Facts about racism

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Smite!

History will show just how just divisive this mass hysteria period has has been and how it totally contradicts the values of the 60s civil rights movement. It is a step back, not forward. Intersectionality, and the self-described Marxist academics behind it have a lot to answer for.

If you doubt the racism in movement for BLM leadership please read their literature, public statements, and website. Also listen to black and white commentators who critisised them from across the political spectrum. These people are called coons by BLM supporters, despite not pandering to negative stereotypes and thinking for themselves.

If you were to compare the rhetoric to white supremacists/separatist spiel it isn't all that different. There are a bunch total unreasonable demands that do nothing to improve race relations and worse than the same failed policies since LB Johnson. Of course no resentment from other disadvantaged people will occur once these policies are implemented....

Movement for BLM do nothing but talk down black people, telling them they are always victims and this is overwhelming the fault of white people. This includes educated middle class black people. This is worsening race relations.

Do you think Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King would endorse movement for BLM if they were still alive? No way. They had principles, they wanted people to be get along.

Bitterness and resentment does not make for principled civil rights

The key thing is not only is back on black crime an issue, there are plenty of people not facing justice for murder, just like they say the police aren't.

Also while they are are example of the police acting wrongly there is no evidence that police who do this are less likely to be convicted if it is a black victim. Nor is it the case that police never face justice of wrong doing when it is a black victim.

Also if you cite their own example of police brutality, many of the named are very poor examples if you study the cases. Yet you have celebrities reading the name as if they know anything about these cases.

blacklivesmatter.com


I bet their members share the same concerns.


Except they aren't suggesting that.

Black Lives Matter Common Misconceptions:

9. The movement hates police officers. Police officers are people. Their lives have inherent value. This movement is not an anti-people movement; therefore it is not an anti-police-officer movement. Most police officers are just everyday people who want to do their jobs, make a living for their families, and come home safely at the end of their shift. This does not mean, however, that police are not implicated in a system that criminalizes black people, that demands that they view black people as unsafe and dangerous, that trains them to be more aggressive and less accommodating with black citizens, and that does not stress that we are taxpayers who deserve to be protected and served just like everyone else. Thus the Black Lives Matter movement is not trying to make the world more unsafe for police officers; it hopes to make police officers less of a threat to communities of color. Thus, we reject the idea that asking officers questions about why one is being stopped or arrested, about what one is being charged with, constitutes either disrespect or resistance. We reject the use of military-grade weapons as appropriate policing mechanisms for any American community. We reject the faulty idea that disrespect is a crime, that black people should be nice or civil when they are being hassled or arrested on trumped-up charges. And we question the idea that police officers should be given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to policing black communities. Increasingly, the presence of police makes black people feel less rather than more safe. And that has everything to do with the antagonistic and power-laden ways in which police interact with citizens more generally and black citizens in particular. Therefore, police officers must rebuild trust with the communities they police. Not the other way around.


They are certainly capable of achieving better outcomes, as are we all, but it's far more difficult if they are trapped in a system that discriminates against them in many ways.


There are certainly people able and lucky enough to transcend their disadvantages, and no one is attacking any "foundations of society", but certain aspects of our society still require change, and change doesn't happen without someone making a fuss. Those same people would also say that their example doesn't change the fact that they faced more struggles to overcome than your average non-minority person.

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor
freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops with-
out plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and
lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many
waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one,
or it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power
concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
—Frederick Douglass,
My Bondage and My Freedom


You might be referring to statements made by people in the heat of a protest, just after someone in the community was killed. Anyone could make the same errors of judgement. Certainly the intellectual movers of BLM don't condone demonizing cops.

Ignorance of history is unfortunately rather common. People said the same things about MLK Jr. That he was dividing the nation, that he wasn't looking at the internal problems in black communities, that he was saying everything was all white people's fault. It's all the same s**t we hear now, it's sickening and wrong, and it comes from white people who say they aren't prejudiced. Yeah right.

The thing that is shocking about black-on-black crime is not that it occurs between black people, but the rate at which it occurs. A hugely disproportionate amount of crime is being committed by black people, specifically young black men. This is why the leading cause of death for young black men is homicide.

We do not collectively agree on the meanings of words. There is no designer. It is a bottom-up system, an evolutionary one. We use words, and popular understandings catch on and are eventually reflected in dictionaries.

Anyone with any experience in academia will tell you that the definitions that they use for various words aren't the same as the ones the dictionary uses. Often, there isn't even agreement within the field - recent cases I have ran into this problem with are "urban" and "cognition". Some sociologists use "racism" to mean something different to what the dictionary means. You can critique their definition for not being useful, too broad, too narrow, or irrelevant, but you can't critique it for being "not what the dictionary says". That quite quickly becomes ridiculous.

I only know a little philosophy of language (mostly from an evolutionary standpoint), but I think Viper has studied it in more detail and I happily defer to him.


I didn't literally mean 99%, my point was to say a vast majority of. But even assuming your estimation is more accurate, what's 10% of less than .01% (I believe the exact number is .004% of black lives lost are from police shootings)? So that's .0004% of black deaths that are from unjustified police killings, by your estimation. That is so tiny it is difficult to even comprehend.[/quote]
Of course deaths of old people from natural causes are always going to outweigh everything else in a peaceful, developed society.

There are 39 million black people in the USA. If we run with the 0.0004% figure, that's 15,600 people being killed unjustly by the police. That's five 9/11s. That's not a problem to play down.

In reality there's not much data about this (the best comes from the Washington Post, which is not peer-reviewed), so I suspect the 0.004% figure you quoted is just as worthless as the "90%" I pulled from thin air.


Erm, thanks for agreeing with me I guess?


They can also be a useful tool for making yourself understand, but you are not necessarily "wrong" if you use a word in a way that a dictionary disagrees with.

Dictionaries are as close to the science of language as looking out your window is to climatology.


Sure, I don't think there are many police officers who go around looking for opportunities to kill black people or disabled people. They just make bad judgement calls, and it would seem like one of the things that feeds into their bad judgement calls is preconceptions, conscious or otherwise, about the danger that black people pose them.


Sure - a police officer in America has to fear being shot and killed whenever they encounter a member of the public. Over the past 10 years, one police officer has been killed on duty every week.

Of course, a member of the public has to fear being shot and killed whenever they encounter a police officer. There isn't much data on this, but from the aforementioned WaPo data, it seems about 19 people are killed by the police every week.


My main exposure to BLM is through hip-hop, particularly Chicago hip-hop. The three most significant American rappers at the moment are Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar, and Chance The Rapper. All three are BLM supporters (West: "hands up, we just doing what the cops told us"; Chance: "Jesus's black life ain't matter, I know, I talked to his father"; Lamar wrote "Alright"). All three have written significantly about black-on-black violence (West's "Murder To Excellence" and "Black Skinhead"; Chance's "Paranoia", "Angels", and "Summer Friends"; Kendrick's... entire discography, but especially "m.A.A.d. city", "Sing About Me", and "The Blacker The Berry").

Of course, there are many ways in which rappers are not representative of the wider movement (richer, less educated, more male, younger...). So I checked the "official" BLM website, and, oh, they do specifically mention black-on-black crime:


So they acknowledge the problem twice, and acknowledge (at least) two solutions. Other people are working on stopping violence from escalating. BLM are working on improving relations with the police. Ergo, they care about black-on-black crime - they just think the best thing they can do to combat it is improve relations with the police.

I also found the founder of a Georgia chapter advocating for an increased focus on black-on-black crime: http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/29/black ... ople-need/


It seems you agree, at least in part, with BLM... I'm guessing, though, that you disagree on what causes what. Of course, it's possible you're both right thanks to a vicious cycle.

And none of that is due to being herded into poverty filled ghettos? None of that is due to housing discrimination or states that openly refused any black immigration, or banks that refused business and personal loans to blacks? None of that comes from systemic disenfranchisement from the political system in the South? Or discrimination in hiring? Or the historical practice of selling prison labor to private businesses (and arresting blacks on fake charges for profit)? No, it's all their fault.

And I have criticized it for being too broad. People use the word "racist" to describe such a wide array of dissimilar people. They put someone like me in with KKK members and Neo Nazis, and actually believe that makes sense. That is a problem.


You are completely wrong. The .0004% number is a percentage of all deaths of black Americans, not of all black people alive. It almost seems like you are intentionally misconstruing what I said, because that 15,600 number you came up with makes no sense whatsoever, and I think you know that. Less than 1000 people total (most of them white) were killed by police last year. 258 were black, and the vast majority of those were justified. Only 38 of those were unarmed.

So please, cut this dishonest BS about five 9/11s.


I think you are confused.


And what if every dictionary completely disagrees with your definition? What if most others disagree with your definition? Would you really think you were being honest using a word knowing that your personal definition is different from the commonly accepted definition? You can use words however you want, but if you want effective communication you are going to have to agree on meanings.

By your logic, I could call you a pedophile publicly, and simply say in my defense, "But what you don't understand is that when I say pedophile, I just mean someone who really likes and cares about children. I'm not referring to people who are sexually attracted to and that molest prepubescent children; that is just the dictionary definition." This goes right along with your estimation of how words and their definitions work, yet I am quite sure you would have something to say in opposition about it.


What would you know about the danger that black people pose to cops? How about you try living somewhere like inner city Chicago, or just look at the crime and who is committing it, and then you can get back to me about the danger that black people pose to police.


And let's just pretend like all 19 of those people didn't do anything to deserve getting shot, right? These are just innocent citizens getting shot in normal encounters with police, right? Come on.


I actually made a thread about this. BLM calls black-on-black crime a diversion tactic, even though it is directly related to police violence on the black community. Stop sweeping this under the rug. It is completely ridiculous to focus on only one side of an issue.

BLM: "Police are killing people and that's bad!"
Me: "Ok, but why are they killing them? Are they doing something that warrants being killed?"
BLM: "Don't divert the conversation! We're talking about police and how evil they are; the actions of the people they're killing have no relevance."

f*****g BS.


And where do you think that cycle starts? I say it starts with the young black men who decide to involve themselves in illegal activities, which then leads to increased police interactions, racial profiling etc. And we can talk about why they make these decisions, and there are many reasons, but we can't do that if we are assuming it all comes down to racism.

You misunderstood my point.



That's a little vague.



Except yes, they are.

http://blacklivesmatter.com/guiding-principles/

"Systematically and intentionally targeted for demise."

http://blacklivesmatter.com/about/

"#BlackLivesMatter is working for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. We affirm our contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression. We have put our sweat equity and love for Black people into creating a political project–taking the hashtag off of social media and into the streets. The call for Black lives to matter is a rallying cry for ALL Black lives striving for liberation."

They're overtly stating that they are specifically targeted by law enforcement for "demise" due to the colour of their skin.



When you have crowds of people representing your movement by walking through the streets chanting that they want "dead cops", your movement is anti-police-officer. When your rhetoric directly leads to anti-police sentiment, your movement is anti-police-officer. As the self-professed leaders of the movement, you are accountable for the successes and failures of your movement.



Due to the increasing antagonism towards cops from BLM representatives, this should be front and centre of your message, not buried in point 9.



So putting on a uniform is tantamount to being born with original sin, no matter how egalitarian and fair your record is as a cop.



Are we to judge a movement by its stated goals or by its results? I'm going with option #3: both.



I agree, but don't see how that's a black problem. I know plenty of non-black people who have first hand experience of power-tripping cops, myself included.



Also not a black issue. If you want to advocate gun control, that's a whole different ball game.



I reject the narrative that seems to imply that the majority of (or indeed all) interactions between black people and cops are "hassling" or "trumped-up charges" resulting in arrest.



I believe that police should be given the benefit of the doubt until reasonable doubt is warranted. Remember, they're mostly just "everyday people who want to do their jobs". I also believe that body cams should be mandatory and that audio-visual footage should be easily, swiftly and freely obtainable by anyone who has any interaction with a cop.



So you refuse to accept that it's a two-way street.



Likewise trust is a two-way street. If you're unwilling to budge an inch, let alone meet them halfway, you're guaranteed to fail.



I believe they're trapped at the very least as much by their own perceptions and cultural attitudes as they are by anything external. The narrative spun in the article we're discussing certainly seems to support as much.



And that change, again, is a two-way street. The way in which poor black neighbourhoods perceive both themselves and others is an integral part of the problem. If you ignore that side of the equation, you won't enact positive change.



Be the change that you wish to see in the world.
- Mahatma Ghandi



The literature on their website suggests otherwise. I don't find it in the least surprising that large numbers of people find justification for their behaviour towards cops within the BLM narrative.

You guessed wrong.



Awful comparison.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/explo ... ish-corpus



Preconceptions based on experience, backed up with data. Cops have to deal with reality, regardless of the cause.

http://www.allenbwest.com/matt-palumbo/ ... ver-report

"5. Blacks are more likely to kill cops than be killed by cops. This is according to FBI data, which also found that 40 percent of cop killers are black. According to MacDonald, the police officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black than a cop killing an unarmed black person."

And whilst that "unarmed" caveat may seem like skewing the data, I think it's reasonable to assume that the overwhelming majority of cases where cops shoot someone who is armed are justified shootings.

Also:

"The “unarmed” label is literally accurate, but it frequently fails to convey highly-charged policing situations. In a number of cases, if the victim ended up being unarmed, it was certainly not for lack of trying. At least five black victims had reportedly tried to grab the officer’s gun, or had been beating the cop with his own equipment. Some were shot from an accidental discharge triggered by their own assault on the officer. And two individuals included in the Post’s “unarmed black victims” category were struck by stray bullets aimed at someone else in justified cop shootings. If the victims were not the intended targets, then racism could have played no role in their deaths."



A disproportionate number (~40%) of whom were killed by black people.



To an extent, I agree. This is why I believe it's incredibly important for all people to act calmly and respectfully towards cops during interactions with them, regardless of innocence. Unfortunately that isn't the advice black kids are hearing in many communities. Going back to #9 on the BLM page:

"We reject the faulty idea that disrespect is a crime, that black people should be nice or civil when they are being hassled or arrested on trumped-up charges."

If you speak to any black kid from one of America's poor black communities, they'll likely tell you that you should always run from the cops when you encounter them.

N.B. I'm not attributing causal blame for the poor relationship between cops and black communities to black people exclusively, but their choices and attitudes are undeniably a contributory factor. Dealing with the root cause requires identifying it in the first place. The BLM narrative obscures and obstructs inquiry and renders this more difficult.



Successful rappers are, indeed, outliers.



Laudable as their efforts are, it's more of a band-aid than a cure. (And I'm not giving BLM any credit just for knowing about Cure Violence).



Yet they still demonstrably hold the police fully accountable without shouldering any of the responsibility themselves. Until that changes, I see no good coming directly from BLM.



I was reading this earlier. It's an excellent article that I largely agree with.



I don't claim to fully understand the causes, but I'm absolutely certain that responsibility for resolving the problems lies, in no small part, with the communities affected by them. My primary issue with BLM is that they preach a message of self-absolution, pointing the finger anywhere but at themselves. If they were capable of accepting even some small part of accountability, I'd hold them in far greater regard.

Would "blacksplaining" be considered racist?

The police are part of a prejudiced system that seems to default to gunfire, especially when the suspect is black. It's not that officers hate black people therefore they want to kill them.

I'd like to see some actual statistics on that...though even then I still don't think that means it's appropriate to stereotype black people in general as 'criminals' for instance. I imagine if that is the case there are various factors that contribute but I do not think one of those factors is they're black. If there really is disproportionate crime that needs be addressed and solved...not used as a reason to justify racist police profiling which solves nothing.

Default to gunfire? How many interactions do cops have with black suspects on a daily basis?

Again, BLM claims blacks are "Systematically and intentionally targeted for demise".

One million US cops achieved the "demise" of 346 black people in 2015. That's an appallingly ineffective extermination program.

The only systematic prejudice in US law enforcement is against criminals and criminal behaviour. Sure, innocent people occasionally get caught in the net, but that doesn't at all detract from the fact that US police forces rank among the best in the world.



Leading Causes of Death by Age Group, Black Males-United States, 2013



The point isn't that being black makes you more prone to criminal behaviour, it's that being black means you're more likely to be subjected to an environment that is conducive to criminality. There's no ascribing of blame, just a recognition that reality = reality.

Racial profiling is only a problem when race is the sole factor being used to determine whether someone is criminally suspicious.

If we switch the onus to gender, you could use exactly the same rhetoric as BLM does to make a case for systemic sexism against males. For example, prior to the introduction of speed cameras in the UK, 96% of all speeding tickets were given to men. Since their introduction, the figures are roughly 50/50. That isn't evidence of systemic misandry in UK law enforcement, however, as there are numerous other factors to consider - e.g. men tended to exceed the speed limit to a much greater degree than women and were thus more obviously doing so to the naked eye.

You again? Did you ever answer my question about why folks such as yourself use terms like "black on black crime" but not "white on white crime?" Or why Donald Trump is concerned with illegal immigrants who are rapists instead of your white peers such as Brock Turner who are raping women behind dumpsters? Because according to your logic, Trump should be focused on white on white crime. Did you ever explain why you aren't as obsessed with your white peers getting away with raping women behind dumpsters? New question: Are you concerned with how the police are capable of capturing white school shooters without using lethal force but kill black people who are unarmed? Or what about the 20 year old white kid who was found eating the man he killed yet officers only used tasers and not deadly force? You have over 11 pages worth of posts on topics of racism is imaginary. If you don't get it now, then that is a choice you've made.

I hope you enjoy being fisked...