Omegavegeta wrote:
While I don't argue that different behaviors can cause different outcomes when one deals with people of authority, resisting authority isn't always wrong.
Resisting in the form of running away from or arguing/fighting with the police right there on the scene is nearly always the wrong course of action. Scratch that. It *is* always the wrong thing to do. Even if the cops are completely in the wrong at the time, you're never going to make your outcomes better doing that.
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I also don't argue that some black kids may be taught to distrust & fear cops, I think how cops treat black people has a lot more to do with it.
And I think the perception of how the cops will treat black people far far outweighs the reality. Meaning that a hell of a lot of young black men get in trouble with the law for "resisting" something that likely would not have happened.
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Cops in this country have disproportionally targeted blacks for generations. Verdicts handed down in the cases of Rodney King, Trayvon Martin, & that lady whom fired a warning shot in Florida & got 20 years further reinforce that belief.
Those are all terrible cases to make for this argument though.
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Yes, I'm positive Zimmerman would have been arrested immediately & all evidence would have been collected. As opposed to what happen in Martin's case.
Excuse me? Zimmerman was detained, questioned, and evidence was collected. Just as would have happened if the person he shot was white. He would not be "arrested immediately" because they don't do this in shooting cases where someone claims self defense unless there's clear evidence that it wasn't. Yes. Even if the victim is white.
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I'm also positive Zimemrman would have been convicted of Manslaughter & that the story would have changed in the media to "overzelous hispanic cop-wannabe murders innocent white teenager". Fictional white teenagers suspension from school & pot use also wouldn't have gained any traction either.
This is your own bias though. Which is part of the problem I'm talking about. Begging the question.
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I guess it depends on whether or not you think that fear based behavior by blacks is justified or not.
It's not a binary question though. It's a matter of degrees. A cop car pulls up behind you and flashes its lights. You know you've done nothing wrong, but you're black and are afraid the cop is pulling you over for "driving while black" because you've been taught that this happens. Your choices are to pull over, answer the cops questions, and risk a negative outcome because the cop is racist *or* run from him, get into a highs speed chase, and virtually guarantee a negative outcome. That's the problem. And a hell of a lot of young black men end out in jail because they ran from and/or fought with cops for no reason other than that they were scared the cop would do something bad to them.
That's the harm. And I'm suggesting that the negative from that assumptive fear far far outweigh the negatives from actual racist cops.
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I think a black man has just as much of a right as a white man to resist authority but is disproportionally arrested, when compared to whites, for doing so. I'm positive any statistics on the subject would support that claim.
I think that the statistics show that black men foolishly resist authority out of proportion when compared to whites, which causes them to be arrested disproportionally compared to whites. And then people look at the arrest statistics, conclude that there must be racism by police towards black men, and feed the exact fear that is causing the problem in the first place.
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But when a black woman gets 20 years for firing a warning shot right around the same time Zimmerman gets off for killing Martin, it certainly implies racial bias, doesn't it?
Only if you have no idea what the
facts are. It doesn't imply anything. It outright tells us that two radically different cases are going to have two radically different outcomes. If Martin and Zimmerman had gotten into a fight, then Zimmerman left, went to his car, then came back and shot at Martin while he was sitting on a couch and was successfully able to claim self defense *then* you'd have a point. Um... But that isn't what happened.
Complete Apples and Oranges.