Senate "Race" Relations (was "U.S. Society and Black Men")

Me and my coworker were joking about the Open Carry Texas thing. We were like if a bunch of black men started doing it, then,we would outlaw all guns.lol

 

Merk, I like the idea of this thread, but I think making it "Guns vs Black Men" as opposed to "US Police Forces vs Black Men" and/or "US society vs Black Men". Because the truth is that black men aren't just shot to death, sometimes indiscrimantly. We're sometimes choked to death for petty crimes.

Every time one of these events go down, there's always the same people swooping in trying to convince us that we're not being unfairly targeted. That while racism certainly exists, this particular incident wasn't about race, or that race may have been a factor, but the victim really should have behaved better or he wouldn't have been shot. I mean, he was walking home at night in the rain wearing a hoodie. What'd he think was going to happen?

And the stories about the killing of unarmed black men is just what actually makes the news. But those stories are the inevitable result of the thousands upon thousands of incidents that don't make the news. Eric Gardner was probably harrassed by the cops hundreds of times before the fateful day came that he decided to snap and argue. And the cops taught him a lesson that no one in that neighborhood will ever forget by choking him to death. None of us ever heard the story of all the previous harrassments. You don't hear the stories about being followed around in the store; being stopped in your neighborhood when you're out for a walk to ask why you're there; DWB; etc. They happen so often that these events just don't make the news. It's almost to the point that the killing of yet another black man by the police won't make the news.

When I was 19, driving from Orlando to NY to report to my duty station, I took a detour with my white wife and my white step daughter through the state of Alabama to visit my mother in law. I was in the state of Alabama for a total of 20 hours, including about 6-8 hours of sleep. I was pulled over 3 times. What got me off with "a warning" each of those times (after the cop looked passed me at each stop to ask my wife and step-daughter "You girls all right?")? My military ID. Each time they saw it, their entire demeanor would change. I was one of the good ones, I guess.

To this day, I shudder to think how those stops would have gone down if I wasn't in the military.

And ****ed up as it is to say, when I read stories like this, I thank the good lord that my son looks more like a white kid than a black one. Because he's 17. If he looked more like his dad, I'd be terrified for his life. And that fact is absolutely the problem.

Anyway, I found this opinion piece on CNN. It captures my thoughts better than I can.

Peace.

 

I didn't know there were only two races.

Edit: response to juliet, not souderwan.

 

The only two teams are agreeing with rogue ten or being racist.

 

I'm not gonna pretend that mansplaining/whitesplaining* aren't recurring problems for Mike in these kinds of discussions, but I don't think it's so easy to conflate his personal faults with just invalidating the entire ideas of internalized racism and horizontal oppression. Minorities can be racist against their own groups. Women are overwhelmingly sexist against other women. It's a neat trick of the kyriarchy that prejudices are so ingrained that oppressors aren't the only ones who reinforce the oppression.

I do think that the dynamic and the conversation would change if the officer who shot Mike Brown was black, but I also think that Mike Brown's race could have been a very significant contributing factor in his death regardless of the race of the shooter.


*I genuinely have no idea if Mike identifies as white, sooo, whatever the equivalent is for whatever he identifies as. It's a discussion specifically about blackness and he isn't black is my point.

 

On a serious note, I've been having conversations about this very topic for the past 3 days with various friends and acquaintances and its like this:

I'm not mad. Kind of like what Noundy was saying, as a black man, I've kind of just learned to expect things like this to happen. The police are, imho, a racist institution in America because it was the primary tool of the enforcement of racist policies for much of the 20th century. I'm very cognizant of the fact that if I get pulled over, for anything, I could be killed at a moment's notice. Now this may sound like irrational thinking, but I grew up, partially, in Washington DC and there were countless examples, some less than 50 ft from my doorstep, of police violence against black males and what was painfully apparent was that this was not going on in the white neighborhoods. And these incidents continued when I moved down south. So when I hear a story about a black male getting killed by the police my first reaction is "I wonder if the cop will be fired." Its not even sorrow or sympathy for the dead(as you guys know I lack empathy), I just realize that's the best that can come from the situation is the cop losing his job.

And I'm not one of those people that ignores the facts of the case. I think sometimes the actions can be explained, but, once again like Noundy said, MOST of the time when things like that happen it isn't reported.

Idk, just growing up in the black community it was very apparent that the cops were a bad idea, for everything. Don't call them if you need help and leave if you get the sense that police will be called.

 

Can't we all just get along? /Reginald Denny

 

How is saying "Women are sexist against other women" and "minorities are racist against other minorities" not just another method of progressives to invalidate the opinions of those who disagree with them. That's the #1 tactic of progressives in deal with those pesky minorities that with them on everything. Followed by questioning their minority status.

 

I don't know if that's just a progressive thing. Its any time anyone is trying to convince a minority to join their side. I've heard it from all over.

 

I've had my identity as a minority routinely challenged by progressives online and offline for disagreeing with them. In fact, I've suffered more racism by the hands of the left than the right. This is fairly common.

Also, considering you've seen my posts here, you know I don't blast liberals/conservatives in every sentence, so idk what you're going on about.

 

To be fair, Vivec has a point. While it is absolutely possible for minorities to actively oppress other minorities--sometimes without even realising it--it absolutely is a fairly common tactic to accuse any minority who doesn't toe the liberal ideological line of suffering from some form of racial self-hatred. Or to accuse them of being a sell out or something along those lines.

That said, I don't think it's accurate to suggest that minorities can't be predjudiced. We absolutely can.

 

The problem here is Rogue wants to hold to the narrative that the cop is racist. Stating that if the cop is black he's just self racist only exists so that Rogue can hold that narrative without any hiccups. It has nothing to do with an academic understanding of race relations or real internalizing of hatred. It's just Rogue being Rogue.

I stated we should wait for more information before saying that. Rogue, well, did his usual.

 

I will admit that I have... a really hard time with a lot of racial issues here in NYC. It's basically ground zero for stop and frisk and the police -- in general -- while I'm still assuming the majority of cops actually want to help, some are psychopaths and racially motivated.

And I clearly don't live (or go to) any of the "bad" neighborhoods so I lack a lot of context. And my only real discussions on this happen at the gym, where my friend who trains me -- who did grow up black in a bad neighborhood in NYC 30-35 years ago -- is totally in favor of stop and frisk. As are most of the other guys in the gym (including the ones who carry). And I absolutely positively don't know what to make of that. It sort of confounds my world-view.

 

I'm kind of in the same boat. We all know that unless that video of Eric Gardner had emerged and gone viral, he would have just been another statistic. The report would have said that he attacked the officers and they, in the course of defending themselves from certain death or serious bodily harm, momentarily applied too much pressure to the suspect's windpipe, resulting in his loss of consciouness. They made heroic efforts to save him, of course, but were ultimately unsuccessful. So sorry.

 

I don't think a black police officer has to hate himself or hate blackness to have a belief (conscious or unconscious) that he is more likely to be harmed by a black person than a white person in the execution of his duties, and therefore be more likely to question, harm, or even kill black people. That belief, when shared by enough cops, can still lead to police targeting of black people. That's one part of what is called systemic racism. Regardless of personal feelings toward members of his own racial group (likely to be positive), he can still participate in systemic racism by enacting behaviors resulting from that belief.

 

PG you said they were mythical progressives but now you're saying it's happened to you as well? So I guess they weren't mythical at all.

 

You're obsessed with progressives. You should catch a movie or do something fun.

 

http://www.torontosun.com/2014/08/11/riots-after-shooting-death-of-black-teen-in-missouri

We've now had two nights of rioting. This surely helps.