Prejudice and Bigotry in Law Enforcement

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by Tiassa, Jun 23, 2020.

  1. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    Of course white privilege exists. I am a white male and I can see it. And it is systemic and deeply embedded.

    Twenty years ago I bought a house that was built in 1928. In the house was a cigar box with the original paperwork for the house and land. Written in the legal document itself was the line that the buyer agreed to never sell the property to a "colored" person.

    1928 is not ancient history. My grandparents were already married adults by then
     
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  3. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    Were most blacks who are alive today redlined and that's why they are where they are?


    When I was 16 I was arrest by a black cop and charged with "careless and reckless" driving. That's not what I was doing. I was going a little over the speed limit. He charged me with that because you have to put someone in jail with that charge and he wanted to put a white kid in jail. I was there for a few hours and my mom bailed me out (I know "white privilege") and eventually the charges were reduced to too fast for circumstances. You don't put people in jail for that. Your insurance rates don't even go up for a first offense.

    He did it because he could throw a white kid in jail. Years later he was thrown off the police force for his abuse of alcohol.

    Your outrage is selective and all pervasive.
     
    Last edited: Jul 13, 2020
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  5. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Just based on demographics, probably not, because redlining was generally done in cities and suburbs - and back then most people lived outside of cities.
    Great example. Now imagine an entire police force like that. Most cops you see - out to throw a white kid in jail. Your life may have also been a bit different, if you had to deal with that once a month or so for 20 years.
    Are you seriously saying that since I am not outraged by your questionable arrest that I am too selective?

    A man was murdered by police a few months ago because he was black And you weren't outraged by that. Are you honestly saying that someone who is outraged over murder but not outraged over a white guy being arrested for a few hours is "too selective?" If so, you simply don't live in the real world.
     
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  7. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    Of course, everyone is outraged by murder. How often does it happen and to what race? It happens to everyone and it's outrageous.

    There is no entire police force like that that you want me to "imagine". Your imagination is the problem.
     
  8. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

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    to seattle the problem isn't racism its black people talking about you are never going to get through to him with arguments based in empathy he has none
     
  9. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    Then why are you bring it up?

    Which is the most helpful, a rally for "intersectionality" which is telling people that you are being discriminated against even if you don't realize it. You may face a little discrimination as a female, a little more as a woman of color, and a little more if you are also gay.

    Or a rally for delayed self-gratification. Don't buy that Escalade if you don't have a lot of money, buy a used Toyota now, put the rest in the stock market and you'll be able to buy a car forever with no new money added.

    It's not that catchy a rally, I'll admit but which would help people more?
     
  10. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    You expressed none. Can I take it that you were really outraged even if you didn't post that?
    Yes. And it happens more than twice as often to blacks. If you are white, you have a 13 in a million chance of being killed by police a year. If you are black that number is 31 in a million.
    Then you haven't been paying attention.

    Here's an illuminating post by Neil deGrasse Tyson. If there is anyone in the world who can claim, through their position in society, some degree of separation from criminal activity, surely an astrophysicist is near the top of the list. And while at a convention with a bunch of OTHER black astrophysicists the subject of "driving while black" stops came up. Read what he had to say; hopefully you will not claim that what happened to him and his colleagues was all in their imaginations.

    https://www.facebook.com/notes/neil...476613?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook
     
  11. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Because it happened a lot.

    Not everyone has to be arrested unfairly, beaten for no reason or lynched for those things to be problems, either. "It didn't happen to most people" is not a defense for any such crime.
     
  12. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    The one line reply to a list of links accompanied by an actual argument, framed as innuendo via bogus "question".
    Note that the bogus framing - what is "most" doing there? Why "alive today"? Why the restriction to "redlined" themselves? - is well coordinated and long practised. Note the dodge of the topic. None of that is by chance.
    Now, the question can be addressed tangentially, by mentally extracting a thread-relevant sort of question from the tangle of innuendo.
    One answer: all of the black people who moved from Jim Crow to a northern city were sequestered to some significant extent by redlining combined with the other well known tactics of race-sorting.
    Second answer: redlining did not stop when made illegal - it continues in various forms to this day, and affects most black people at one time or another - directly or indirectly.
    Third try: All the black people who live in black neighborhoods in a large American city have been "redlined" in some way.
    Of course.
    It's not conscious. These guys lack self-awareness. (The irony deafness of the US "conservative" is another manifestation.)

    You can see it immediately in their use of terms such as "hate".
    Hatred has little to do with the normal racism and racial bigotry of the US. It is a term used to conceal or deny racism and racial bigotry in various ways (by the assessment requiring mindreading, for example). It is used in a common and influential meme now being spread by the media wing of American Republicanism: {if there is no hatred involved, there is no racial bigotry involved. If you don't hate black people, you aren't racist.}
    That's part of where this goofy claim that racism no longer blights the lives of black people in the US comes from.
    We see the introduction of that framing term has spread it to the posts of others - that is one of the effects of posting as Seattle does, and a few others here.
    That has very seldom been the case, and this isn't one of them.
    The "ignorance" involved - it's more of an amnesia, and requires constant reinforcement - has never been questioned by anyone displaying it in this forum, in my tenure on this forum.
     
    Last edited: Jul 13, 2020
  13. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,849
    I heard him say what happened and it's unfortunately that the group of physicists were all black. What if there were some white members and they had similar stories?

    Also, if you are a cop and you stop someone at night because they are black, can you tell they are black before you stop them?

    White cops are more likely to get shot by a black man than a white cop is likely to shoot a black man. None of these stats tells the complete story but you seem to think so.
     
  14. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    No one is defending an actual crime. It doesn't happen often is a good reason to not blow it out of context.
     
  15. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    Are you a trained monkey? Sometimes I can't tell.
     
  16. Bells Staff Member

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    We are 12 pages in and despite numerous studies, links, articles that shows racism to be a massive problem in the US, Seattle still refuses to accept it.

    At what point do we say 'hmmm, perhaps this isn't ignorance, perhaps this is actually hatred', particularly as he continues to push the same racist stereotypes throughout these 12 pages?

    How many more excuses are we going to make for him?

    Then perhaps you should refrain from making such statements when you are ignorant of the facts and comments made in a thread?

    Because he is racist, Wegs.

    12 pages in, numerous links have been posted, he is still making racist stereotypes and still arguing racism isn't a problem in the US while making said racist stereotypes while scoffing at white privilege.

    Have you ever paused to consider that sometimes, one is ignorant because one is hateful?

    Every single racist and white supremacist is ignorant. They choose to be ignorant because they are racist. As I noted earlier in this thread, racism is a choice. Seattle chooses to be ignorant, because he chooses to be racist.

    Others would disagree.

    You can lead a horse to water, but you can't force him to drink it. He has been provided with more than enough of the correct information to educate him and make him aware that he is wrong and perhaps provide an inkling of self reflection.

    Here is the thing about racists Wegs, they don't give a toss and they will refuse to acknowledge it, or worse, they will complain about the information provided and they will continue with the same racist stereotypes while denying racism is an issue and that the only reason black people are poor is because of those racist stereotypes..

    You have read a lot of Seattle's posts? That's nice. I have had to deal with countless racist white supremacists in my time and thwy all exhibit the same pattern as Seattle exhibited throughout this thread..

    Because that is what he chooses. And it is a deliberate choice.

    Denial is the heartbeat of racism, beating across ideologies, races and nations. It is beating within us. Many of us who strongly call out [President] Trump’s racist ideas will strongly deny our own. How often do we become reflexively defensive when someone calls something we’ve done or said racist? How many of us would agree with this statement: “‘Racist’ isn’t a descriptive word. It’s a pejorative word. It is the equivalent of saying, ‘I don’t like you.’” Those are actually the words of White supremacist Richard Spencer, who, like Trump, identifies as “not racist.” How many of us who despise the Trumps and White supremacists of the world share their self-definition of “not racist”?

    What’s the problem with being “not racist”? It is a claim that signifies neutrality: “I am not a racist, but neither am I aggressively against racism.” But there is no neutrality in the racism struggle. The opposite of “racist” isn’t “not racist.” It is “antiracist.” What’s the difference? One endorses the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist or racial equality as an antiracist. One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people, as a racist, or locates the roots of problems in power and policies, as an antiracist. One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an antiracist. There is no in between space of “not racist.” The claim of “not racist" neutrality is a mask for racism.... This may sound harsh, but it’s important at the outset that we apply one of the core principals of antiracism, which is to return the word “racist” itself back to its proper usage. “Racist” is not — as Richard Spencer argues — a pejorative. It is not the worst word in the English language; it is not the equivalent of a slur. It is descriptive, and the only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it — and then dismantle it. The attempt to turn this usefully descriptive term into an almost unusable slur, is, of course, designed to do the opposite: to freeze us into inaction.

    I am not really allowed to answer that question.

    But I do think the repeated excuses for racism and racist members has to stop, be it from staff and members alike.
     
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  17. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    He has no self-awareness whatsoever. He has no idea where all the ridiculous crap he typed there came from.
    And you could notice how much more likely that is if you are black, in the US. But you don't.
     
  18. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

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    is it just me or at this point his willful ignorance of systemic racism is just gaslighting. Like seriously.
     
  19. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    I've basically said that I don't see race and you take this as racism? That's an odd definition for racism. It's even more odd to take this as white supremacy?
     
  20. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    re the "troll" part:
    How about his many dozens of posts that - in their entirety - read like this:
    - - - -
    To be fair, there's a real problem with the word "privilege". A privilege by definition is something one must earn in some way. Especially in the US, originator of the Bill Of Rights, the ordinary civil rights and straightforward good treatment by authorities and so forth that white people enjoy are not privileges, surely. No one should have to earn them.

    Liberal, lefties, etc, should leave that kind of language twisting to the Republican voting base. It's part of keeping reality on our side.
    - - - -
    You would need lots of white members who all had similar numbers of similar stories each.

    White physicists don't have similar stories in anything like that frequency. Tyson knows that. And you know it. That's the point.
    It's either that or another attempt at "humor".
    It's so obviously racist a claim that national comedians use it to identify their comic characters as racist.
     
    Last edited: Jul 14, 2020
  21. Bells Staff Member

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    24,270
    That is why you rifle through the racist stereotypes about Black people, Jews, Asians throughout this thread...?
     
  22. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    I don't. If you are talking about group average assets that isn't a stereotype. If it is why is it used regarding "average white assets"?
     
  23. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    No, I don't know it and he doesn't know it nor do you. That's the point.
     

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