Racism is contextual

[Emily's Cat]

Doesn't matter if you're completely okay with it - the point is that both are obviously racist. Better to recognize what it is and nip that sort of thing out early...

Really kind of depends on what you're trying to accomplish. If you're trying to change cultural norms and sunset meaningless stereotypes, then discussing social biases is probably more likely to get you progress than telling everyone that they're racists.

If, on the other hand, your objective is to gain some sort of elusive virtuous superiority by highlighting the assumed moral failings of other people... then I suppose that always referring to it as racism will fill that emotional need quite well.

 

[Emily's Cat]

You get used to Ponderingturtle after a while. Every conversation with him is functionally:

"I like soup"
"Why do you support beating orphans to death with kittens wrapped in a burning American flag?"

What baffles me is the prevalence of ponderingturtle's disruptive derails that are consistently overlooked and allowed to stand.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Responding to an accusation of strawman with another one. Fractal strawmen, now?

It's ponderingturtlestrawmen all the way down.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Hey, what do you know? Another strawman! Colour me surprised.

Assuming you're posting what you actually think and not engaging in some sort of performance art, you really do seem to be entirely unable to see nuance. It's either 100% in agreement with you, or 100% in disagreement.

The answer lies within the question...

 

[kellyb]

It's ponderingturtlestrawmen all the way down.

Hahahaha!

 

[Fudbucker]

As Obama once said, "there are very few African-American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me, at least before I was a senator."

Ponderinturtle has a valid point. The police are no different. They're only human. They're going to assign a higher risk to a black guy, just like the people that lock their cars do. How many times have we seen unarmed blacks killed by cops? Way too many times.

Unarmed black guy with a cell phone? Shoot off 20 rounds. And turn the bodycams off right afterwards. Disgusting.

 

[cmikes]

For what its worth, I think its based on a false premise. Rmember the study from a few years ago that conservative claimed showed police weren't really racist? What hit seemed to show was that cops were as likely so kill white men as black men when they interacted with them. The reason cops kill more black men seems to be because the interact with black men more frequently.

Most conservatives want to believe this is just because black men commit more crime. That is doesn't appear to explain it all, driving while black is definitely a thing, as long as it is, cops will kill more black men. This would also put lie to the notion that black men are more aggressive with cops than white men.

I'd argue that if we address the reasons why cops are so trigger happy generally, that would benefit black men more than the rest of us.

Of course, I don't really have a problem with calling unconscious bias, racism. We should be clear as to whether we're talking about unconscious vs conscious racism. Those two things have different solutions.

The problem of police use of force policies and the militarization of police departments has been a topic among conservatives for decades now. The problem is that conservatives don't necessarily leap to RACISM!!!!1111!!!!* as the cause of every single problem so they can't get any traction with progressives on the subject. As long as progressives keep trying to jam the round peg of racism into the square hole of the problems with police militarization both sides are going to continue talking past each other without any progress being made.

For instance, here's a great article about police use of force policies that will never be acknowledged by progressives because it doesn't mention race.

National Review


*Before anyone strawmans that I'm claiming that racism is never the cause of police shootings, I acknowledge and understand that some police shootings have racial components, but not all them.

 

[Mumbles]

The problem of police use of force policies and the militarization of police departments has been a topic among conservatives for decades now. The problem is that conservatives don't necessarily leap to RACISM!!!!1111!!!!* as the cause of every single problem so they can't get any traction with progressives on the subject. As long as progressives keep trying to jam the round peg of racism into the square hole of the problems with police militarization both sides are going to continue talking past each other without any progress being made.

For instance, here's a great article about police use of force policies that will never be acknowledged by progressives because it doesn't mention race.

National Review


*Before anyone strawmans that I'm claiming that racism is never the cause of police shootings, I acknowledge and understand that some police shootings have racial components, but not all them.

Yes, and in congress, there's Rand Paul.

But then you get to Jeff Sessions, and to Dolt 45. Again, there's a perfectly good conservative case to make for police not being trained as "warriors" and laying siege to a town like Ferguson. This is notably the opposite of the case that the overwhelming majority of prominent republicans make, however - although they were happy to see Cliven Bundy's pals openly point guns at federal law enforcement.

 

[kellyb]

I think it's generally true that the topic of the need for more police use of force and more militarization of police departments has been a hot topic among "law and order conservatives" for decades now.

Is that basically the same thing?