Avatars and Race

[Luna Bliss]

13 hours ago, Phorumities said:

Groups like Black Lives Matter are nothing but out of control special interest groups that really shouldn't be given the time of day.

Opinions of Black Lives Matter are pretty much split along racial lines, and Democrats give the movement a higher approval rating than Republicans.
According to a Harved study only 35 percent of whites have a favorable view of the movement, while 83 percent of blacks have a favorable view:

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/344985-poll-57-percent-have-negative-view-of-black-lives-matter-movement

The group was formed to raise awareness of the disproportionate targeting of blacks by the police, as well as to address broader issues in the U.S. criminal justice system such as racial profiling, police brutality, and racial inequality.
I don't doubt some confrontations during protests have gone over the line, as this is easy to happen during a protest, but overall the movement seems to be fulfilling its goal of creating awareness over black issues that relate to the criminal justice system.

To address another point you made earlier where you claimed Trump is increasing jobs for blacks, take a look at the following chart. There has been a steady trend of unemployment rates lowering for blacks since 2010, and this has continued under Trump yes, but viewing the graph you can see this is a trend set in motion before and only continuing with the Trump presidency. In other words, he should not take credit for it.

 

[Luna Bliss]

13 hours ago, Phorumities said:

Perhaps you can explain how a group called Black Lives Matter can call a shooting racist when a black cop shoots a black man who refuses to put down his gun and advances on the officer. They even called for the resignation of the chief of police, who was also black.

Please provide a link to this case.

Offhand though, I will say that blacks can be affected by racial stereotypes too -- even regarding their own race. In fact, this is one sad fact of oppressed peoples overall -- they internalize the negative stereotypes of the dominant culture.

[Luna Bliss]

Personally, I think the Blue Lives Matter & All Lives Matter movements should be changed to the Hey What About Me movement...lol.  When such groups immediately feel they need their own groups in order to be noticed too it demonstrates they don't understand the systemic abuse levied against blacks throughout history, and why people of color need their movements but they themselves really do not.
Same for white pride, straight pride, and male pride movements. They really don't get it -- don't understand their privilege.

[Ivy Mysterious]

10 hours ago, Garnet Psaltery said:

You edited your original posting.  So what comes after looks as though it's in response to what you're saying now when it wasn't.  I can't edit my comment to reflect that since too much time has passed for me to do so.  I'm not reading this damned forum 24 hours a day!

This does not make me happy at all.

I didn't change anything on the original list. The only thing i did was ad the logs of the conversation. 

Also I didn't expect you to read this forum all the time. Im not the type to change the original post on a forum. So please calm down

[LittleMe Jewell]

5 hours ago, Klytyna said:

There's a lot of blather about demanding "respect" these days...

Most of the people demanding "respect", don't in fact deserve any.

I was talking more about a general respect for others.  The clueless self-absorbed walking down the street with their eyes glued to their phone and thus bumping into others as they go - and not caring a bit about that; some even being indignant and getting mad at the other person.  Way too many people spending all their time whining about 'me, me, me' and just not giving a damn about anyone else.  Having such a lack of basic respect for life that they don't even think twice about taking someone's.

[Madelaine McMasters]

4 hours ago, AyelaNewLife said:

Yes. That's what the post I quoted is saying. My point is that those stats don't go far enough.

It's correlation vs causation stuff. Saying "black people are 3x as likely to be shot by the police as white people" is NOT the same as saying that but adding "because they are black" on the end - which is how those stats are often used, by the statistically illiterate or politically motivated. There's far more factors involved.

As an (incomplete) example:

• You are more likely to be shot by the police if you're a suspect in a crime.
• You are more likely to be a suspect of a crime if you have an existing criminal record.
• You're more likely to have an existing criminal record if you live and grew up in a deprived area.
• You're more likely to live and have grown up in a deprived area if you're black than white.
• Therefore you're more likely to get shot by the police if you're black; but not necessarily because you are black.

Not a perfect example, but it shows the logic train needed. If you were to adjust the stats I quoted for each factor, with each one the difference in likelihood of being shot decreases massively. But not entirely. You are still more likely to be shot by the police in America purely because you are black. Just not 3x; that's an incomplete and misleading statistic.

In other posts in this thread, I mentioned race based income/employment disparity and the reality that crime statistics give real reason for police to have a "bias" against color.

We're looking at a multidimensional problem, with correlations and causations that can take generations to play out. The causal chain you described leads to the normalized statistic I provided. You're quite right that addressing only the last link in the chain, using a statistic that represents the entire chain, is problematic. Every link in the chain must be addressed, and that requires recognizing the links and their place in time in the causal chain. It has been argued, and I believe it, that this is a problem what will take at least three generations to solve. Unfortunately, long term planning is not our strong suit.

Edited November 4, 2018 by Madelaine McMasters

[LittleMe Jewell]

4 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Recent examples, police officers admitted they were afraid, as their excuse for using deadly force. Apparently, they are more afraid of black people.

Again, there are more factors.  If police walked into an expensive high-rise building, I doubt they would be any more afraid of a black man in a suit than a white man in a suit.  Things are different out on the streets and even more so in the lower income areas of town.

[Love Zhaoying]

Just now, LittleMe Jewell said:

Again, there are more factors.  If police walked into an expensive high-rise building, I doubt they would be any more afraid of a black man in a suit than a white man in a suit.  Things are different out on the streets and even more so in the lower income areas of town.

There are plenty of poor white people, yet we are not hearing the same news stories about them getting shot by police and police using the same coverups and excuses..

[Selene Gregoire]

5 hours ago, Maryanne Solo said:

Thank you Selene & Callum for your comments.

Especially for the wiki link to the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990. (USA).  

 

 

You're welcome. 

[Madelaine McMasters]

8 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

Again, there are more factors.  If police walked into an expensive high-rise building, I doubt they would be any more afraid of a black man in a suit than a white man in a suit.  Things are different out on the streets and even more so in the lower income areas of town.

I don't know if I share your doubt, though I do think the suit and the locale have some effect. My neighbor is one of the few black men living in my area. He's a dapper suit and tie man, yet still gets hassled by locals who think he's out of place. His latest encounter was with a white soccer mom, who saw him carrying a box out of the high school (containing PTA paper work, he's a member) to his car (a Lexus). She accused him of stealing.

This is, of course, an anecdote. I'll leave it to the psychologists to discern the relative weights of skin color and suits in eliciting/dissipating fear.

Edited November 4, 2018 by Madelaine McMasters

[LittleMe Jewell]

57 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

There are plenty of poor white people, yet we are not hearing the same news stories about them getting shot by police and police using the same coverups and excuses..

My opinion - and just my opinion - it's because that isn't the story that the mainstream media (typically liberal) wants to advance. 

The stats already show that more whites get killed than blacks - because their are more whites.  Thus they are obviously being shot and some being shot by police. 

As to cover-ups and excuses - I worked IT for a police dept. once.  On any shooting, if the known facts are not super clear cut to indicate the police was right in the shooting, some will try to find excuses and such, even some cover-ups.  My guess is that we see a bit more of that now because every black shooting by a police officer, especially if the officer is not black, is questioned and scrutinized more than any other shooting and more so than in the past.  Not saying such scrutiny is a bad thing, just that there is more of it than in the past for some shootings.

Edited November 4, 2018 by LittleMe Jewell

[LittleMe Jewell]

3 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

I don't know if I share your doubt, though I do think the suit and the locale have some effect. My neighbor is one of the few black men living in my area. He's a dapper suit and tie man, yet still gets hassled by locals who think he's out of place. His latest encounter was with a white soccer mom, who saw him carrying a box out of the high school (containing PTA paper work, he's a member) to his car (a Lexus). She accused him of stealing.

This is, of course, an anecdote. I'll leave it to the psychologists to discern the relative weights of skin color and suits in eliciting/dissipating fear.

Yeah, I'd definitely say that locale plays a role, and unfortunately there is also the issue of how common seeing a black person in a given area or circumstance.  If you are in an upscale area that is mostly white, even a nicely dressed black person might raise the suspicions of some folks.

You mentioned previously something about it needing at least three generations to solve.  In some areas, I think that is a super optimistic outlook.  ☹️

[Madelaine McMasters]

9 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

There are plenty of poor white people, yet we are not hearing the same news stories about them getting shot by police and police using the same coverups and excuses..

To continue with Ayela's thinking, there are a lot of factors at work here. Perhaps poor white people aren't as violent as poor black people, and there is an undiscovered causal chain to explain that, not involving police coverups. Perhaps poor white people are more violent, and coverups and excuses are rampant. I wouldn't be surprised to find both hypothetical situations somewhere in the US. Locality is yet another dimension (multi-dimension, actually) in the problem.

Now, imagine trying to craft public policy at a national level, knowing that there are voters out there who's communities are the reverse of what the legislation addresses.

I don't want to make this seem like an intractable problem, but we all must be ready for thoughtful analysis to produce results that are surprising, and that we don't like.

[KanryDrago]

1 minute ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

Yeah, I'd definitely say that locale plays a role, and unfortunately there is also the issue of how common seeing a black person in a given area or circumstance.  If you are in an upscale area that is mostly white, even a nicely dressed black person might raise the suspicions of some folks.

You mentioned previously something about it needing at least three generations to solve.  In some areas, I think that is a super optimistic outlook.  ☹️

Sadly however a lot of issues don't get addressed for various reasons some of them because of folks shouting racism at the drop of a hat.

A good example of this is knife crime in london. The majority of fatal stabbings are black on black mostly related to gangs. Stop and search helps act as a deterrent to carrying a weapon. Given these two facts then a logical approach means the right people to target for it is gang members. However if the police stop and search a higher percentage of black people than their demographic representation for an area we hear the usual suspects squealing about police racism when the simple fact is they are being stopped in accordance with their demographic representation within gang culture.

Other issues that don't tend to get addressed properly because of people shouting racist. (This is for the uk)

Why black children are more likely not to have a father figure living at home

Why black kids are more likely to get involved with gangs

Why black children do badly at school when other ethnic minorities don't (which suggests it is not purely down to racism in schools)

The other part of the problem is that often the self appointed "community leaders" are more interested in progressing their own agenda than working with authorities to find long term solutions. The ones you see on TV proclaiming it is all racism before the blood is even dry on the streets. There are also similar problems growing in many poor white communities fortunately I expect those issues to be addressed more easily as when people talk about it they won't get people throwing "Racist" at them for suggesting that it is the community itself that is part of the problem. I am thinking here of things such as seeing no value in education and not supporting their kids and encouraging them

 

[Madelaine McMasters]

17 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

Yeah, I'd definitely say that locale plays a role, and unfortunately there is also the issue of how common seeing a black person in a given area or circumstance.  If you are in an upscale area that is mostly white, even a nicely dressed black person might raise the suspicions of some folks.

You mentioned previously something about it needing at least three generations to solve.  In some areas, I think that is a super optimistic outlook.  ☹️

I first heard the "three generations" idea two generations ago. You're probably right, but I am an optimist!

[Love Zhaoying]

4 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

I first heard the "three generations" idea two generations ago. You're probably right, but I am an optimist!

Three MORE generations, right?

[Love Zhaoying]

I’d like clarification on whether more UNARMED people of color are being shot per capita.

To make the gun violence worse, here in Florida there is a “stand your ground” law, hopefully to be repealed soon. 

[Luna Bliss]

For affluent blacks, wealth doesn't stop racial profiling:

https://money.cnn.com/2016/07/14/news/economy/wealthy-blacks-racial-profiling/index.html

[Madelaine McMasters]

6 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Three MORE generations, right?

Like fusion power generation, perpetually "only 30 years away!"?

[Luna Bliss]

Kanry & Phorumities….I don't recall ever seeing a post of yours where sympathy toward people of color & their experience of oppression was expressed.

You only state your side, that we should look at the far fewer cases where whites were oppressed due to an overreach by the policies attempting to solve racial oppression.

I'm not sure you even believe racial oppression exists..

[Love Zhaoying]

6 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Like fusion power generation, perpetually "only 30 years away!"?

Where’s my flying car?

[LittleMe Jewell]

31 minutes ago, KanryDrago said:

The other part of the problem is that often the self appointed "community leaders" are more interested in progressing their own agenda

In my opinion, this describes almost all politicians, regardless of what they claim - and most of the time, that "agenda" starts with them getting more power and prestige.

[KanryDrago]

1 minute ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

In my opinion, this describes almost all politicians, regardless of what they claim - and most of the time, that "agenda" starts with them getting more power and prestige.

This is very true however I raised it in this thread because I think it is particularly damaging for the communities these people claim to represent and is holding back finding solutions to help these communities escape the circle they have gotten into.

[Selene Gregoire]

29 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I’d like clarification on whether more UNARMED people of color are being shot per capita.

To make the gun violence worse, here in Florida there is a “stand your ground” law, hopefully to be repealed soon. 

https://thesocietypages.org/toolbox/police-killing-of-blacks/

[Madelaine McMasters]

15 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

Kanry & Phorumities….I don't recall ever seeing a post of yours where sympathy toward people of color & their experience of oppression was expressed.

You only state your side, that we should look at the far fewer cases where whites were oppressed due to an overreach by the policies attempting to solve racial oppression.

I'm not sure you even believe racial oppression exists..

Over in the trans thread, Phorumities expressed sympathy for trans people, wishing they could live as they wish. I don't get the sense she doesn't see oppression, or wish it gone, but that she sees it differently, sees more culpability amongst the oppressed, and believes minimal government involvement will produce better results. I see Kanry in the same way. There is ample evidence that government involvement, and reckless advocacy, don't help.