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Buying a TV while Black

Thermal said:
Not familiar with two of your examples, but of the other two (Guyger and McMichaels), one is in prison for murder and the other two under arrest for same and awaiting trial. So the police pretty clearly can't do what you claim they can.

Also, in a nation of a third of a billion people, there are going to be occasional outliers of hateful injustice. Please don't insult all of us with that wide brush of yours.
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For another, older example, 1985, look up Sagon Penn. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagon_Penn
 
Skeptic Tank said:
FYI Australia and NZ and such are also wondrously low percentage black. Our considerable number of forum members from those nations have my envy.
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I am sure that the Maori, Pacifica, and Aboriginal members of our populations would be so pleased that you don't consider them black.
 
theprestige said:
It's the OP's job to do research on the items they post about.
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I don't think that there are any rules about who should do research.

But if you are scratching your head wondering "what happened?" then research is an excellent way to get more information about it.
Life's to short to crawl through crappy news outlet websites trying to figure out what might have happened, just because someone's going to accuse you of racism if you don't.
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You could have tracked down the complaint made by the Grays which has the whole story from their perspective and the statement by the Des Peres Public Safety Director. Together with the videos this would have supplied all available facts.

This would have taken a lot less time than dreaming up scenarios that don't fit the facts.
 
Skeptic Tank said:
To me, it has always seemed the natural role of a skeptic to hear a story presented in the media as "horrible racist treatment of black people has happened again, black man beaten and/or killed for no reason at all!" and then say "Hmm, I bet there's more to this story"

I don't see why so many here want to shut down that sort of reaction to these stories.
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This is a reaction I'm familiar with from the conspiracy theory forums. "You're supposed to be skeptics, why are you supporting the official story and why are you trying to suppress alternative theories?" Viewed in the most charitable sense, it's based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between skepticism and denialism. Less charitably, it's an attempt to subvert the process of rational skepticism in support of an agenda. Skeptic Tank's stated his agenda quite openly, and strongly argues for a belief that black people are unfit for citizenship, so we needn't bother enquiring too closely about motives. But it's worth pointing out that skepticism only requires that conclusions are questioned, not that they're necessarily rejected. We're allowed so form working conclusions based on the evidence available, rather than having to wait till irrefutable proof of a conclusion is presented - in fact, outside of mathematics there is no such thing.

I'm being criticized for my provisional conclusion that racism played a part in this incident, so I'll explain what led me to it, and where I stand with respect to evidence. Firstly, we regularly see stories of black people in the USA suffering excessively brutal treatment at the hands of police officers, and my perception is that these stories are vastly more common than white people suffering similar treatment - though there are such stories, they are relatively few. The simplest and most parsimonious explanation, given the long and well-documented history of racial discrimination in the USA (please note: I'm not suggesting here that the USA is unusual in this respect), is that racism has not been eliminated from the law enforcement community, and the result is a preponderance of stories in which black people are beaten or killed by police when there is no rational cause. This is clearly exascerbated by the USA's attitude to gun ownership, which raises the perceived level of danger police work under to the point where the "warrior cop" attitude becomes prevalent. Police see their job as taking out the bad guys before they get taken out themselves, and some tend to associate black with bad. Even if that's based, as ST insists, on crime statistics, applying it to a situation like this, if that's what happened, is still racist; it's judging an individual on the basis of characteristics rightly or wrongly assigned to their race. The common counter to this is "You can't prove this specific instance was racist." This is equivalent to asking for the benefit of the doubt, but the overall picture seems too clear for there to be much doubt to benefit from.

Now, I admit I may be wrong. It may be that white people suffer this sort of treatment at the same rate as black people, but the stories are not widely reported. I can think of three responses to this.

Firstly, are the stories not reported because they're hushed up by police departments? Do municipalities offer generous settlements to white victims of police brutality that they don't offer to black victims, so only the latter become major issues? That would simply remove the racism one step, but I'd be interested to see evidence of it.

Secondly, are the stories not reported because they're not considered newsworthy, that more or less innocent white people being brutalized by police is considered so commonplace that it's not worth talking about, but the occasional black person suffering the same becomes national news? This seems unlikely, because there are news outlets quite capable of reporting stories of brutality against white people; there should be links to post.

Thirdly, is there a nationwide conspiracy to suppress stories of brutality against white people? I'd be prepared to consider evidence for this, but the burden of proof is pretty damned high.

Fourthly, is Skeptic Tank right, and was every single incident of this sort brought on by the criminality of the victim? Was 68-year-old Marvia Gray a violent criminal who needed to be wrestled to the ground by armed officers? Was Philando Castile's exercising of his legal right to carry a weapon, and his notification of the police officer stopping him that he held one, a crime so threatening that it demanded his instant shooting? Was the supposed carer of an autistic man armed with a toy car presenting such a threat by lying on the ground with his hands up and politely asking a police officer not to shoot him that he needed to be shot, handcuffed and left to bleed for half an hour before receiving medical attention? The arguments offered so far in support of this interpretation have been weak at best, pathetically biased at worst. But I'm open to better evidence.

But for the moment, simple, good old fashioned racism is the explanation that comes across as most compelling in this case, based on the overall picture. And the arguments I've seen for any other interpretation simply don't fit the facts as presented. As a middle aged white man, I'd expect on occasion to get rather annoyed with a customer services representative without being body-slammed, handcuffed and hospitalized. Yet when a black man and a black old lady get treated differently, we're asked to assume it can't possibly be racism unless and until it's proven beyond possible doubt.

Skepticism doesn't work like that. Racism doesn't work like that. If you want to change my mind, give me something better.

Dave
 
PhantomWolf said:
I am sure that the Maori, Pacifica, and Aboriginal members of our populations would be so pleased that you don't consider them black.
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I mentioned this in another topic. Skeptic Tank has redefined races in a unique way that supports his narrative. In this alternate universe, white Hispanics in the USA are not “white,” and aboriginals in Australia and NZ are not “black.”
 
Very well said, indeed. I would only add that if one actually knows black people (and others who don't look white) and listens to them, stories of mistreatment by police - from regular, seemingly unmotivated traffic stops to physical abuse - are common.
 
"Just believe the opposite of what I'm being told" doesn't make you a Skeptic, it makes you a Contrarian Idiot.
 
Babbylonian said:
Very well said, indeed. I would only add that if one actually knows black people (and others who don't look white) and listens to them, stories of mistreatment by police - from regular, seemingly unmotivated traffic stops to physical abuse - are common.
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Implicit in the denials in these threads of racist intent is the belief by the deniers that black people are untrustworthy when they claim that an incident in which they were the central participants was racist. That the black person who was there and experienced the discrimination just was too stupid or too angry to understand that no racism was involved. Whereas white people who only read about the incident and lived as members of the majority their entire life can more correctly blithely state that no racism took place. Frequently white people who believe that there is virtually no white on black racism in the USA. They certainly haven’t experienced any!:)

Sad and embarrassing.
 
Giordano said:
Implicit in the denials in these threads of racist intent is the belief by the deniers that black people are untrustworthy when they claim that an incident in which they were the central participants was racist.
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That's just a sub-category of "I define bias as 'disagrees with me.'" that people have started to adopt more and more.
 
Again since so much of people's mentalities are a childish, spiteful "showing up" routine this is to be expected. For many people there is no greater joy then using someone's own values against them.

It's why we skeptics have to deal with so much "Oh I thought you were a skeptic" denialism, why argumentative standards have to deal with kneejerk contrarianism, why simple "All things being equal the solution with more freedom is preferable" desire for freedom has to deal with "I'm going to poke myself in the eye with a sharp stick, not because I want to or even think it's a good idea but just because someone dared tell me not to" Youcantellmewhattodoism.

It's like these people can't achieve orgasm without perverting someone else's good idea into a twisted strawman version and using it against them.
 
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I would also add how oddly specific the “True skeptics question everything!l” posts are to threads dealing with white on black racism. The impossibly high bar assigned to accepting the statements of black people is seldom applied by many of these same posters to other issues in other threads.

Frankly I don’t think they themselves even realize this.
 
Giordano said:
I would also add how oddly specific the “True skeptics question everything!l” posts are to threads dealing with white on black racism. The impossibly high bar assigned to accepting the statements of black people is seldom applied by many of these same posters to other issues in other threads.
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Yep, those who proclaim "a true skeptic would question the narrative of the black victim's lawyers" have no trouble accepting the claims of the white perpetrators. That's real skepticism!
 
JoeMorgue said:
That's just a sub-category of "I define bias as 'disagrees with me.'" that people have started to adopt more and more.
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This is way off topic, but I realized this with the OJ trial. 99% of black people said he was innocent, and 99% of white people said he was guilty (including me). I was happy to think that I had rational reasoning for concluding that he was guilty.

But then I started thinking about it. Does that mean I think that the black people who think he is not guilty are all irrational? Do I believe that all black people are irrationally biased and all white people are not? That can't be right. Clearly not all black people are irrational, and those who are not irrational have come to the conclusion that he is not guilty, just as I believe I have rationally come to the conclusion he was guilty. How can I claim they are all biased and I am not? How much of my conclusion results from an unconscious bias?

Suddenly, I'm not so sure any more. I still know what I think, but I recognize that it might not be coming from as much of a rational position as I would like to believe. As a result, I'm not as confident in my conclusion. Make no mistake, Mark Fuhrman is a real piece of work and is enough to justify a lot of doubt. I am certainly to the point now where I more or less concur with the not guilty verdict, because there is at least a reasonable doubt.

The short answer is, when opinions run so strongly along racial lines, it is irrational to put all the blame on one side.
 
Giordano said:
Implicit in the denials in these threads of racist intent is the belief by the deniers that black people are untrustworthy when they claim that an incident in which they were the central participants was racist. That the black person who was there and experienced the discrimination just was too stupid or too angry to understand that no racism was involved. Whereas white people who only read about the incident and lived as members of the majority their entire life can more correctly blithely state that no racism took place. Frequently white people who believe that there is virtually no white on black racism in the USA. They certainly haven’t experienced any!:)

Sad and embarrassing.
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This is certainly true, but there's an aspect of it that I've often not seen discussed. It's the, "Oh come on, that's ridiculous!" reaction. As a white guy who hasn't seen a whole lot of in-your-face racism for myself, it used to be that a lot of these stories just sounded so ridiculous. Why would the store employees act like that? Why would Karen call the cops over something like that? Why would the cops shoot someone over something like that?

It all seems so ridiculous; you think to yourself, "Yeah, there's got to be more to the story than that!" (notice what ST wants us to be asking ourselves? I'll come back to this)

But then you see a story like one linked earlier - the guy who kept being arrested for "trespassing" while he was at work. And arrested not just once or twice, but dozens of times, often by the very same cops, and over the strident objections of the store owner who employed him.

At some point, you realize these stories sound ridiculous, because they are ridiculous. They're ridiculous, because the racists doing all these things either are themselves ridiculous (your typical Karens), or are counting on this reaction to cover for their racism (your typical Klansman
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Edited to remove breach of rule 12
).

The key is to realize that yes, it's ridiculous, because the racists are ridiculous. Once you embrace that, it becomes much clearer.
 
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Man, it’s like someone turned on the lights in this thread and the roaches just scattered...
 
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