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

Actually, several studies have shown that in "justified use of force" situations, concealed carry permit holders tend to be both more accurate and require fewer shots to end the situation when compared with police. A large part of that is because there are many police who only spend the time to practice on the range when they are required to requalify (usually annually), while most permit holders tend to spend more time at the range.

These are averages, so there are exceptions on both ends of the spectrum, but take it as you will.

EDIT: And with that, I have to head home from work. I might be able to respond more later tonight, but you might need to wait until tomorrow for an answer to your question, KnightWriter

 

That is interesting, but I don't know if a CCP holder matches his definition of "regular yahoo".

 

For me, it's the latter. I literally have never called the police.

 

Jedi Merkurian, I'm not on twitter so I didn't know about #IfTheyGunnedMeDown. I've been looking through it and can definitely identify with the thrust of the posts.

In fact, reading Dani's post below made me think about that a bit more:

The acute awareness you're talking about is so pervasive that I go out of my way to appear non-threatening. I fin myself purposefully smile at every white person who makes eye-contact with me. I do it so often that it's second-nature and don't even think about it. When a police officer and I interact, I make sure to keep my hands in plain view and make sure not to make any sudden movements. I'm hyper-aware of the way I might appear to him. And I constantly watch his body language--especially his hands. Twice, when I got pulled over, the cop approached my car with his hand on the pistol. Both times, I thought "This could be it."

The point is that this is very much my life. And I suspect its the life of most black men in this country. We're very much aware that most people don't have this experience. Like anakinfansince1983 said, most people are taught to trust the police. We have learned to fear them. It's frustrating. Imagine a dull ache in your head that just never goes away. You learn to accept it as a part of you. But it still hurts.

And then another killing happens. And you know that the kid who got shot or choked died because he didn't follow the rules. Maybe that was the day he forgot that he's supposed to actively appear docile, harmless, and respectful. Maybe that was the day he let his frustration boil over and say the wrong thing at the wrong time. Maybe that was the day he forgot he wasn't white and can't play the same stupid pranks that white kids can play. Maybe that was the day he forgot that being caught with drugs as a black man is not the same as being caught with drugs as a white kid in the suburbs. Maybe that was the day he forgot to smile and assure his fellow citizens that he's not the scary guy from our collective nightmares. I

It doesn't matter why. Because the kid is dead. We'll quibble about the details. What were the cops supposed to do? Of course they were afraid for their lives! He was carrying what appeared to be a gun! He was "acting in a threatening manner". He "approached with apparent aggressive intent." He "refused to cooperate". Either way, the police's actions in that instance always end up being justified. It's just a littler weird that they're justified in killing black men at a disproportionately higher rate than white men. I mean, if these are all justified, wouldn't these kinds of things happen, on average, about the same rate, independent of race?

Anyway, when these killings do happen, and the usual suspects show up to try and convince us that it has little or nothing to do with race, that's when the frustration boils over. Because it insults our intelligence. And the last thing you want to hear when your head has been killing you for the last 3 days is that you're probably just imagining it.

 

That was a fairly insipid post when it was immediately obvious to all and sundry what Mr44 was getting at. But, I guess, congratulations for scoring a pissy point, you are indeed something something.

Sure, but the problem with your open post is
a) The incidents are unrelated,
b) The Crawford shooting at Walmart seems a lot less likely to be a racial thing (in that, if you made Crawford white, would the shooting still have happened? Seems that as most of the mass public shootings in the US in recent years have been carried out by white males, it's likely that a white person in the same position very likely also would have been shot, making the issue less about race about more about the absurdity of the 2nd amendment)
c) the Brown shooting is recent and facts remain unclear, and
d) you and others immediately jumped to a conclusion.
Nothing inherently suggests that your conclusion was wrong; merely that you made a number of assumptions to get there. And this is where, Soundwave's experiences notwithstanding, I question the issue of race in America.
Race, fundamentally, does not matter. It's a stupid distinction we continue to draw because **** it, we always have right?
Part of what makes racism "work" is the disempowerment angle; I am different from you, asthetically, and I will deny you access to equality through structural means as a result. It may range from treating you like you're lesser as a citizen to instituting segregationist policy. We know this.
The election of a black president in America should have been a watershed moment and race should have at least taken a back seat to tackling issues that actually matter (not because racism isn't important; but because of aforementioned idiocy of discriminating on racial lines) like poverty. Poverty is colour blind and has a fairly neutral lethality with respect of whom it strikes yet we're all hung up debating racial issues.
Seems to me it's not just the likely racists that are the problem, either.

 

Good heavens, Ender . .. wherever did you get the idea that poverty was color blind? Not in 'Murica, surely.

You'd have a better argument if we were talking world povery, but we're not. The thread title is specifically about the United States.

 

Does poverty either care what colour your skin is, or require a racial quota to be fulfilled?

You're talking about representation now; I'm talking about 'at risk'.

 

I'm reminded of a Chris Rock routine on this subject.

It's funny 'cause it's true.

Edit: Ender, I think I know where you're coming from, but you're missing the point. You're talking about racism from a rational perspective--pointing out that it doesn't matter (i.e. the distinctions are stupid). Well no ****. But the practical reality is that if I am walking down one side of the street at night and you're walking down the same street on the other side, one of us is more likely to be intercepted by the police. And it won't be because your wallet is bigger than mine.

 

So long as you focus on race you'll never find a path to political consensus. However, if I were a racist old white person - i.e. a Republican - I would absolutely ensure the race discussion continues in it's giant circles for decades to come.

 

So long as you ignore race, cops will keep killing black men. Political consensus will mean nothing if you're dead.

 

That is painful for me to read, partially empathetic, and I'll explain why. I've never had that reaction from the police towards me. Authorities are generally polite and I don't fear for my life or safety when I have interacted with them (I have only ever been pulled over twice, and I suspect that has to do with the profile that I fit). I do, however, know what it's like to have my appearance be automatically associated with threatening and violent behavior. I have even been told by authorities that my height and gender are problematic, and that I need to further alter my behavior to make them comfortable. It's a really frustrating thing to be told, because I do it anyway. I smile at every, like you, I slouch, and I avoid taking any postures that are remotely threatening.

It really is emotionally painful for me. I don't like being treated like I'm going to hurt someone. I've never been in a fist fight. I'm not that kind of person. Treatment like I am eats at me and causes pain whenever I think about it. So I

As hard as it is on me, I suspect feeling for a black man is of similar quality, and about one to two orders of magnitude worse in quantity - though I can't be sure. The experiences I have had being feared and treated as a threat because of my gender and size make me grateful that I'm not subject to the kind of treatment that you deal with every day. I really am sorry that this happens to you.

When you think, "It could be me, it could be my son, it could be my father, it could be my brother, it could be my best friend," it must make that fear so tremendous real and terrible. I am so sorry about this. I want it to be different. I really do recognize that I can't fully get it. It's far easier for me to think, when I read about an unarmed black man being shot, that it was because he attacked the police officer and went for his gun, like the report says. It shouldn't be this way.

1.) Yeah, I am disturbed by the excessive authority police have. I don't like how things become he said/she said. It's why I support lapel and dash cameras at all times for police. I live in a town that has made national news over our police killing people (mostly Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites - we don't have many blacks. Almost our entire underclass is Mexican.). One of my friend's classmates in law school lost a testicle to police brutality - a middle class white man.

2) I specifically want to address the justified killings of black men being at a higher rate than white men. I think it is undeniable that black men in the United States are responsible for an overwhelmingly disproportionate amount of crime in the US. One statistic I have heard, and am unsure of its veracity (claimed source was DoJ), that black men between the ages of 18 and 49 are responsible for a little more than half of all violent crime in the United States according to victimization surveys. Knowing that, and knowing that black men are also disproportionately represented among murderers, wouldn't it also make sense that black men would be disproportionately represented among the men justifiably killed by police officers in the course of their duty? Systemic racism and inequity in the United States may be why black men are so disproportionately represented in crime and specifically crimes of violence, but if they are truly in fact overrepresented in the population of violent criminals, wouldn't it also make sense for them to be disproportionately represented in victims of justifiable homicide?

 

Great posts by Souderwan here.

It's vital to be aware of race, and also privilege.

 

I figured. Sometimes I want to separate posts out because I respond in kind to one part of what someone said, and then at the end I throw in something they disagree with. Then when a post is liked I am genuinely confused about what the person liking it liked about it.

 

I'm just conscious that this isn't happening anywhere else and that America is the only place i know with such a hypersensitivity to race.

 

Substitute "religion" and "conformity to our European notional ideals of statehood" and it's basically the same everywhere else?

 

Yeah, Australia and the UK have no racial problems whatsoever.

 

Cut out the personal attacks

For those not afflicted by the curse of upper middle class paralysis because so many issues, so little time to lift a finger to do anything but be outraged by them all, you'll note I didn't say there wasn't a race issue. I talked about how there isn't a hypersensitivity to it.

But I tell you what, Even. I'm wearing black leather shoes. You should feel outraged because they were probably made by underpaid labour; leather comes from the hide of an animal, and there's something innately racist about treading on something that's black with every step.

Meanwhile, congrats on how many lives you've saved with all that outrage. And without having to leave the house!

 

Kudos on your attempt to distract from your J-Rodian understanding of race politics. Getting a bit repetitive, though.

 

What like you feigning outrage at just about everything? You're literally a caricature of yourself right now and I don't know what's going on but fix it.

Speaking as an outsider - you're all nucking futs about race. To the point where you are creating problems with it. And when someone points this out, especially from a country with a reasonable effort at being massively racist itself, you can't handle it.

You want to call my country racist, I'll tell you you don't know the half of it. I'll tell you how angry people used to get at me for pointing out the Stolen Generation was a genocide; or that during the 2005 race riots that I was in Singapore, glad I don't sound Australian so I couldn't be confused with it.

You guys are idiots. Sorry. You actually have much better race relations than most other countries because whilst we and the UK have had women leaders, the odds of a non-white leader are slim right now. By which I mean, lol, no, we're staying white for sometime. But the way you talk it's like it's worse than here. Which is preposterous.

If you ever have a friend who won't deal with an issue - drug use, obsessive stalking an ex, depression - and gets fairly manic about not wanting to deal with it, it's you guys. You can't have a rational discussion and you have no idea how good you actually have it. None.

COPS KILLING BLACK MEN. Seriously.

 

I think that the accessibility of military surplus equipment (particularly vehicles) is more a symptom than a cause of the issue. The roots run a lot deeper.

The roots of the issue go back several decades, to the establishment of the first SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) teams in the 1960s (some sources point to Philadelphia in 1964, while others look to LAPD forming a SWAT team in 1967). With the rise of some high-profile incidents where the police were outgunned by criminals, the idea behind a SWAT team was sound. The idea was that you would have a small group who received specialized training and could respond to those rare incidents where your average police force would be outmatched.

However, with the development of the "War on Drugs" starting mostly in the 1970s, and the increase in drug-related organized crime, the roles of SWAT teams were greatly expanded. By the 80s, you had police forces receiving significant federal grants to fund the formation, training, and operation of specialized anti-drug "task forces", that largely use SWAT-style tactics. In my opinion, this was the turning point. Those federal grants gave police departments significant incentives (i.e. money $$$) to form specialized paramilitary forces. Once those teams were created, there was a natural reluctance to let them just sit around. Routine operations (such as serving warrants) could be used as training or practice for those tactics. This trend continued into the 1990s.

Towards the end of the 90s, incidents like Columbine caused a re-evaluation of tactics. Prior to Columbine, the doctrine was largely for police to wait for SWAT to arrive and let them handle an active shooter situation with potential hostages. After Columbine, the doctrine became for first responders to engage the active shooters ASAP. This, in turn, led to more training and equipment (stuff that was primarily reserved for SWAT teams) for the average police officer. Instead of being armed with just a revolver (and maybe a shotgun in the car), in the 80s and 90s police departments started transitioning to higher-capacity semi-automatic handguns. As that trend continued, semi-automatic rifles (primarily based on the M16/M4/AR15 family of rifles) also started becoming standard issue.

And then, 9/11 happened. In addition to the anti-drug money, you suddenly had massive grants for anti-terrorism, and everyone wanted their share. This had the same effect as the "War on Drugs" grants in the 80s, and encouraged even more militarization of police forces.

Most recently, with the military reducing its forces and equipment as the draw down in Iraq and Afghanistan, many pieces of military-surplus equipment (such as MRAP vehicles) have been made available to law enforcement organizations. (I remember reading one article last week about a town in Michigan that only has 4 deputies, but has 2 MRAPs and another 2 APVs of a different make). Combine that with the large number of military personnel who are transitioning out of the military and who enter law enforcement, and the trend only accelerates.

Through all of this, you have gotten numerous court rulings that have permitted a wide range of actions in the name of "officer safety", but then those same officers are essentially held to lower standards for use of force than any "civilian" would be in a comparable situation. It is that dissonance that I find the most troubling. If police officers are so much better trained than "civilians", then they should be held to a higher standard than those same "civilians". And yet, you can routinely read stories about officers who get little or not reprimand for actions that would put "civilians" behind bars. (For example, a police commissioner in New York who used the laser sight on his handgun as a laser pointer in a presentation, sweeping the gun across the crowd in the process.) Police are routinely allowed to commit assault (pointing a gun at someone) without having to have a reasonable belief that they face imminent threat of life or limb like a "civilian" has to. A "civilian" who draws (or even just puts his hand on) his handgun "just in case" is committing the crime of brandishing, while a cop is allowed to do so without any threat being apparent.

I need to go, as I've taken way too much time away from the kids (and dinner is ready), but the overall trend is very troubling. There have recently been some rays of hope, but they are not nearly as bright as they need to be.