Police shooting of unarmed teen leads to protests and Riot

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by polak

Why are African Americans so highly represented versus Latin Americans? Genuine question.

Because of systemic racism against blacks specifically.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by polak

Cause it's a pretty loaded question. Is it your sole purpose to bait people into saying something that could get them jumped on? Literally any time I see an even slightly controversial post, you are two lines under it with a passively aggressive post trying to goat them into saying something they might regret.

I wouldn't be happy or "okay" with any rioting but at this point, the system is pretty stacked against people living in low income areas in the USA so I could sympathize with the people who are tired of it, see the odds stacked against them from the get-go and decide they have had enough.

The US is primed for some what of a civil war and I couldn't really fault the oppressed for actually fighting back. These riots in Baltimore are nothing of the sort though so I don't know why you're bring this up?

Civil wars aren't fought against your own side.

Polak, you have a history of posting, then other posters (not just me) seek clarification on what you have posted. Inevitably you backpeddle or say it was taken out of context or that PC crowd is out in full force.


You know what you wrote:

....I'd be completely fine with an oppressed group saying "No More" and fighting back...They are not fighting back and going and attacking police stations. They are not fighting back and going after big business. They are not fighting back and attacking the affluent areas. They are not fighting back against anybody....

It reads as you would be "completely fine" with those actions.


Civil Wars aren't fine. They are ####ing tragic and wasteful.

[icecube]

Nothing gets my blood boiling faster than reading a thread on CP about race issues. So much ignorance, stupidity and denial. Just read the last page or two and posts by Pylon and Polak make me want to rip my hair out.

[polak]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

Because of systemic racism against blacks specifically.

Systematic racism? I disagree. There's systematic oppression of low income areas. No doubts about. Bad schools, bad hospitals, poor infrastructure, low access to work... All major problems in these areas, but also not racist. White people in these areas are just as exposed as African Americans or Latin Americans or Asians.

That's not racism.

I think what you're looking for is more of a self fulfilling prophecy. "I have no choice, this is what I'm supposed to do". That's a problem but it's not systematic.

[polak]

Originally Posted by icecube

Nothing gets my blood boiling faster than reading a thread on CP about race issues. So much ignorance, stupidity and denial. Just read the last page or two and posts by Pylon and Polak make me want to rip my hair out.

Oh please enlighten me where I am wrong? Please. I'd love to hear it.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by polak

Systematic racism? I disagree. There's systematic oppression of low income areas. No doubts about. Bad schools, bad hospitals, poor infrastructure, low access to work... All major problems in these areas, but also not racist. White people in these areas are just as exposed as African Americans or Latin Americans or Asians.

That's not racism.

I think what you're looking for is more of a self fulfilling prophecy. "I have no choice, this is what I'm supposed to do". That's a problem but it's not systematic.

[icecube]

I can't enlighten anyone who doesn't even believe that systemic racism exists. Just like I couldn't convince a flat earth moron that the earth is round. It's no use debating idiots. Idiot is a fact by the way. Not an opinion. Only an idiot would deny the fact that systemic racism exists in North America (it's just as big a problem here than it is in the states btw)

[polak]

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

Why is it only black people? Like I said, there is definitely oppression in the US.

The cartoon should be low income residents.

It's unfortunate that those areas are disproportionately populated with black people and that is a result of systematic racism called "slavery" but to say the system is STILL racist towards black people is a cop-out.

It oppresses all of its residents equally.

[polak]

Originally Posted by icecube

I can't enlighten anyone who doesn't even believe that systemic racism doesn't exist. Just like I couldn't convince a flat earth moron that the earth is round. It's no use debating idiots. Idiot is a fact by the way. Not an opinion. Only an idiot would deny the fact that systemic racism exists in North America (it's just as big a problem here than it is in the states btw)

Tell me why you think there is systematic racism towards black people specifically.

Also, what does that have to do with the riots in Baltimore and my post calling them out for not actually "fighting back" against anything but instead, breaking #### because they can?

[wittynickname]

Originally Posted by polak

Why are African Americans so highly represented versus Latin Americans? Genuine question.

It's also much easier to pass as white if you're Latino vs. black. It's easy to pass as white if you're a lighter skinned Latino without an accent. If you're black, well--you're black.

Originally Posted by polak

Tell me why you think there is systematic racism towards black people specifically.

Also, what does that have to do with the riots in Baltimore and my post calling them out for not actually "fighting back" against anything but instead, breaking #### because they can?

Look at the rate of conviction for minor drug charges that black people face as opposed to white people. Black person kills someone--he gets charged and convicted. White people--particularly affluent white people--if they're caught with drugs or even kill someone, chances are they get a slap on the wrist.

Harsher punishments, by a wide margin, for black people than for white. Harsher punishments for crack cocaine (largely a problem in low-income, black neighborhoods) than for powdered cocaine (far more often used by wealthy white people). White kid caught with marijuana? Maybe rehab. Minor fine. Black kid caught with marijuana? Jail time.

But recent research has kept the argument alive. A 2005 study by the Justice Department found that while Hispanic, black and white drivers were stopped by the police about as often, Hispanic drivers or their vehicles were searched 11.4 percent of the time and blacks 10.2 percent of the time, compared with 3.5 percent for white drivers. Data collected from state courts by the Justice Department also shows that a higher percentage of black felons than white felons receive prison sentences for nearly all offenses, and also that blacks receive longer maximum sentences for most offenses

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/we...ater.html?_r=0


Even in just minor ways: when the idiot white kids that shot up Newtown, Aurora, and California, no one called them "thugs" or "monsters." They were "troubled" and "lonely." They were actual mass murderers, ruined the lives of hundreds of people--but the images used of them on the news and in papers were less damning than the images used of Michael Brown--who sure, he shoved a guy around, might've gotten into an altercation with an officer, but he didn't shoot anyone in cold blood.

Racism happens in big, obvious ways (The DoJ's report about Ferguson's police department) and in minor, passive, quiet ways. It exists, and it's incredibly pervasive.

If you honestly don't see that racism is still a major, overwhelming problem in the US--you haven't spent very much time here.

[icecube]

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by polak

Systematic racism? I disagree. There's systematic oppression of low income areas. No doubts about. Bad schools, bad hospitals, poor infrastructure, low access to work... All major problems in these areas, but also not racist. White people in these areas are just as exposed as African Americans or Latin Americans or Asians.

That's not racism.

I think what you're looking for is more of a self fulfilling prophecy. "I have no choice, this is what I'm supposed to do". That's a problem but it's not systematic.

Why did you ask a question if you already know the answer?

[FlamesAddiction]

I find those cartoon offensive. They undermine the struggles that many immigrants (white and otherwise) have to face to try and get ahead.

If most black people really feel that every white person has things handed to them like that, then it can't be good for motivating themselves.

[icecube]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

I find those cartoon offensive. They undermine the struggles that many immigrants (white and otherwise) have to face to try and get ahead.

If most black people really feel that every white person has things handed to them like that, then it can't be good for motivating themselves.

Far less offensive than someone dumb enough to think that Black's, Latinos and North America's indigenous people are in the lowest caste of society (generally speaking) because they just don't work as hard as the immigrants do. Yep, nothing to do with the intergenerational impacts of things like slavery, assimilation policies and other ongoing forms of systemic racism. It's just because they're inherently lazy and dumber!

[llwhiteoutll]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

White out, are black people 3 times as likely to commit crimes as white people?

Are black people by nature of their ethnicity more prone to crime?

I'd be more inclined to say that the felony rate is tied to income status more than it is tied to race. The statistic I presented doesn't address either race or income, simply that the felony rate for whites was 330/100k and 1178/100k for blacks.

Bill also over emphasized the racial breakdown for some reason, the actual number is closer to 62% white and 12% black.

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

I find those cartoon offensive. They undermine the struggles that many immigrants (white and otherwise) have to face to try and get ahead.

If most black people really feel that every white person has things handed to them like that, then it can't be good for motivating themselves.

It's not that whites are handed things, it's that blacks are obstructed from getting them.

A study by the Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit research group based in North Carolina, examined 50,000 subprime loans nationwide and found that blacks and Hispanics were 30 percent more likely than whites to be charged higher interest rates, even among borrowers with similar credit ratings. A report released in March by the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project and other groups found that in New York, blacks were five times and Hispanics almost four times more likely to pay higher interest rates for home loans than whites.

One of the most heinous of these policies was introduced by the creation of the Federal Housing Administration in 1934, and lasted until 1968. Otherwise celebrated for making homeownership accessible to white people by guaranteeing their loans, the FHA explicitly refused to back loans to black people or even other people who lived near black people. As TNC puts it, "Redlining destroyed the possibility of investment wherever black people lived."

Before there was a funeral and protest, then violence, curfews and canceled ballgames in Baltimore this week, there were other chapters in the life of this city that must be remembered.

Just a few years ago, Wells Fargo agreed to pay millions of dollars to Baltimore and its residents to settle a landmark lawsuit brought by the city claiming the bank unfairly steered minorities who wanted to own homes into subprime mortgages. Before that, there was the crack epidemic of the 1990s and the rise of mass incarceration and the decline of good industrial jobs in the 1980s.

And before that? From 1951 to 1971, 80 to 90 percent of the 25,000 families displaced in Baltimore to build new highways, schools and housing projects were black. Their neighborhoods, already disinvested and deemed dispensable, were sliced into pieces, the parks where their children played bulldozed.

And before that — now if we go way back — there was redlining, the earlier corollary to subprime lending in which banks refused to lend at all in neighborhoods that federally backed officials had identified as having "undesirable racial concentrations."

These shocks happened, at least 80 years of them, to the same communities in Baltimore, as they did in cities across the country. Neighborhoods weakened by mass incarceration were the same ones divided by highways. Families cornered into subprime loans descended from the same families who'd been denied homeownership — and the chance to build wealth — two generations earlier. People displaced today by new development come from the same communities that were scattered before in the name of "slum clearance" and the progress brought by Interstate highways.

And the really terrible irony — which brings us back to Baltimore today — is that each of these shocks further diminished the capacity of low-income urban black communities to recover from the one that came next. It's an irony, a fundamental urban inequality, created over the years by active decisions and government policies that have undermined the same people and sapped them of their ability to rebuild, that have again and again dismantled the same communities, each time making them socially, economically, and politically weaker.

"lazy blacks" isn't just morally repugnant, it is idiotic. It is the conclusion a moron would come up as an answer to the problems that set the black community in the US.

[comrade]

Originally Posted by llwhiteoutll

I'd be more inclined to say that the felony rate is tied to income status more than it is tied to race. The statistic I presented doesn't address either race or income, simply that the felony rate for whites was 330/100k and 1178/100k for blacks.

Bill also over emphasized the racial breakdown for some reason, the actual number is closer to 62% white and 12% black.

Do you have any particular evidence supporting your inclination?

[RougeUnderoos]

Originally Posted by pylon

Secondly, this man was a convicted felon with a rap sheet longer than this thread, including burglary, assault and drug dealing. He was a piece of human scum. Did he deserve to die? No. Did the Police have good cause to keep tabs on him, absolutely. I would not want that man as my neighbour, and nor would you. Regardless of the colour of his skin.

Honestly, I don't think that has anything to do with it. Sure, he was a bad guy, and I wouldn't want him to live next door, but the cops can't treat anyone that way (the way I believe the evidence that we have points).

Originally Posted by pylon

Lastly, I am getting very tired of this argument being about black people being singled out and persecuted simply because of skin colour. Are more black people per capita killed by cops. Yes. Is it because they are black? No. It is because they are unfortunate victims of a socio-economic situation that has put them in an extreme cycle of poverty and crime. You cannot blame a young black man for resorting to a life of crime when he has next to no options otherwise. He is being stereotyped by employers, he is at an extreme economic disadvantage as his parents survived the same tragic set of circumstances, and the cycle repeats itself. But regardless of those circumstances, crime cannot go unpunished. Whether it is the disadvantaged African American from the projects, or the hillbilly piece of white trash cooking meth.

Agreed with the bold part, but the rest of it really sounds like a chicken/egg question. It's definitely due to socio-economic circumstances, but isn't he in those circumstances because of the color of his skin?

Originally Posted by pylon

Lastly, IMO, you're a solid, funny and well educated poster. However your passive aggressive insults get tiring sometimes. You have a very smug way about arguing a point sometimes, and a very talented way of blatantly mislabelling what people said to forward your point. In no way was I painting 'every protester' as a criminal. And if that is what you took away from that statement, I might actually begin to question the educated part of my opinion of you.

Well-educated and solid is seriously questionable, but smug - you got me there. It's an emotional topic and I do tend to get snarky, but I wasn't trying to misrepresent anything. I won't bore everyone with the details of why, but that was how I read it.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

It's not that whites are handed things, it's that blacks are obstructed from getting them.

"lazy blacks" isn't just morally repugnant, it is idiotic. It is the conclusion a moron would come up as an answer to the problems that set the black community in the US.

I agree, but those cartoons were suggesting both - that whites are handed everything and benefit from nepotism and blacks are obstructed. It's a gross generalization. If you go to a lot of smaller communities where black people are even a smaller minority than in large centres like L.A., you will find that many of them are fairly well off in those communities. Like anyone, black white or brown, you need to be motivated to change.

And don't take lack of motivation as laziness. Some of the least motivated people I have ever met, are also some of the hardest working when it comes to day-to-day labouring. The last thing they are is "lazy", but attitude definitely plays a roll.

Let me ask you this. If you went to a poor black neighbourhood in a place like L.A. or Chicago, and asked a group of young African American males if they wanted to go somewhere like Thompson Manitoba, Fort Nelson BC, Red Lake ON, etc..., and said hey, we'll give you a job making decent money clearing brush, but the next 40 years are going to be a sacrifice so that your children might have a chance... how many do you think would take you up on that offer (honestly)? Because that is the type of sacrifice most immigrants who move here make in order to improve their situations.

An interesting phenomenon related to the lack of economic mobility among black people in the US is that black immigrants are having a much higher success rate than native African Americans, therefore racism can't be the only thing holding African Americans back. A racist doesn't care or probably know the difference between an African American and an American of African descent. African/Caribbean immigrants in the US only make up 13% of the black American population but represent 25% of black students in universities. (And yes, I know here are some other valid reasons, such as some black immigrants sometimes bring a little bit of wealth with them to get started, nor do they have automatic dislike for white people). The division between black immigrants and African Americans is a very hot topic these days. Children of African immigrants are more likely to attend university than both native black and native white people in the US (you can see the data here if you are inclined: http://home.uchicago.edu/~arauh/Rauh2013a.pdf ). Again, that is not to say that racism/denying opportunity isn't an issue or an impediment because it certainly is, but just that it isn't the only issue at play.

Another interesting fact is that while black people in the US are far more likely to grow up and live in poor neighbourhoods, be exposed to more crime and drugs, and have fewer opportunities as poorer communities often have inferior schools and professional networks, there is also the fact that even middle class educated and successful African Americans who can leave the communities tend to stay in those communities so you see generational gain reversals in many situations.

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

I agree, but those cartoons were suggesting both - that whites are handed everything and benefit from nepotism and blacks are obstructed. It's a gross generalization. If you go to a lot of smaller communities where black people are even a smaller minority than in large centres like L.A., you will find that many of them are fairly well off in those communities. Like anyone, black white or brown, you need to be motivated to change.

And don't take lack of motivation as laziness. Some of the least motivated people I have ever met, are also some of the hardest working when it comes to day-to-day labouring. The last thing they are is "lazy", but attitude definitely plays a roll.

Let me ask you this. If you went to a poor black neighbourhood in a place like L.A. or Chicago, and asked a group of young African American males if they wanted to go somewhere like Thompson Manitoba, Fort Nelson BC, Red Lake ON, etc..., and said hey, we'll give you a job making decent money clearing brush, but the next 40 years are going to be a sacrifice so that your children might have a chance... how many do you think would take you up on that offer (honestly)? Because that is the type of sacrifice most immigrants who move here make in order to improve their situations.

Like I said, it's not just morally repugnant, it is moronic.