many of those studies return a conclusion that it is not so. More than that, it isn't even close. Some have found, if one can say there is an opposite to a thing like "racism" that the opposite is true. By a very large margin, for instance, white officers are far less likely to discharge a weapon against a black suspect than black police officers. Although suspects described as "unarmed black men" have been killed in police encounter, two critical items are often left out of those descriptions. The first is that the term "unarmed" appears to describe the suspect's state at the start of the encounter. If they become armed during the encounter, they are still described as "unarmed". For instance, in one recent case, an "unarmed suspect" grappled with a police officer, took his gun, and tried to shoot him with it. The police officer managed to get the better of the suspect and shot him. The second item, alluded to in the previous example, is that in at least half of these examples, the police officer is being attacked by the suspect at the time his weapon is discharged. In other words, they are clear examples of self-defense. My impression is that white officers are so terrified by the possibility they will be called "racist" if they shoot or injure a black suspect that they have ignored their police training to avoid that outcome. Some have died because they didn't defend themselves adequately for this reason.

It is also useful to be aware of how often this things happen and where they happen. If you look at the number of shootings involving a white police officer and a black suspect, they range between about 9-15 per year. Those numbers tend to about half the number of white police officers killed by black suspects. Both of those numbers are dwarfed by the number of black victims killed by black suspects and white victims killed by black suspects. Those higher numbers are dwarfed again by the number of police encounters overall, which is in the millions per year. Another factor often ignored by the media in discussions of this subject are the many black people who serve in government and the police force. There are cities that have a near black population majority (like Baltimore), a black mayor, black police commissioner, black police chief, and nearly 50% of the police force is black. There are examples of those departments in those cities being described as examples of "systemic racism" after one of the exceedingly rare examples of a white police officer shooting a black suspect occurs there.

Some say that all the evidence one needs of the racist American justice system is the number of black people incarcerated in American prisons. This can also be an indicator of who is committing the crimes. If they happen to be black more often than not, they will go to prison. Keep in mind that not all crimes are solved, not all criminals are caught, and not all criminals who are tried are convicted. The criminals who are caught and convicted represent a subset of the total number of criminals in the country at any given time. Whether the proportion caught and incarcerated represents their ratio by race of the total number of criminals cannot be known but the hurdles to incarceration are so high that even demonstrably guilty people are set free. This leads to the conclusion that most most of the people in prison are guilty of the crime they were convicted of. If this is true, then the system isn't racist because they are not favoring black incarceration over non-black incarceration. The preference is to incarcerate criminals over non-criminals, and that is as it should be.

Let's also be aware of the effect of black-on-black crime. Black suspects overwhelmingly prefer other black people as their victims. In some cases, this means one group of criminals committing crimes against another group of criminals. It also means black criminals destroying the lives of perfectly honest, hard-working black people, ravaging communities, making things much harder for other black people. This is why many black people want police in their communities. They have been known to beg for police to return to their communities. A syndrome you will find in America if you look is this: a black community is ravaged by crime. A white officer injures or kills a black suspect in a confrontation. Protests against the police erupt. The police voluntarily withdraw from the neighborhood, either to satisfy the demands, or out of caution for their own safety. After the police leave, crime gets worse than it was before. Members of the community beg for the police to return. They do, and crime goes down again, until the next time a cause is made of a police interaction and the cycle repeats.

My impression is that crime is a very bad thing, whether it is perpetrated by black people, white people, or space aliens. Crime is bad no matter who does it. That means I am against crime perpetrated by black criminals, whether the victims are black, white, or anything else. I am also against crime committed by Caucasians, Asians, and any other group you care to name (women, midgets, terriers, etc). Riots are crimes. Incitement to riot is a crime. Inducing a minor to commit a crime is a crime. In my opinion, the biggest criminals, the biggest racists in this entire mix are the media figures who encourage racism and criminal activity to "protest" the "racism" they invented and promote for their own reasons. I'd rather see major figures in entertainment accused of racism than see that accusation generically leveled against the police force in America because I think it actually describes entertainment and media figures much better than it does the police.

In the "fight against racism" we find almost all of the racists one could care to find. There likely are a few hard-core racists around, hiding in the shadows of society but they are marginalized figures with little to no influence. Racism as an ideology is frowned upon by a large consensus of Americans, including me. I have no respect for genuine racists, but the only ones I have seen these days are in the media. Getting back to the fight against racism, I see three groups: 1) promoters of racism. These people are racists themselves because they do make value judgments on the basis of race. The tendency is to equate white skin with moral inferiority or brutality. 2)Victims of promoters. These are people of all races who genuinely believe the racist lies broadcast by the promoters. I consider these people victims because they are harmed by their belief in the lies. At the lowest level of harm, they feel anger or sadness (or both) because of the lies. They are encouraged to engage in activities that disturb other's peace of mind. That also harms them because now they are victimizing others, which reduces their integrity, something they will regret when or if they ever learn the truth. Their protest activities, particularly when they turn violent, create fear in and around their community, perversely creating fear of "black people" because they have now been witnessed behaving irrationally and causing real harm to communities on that basis. Violent participants in riots, or victims who become so enraged by promoter's lies that they become criminals themselves, effectively destroy their own future, the lives of their family, and the lives and future of anyone they victimize, such as the many police officers wounded or killed by protester/rioters in the recent riots. 3) fearful members of all races, including black. These people do not believe the promoter's lies but they are afraid they will come to harm if they don't pretend to go along with them. For this reason, they will, for example, write "black-owned" on the front of their store to prevent it from being looted, or post a black square on Instagram to show fealty, not support, to a cause they don't believe in but don't want to be victimized by.

3) I am American. I was born in Minnesota, grew up poorer than almost any black person you could name, suffered from malnutrition and occasional homelessness as a child, grew up with a schizophrenic single mother who ensured that our family had almost zero support from our communities, which we normally lived in for between three to six months before moving on, never to see anyone we knew again (I've lived at 57 separate addresses, not counting when we lived in our car). The police came to our house/apartment more than once, even arrested my sibling, a Caucasian minor female child. Child Protective Services more than once tried to get my sister and I away from our mother but she always moved before they had a chance. I almost escaped once when I was fourteen, by calling the police to have them pick me up, but my mom arrived first and whisked me away. If my background shows even a hint of the "white privilege" I supposedly experienced, I'd love to know where, because I can't see it. I have never met one person of any race who has personally experienced the terrors I lived through as a kid. When I read memoirs written by abused children, I often find myself mentally competing with them, thinking, "Ha! That wasn't so bad, I've experienced worse." Moreover, it doesn't bother me now. Even as a child, I didn't notice so much because to me, my life was normal because it was the only frame of reference I had. This, I hasten to add, does not mean I haven't read of examples that are worse, I have, it's just that it takes some looking to find them. More importantly, we make of our lives what they become. The end isn't determined by the beginning. To dwell on the past is to destroy one's future. It is for this reason I feel that, even if all the claims of racism were true, and I don't believe they are, it would be better to look forward by constructively working on solutions.

A last note on this, how is it that a protest over the death of one man who dies in police custody can result in the deaths of nine innocent bystanders or police and the crowd's only get bigger, louder, and angrier. Surely by now they would realize that the only appropriate reaction would be to bow their heads in shame, apologize, and meekly volunteer to rebuild their communities and repatriate all the stolen goods looted during this unpleasantness.
Andrew,

Sorry for the long delay in responding. Again, appreciate your taking the time and effort to create your robust post!

On the PoC term, I think we've likely run that one out. As a white man in the U.S. I've tried to be careful when needing to use descriptive terms for people to be non-offensive about it. Black and brown skinned friends and acquaintances have seemed to not take offense at "PoC". I really don't have anything invested in the term myself.

As for finding references to race offensive, I believe that is a nuanced thing as I've seen come to the forefront in our current times. Just as any physical difference between people can be offensive if used pejoratively (or worse), its also something that is relevant to discuss at times. Especially when this difference is a basis for immoral prejudice. Can it be overdone or can it be used to push less scrupulous agendas? Most certainly.

On the topic of racism in law enforcement and in society more broadly, I don't see the world as you do. In my experience, racism remains a very real thing albeit for the most part its been relegated from the light into the shadows so to speak. I do, however, think it is less than it was when I was much younger. It "feels" like there is a gradual shift at play. For example, when I was a kid it wasn't uncommon to hear white men use the "n" word. My father never did so I always found it troubling, but I heard it fairly often. I honestly can't remember the last time I heard a white man use the "n" word. This is all anecdotal however, and simply my own personal experience.

This is where I turn to what others are saying. Its almost like our old discussions of NDEs. Remember those? :)

The materialist skeptic would attack the personal stories of NDE experiencers out of hand; dismissing them as unreliable, as artifacts of subconscious influence, etc. I have the same difficulty dismissing every black American's stories of police harassment and other forms of racism as simply a delusion thrust upon them by the MSM or whatever controlling group you might wish to put forth.

It seems insulting to the general intelligence of people to a) have an experience (NDE or racial harassment) and b) report it as objectively as possible. Both are highly emotional and noteworthy events.

So, when the volume of black Americans, including many who I've known personally, tell me that these things have happened to them, that they fear for their sons (and daughters, but acutely for their sons), that they are distrustful of law enforcement, I take it at face value. The sample size certainly is significant in my experience, both directly and in the media.

Thus, it feels worthwhile and morally right for us as a society to seek to alleviate this suffering if we can.

Finally, I appreciate you sharing your story and find myself inadequate in attempting to understand or relate. I was blessed with two parents who loved me deeply and raised me safe and generally happy. I can only say that I empathize with you for having had to go through such a tough road. Hopefully that does not come across as empty. (Written medium is tough for me to convey such things.)

I would ask you, in the most respectful way possible, if you have reflected on how your experience may impact your views here? You had an extremely difficult background and found the strength to pull your own self up by the bootstraps (and beyond!). Remarkable for sure. And you being remarkable in this regard, might it make it more difficult for you to relate to those who might not have the same strength of character and have suffered from racism? Again, my apologies if I've made too much of an assumption here. It just struck me as I was reading your story.

I'll close again by thanking you for the dialogue. The George Floyd situation has been particularly poignant for me. Sure, the cynic can see that as me buying into some manipulative MSM narrative. But as I've shared, I've seen enough racism myself to find the stories from black Americans as credible. I think we should act and seek to lessen this pain.
 
I suspect that it is easier to say that if you don't have to face large, violent men, possible in a drug induced frenzy. I guess you could still head-but, and bite, and even spitting might be considered an attack at the moment.

David
Handcuffed behind his back, on the ground, prone on his stomach?

The force used wasn't appropriate and certainly wasn't proportional. The eye test here should be enough: four cops should be able to restrain one man in such a situation without choking the life out of him.
 
Where is the police bodycam video of Floyd inside the police car?

Some people say it shows the cops roughing up Floyd, others say it shows him resisting the police.

And your point is?

That this justifies the use of lethal force against a suspected criminal who's handcuffed and on his stomach?

All we know at this point is that the cops had survived whatever threat Floyd may have been to them and had managed to get him handcuffed and on his stomach. What happened prior seems utterly irrelevant. Its a tough job and as cops will tell you they tend to deal with people when they are at their worst.
 
I agree but what is the real problem?
Just racism?
I wish it was that simple as that’s learnt behaviour & can be changed. (I know there’s examples of people like David Duke, who can’t be helped without a major divine life lesson.)
I think it’s deeper. “Show me the child at 7 and I will tell you the man” Aristotle quote, I think.
It’s still true today.
As a past guest Conner Habib said, modern society is disconnecting from spirituality.
I see a lot of “Role models” as vapid materialists or degenerates. (My niece showed me teen vogues twitter recently. That perfectly demonstrates how our youth is being sexualised and indoctrinated.) Throw in violence, lack of parental time & guidance, drugs etc This is the issue that needs to change. But it’s bigger than politics.

We are all of us products of our previous inputs and experiences. I agree that an examination of the child at 7, or probably way earlier, will give a good indication of their future disposition. And this is something we can impact.


Investment (or lack thereof) in quality publicly funded early years education will pay societies back many times over. This has to be the first step and totally within the purview of politics.

Folk smash shit up because they feel they have nothing to lose. We need to build resilience in our citizens. That starts early. I’m also interested in the notion of ‘obedience’. It’s not in fashion but happens to be a core value at my son’s school. Fact is we can’t run societies without it.

We build the societies we deserve.
 
“Folk smash shit up because they feel they have nothing to lose. We need to build resilience in our citizens. That starts early.”

Yes and I also believe there’s a HUGE addiction problem going on. Even cannabis has a higher THL level than 20 years ago. I’ve seen a podcast discussion of people that have become schizophrenic from mild use. Let’s alone the brain destroying chemicals that are flooded in society now.
Colleges are overblown with useless administrators and studies that turn people against common sense. If you think I’m exaggerating check this out.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair
I guess what scares me for youth now is they are not taught critical thinking but ideology.

Obedience, hmmm some like to rebel against that ;) I get what you mean thou. I’ll use the word respect, I think that’s missing. Respect for yourself and other people.
 
Andrew,

Sorry for the long delay in responding. Again, appreciate your taking the time and effort to create your robust post!

On the PoC term, I think we've likely run that one out. As a white man in the U.S. I've tried to be careful when needing to use descriptive terms for people to be non-offensive about it. Black and brown skinned friends and acquaintances have seemed to not take offense at "PoC". I really don't have anything invested in the term myself.

As for finding references to race offensive, I believe that is a nuanced thing as I've seen come to the forefront in our current times. Just as any physical difference between people can be offensive if used pejoratively (or worse), its also something that is relevant to discuss at times. Especially when this difference is a basis for immoral prejudice. Can it be overdone or can it be used to push less scrupulous agendas? Most certainly.

On the topic of racism in law enforcement and in society more broadly, I don't see the world as you do. In my experience, racism remains a very real thing albeit for the most part its been relegated from the light into the shadows so to speak. I do, however, think it is less than it was when I was much younger. It "feels" like there is a gradual shift at play. For example, when I was a kid it wasn't uncommon to hear white men use the "n" word. My father never did so I always found it troubling, but I heard it fairly often. I honestly can't remember the last time I heard a white man use the "n" word. This is all anecdotal however, and simply my own personal experience.

This is where I turn to what others are saying. Its almost like our old discussions of NDEs. Remember those? :)

The materialist skeptic would attack the personal stories of NDE experiencers out of hand; dismissing them as unreliable, as artifacts of subconscious influence, etc. I have the same difficulty dismissing every black American's stories of police harassment and other forms of racism as simply a delusion thrust upon them by the MSM or whatever controlling group you might wish to put forth.

It seems insulting to the general intelligence of people to a) have an experience (NDE or racial harassment) and b) report it as objectively as possible. Both are highly emotional and noteworthy events.

So, when the volume of black Americans, including many who I've known personally, tell me that these things have happened to them, that they fear for their sons (and daughters, but acutely for their sons), that they are distrustful of law enforcement, I take it at face value. The sample size certainly is significant in my experience, both directly and in the media.

Thus, it feels worthwhile and morally right for us as a society to seek to alleviate this suffering if we can.

Finally, I appreciate you sharing your story and find myself inadequate in attempting to understand or relate. I was blessed with two parents who loved me deeply and raised me safe and generally happy. I can only say that I empathize with you for having had to go through such a tough road. Hopefully that does not come across as empty. (Written medium is tough for me to convey such things.)

I would ask you, in the most respectful way possible, if you have reflected on how your experience may impact your views here? You had an extremely difficult background and found the strength to pull your own self up by the bootstraps (and beyond!). Remarkable for sure. And you being remarkable in this regard, might it make it more difficult for you to relate to those who might not have the same strength of character and have suffered from racism? Again, my apologies if I've made too much of an assumption here. It just struck me as I was reading your story.

I'll close again by thanking you for the dialogue. The George Floyd situation has been particularly poignant for me. Sure, the cynic can see that as me buying into some manipulative MSM narrative. But as I've shared, I've seen enough racism myself to find the stories from black Americans as credible. I think we should act and seek to lessen this pain.

Thanks for the thoughtful answer. A couple of items attracted my attention. I will address those:

1) Racist incidents: I do not doubt that these have occurred or that they do occur. My question is whether they are as common as the media implies. For this reason, I do not think the comparison to NDEs works very well because in that case the question is whether they are a genuine phenomenon. That is, whether there is any objective reality to the visions seen by the percipient during the NDE.

2) Racist incidents involving police cause fear among black citizens: I also don't doubt this but for a different reason than yours. From my point of view, the fear felt by (apparently) millions of black citizens across the country is genuine but it is not based on actual crimes against the black community by racist white officers. The fear is caused by the way isolated and rare examples are portrayed by the media. In much the same way that US citizens were told to expect the worst of our Japanese population at the beginning of WWII, to create enough fear that they would acquiesce to sending those people to detention camps, I believe the media has exaggerated real events, oftentimes misconstruing the details, to create a vivid and frightening portrait of American policing.

The way these two things come together is interesting to me because there is a significant disconnect between the two. While I believe in the existence of real racism against blacks (as opposed to the much more obvious and widespread racism against whites and Asians), the incidents chosen by the media to represent racism are poor examples of it. For instance, the death of Trayvon Williams by George Zimmerman.

At the time, it was portrayed as a racism-motivated killing by white racist Zimmerman, who stalked Williams and shot him, though unarmed, with hands in the air, pleading, "Don't shoot." Eyewitness testimony (from black witnesses) and forensic examination of the evidence made it clear that the media's version of events was wrong in many important details. There had been multiple burglaries in the neighborhood. Zimmerman was a neighborhood watch officer. Martin was behaving suspiciously. Martin was high on drugs. Martin had just robbed a store. Martin tried to attack Zimmerman with his own gun. In the scuffle, Zimmerman shot and killed Martin. Two last details about the case are that Zimmerman was Hispanic, not white, and the photo displayed all over TV of Martin was an old photo that made him look small, skinny, and weak compared to Zimmerman. It turns out that at the time of his encounter with Zimmerman, Martin was a physically imposing young man and was larger than Zimmerman.

I don't see how the Martin case becomes an example of institutional racism among white officers in American police departments. Zimmerman wasn't a police officer. He wasn't white. His actions were consistent with self-defense. He had good reason to be suspicious of Martin, who was on drugs, had just robbed a store (which Zimmerman was aware of) and Martin had attacked Zimmerman. One of the after effects of that encounter was rioting and protests against police brutality. First, no police were present during the shooting, so "police" brutality is impossible, and second, what other option did Zimmerman have? Martin at one point had his gun (fingerprints show this). He likely would have shot Zimmerman. Is it police brutality to defend yourself from a would-be murderer?

I don't know that I've read any recent case of police brutality against a black man who was killed that didn't have a good argument against racism as the cause. In at least half of the cases last year (a total of ten, down from thirty-five during Obama's presidency), the officer was in the process of being attacked when the shooting occurred. That means, self-defense is a better explanation. Who has time to wonder about the race of an attacker when they've just driven over your partner in a car at night and are racing toward you at high speed? That actually happened by the way.

I would be far more sympathetic to the Black Lives Matter complaints if the tiny number of examples they discuss as examples of racism-inspired police brutality weren't better explained some other way. I would also expect more examples. Ten cases in a country of three hundred and twenty million people is too small to generalize. I wouldn't even generalize it to the cities they happened in unless all ten cases were in the same precinct, which they aren't. Keep in mind that they aren't simply choosing a small number of representative cases from a large pool of candidates, they are hyping the entire pool of candidates because that's all there is. At the same time, they ignore the much higher numbers of shooting deaths involving black men who shoot each other or who murder other people, regardless of race.

Sorry, RSI symptoms in my elbow just started so I have to cut my answer short here. I may write more later.
 
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