Exactly, well said. If protesting doesn't make the comfortable uncomfortable, then nothing can possibly change. I haven't seen one single post on this forum criticizing the US police which have systematically lynched black people for centuries, but I've seen countless ones bitching about the protests*. See, protests get people's attention. People who just yawn and ignore violence when the police murder someone, and have nothing to say about it, suddenly sit up and take notice when the masses fight back.
* Frankly there shouldn't be any political posts here at all, I try to discourage that and it seems the mods occasionally delete a post or two when they're in the mood, but it keeps happening anyway so today I've been breaking my personal no-politics rule so I can contribute a bit of balance here. I don't want to get into a slug-fest but I'm tired of seeing the only posts about the protests being condemnations, so I want to at least add one voice of sympathy with the protestors. And the riots too, yes, those too. I've seen people on this forum talk about the Second Amendment and how they need guns to fight tyranny, but then those same people condemn rioters. As if the Boston Tea Party wasn't a riot. Only white violence is ok, apparently. Violence is power, and only with power can anything be achieved.
"While I was traveling, I had a chance to speak in Cairo, or rather Alexandria, with President Nasser for about an hour and a half. He's a very brilliant man. And I can see why they're so afraid of him, and they are afraid of him -- they know he can cut off their oil. And actually the only thing power respects is power. Whenever you find a man who's in a position to show power against power then that man is respected. But you can take a man who has power and love him all the rest of your life, nonviolently and forgivingly and all the rest of those ofttime things, and you won't get anything out of it."
- Malcolm X, speech at Ford Auditorium, February 14, 1965
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trevorh321 (5495)
5 years ago
Not all change is good. The protesters are protesting something that does not exist. The death of George Floyd, while tragic, has not been proven to be a result of racism. Just a bad cop.
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Kawada_Kira (7282)
5 years ago
It's remarkable how many "just a bad cop"s the US seems to have, considering this has been happening on a constant basis for years upon years and generations upon generations. How many "bad apples" can there possibly be, and why does the US police system seem to have so much more of them than most other countries in the industrialized world (and many in the third world, even)? The issue is systemic, not individual.
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jriley555 (8535)
5 years ago
i agree with that but still maintain the only constructive outcomes are policy & police practice reform, which will be, in technique at least, race-neutral.
we cannot 'fix' racism head on (witness the denial here, there, everywhere). but we can fix the practice, and most of all outlaw police murder with new policies, among them:
abolition of choke holds
always-on body cams (dispensing of which a firing offense)
extensive & periodic training on conflict resolution & de-escalation techniques
most of these no reasonable person will argue with. it also will flush out the 'bad apples', howsoever many there are, or at least frustrate them from acting out their issues, whatever they may be.
the problem may be cultural, the solution must be practical.
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Kawada_Kira (7282)
5 years ago
Yes, of course I largely agree with that, and hope that the protests will help serve as a catalyst for such reforms.
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trevorh321 (5495)
5 years ago
When you take into consideration the number of police interactions, it is amazing how RARE these 'bad apples' seem to be.
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Kawada_Kira (7282)
5 years ago
There are almost as many police shootings in the US per year as there are days in the year. And plenty of other acts of police violence which don't result in death and therefore get less press. It's bad enough that every black family has to have "the talk" about it with their kids. White people think of "the talk" parents have with their kids as about sex, but while black people have that one too, for them "the talk" is about how to deal with the police and avoid getting killed. The threat is ALWAYS there and every one of them has to face it. Black people risk death just walking out the door. Or not even doing that much; recall Botham Jean, the man who was murdered when a cop broke into HIS apartment and shot him in "self-defense" not so long ago. Do literally all police encounters result in death? No. But for black people, the threat to their well-being is there in every single police encounter, if they make the slightest wrong move. Maybe try listening to black people's stories about their encounters with the police and how frightening it is, how they have to be hyper-aware of everything they're doing lest the cop decide that he "fears for his life". Try to imagine living that. For white people, police make them feel safe; for black people, it's just the opposite. The US is a country whose institutions are built on racism, on slavery, with the police rooted in the old slave-catchers of the early 1800s, and right up to the 1960s were quite openly about keeping black people down. You think that simply goes away? This is why it's a mistake to try to make it about individuals and "bad apples". Institutions operate on institutional logic. There's a racial divide in the US, and the police exist to serve the upper crust of society, the middle class and the rich, primarily white people, and wield a monopoly on force to keep everyone else (especially black people) in line. And I would think in the Trump era of all times you could see how incredibly racist much of US society still is. How someone could believe that the police, an apparatus of the ruling system of such a society, wouldn't reflect that, is beyond me.
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Stratego (31059)
5 years ago
Their talk should be about how to avoid getting killed by their fellow black men.
And THIS talk should move to the politics board where it belongs.
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TalkinPikchorBox (2250)
5 years ago
“Black people risk death just walking out the door.”
This is true about the cops but it is even more true with black on black crime. Here in Chiraq it’s mostly the gangbangers doing the shootings and killings.
Ah crap the thing above me posted the same thing. Maybe I’m wrong.
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[deleted]
5 years ago
Yeah, checkity check yo'self
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TalkinPikchorBox (2250)
5 years ago
Its just that all these people giving their opinions on this matter but I know none of you are from the hood or never put in work on the streets. Most of my homeboys from back in the day are dead or in prison. I went through all this shit with pigs planting stuff, lying on reports, or just plain giving us a beat down and taking our weed. When I was a shorty we actually hung on a street corner and did dirt. Not like the youngsters today gang banging on YouTube behind a screen. The only thing that got me out was my love for cooking. If I didn’t go to culinary school I would most likely be getting 3 hots and a cot at Menard getting drunk on pruno. Now that I’m a contributing person in society pigs don’t even look my way, not so much as a speeding ticket. Probably cus I’m a has been but still.
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[deleted]
5 years ago
Do you realize that you always underestimate me? Best not to make assumptions, you hot hunk of man.
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Kawada_Kira (7282)
5 years ago
Ah yes, "black on black crime", the racist gold standard. Kindly insert that argument someplace where the sun doesn't shine, if you would.
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trevorh321 (5495)
5 years ago
Yes, when you consider the sheer number of encounters, that is a very small number. And we are going to dismantle the police over that? You are condemning thousands, tens of thousands to brutal murder if you get rid of the police. It will be horrifying.
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Kawada_Kira (7282)
5 years ago
It's a damn sight higher than you see in most other places in the world. Only a few places are comparable, places like Brazil which have a similar history of racial oppression to the US.
And I said nothing of having no security system of any kind. Though I also think it's downright funny that you think we'd automatically descend into some kind of Mad Max world without cops, considering cops have only existed in their modern form for a couple hundred years. Somehow people survived thousands of years of civilization without them.
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trevorh321 (5495)
5 years ago
You might want to look into Australia. But the reality is most police forces in the world are so corrupt they don't even keep any kind of accurate records.
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Kawada_Kira (7282)
5 years ago
In any case, police don't really do much, if anything, to keep crime down. As Mrmojo said below, police show up after a crime happens. What keeps crime down is resources. Economic well-being of a society. Infrastructure, jobs, livable wages. Not confining people to the margins and then siccing the police on them to beat them down.
What about Australia?
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trevorh321 (5495)
5 years ago
You should look into the record the police there have against the natives. It's certainly worse than in America. In fact, you could make a very strong case the police target white people in America more than anyone else. Despite the fact they commit less crimes. The narrative sold to the public about the police being racist towards African-Americans is simply not supported by the facts. Before there was any investigation at all, the protests were out, the rioting and looting ensued, and they have no idea what reason George Floyd was killed. Not that they care. All they care about is using his death to advance a political narrative against the police and, more importantly, against white people.
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Kawada_Kira (7282)
5 years ago
You're gonna use whataboutism on this? Really? Australia and the US are both colonial societies spawned from British imperialism, born in genocide. Who gives a rat's fart which of them is "worse"? They're the same thing, the same basic social system.
And now I think you've shown your full racist colors with your silly whining about the police being worse to white people (laughable not least because it's false but because you've spent this whole thread defending the police and their conduct toward black people, with just a "few bad apples" somehow managing to kill a black man every 20 hours on average), white people committing less crimes, and how the protestors hate white people and have some anti-white agenda. You can shove that right back up into your rectum, because I'm not having it. You're the one advancing a political narrative, one not merely about protests but against black people themselves, which you have just clearly shown in its full glory, racist.
The protests ensued because this was just the latest in a run of murders that takes place every single day in the US. But you obviously don't give a damn about that. So you go on not caring when black people are killed but pissing yourself when they respond to systematic mass murder in the only way that actually gets to people like you.
I won't be responding to you any further, as you've outed yourself and racists aren't worth my time.
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trevorh321 (5495)
5 years ago
Both are better than most of the world's police. I invite you to visit Africa, Latin America, Russia, China, North Korea, the Middle East. They are far far worse. You dare not step out of line there. They don't even have the freedom to record and report such killings by the police. That's a big difference.
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[deleted]
5 years ago
Dude only has 11 posts. Dont waste your time, conserve your energy.
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