Black Lives Matter get police float kicked out of Pride Parade

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by rubecube

Except you can't trot this out without also mentioning the restrictions on abortion and birth control.

Yeah, and also the fact that a "breakdown" of a relationship that produces a kid isn't just a choice made on a whim; there are often good reasons for it, and many of those relationships were doomed to fail and thus they probably shouldn't have had the kid in the first place and should have been less gung-ho about making that decision.

But then you get the flip side of it, which is what happens when you have people hesitant to have kids... European, or even worse, Japanese birth rates and the demographic hell that can inflict societally and this all starts getting really confusing while remaining super interesting.

And off topic. But whatever, who cares.

[blankall]

Doesn't Sweden have one of the highest rate of children born out of wedlock, yet also remains one of the most prosperous nations?

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by blankall

Doesn't Sweden have one of the highest rate of children born out of wedlock, yet also remains one of the most prosperous nations?

Sweden's social safety net is also a lot stronger than the U.S.'s is, which I guess would technically be a counterpoint to the claim that you can't blame capitalism.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by blankall

Doesn't Sweden have one of the highest rate of children born out of wedlock, yet also remains one of the most prosperous nations?

The difference is that in Sweden those children tend to be born to unmarried couples who stay together to raise kids. So if you like, you can replace 'marriage' with 'enduring union.' The point still stands.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by rubecube

Except you can't trot this out without also mentioning the restrictions on abortion and birth control.

Are those restrictions more severe on uneducated women than on educated women? And you're making a big assumption that most births outside of marriage are unplanned.

[peter12]

aAs per my WTF response, don't have one. This should an area where I have some academic expertise. There is lots of good literature out there on the subject.

Good places to start:

- Edward Banfield's "Moral Basis of a Backwards Society" and "The Unheavenly City."
- Charles Murray's "Coming Apart"

I will follow up sometime this afternoon but as CHL can appreciate, I am going to pick up a pair of Aldens.

[peter12]

Double post while walking in the rain.

[Flash Walken]

To bring this back to race relations and the state/police, let's assume the breakdown of the traditional family unit is to blame for...I don't even know anymore.


Do policies that preceded this breakdown and contributed to said breakdown brace some of this burden?

For example in Canada, surely the residential school system in particular and the reservation system in general has had a negative impact on the family unit for one of Canada's more recognizable minority groups. So in this instance do we shake our heads at the breakdown of the family unit or do we probe a little bit deeper.

To say it is the breakdown of the family is like saying someone died of a symptom of a larger disease. Sure, my grandfather coughed to death but a much more accurate diagnosis is he died of lung cancer.

In the US it is "worse" but I argue it is not "different". It is racist policies direct from the government disproportionately applied to specific minorities.

I don't think it has anything to do with capitalism, if anything it is about anti-capitalists influencing markets in a negative capacity through unnecessary, burdensome regulations.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Are those restrictions more severe on uneducated women than on educated women?

Probably. I would imagine educated women would likely have more resources and/or knowledge when it comes to circumventing these laws, but that's entirely speculation on my part. I'm not sure that really takes away from my point regarding single-parenthood though. I mean it seems rather self-explanatory that lack of access to birth control methods would naturally lead to more unwanted pregnancies and more unwanted births.

Education is also a good point though because I think we should also consider the lack of proper sex education in conservative regions of the world and how they often correlate with more unplanned pregnancies.

And you're making a big assumption that most births outside of marriage are unplanned.

Not at all. I'm just saying that North American puritanism is probably as much or more to blame for single-parent families than the sexual revolution.

[taco.vidal]

Heres a post from one of Toronto BLM organizers. Its generating a lot of discussion in T.O.

[underGRADFlame]

Originally Posted by taco.vidal

Heres a post from one of Toronto BLM organizers. Its generating a lot of discussion in T.O.

[ResAlien]

A good breakdown of why the all lives matter response is dumb. From Reddit

Imagine that you’re sitting down to dinner with your family, and while everyone else gets a serving of the meal, you don’t get any. So you say “I should get my fair share.” And as a direct response to this, your dad corrects you, saying, “everyone should get their fair share.” Now, that’s a wonderful sentiment — indeed, everyone should, and that was kinda your point in the first place: that you should be a part of everyone, and you should get your fair share also. However, dad’s smart-ass comment just dismissed you and didn’t solve the problem that you still haven’t gotten any!

The problem is that the statement “I should get my fair share” had an implicit “too” at the end: “I should get my fair share, too, just like everyone else.” But your dad’s response treated your statement as though you meant “only I should get my fair share”, which clearly was not your intention. As a result, his statement that “everyone should get their fair share,” while true, only served to ignore the problem you were trying to point out.

That’s the situation of the “black lives matter” movement. Culture, laws, the arts, religion, and everyone else repeatedly suggest that all lives should matter. Clearly, that message already abounds in our society.


The problem is that, in practice, the world doesn’t work that way. You see the film Nightcrawler? You know the part where Renee Russo tells Jake Gyllenhal that she doesn’t want footage of a black or latino person dying, she wants news stories about affluent white people being killed? That’s not made up out of whole cloth — there is a news bias toward stories that the majority of the audience (who are white) can identify with. So when a young black man gets killed (prior to the recent police shootings), it’s generally not considered “news”, while a middle-aged white woman being killed is treated as news. And to a large degree, that is accurate — young black men are killed in significantly disproportionate numbers, which is why we don’t treat it as anything new. But the result is that, societally, we don’t pay as much attention to certain people’s deaths as we do to others. So, currently, we don’t treat all lives as though they matter equally.

Just like asking dad for your fair share, the phrase “black lives matter” also has an implicit “too” at the end: it’s saying that black lives should also matter. But responding to this by saying “all lives matter” is willfully going back to ignoring the problem. It’s a way of dismissing the statement by falsely suggesting that it means “only black lives matter,” when that is obviously not the case. And so saying “all lives matter” as a direct response to “black lives matter” is essentially saying that we should just go back to ignoring the problem.

[calgarygeologist]

I'm probably ignorant but what is with the "x" in the word human all about? Is there some specific meaning to that or just some messed up autocorrect?

[taco.vidal]

Its to avoid using man or men. More often than human, its woman thats gets written womyn or womxn.

Originally Posted by calgarygeologist

I'm probably ignorant but what is with the "x" in the word human all about? Is there some specific meaning to that or just some messed up autocorrect?

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by taco.vidal

Its to avoid using man or men. More often than human, its woman thats gets written womyn or womxn.

Interesting. I had no idea and I hadn't seen this before despite having lots of progressive/activist feeds on my Facebook.

[CliffFletcher]

Here's an excellent graphic display of the 990 fatal shootings by police in the U.S. in 2015, by gender, race, age, threat level, etc.:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graph...ice-shootings/

You can filter by any category. For example:

Unarmed

White32
Black38
Hispanic18
Other5

Under 18

White10
Black5
Hispanic3
Other0

[ResAlien]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Here's an excellent graphic display of the fatal shootings by police in the U.S., by gender, race, age, threat level, etc.:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graph...ice-shootings/

Black: 13% of the population, 26% of those killed by the police.

Whites: 63% of the population, 50% of those killed.

That doesn't seem disproportionate to you at all?

[wittynickname]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Are those restrictions more severe on uneducated women than on educated women? And you're making a big assumption that most births outside of marriage are unplanned.

Originally Posted by ResAlien

Black: 13% of the population, 26% of those killed by the police.

Whites: 63% of the population, 50% of those killed.

That doesn't seem disproportionate to you at all?

Trevor Noah hit the nail on the head in the opening segment of the Daily Show, pointing out that while race is part of the issue, it isn't the whole issue, and showed a still photo of yet another video today of yet another person (this time a white man), who was shot while laying down on the ground, presumably in surrender.

Race certainly has some role in this problem, but the overly aggressive police problem is bigger than just race.

To me, one of the biggest points made in some of the articles shown in this thread is that along with possessing a weapon, many of those killed by police have been mentally unstable or suicidal. Why are our police not trained to properly deescalate a situation with a person in mental distress? Why are police using excessive force on teenagers who are smaller than they are?

And how are almost none of them held accountable for such actions?

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by ResAlien

Black: 13% of the population, 26% of those killed by the police.

Whites: 63% of the population, 50% of those killed.

That doesn't seem disproportionate to you at all?

Where have a I said it isn't disproportionate? But why is that disproportionality the only story we're hearing about? It seems to me that the issue here is the U.S. has a terrible problem with trigger-happy police. 704 non-blacks shot dead by police in 2015. That isn't something that can be hand-waved away as a red herring. I doubt it's any comfort to the families of the two unarmed minors shot dead by U.S. police in 2015 (both white) that whites are proportionally less likely to be shot dead than blacks.

It's so dispiriting to see everything devolve into tribal narratives of Us vs Them, Heroes vs Villains, Oppressor vs Oppressed, etc. I'm starting to despair that maybe humanity can't think of social ills in any other terms.

[WhiteTiger]

Originally Posted by wittynickname

Why are police using excessive force on teenagers who are smaller than they are?

Because 'excessive force' is often in the eye of the beholder, and few North America folks have any actual experience with physical violence these days? Because the teen will be fighting to hurt and/or run away while the police officer is likely trying to restrain with as little damage as possible to the teen? You ever try to hold onto someone that doesn't want to be held on to, period? Then try to do it without hurting them, while they are beating the 'bleep' out of you?

Size and strength provide distinct advantages in a fight, to be sure, but they are mostly neutralized if the goal is as pain-free restraint as possible instead of a KO 'win'.