I'm not saying we're all guilty of something, or that everyone is to blame. But Bob's "joke" isn't really a joke, it's not calling out the morality of anything these people are doing, it's just two back to back stereotype slurs.


Have you ever seen a thief take a job application? Take a greeting card?

Those things have nothing to do with what's happening here, it's just an attempt to reenforce racial bias under the guise of being a joke.

Actual racists only use these new symbols when the mainstream recoils in horror and labels the trolls incorrectly as racists instead of as trolls, or just ignoring them. I think many spreading the "it's ok to be white" slogan are trolls too. They enjoy seeing people freak out at a phrase that says nothing negative about anyone, but many people will read into it a hidden meaning. You can't discern intention in these cases, only assume based on your personal previous exposure. I seem to understand it as a response/analog to "black lives matter" which most people don't think secretly means white lives don't matter, and the posters think the disproportionate response is racial bias.

@C-note

Do you only post racial videos which features injustice?
Because if you spend your life looking for something, that's all you'll ever see.

You need to broaden your prospects. I understand there are racial bias and prejudice people out there but you seem to hyper-focus on it. You invite your life to be surrounded by these bad energies.

I'd love to see you more positive. I don't know what wrongs this world has served you personally, or if you just surround yourself in these issues, but sometimes, the best way to free yourself from these issues is to not see them in everything you see and do.

There are a few things that do make me laugh at the ignorance though. He hasn't seen any postitive...at all...since the civil rights era...? Okay, little sensationalized...considering *Dash cams *More prosecutions *more black officers (I read one recount how in the 80s the force was so different that only white men could arrest white men in the city, that was probably the funniest example...) *more policies and training against racial bias... Ergo the problem. Mahar doesn't care what the police really do, only the perception of the television plugging points.

I agree with everything else you said, but I have to take issue with this.

The two are not comparable at all. A cop is not an abusive spouse, they are the people who society grants a monopoly on force to. Their explicit purpose is enforce the law. If a cop issues a lawful request and you do not comply with it, they are BY DEFINITION, allowed to use force.

Now, I'm not saying that all police do this correctly, or that there aren't serious issues with racial bias.

But it comes down to rights and responsibilities.
An abuser has no right to abuse their spouse/children and their victims have no responsibility to capitulate or be perfect.
Whereas again, a cop explicitly has the right to use force and a citizen has the responsibility to obey a lawfully issued command from a police officer.

It would certainly be a formative experience that they share in common.

Could be training, where the list of suspicious attributes (such as what clothes someone wears) are more likely to be worn by a particular culture (and since culture broadly tracks race, it would also then have a racial bias).

Could be that they are taught self reinforcing statistics. Something like : Blacks are more often convicted of crimes. So then the police more often expect blacks to be up to crimes, so they watch them more carefully - which in turn leads to more caught crimes in that population than in populations not watched so closely - which reinforces the statistic and repeats the cycle.

Could also be a social bias where the kinds of black people who go into the police force are more likely to have life experience that biased them against their own people. Some function or demographics, and location, etc.

Could also be pop culture bias. 'Black pop media culture' spent the last decade+ going on and on about 'gangsa this and gangsta that', etc. Since I haven't seen many 'gangsta cops' (lol), I wouldn't be surprised if the black cop population was culturally biased against the people that dress to mimic said media (which would more often be black people than white people)

In any case, I can theorize all I want, but not knowing the truth, it's all just guesswork.

-scheherazade

Good, so we can agree on the one possible reason for him not being shot could have been racial bias (scrawny white kid). Cool.




As for the rest:

"
- the Civil War wasn't about Slavery..
"

Propaganda is real. Believing everything you're told by a government authority who has the power to control information, and who has a vested interest in drumming up nationalism, is naive. Particularly when that authority's actions so often throughout the history of events in question have not matched their words.

I would only ask you this :
How many of your neighbors today (of any race) do you think would willingly die _for you_, a stranger to them, for _any_ reason?
How many white people do you think would have died _for you_ back then? (I use "for you" because you earlier indicated that you are black, so the question is meant to be answered not rhetorically, but actually from your perspective)
Does it make sense that the civil war was out of the goodness of white people's hearts, or does it make more sense that white people had a score to settle with one another?
Do you really think that primary schools are telling the absolute unbiased truth about the civil war (particularly given that the north got to dictate the curriculum after victory)?

My point here has nothing to do with any opinions of black people. It is squarely to do with distrust of government as an institution combined with government's history of white washing is own actions after the fact. Don't conflate the two.




"
- that white people are treated just as poorly as black people (sometimes)..

[...]

Like I said before. Fuck off with that..
"Well, cops are mean to ME TOO!!" bullshit.
"

Why would I not assert that [*some*] white individuals are [at times] treated just as poorly [or poorer] as [*some*] black [individuals]? (to be stated precisely).

Your command that I not mention harms done to whites makes it sound like you don't think those harms are worth mentioning. Maybe because you think they are not real or meaningful?

There are plenty of police brutality videos on this site depicting injury and murder of white people at the hands of police.

Do dead white people get to come back to life, because they aren't black, and so their gun shot wounds obviously aren't as bad?

Or those that went to jail for 'assaulting a police officer' after a cop beat the crap out of them, do they get to rewind their lives and get their squandered time [and reputation/job] back, because they aren't black?

Like I said, I agree that black people get fucked with more than white people - but I don't deny the suffering of anyone, and I certainly wouldn't go as far as to assume that 'it's all about me'.

In essence, being targeted more often, is not the same as being the only target.

The general problem I see with LE (that affects everyone), is the government's (police are the executive branch) lack of obedience to the 14th amendment, giving themselves privilege to harm the state (in a republic, citizens are the state) whenever their agents personally whim so.

That's a separate issue from LE officers more often using their privilege on blacks than on whites - which as I stated, is also real issue in and of itself.

Fixing this disregard for the 14th amendment would encompass everyone, so 'we're all in it together' in this regard.





"
- that the ONLY DIFFERENCE between cops arresting a MASS fucking MURDERER WITHOUT INCIDENCE..

And murdering 12 year old Tamir Rice for wielding a BB-GUN!

Is that Rice pointed a "realistic-looking" gun at cops.
"

I never even mentioned anything about this.

Was that the difference? Was it actually that Rice pointed a real looking fake gun at a cop, while this recent white kid didn't?
(I don't actually know)

If that really is the difference, then I guess I can see why the one pointing a gun at the cop would get shot by a cop.
...
Although, I suspect that the black kid never pointed a gun at anyone, and the cop lied about it, and the cop just shot the kid 'just in case' (because that's what cops do when they feel even remotely in danger, because they're trained to be paranoid and afraid of everything, and to place their own safety first and foremost). And I suspect that cops would have liked to do the same in this recent case, but their departments are probably afraid of drawing more negative attention to the police.
But, that's just my suspicion. I wasn't there.




In this recent case, what was the connection between the white kid and the church he attacked? Was it random, or did he pick it for a reason? (actually asking, not some veiled statement)

-scheherazade

Hey @lantern53

You're oddly silent.

What's your opinion on this one?

Good police work here?

I wonder why they only tackled and handcuffed the black kids tho.

Clearly they aren't racial bias or anything. Cops can't ever be racist.

They probably just knew exactly ever kid that did or didn't "belong" there
You know, like they personally know each and every kid and where they live.

So of course they only tackled the ones that were "trespassing" and "fighting".. right? o_O?

Either way, lawful or clearly morally unlawfully wrong.
ALWAYS obey the police, amirite?!

So yeah, thanks for asking "why are white people seemingly MORE willing to be terrible shits to 'others'?"

[Just gonna leave this here: Research has shown that the brain has a very strong racial bias in response to seeing others in pain or suffering.

[Sidenote, this common "there is no white privilege, cause I don't FEEL like there's white privilege" problem is why i tagged @newtboy in a past tirade @lantern53]

But fer fuck sake white dudes, it's STILL racist or sexist.. even if you mean it ironically or sarcastically

Own that shit.
Without gloating or still somewhat mostly denying it.

Just say "Okay, so i'm gonna be extremely racist for a little bit, but i have an objectively valid point based on facts & data"


Seriously, white people can't comprehend and consistently deny how great they have it.. just for being white..

Yet somehow unintentionally & flagrantly gloat about how simple shit should be/is for the rest of us?!

As my hispanic mother would say "I dun bell'eeb"

The problem in this video here isn't what could've happened to the cop or how threatening the suspect was or even racial bias. That shit is secondary.
A man got shot 2 times in the chest because he did not do what he was told to. He was passive agressive and was murdered because of it. That was murder.
If a law enforcement officer can not subdue a single person without shooting them in the chest, he is either beyond incompetent and his whole organisation needs to be seriously reevaluted concerning their training methods and oversight practices or he just enjoys murdering the shit out of people.
There is no argument that there was not another option how to react. Even if he didn't have a taser, he should have at least some pepperspray. Or hey, try firing a warning shot. If that fails, you can still immobilize the suspect by shooting them in the legs. However, dead men don't sue, right?
That man got murdered and I don't give a shit why. He was killed without reason.

Yes @Asmo, the situation is shitty and everybody knows it. There is no reason to act as if there isn't a racial bias in US police forces. Not all cops are racist, of course, but when you talk about the police as an organisation, you have to go by everyones behaviour.
It is a sad fact, being white in the US means being safer. Especially from the police.
Another thing, you're not a patriot if you provoke the cops to shoot you for a YouTube video. You simply give your life to prove a point everybody already knows to be true. You're even less a martyr than a suicide bomber. And those guys are idiots.

@MichaelL
i agree that most would understand your point,including myself.

i was merely pointing out that your argument has little or nothing to do with white privilege and after reading your response,i am forced to come to the conclusion you do not know what white privilege actually is.

so your conflation of racism and racial bias to white privilege is not uncommon but rather the norm.

To be fair, it's expected to say something offensive to someone when you want to offend them.

From this video clip (particularly one that starts after the argument is already going, and doesn't let us see the beginning, or a view of both people's gestures), you can't tell if there is actual racial bias there, or her doing her best to be harsh.

Some people are really easy to get going, and it doesn't take much to get them to make a fool of themselves.

-scheherazade

Because they're two separate issue, one relates socioeconomics, the other to racial bias.

Based on the audio of the police call we also know who picked on who.

>> ^KnivesOut:

Again, I don't necessarily think you're a sexist or a misogynist. I think you may be suffering from the same "boys club" attitude that many of the engineers I've worked with operate under. I just want you to introspect a little and consider the possibility.

Possibly. I'd like to think I don't suffer from that, although in reality, I cannot ignore the fact that we are all a product of the society we grew up in. In my defence, it is something I've thought about and I feel I'm open to the possibility of being wrong.

>> ^KnivesOut:

For the sake of argument, what if we replaced the masculine/feminine terms in your question with racial ones:
"why do we need to promote any career/vocation that is traditionally single [race] dominated to the other [race], e.g. [some profession] to [blacks], [some other profession] to [whites]?"
I'm drawing no conclusions about the importance or the value of one profession over the other, merely putting it into racial terms instead of sexual ones. To me, it feels just as icky.

I understand the ick factor there. But isn't there a difference between assuming a racial bias and a gender or even cultural bias? (bias is really the wrong word here, but I'm struggling to come up with a better one). I don't believe we can ignore the fact that different genders or cultures show aptitudes for different things (I believe culture is more important than race in determining this, in fact, I generally believe race to be largely irrelevant).

I guess my idea is to be "post-feminist/racist". I'd hope that we can accept individuals on their merits.

>> ^KnivesOut:

I believe that sexism is still widely accepted in our society, to a much higher degree than racial intolerance, or even tolerance of "alternate lifestyles". It's insidious, and it crosses the entirety of our society (sexism in every racial community.) Women still get paid less for the same work, they still have a harder time getting promotions (and then still make less money.) Women are even very sexist against each-other (you should see the looks my wife gets when she tells other mothers at school functions that she's finishing a compsci degree.)


This I agree with. Look at the current crop of games from E3. I utterly dislike the idea that anyone is judged in a career on anything other than their merits.

>> ^KnivesOut:

Maybe I'm overly touchy about it, and for that I apologize.


You probably shouldn't. In general, I am a cantankerous, grumpy bastard who's entirely too sure of the correctness of his own opinions.