Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill Bumface
I've been talking through all of this with a hardcore right winger in the US I used to work with. He's a very smart guy, always seemed nice enough, but he's deep in an echo chamber. It's been interesting and disturbing seeing the lens a lot of people put on this.
His one point has been that there isn't systemic police racism, but police develop stereotypes because of negative interactions with groups of people over time, and they can be a good thing that is actually a protective mechanism.
I've been trying to bring it back further to root causes with him, and discuss why a black male is so disproportionately likely to have an encounter with the law. As part of this I went digging for education funding numbers as hearing US coworkers talk about moving to a "good school district" has always been an alarm bell for me.
This is a fascinating presentation on the funding inequalities in the US education system: https://edbuild.org/content/23-billion
When the UCP is discussing the privatization of education we all need to do our part to push back. Entrenching systemic inequality for children in our province is in none of our best interests. |
I think about this problem allot, I saw a relative post some terrible antivax crap today, and I have been thinking about how you address half truths in conversations while getting the point across they they are using them to justify completely wrong conclusions.
This is the inherent problem with forming your rhetoric around rationalism. It would be disingenuous to argue that your friend is wrong for talking about the feedback loop between negative interactions, negative attitudes and negative interactions. It is a very strong point, and a very true part of the problem, so to have a genuine discourse you need to agree with him that the problem he is concerned about is real. The problem is that in agreeing with him you are hoping to move on to a conversation about the actions both parties would need to take to unwind this negative feed back loop. Understanding that the police being an organized group would have an easier time initiating these changes, while marginalized citizens are a disparate and disorganized groups that need cultural change not structural change since they don't have an underlying organizational structure. All of this is a conversation you are interested in having and exploring, in search of better understanding the causing and solutions to what is obviously a big issue we need to address. Your friend on the other hand has no interest in conversation, he has a prefered conclusion that the existing structures are good and people just need to find a way to fit into them. Seeking confirmation of his preexisting biases, he either hears you agree that there are in fact negative feedbacks and assumes his world view is affirmed, or he hears you reject his obviously true statement that police are more likely to have negative interactions with instituationaly marginalized people and he understands that you are arguing for a world view not for truth.
No guarantee you can ever break through, but there is a tight line you have to tow. Frist not rejecting or affirming his statement, either action will end the discourse and lead to talking at each other rather than to each other. Second inserting all of that nuance into the conversation, prequalifying any agreement with him in the fact that both sides need to make changes but the police are the only ones capable of making changes first. Then talking about even where his premise is true he is deliberately skipping over many other facts because of nuance he has been ignoring.