I was at work all day, and a lot has happened in this thread since then, but I feel the need to respond to a few things:
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Originally Posted by RyZ
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So two cases in the months since Mike Brown was killed?
Just last week a 12 year old kid with a bb gun was shot by police in Ohio, which btw, is an open carry state. Ohio where another man was shot (a week after Brown was killed) while holding a bb gun he was about to purchase at a Walmart. The guy in Walmart was holding the gun like a cane, not aiming it. Officers just stormed in and shot him dead without asking questions. This isn't a rare occurrence, the reason this issue became such a big deal is because of the prevalence of instances like this.
In Florida, George Zimmerman killed a kid, got off. In the same state, a woman fired a warning shot--hitting no one at all--when her abusive ex was coming toward her. She's now spending 3 years in jail. But she's black, so Stand Your Ground apparently wasn't applicable. Zimmerman killed someone, she did not, but she's the one serving jail time.
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Originally Posted by nfotiu
White people definitely deserve a lot of the blame for how things all got this way. But focusing on guys like Wilson is not going to touch any of the root causes. Burning down their own communities is also not going to make things better.
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At some point this country needs to address the issue of police regularly using excessive and deadly force. Have to start somewhere.
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Originally Posted by llwhiteoutll
What's the seemingly huge fascination with the number of rounds fired? It's not like police procedure is some giant mystery.
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Yes, police procedure is very clear.
Shoot first. Shoot a lot. Figure the rest out later.
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Originally Posted by rubecube
Well I spent two hours reading Dorian Johnson's grand jury testimony, and it's absolutely harrowing. Also, the tone of the cross-examination by some of the jurors pretty much demonstrates that some of them had already made up their minds on the case.
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You also have the fact that one of the witnesses in the case made a racist journal post the morning of Brown's shooting, clearly you had at least one witness with a pretty strong bias.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/1...n_6216366.html
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Originally Posted by Acey
Hey guys, look! Looks like there's a ton of black people in jail relative to their percentage of the total population! Almost as if what nofotiu just said is fact.
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Or, just maybe, that increased incarceration rate is due to the fact that most communities are policed and governed by mostly white authorities. Or that perhaps just maybe black people get harsher punishments for the same crimes. Or that maybe, just maybe, systemic racism actually exists and is the main cause for all of these problems--increased black crime, increased black incarceration, etc, etc.
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Originally Posted by PIMking
Because the riots are because the cop was white and black on black crime is just swept under the rug and they don't seem to care about it.
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In order to deal with black crime--mostly gun crime--this country would have to make some attempt to make guns harder to gain access too. But the NRA would never allow that.
And don't even come at me with "legally owned/illegally owned" weapons. Guess what--if you outlaw guns entirely, or heavily restrict their ownership, you could probably limit a whole lot of those illegally owned weapons. Fewer guns means fewer guns getting into the hands of criminals.
Gun crime is massive in this country, and it just keeps getting more prevalent as the NRA pushes for more and more lenient gun laws. That just leads to more weapons being in the hands of people who shouldn't have them.
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Originally Posted by Acey
To some degree, it's a retort to the black people feeling victimized about the crime statistic. The argument is that you don't have much of a leg to stand on if it's the supposed "black on black" crime, i.e. doing it to "yourself" type of thing. Bottom line is that 5% of black people are in jail and less than 1% of white people are, so black people have got a problem whether it's pink on black on green on purple or what.
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Yes, black people have a problem--a justice system that arrests them at an increased rate due to the "war on drugs" which sees plenty of black people jailed for minor drug charges--meanwhile white people get a slap on the wrist for the same charges.
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Originally Posted by AcGold
The lesson to be learned is don't act like a thug or a gangster. So much of the black culture is around acting like a thug and it's silly, the people in the black community should start condemning their own for acting like tough gangsters.
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The concept of calling the victim in this case--remember that, Brown was the kid who was killed. Brown wasn't the one on trial here, believe it or not. So you have Michael Brown who robbed a store and shoved a clerk and may or may not have fought with an officer.
Michael Brown is dead. Michael Brown was a thug and a criminal and deserved what he got.
Yet when you have a white kid shooting up a theater or a school--somehow the white kid always gets caught alive--unless he turns the gun on himself. When it's a white kid, he was "a loner" he was "troubled" he just "needed help."
When they show pictures of Michael Brown, they used pictures of him looking the part of a thug. When they show pictures of the kid who shot up Newtown they use wholesome school photos. Meanwhile only one of these people murdered anyone, and it wasn't Michael Brown.
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Originally Posted by nfotiu
It gets pointed out because out of black-on-black; black-on-white; white-on-white; white-on-black, black-on-black is statistically by far the most common.
I'd imagine a black person living in a middle class suburb is statistically no more likely to commit a crime than a white person in the same area.
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White on white crime and black on black crime are likely to happen far more often because this country may not have "segregation" any longer--but the society is set up in a way where whites still live mostly around other whites, and blacks still live mostly around other blacks. And in general, those black communities are underfunded and poorly policed. Leading to lower education, leading to higher crime rates, leading to more hardened, jaded police officers and then leading to increased tension between the community and the officers tasked with protecting said community.
Systemic.
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Originally Posted by Azure
So who are all these black people voting for? Who have they been voting for the past 50 years? Democrats? Republicans? The system wasn't created overnight.
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The system wasn't created now, the system has been in place for hundreds of years. Only now there's a black man in the White House, so racists can just point at him and say Racism Is Over!!
Also the GOP is pretty busy making sure it's as difficult as possible for black people to vote at all. And if they do vote, the GOP has gerrymandered the districts to a point where it doesn't matter how people vote--the GOP wins because the districts are effed.
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Originally Posted by Acey
In '12...
93% Obama
6% Romney
In '08...
95% Obama
4% McCain
Luckily for the United States, blacks are only 13% of the population. |
Romney was an atrocious candidate, and McCain has proven to be completely insane in the years since 08, and he did himself no favors in picking Palin as his running mate.
Also in case you missed it, despite all the ridiculous refusal to work with him, Obama has cut the deficit down dramatically, has unemployment lower than even Reagan managed to get it, and the stock market is hitting record highs. He's not the perfect president--far from it--but I severely doubt that McCain or Romney would've done better.
And really, if you're a low income person of any race, or a woman, or a gay person, or anyone who isn't white, male, Christian and making less than 250K/year--why on earth would you have voted for McCain or Romney? Their policies go completely against your own interests.
The amount of blatant, unbridled racism in this thread is unbelievable to me.