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#202 Jul 25 2016 at 6:54 PM Rating: Decent
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Jophiel wrote:
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How dare that white officer not recognize his Highness's bobby pin and do his job instead?

Actually the guard said he recognized the pin, he just didn't believe that Senator Scott should be wearing it. After five years at the Capitol.


And? If you are a guard, and you see someone you don't recognize wearing a pin that indicates he's a member of congress, shouldn't you ask for ID to verify the person?

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I won't pretend to know all the ins and outs of Capitol security and protocol, but this old Slate article suggests that Congressmen typically wear their pins to get past security without issue and that wearing your pin is less common in the Senate because, with their longer terms, guards recognize the senators. Which would make it curious that Scott was stopped because he was wearing his pin.


I saw nothing in the earlier article to suggest he was stopped because he was wearing the pin. Unless you're arguing that if he had not been wearing the pin, the guard would have just waved him through (neither article supports that)? I also don't know the details of Capitol security, but I'd assume that relying on people wearing pins is probably not a great security model, regardless of what someone at Slate thinks. I guess what would really clarify things is if some budding investigative reporter were to do some actual investigating and determine how often members of congress are stopped and asked for ID if they forget their pins, or how often they may be asked for ID even when wearing one. That might shed some light on the subject.

But then, it might just reveal that it happens to white members of congress too, and that would step on the narrative. And we can't have that, can we?

Edited, Jul 25th 2016 7:36pm by gbaji
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#203 Jul 26 2016 at 7:44 AM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
But it's not the broad systemic problem that some are trying to make it out to be.
Thank you, middle aged suburban white guy. Your purposefully unverifiable and implausible anecdote and years of similar behavior certainly convinced me that racism is over.
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#204 Jul 26 2016 at 9:54 AM Rating: Excellent
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lolgaxe wrote:
gbaji wrote:
But it's not the broad systemic problem that some are trying to make it out to be.
Thank you, middle aged suburban white guy. Your purposefully unverifiable and implausible anecdote and years of similar behavior certainly convinced me that racism is over.
The trick is to hate people because they're poor, that way you can't be called a racist.
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#205 Jul 26 2016 at 2:49 PM Rating: Decent
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lolgaxe wrote:
gbaji wrote:
But it's not the broad systemic problem that some are trying to make it out to be.
Thank you, middle aged suburban white guy. Your purposefully unverifiable and implausible anecdote and years of similar behavior certainly convinced me that racism is over.


As opposed to the use of broad statistics coupled with similar anecdotes to prove that racism is behind every social outcome in the country? That's perfectly ok? And it's even better when used to create riots and encourage people to ambush and assassinate police? That's what's ok? But the guy saying "Hey. Maybe we should calm down and take a look at the root causes rather than leap to emotional and harmful reactions" is to be vilified?

Seems kinda backwards to me. And also seems designed to create conflict rather than resolve it.
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#206 Jul 26 2016 at 3:13 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
But the guy saying "Hey. Maybe we should calm down and take a look at the root causes rather than leap to emotional and harmful reactions" is to be vilified?


That's not the reason you are vilified.
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#207 Jul 26 2016 at 3:17 PM Rating: Default
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Gbaji wrote:
But the guy saying "Hey. Maybe we should calm down and take a look at the root causes rather than leap to emotional and harmful reactions" is to be vilified?
When none of your results include race, then you're leaping to emotional and harmful reactions.
#208 Jul 26 2016 at 3:37 PM Rating: Decent
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Almalieque wrote:
Gbaji wrote:
But the guy saying "Hey. Maybe we should calm down and take a look at the root causes rather than leap to emotional and harmful reactions" is to be vilified?
When none of your results include race, then you're leaping to emotional and harmful reactions.


Ok. I give up. I've read and re-read what you just wrote and I have no clue what you are saying. Maybe try again? What are you defining as "results"? What do you mean by "include race"?
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#209 Jul 26 2016 at 3:58 PM Rating: Good
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I think what he's saying is that if you (gbaji) insist that race is only sometimes kinda occasionaly rarely the reason that bad things happen to people of color then you must be a complete idiot or you are lying.

So, pick one so we all know, k?
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#210 Jul 26 2016 at 4:24 PM Rating: Default
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gbaji wrote:
Almalieque wrote:
Gbaji wrote:
But the guy saying "Hey. Maybe we should calm down and take a look at the root causes rather than leap to emotional and harmful reactions" is to be vilified?
When none of your results include race, then you're leaping to emotional and harmful reactions.


Ok. I give up. I've read and re-read what you just wrote and I have no clue what you are saying. Maybe try again? What are you defining as "results"? What do you mean by "include race"?
See post 115 (second paragraph)
#211 Jul 26 2016 at 5:13 PM Rating: Decent
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Almalieque wrote:
See post 115 (second paragraph)


Would it have killed you to just quote it yourself? You know, since you already had to go back and find the stupid post number in the first place? Let me do the work for you and quote the relevant portion:

Almalieque wrote:
gbaji wrote:
The problem with BLM is that instead of starting with a problem and seeking solutions, it instead starts with an assumption of the cause, and protests that assumed cause. Worse, it attacks anyone who challenges their assumption by claiming that they are rejecting the problem itself. They will claim that if I disagree with a BLM protest, it means that I don't care about black lives being lost disproportionately. But what it really means is that I disagree that the disproportionate loss of black lives is the result of police valuing a black life less than other lives.


You act as if there is only one problem with a magical solution. You ignore the problems where black people aren't the root cause and only focus on the problems where black people are the root cause.


The irony with this response is that you're accusing me of doing what BLM is doing: Assuming there's just one and only one solution (racist cops). I'm the one saying "let's look for other causes".

I also disagree that pointing out that disproportionate black poverty is the cause of disproportionate police stats is the same as saying that "black people" are the cause. Your response (and several other posters for that matter) assumes that I somehow place blame on black people for being poor. That's not remotely the case though. There are a number of causes of that disproportionate poverty. But if you're unwilling to even acknowledge that this is the source of the disproportionate police stats, and prefer instead to just blame the police, then you're the one focusing on one "magical solution", right?

I've already examined the "solution" that BLM is pursuing and have concluded that it's not only the wrong one, but that no amount of "fixing" the police will ever fix the problem. I've posted this several times. You can make all the changes you want to police stop procedures, and put every single cop through racial sensitivity training, change the racial makeup of the police forces, change the hiring parameters, requires body cameras, etc, etc, etc, and you will not change the relative rate in which negative encounters between civilians and police occur as it relates to race. Whatever the resulting rate of police shootings are after all of that, you will still have a higher rate among blacks than among whites. Because even if every other factor is exactly the same, a patrol areas with a higher crime rate will have a higher rate of stops to citizens. So if the odds of something "bad" happening are constant, then the number of times something "bad" happens in a year out of every 1000 people will be higher in the poor neighborhood than in the middle class neighborhood.

Thus, since a higher percentage of blacks live in poor neighborhoods, they will *always* have a higher rate of "bad things" happening to them. Not just police encounters either. Higher rates of being mugged. Higher rates of being randomly shot. Higher rates of dropping out of school. Higher rates of drug abuse. Higher rates of domestic violence. Higher rates of incarceration. Higher rates of every single negative factor. Sound familiar? These are the stats we all see all the time. They're all coming from the same place. Why focus on one symptom of one problem stemming from that cause? It's lunacy. Well, if you actually want to make things better for blacks in the US. If you don't care about them, and want them to be eternal second class citizens, then by all means, go chase your tail and march and protest the police. Because all you're doing is perpetuating the problem.


I've asked this question a couple times already, and no one has answered it. Imagine that you had the power to make any changes to the police that you want. Tell me what changes you would make, and then explain to me how these changes would fix the problem at hand. And I don't want to hear end goals (like: "make them not stop blacks at a higher rate than whites" or "make them not shoot black people"). I mean what changes you would make that would achieve those goals. Assume they still have to do their jobs and enforce the law, arrest people who are committing crimes, etc. Can you actually think of any way to make changes that would fix the relative rates of negative interactions with cops? Cause I don't think there is any way to do this. But you're welcome to try.
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#212 Jul 26 2016 at 5:19 PM Rating: Decent
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gbaji wrote:


I've already examined the "solution" that BLM is pursuing and have concluded that it's not only the wrong one, but that no amount of "fixing" the police will ever fix the problem. I've posted this several times. You can make all the changes you want to police stop procedures, and put every single cop through racial sensitivity training, change the racial makeup of the police forces, change the hiring parameters,...


This is probably the only real thing I do not agree with. At this point, changing hiring parameters a little could help.
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#213 Jul 26 2016 at 5:34 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
I've asked this question a couple times already, and no one has answered it.

I previously linked to the reforms suggested by BLM. I don't need to play some "Let's watch Gbaji judge our ideas" because the people actively advocating for this stuff already have their own goals.
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#214 Jul 26 2016 at 6:59 PM Rating: Good
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Gbaji wrote:
Would it have killed you to just quote it yourself? You know, since you already had to go back and find the stupid post number in the first place?
Would it have killed you to just answer it the first time. I didn't have to go back, because I already referenced it before.

Gbaji wrote:
The irony with this response is that you're accusing me of doing what BLM is doing: Assuming there's just one and only one solution (racist cops).
I literally said the opposite, so please reread and respond accordingly. You act as if there is only one problem with a magical solution. You ignore the problems where black people aren't the root cause and only focus on the problems where black people are the root cause.

You are literally disregarding what I'm saying and then complain when I reference posts refuting your claims.
#215 Jul 27 2016 at 7:46 AM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
As opposed to the use of broad statistics coupled with similar anecdotes to prove that racism is behind every social outcome in the country?
As unreliable as broad statistics and hundreds of thousands of similar anecdotes can be, your use of broad statistics and fiction is less reliable.
gbaji wrote:
Seems kinda backwards to me.
I'm sorry you're so shocked that your word just doesn't mean anything, middle aged suburban white guy.
Jophiel wrote:
gbaji wrote:
I've asked this question a couple times already, and no one has answered it.
I previously linked to the reforms suggested by BLM.
Yeah, but that wasn't the answer he wanted so it doesn't count.
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#216 Jul 27 2016 at 7:52 AM Rating: Excellent
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I'm sure everyone's gold standard for the effectiveness of goals is whether or not Gbaji says that it'll work.

"Hey, wait, the random white Republican guy on the internet says that instead of making police more accountable and ending arrest quotas, we really just need to learn how to be arrested better. Welp, let's pack it in then..."
lolgaxe wrote:
gbaji wrote:
As opposed to the use of broad statistics coupled with similar anecdotes to prove that racism is behind every social outcome in the country?
As unreliable as broad statistics and hundreds of thousands of similar anecdotes can be, your use of broad statistics and fiction is less reliable.

"Here's some stories about people getting hassled."
"Anecdotes are meaningless!"
"Here's some data on how blacks are disproportionately targeted"
"I was once stopped fifty-eleven times so that data doesn't count!"

Edited, Jul 27th 2016 8:54am by Jophiel
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#217 Jul 27 2016 at 5:50 PM Rating: Decent
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Jophiel wrote:
gbaji wrote:
I've asked this question a couple times already, and no one has answered it.

I previously linked to the reforms suggested by BLM. I don't need to play some "Let's watch Gbaji judge our ideas" because the people actively advocating for this stuff already have their own goals.


Yes. I've read those suggestions. And I'll repeat the assertion I just made: Those are broad changes that would affect the rates at which "bad things" would happen across all police patrols, not just the ones involving black people. We can reasonably assume therefore, that any effect would be universal. Thus, the existing disparate ratio of deaths/injury/etc by cops of black people versus white people will still be about the same. Even if you could somehow magically change the average rate at which a death occurs during a stop across the board by 50%, the average for the set involving blacks will be higher than the average for the set involving whites.

This is true because you're still not changing the underlying fact that disparate poverty rates causes disparate presence in high crime areas, which will affect every other statistic that flows from that fact. The only proposal that comes close to addressing this is the bit about broken window policing. But again, the poverty stats are the key component here. You have more public drinking, loitering, disorderly conduct, etc in poor neighborhoods than in middle class neighborhoods. The "solution" of simply not policing those things will almost certainly result in even higher crime rates in those neighborhoods (seriously? They're proposing that the police not do anything if someone is trespassing?). So the complaints will shift to the police not protecting black citizens as well as white citizens, and they'll just trot out the stats showing that just like they're using the same stats to complain about over policing in those neighborhoods.

Again though, this ultimately isn't about police bias towards blacks. It's about blacks being disproportionately more likely to live in neighborhoods where greater policing efforts are required due to the higher crime rates in those neighborhoods. Short of just putting their hands up and saying "just fend for yourselves", you're never going to fix this by changing the actions of the police.

And just to circle back to what I was talking about in the first paragraph. While one might think that reducing the total deaths by 50% is a great thing (assuming you could get his number, of course), the current protests aren't about the total numbers. If it were about numbers of lives, they'd be talking about other things that kill black people at a far far higher rate than the police. It's about the disparate ratio of such deaths, and the highlighting of a very small number of such cases in our national media. If that number were only 5 a year, that's still enough to put them on our TVs and generate the same amount of outrage, protests, and riots. How many such deaths are we talking about right now? Just a handful, right? I'm not trying to dismiss the loss of a life, but merely pointing out that *any* death can be used to generate outrage.

Wouldn't a far better approach be to try to fix the underlying problem of disparate black poverty? That fixes the police issue and it fixes a whole slew of other problems as well. Chasing after one symptom of a problem just seems like a poor use of our collective effort, and frankly serves to distract us from the much bigger problem. It's like a doctor spending all his time trying to adjust the pain medication he's giving a patient with a broken leg to alleviate his pain, but not actually setting the bone or putting it in a cast, or otherwise attempting to heal the cause of the pain in the first place. Sure, you could go that route, but that seems like a dumb way to go.
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#218 Jul 27 2016 at 5:56 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
Yes. I've read those suggestions. And I'll repeat the assertion I just made: Those are broad changes that would affect the rates at which "bad things" would happen across all police patrols, not just the ones involving black people. We can reasonably assume therefore, that any effect would be universal.

Yeah, you're wrong. More to the point, no one actually cares that you're wrong and if you think we're all going to try and find ideas that appease Gbaji, you're insane Smiley: laugh
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#219 Jul 27 2016 at 6:22 PM Rating: Decent
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Almalieque wrote:
Gbaji wrote:
Would it have killed you to just quote it yourself? You know, since you already had to go back and find the stupid post number in the first place?
Would it have killed you to just answer it the first time. I didn't have to go back, because I already referenced it before.


I did answer you. I have made the same argument that changes to police methodology will not erase the disparate rate at which blacks have negative interactions with police several times now. What you have not done is answer my question about what you think the cops can do to change their behavior that will fix this. Failing to do that and just repeating the same assertions that police bias/actions are to blame over and over isn't terribly helpful.

Quote:
Gbaji wrote:
The irony with this response is that you're accusing me of doing what BLM is doing: Assuming there's just one and only one solution (racist cops).
I literally said the opposite, so please reread and respond accordingly.


I'm reasonably certain that you have repeatedly claimed that the one problem to be solved is racist/biased cops. Are you saying that there's some other direction we should be looking in for a solution to the problem of black deaths at the hand of police? Because I'm pretty sure that that's been *my* position all along. So you are taking my side now? Yay! Progress at last.

Quote:
You act as if there is only one problem with a magical solution. You ignore the problems where black people aren't the root cause and only focus on the problems where black people are the root cause.


Again though, this is what BLM is doing (in reverse). They ignore the problems where police are not the root cause and only focus on the problems where the police *are* the root cause. As I said earlier, they start with the assumption of a cause (police bias), and proceed from there. I disagree with their starting assumption.

Quote:
You are literally disregarding what I'm saying and then complain when I reference posts refuting your claims.


I'm not disregarding anything you say. I'm reading it, responding to it, and rejecting it. And guess what? I have provided multiple arguments *why* I disagree with you on this. All you do is keep repeating the same assertion over and over.

I'll ask again: What changes do you think the police could make to their methodology which would change the relative rates of deaths by cops among blacks as compared to whites? Heck. Let me be even more specific. Let's look at the Michael Brown case. Please tell me what that officer could or should have done differently in that situation while still allowing him to actually enforce the law. Recall that Brown had, in fact, just committed a robbery. He did, in fact, have the stolen property in his freaking hands. Should the cop just have ignored him? Driven on by? And when assaulted by Brown, he should have just ignored the felony assault that occurred and let him go? And when Brown turned and charged him, he should have... what? Just let the 300 lb man beat the stuffing out of him?

Maybe only allow cops to have tasers? Sure. Except that people die from tasers as well. And when that happens, it's "they should have reasoned with him", or "they should have used some other means to restrain him". And when they use some other means (like say, attempting to pull him to the ground and handcuff him), and that results in a constricted airway and he dies, then what? "They should have tasered him instead" (Remember Eric Gardner?). How many times do we have to go around this maypole before we recognize that there is no perfect and safe way for the police to apprehend someone, and that some small percentage of apprehensions will result in serious injury and even death.

You want to reduce the rate at which black people suffer this result, the only and best way to do that is to reduce the rate at which black people are living in conditions that increase their odds of being apprehended. And that can only result from a broad improvement of the social condition of blacks in this country. I would assume you aren't opposed to this, right? So why the backlash against it? Deaths by police is the merest tip of the iceberg of the problem of black poverty. Why not focus on the actual problem instead of one of many symptoms of that problem?

If I were wearing my Smiley: tinfoilhat I would suspect that there's some political faction that actually wants to keep black people poor and angry for some reason. And thus, they prefer to use that anger for political ends rather than make any effort to fix the underlying problem. And sadly, far far too many blacks have bought into this narrative and actively join in the circus act (and national conventions) instead of waking the heck up and realizing that they're just being used. Change all the police procedures in the world, and blacks will still be getting the shortest end of the social stick and will still have a long long list of disadvantages that can be highlighted, complained about, and raised as yet another means of motivating them to continue voting for the very party that has created their impoverished conditions.

Of course, that would be crazy conspiracy talk. I'm sure there's nothing to it and you can just disregard the whole thing.
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#220 Jul 27 2016 at 6:37 PM Rating: Default
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Gbaji wrote:
I did answer you.
Gbaji wrote:
Again though, this is what BLM is doing (in reverse). They ignore the problems where police are not the root cause and only focus on the problems where the police *are* the root cause. As I said earlier, they start with the assumption of a cause (police bias), and proceed from there. I disagree with their starting assumption.
You responding with words isn't the same as you responding to my post. You haven't addressed my post.

Gbaji wrote:
I'm not disregarding anything you say. I'm reading it, responding to it, and rejecting it. And guess what? I have provided multiple arguments *why* I disagree with you on this. All you do is keep repeating the same assertion over and over.
Gbaji wrote:
I'm reasonably certain that you have repeatedly claimed that the one problem to be solved is racist/biased cops. Are you saying that there's some other direction we should be looking in for a solution to the problem of black deaths at the hand of police? Because I'm pretty sure that that's been *my* position all along. So you are taking my side now? Yay! Progress at last.

Read above. You saying "that's what BLM does in reverse" does not affirm or deny the fact that you are doing what I said.


#221 Jul 27 2016 at 6:38 PM Rating: Decent
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Jophiel wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Yes. I've read those suggestions. And I'll repeat the assertion I just made: Those are broad changes that would affect the rates at which "bad things" would happen across all police patrols, not just the ones involving black people. We can reasonably assume therefore, that any effect would be universal.

Yeah, you're wrong.


You're free to claim that, but I'll note that you have no rationale or argument to back it up. Which just makes it an empty opinion.

You can't possibly think that police will only wear body cameras when stopping black people, or only switch to less lethal weapons when patrolling black neighborhoods, or that policy changes regarding when/why they can stop someone will only affect stops where the person is black. Those changes will affect the same stats to the same degree across the board. So the rate at which belligerent white guys get killed will drop to the same relative degree as the rate at which belligerent black guys get killed by cops. Which will still leave us with statistics about relative rates of stops, searches, arrests, and deaths that you've parroted yourself:

Jophiel wrote:
You're 33% more likely to be pulled over if you're black than if you're white. You are 300% more likely to be searched/frisked during a traffic stop if you are black than if you are white.


These relative stats will not change. They wont change because these stats are not driven by police bias, but by a difference in the socio-econonmic conditions between blacks and whites in this country. If you change the rules such that half as many people get pulled over, you wont change the stats. Heck, you might actually make them worse. In a high crime area, even with more restrictions in terms of probable cause for stops and searches, you'll likely still have enough activity going on that meets that higher bar to keep the officers in those neighborhoods busy their entire shift, while the cops in the low crime areas will now be sitting around all shift waiting for someone who meets the criteria rather than perhaps randomly stopping people just because they're bored and there's no one else around.

Again, you're not solving the problem with this. You can't. I get that it's a feel good thing to adopt so you can claim to be "on your side" and stand in solidarity with your black brothers and sisters, or whatever other nonsense they'll likely be parading around on the convention floor, but it's not actually a solution to the problem. It's just something to make you look good while not actually doing anything at all. It's something to make you feel better and to assuage your white guilt, I guess. But don't kid yourself that it's anything more than an empty gesture.
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#222 Jul 27 2016 at 6:42 PM Rating: Excellent
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#223 Jul 27 2016 at 6:56 PM Rating: Decent
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Almalieque wrote:
You responding with words isn't the same as you responding to my post. You haven't addressed my post.


You mean this post:

Quote:
You act as if there is only one problem with a magical solution. You ignore the problems where black people aren't the root cause and only focus on the problems where black people are the root cause.


Could have sworn I've replied to this directly at least twice, but here you go (again):

1. I don't act as though there is only one problem with one magical solution. Quite the opposite. The issue of disparate poverty is a whole set of different problems, each of which contributes to the resulting effect. I'm talking about black education rates, black dependence on welfare, black housing issues, availability of jobs for blacks, availability of advancement within those jobs for blacks, problems with gangs, drugs, etc, etc, etc. All of those problems contribute to a higher rate of black poverty (and also, perversely, are themselves symptoms of that poverty).

There's no "magical solution" to this. It's a long and difficult process. But one that isn't currently being addressed (or, worse, is being addressed wrong).

The people acting as though there is just one problem and one solution are the BLM folks who point the finger at the police. Which, in case you're wondering, is yet another in a long list of examples of "addressing it wrong". We're not addressing the problem here, but merely treating the symptom. Which, while it might make some people feel slightly better for a while, will never actually fix things.

2. I've already stated that the issue of black poverty is not the "fault" of black people. They are not the "cause" of their own poverty. That's a bizarre way to think about it. It's not about placing blame on a whole group of people here. Well, maybe it is for you, but it isn't for me. Black people are the victims of poverty. And the increased rate at which they are killed by cops is one of many many symptoms of that poverty. I'm not pointing the finger of blame here. I'm saying we need to correctly assess the root cause and start working on that rather than looking for convenient scapegoats whenever another symptom of that problem reaches public awareness (in this case, another black man is shot by police).

BLM are the ones who want to view the "cause" of the problem as a group of people rather than a socio-economic condition. And IMO, that's just contributing to the problem rather than doing anything at all to solve it. We can't fix this if all people want to do is stand around pointing fingers at each other.

Quote:
Read above. You saying "that's what BLM does in reverse" does not affirm or deny the fact that you are doing what I said.


Huh? BLM is the group that's focused on one thing: Police.

Are you denying this?

Edited, Jul 27th 2016 6:02pm by gbaji
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#224 Jul 27 2016 at 7:14 PM Rating: Default
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Gbaji wrote:

Could have sworn I've replied to this directly at least twice, but here you go (again):

1. I don't act as though there is only one problem with one magical solution. Quite the opposite. The issue of disparate poverty is a whole set of different problems, each of which contributes to the resulting effect. I'm talking about black education rates, black dependence on welfare, black housing issues, availability of jobs for blacks, availability of advancement within those jobs for blacks, problems with gangs, drugs, etc, etc, etc. All of those problems contribute to a higher rate of black poverty (and also, perversely, are themselves symptoms of that poverty).

There's no "magical solution" to this. It's a long and difficult process. But one that isn't currently being addressed (or, worse, is being addressed wrong).

The people acting as though there is just one problem and one solution are the BLM folks who point the finger at the police. Which, in case you're wondering, is yet another in a long list of examples of "addressing it wrong". We're not addressing the problem here, but merely treating the symptom. Which, while it might make some people feel slightly better for a while, will never actually fix things.

2. I've already stated that the issue of black poverty is not the "fault" of black people. They are not the "cause" of their own poverty. That's a bizarre way to think about it. It's not about placing blame on a whole group of people here. Well, maybe it is for you, but it isn't for me. Black people are the victims of poverty. And the increased rate at which they are killed by cops is one of many many symptoms of that poverty. I'm not pointing the finger of blame here. I'm saying we need to correctly assess the root cause and start working on that rather than looking for convenient scapegoats whenever another symptom of that problem reaches public awareness (in this case, another black man is shot by police).

BLM are the ones who want to view the "cause" of the problem as a group of people rather than a socio-economic condition. And IMO, that's just contributing to the problem rather than doing anything at all to solve it. We can't fix this if all people want to do is stand around pointing fingers at each other.
So, you agree that the state of black America is a combination of personal actions AND constitutional favoritism?


Gbaji wrote:
Huh? BLM is the group that's focused on one thing: Police.

Are you denying this?
I don't think Treyvon's death had anything to do with the police.
#225 Jul 27 2016 at 9:43 PM Rating: Decent
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Almalieque wrote:
So, you agree that the state of black America is a combination of personal actions AND constitutional favoritism?


I think it's a combination of a number of factors. I don't agree with the two you listed though. "personal actions" is so broad as to be meaningless in this context, and "constitutional favoritism" isn't a factor at all (there's nothing in our constitution anymore that favors any race over another). Big factors are things like already existing poverty levels combined with economic policies that make poverty more generational than it should be. Another factor is the difficulty of moving from a highly focused poverty model to a more distributed poverty model. I believe I linked to some site that discussed the fact that white poverty and black poverty is very different in this country. A white person may be just as poor as a black person, but is much less likely to live in a neighborhood where everyone (or at least a very high percentage) is poor. This has a massive effect, not just on the perceptions of those who grow up in those neighborhood (which leads to that issue of generational poverty I mentioned earlier), but also on the very ability to obtain the employment necessary to lift oneself out of poverty. If there are literally not enough jobs for even a small percentage of the people living in an area, and few of them pay more than a pittance, how do you ever leave? You're trapped. IMO, that's a huge problem that has to be addressed.

It's usually not addressed though because of political reasons. There's a perception that the "black vote" only counts if it's concentrated in tight geographical regions. As a result, there are a number of social and economic pressures in place that cause blacks to tend to congregate in nearly entirely black neighborhoods (and increasingly very poor neighborhoods). This does allow those voters to get black representatives on city councils and state legislatures and in the US congress, but IMO the cost of doing this is far greater than the benefits. I think that blacks would be far better as a small percentage of a large number of regions than a large percentage of a small number. it would give them a broader voice in many more jurisdictions *and* would reduce the concentrated poverty effect. Right now, all that's happening is that they are electing black representatives who can do nothing for them except try to get some social welfare programs put in place to make their lives a tiny bit better. Which, again, is just treating the symptom, and not the problem.

And yes, some of that was the result of redlining practices back in the day. Um... But that's been gone what? for 35 years now? Things haven't gotten better. I could probably speculate about a whole bunch of different forces that may be in play here, but the point isn't to solve that problem on day one. The point is to get more people to even recognize that this is a problem which needs to be solved. And as long as there's are political forces that benefit from concentrated poor black voters, we're probably not going to see much action on this.

BTW, this is thy the Dems are so happy to jump in bed with the BLM movement. Anything that focuses angry black voices in a direction other than their own failed social policies is a great thing for them. At the end of the day though, I firmly believe that the current state of things for blacks in the US is overwhelming the result of Democratic party policies over the last 50 years. They replaced segregation with the welfare state. Different tactic, same result. Well, except instead of suppressing black voters, they trap them economically so they have little choice but to vote for them. Remove the poverty condition for blacks, and this power over them fades away. Which is why the Democrats have no interest at all in fixing the problem of black poverty. Put another way, blacks should not be this poor. Their condition is artificially maintained, and not in the way you may think.


Quote:
Gbaji wrote:
Huh? BLM is the group that's focused on one thing: Police.

Are you denying this?
I don't think Treyvon's death had anything to do with the police.


It didn't. That also has nothing to do with the agenda and actions of the organization. There's a difference between the events they use to gain support and the actions they take once they have that support. Overwhelmingly, their public demands have been about changes to police procedures. Their protests have been about the police. If they cared so much about civilians killing blacks, wouldn't they focus more of their condemnation at the vast number of blacks killed by gangs in inner cities around the country every year?
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#226 Jul 28 2016 at 7:13 AM Rating: Default
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Gbaji wrote:
I think it's a combination of a number of factors. I don't agree with the two you listed though. "personal actions" is so broad as to be meaningless in this context, and "constitutional favoritism" isn't a factor at all (there's nothing in our constitution anymore that favors any race over another).
MY MISTAKE.. I apologize, let me rephrase.

So, you agree that the state of black America is a combination of personal actions AND institutional favoritism?

Gbaji wrote:

It didn't. That also has nothing to do with the agenda and actions of the organization. There's a difference between the events they use to gain support and the actions they take once they have that support. Overwhelmingly, their public demands have been about changes to police procedures. Their protests have been about the police. If they cared so much about civilians killing blacks, wouldn't they focus more of their condemnation at the vast number of blacks killed by gangs in inner cities around the country every year?
See post 92, second paragraph.
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