How is it projecting, when I look up Assata Shakur, H Rap Brown, and Kamau Sadiki and note their convictions for murdering police officers.
What do you mean by quality leadership? The point is that if you agree that there should be parity between all cultural groups economically, then simply making things fair without also redistributing all wealth makes it difficult for poorer groups to ever achieve that parity. People clearly agree about this point when it involves baseball teams, so it doesn’t really seem controversial to suggest that the groups at the top should give resources to the groups at the bottom and therefore help those groups reach the top.
Since they don’t actually say who specifically they want released, I can’t really judge the validity of this claim. They seem to be asking for prisoners who would otherwise be eligible for parole to be released, with the justification that denying their parole due the “nature of the crime” makes them political prisoners. It’s no more crazy a position to claim the BLA was a legitimate freedom-fighting organization than it is to demand reparations, and I think both of those positions are legitimate ones, even if the remedy for them is very difficult to achieve (how do you decide who, exactly, pays reparations? How do you distinguish legitimate freedom-fighters that any 2nd Amendment person should love from domestic terrorists?).
They didn’t call for the release of H Rap Brown and Kamau Sadiki, just used them as examples of the problems caused by continuing to investigate these cold cases. They called for Assata Shakur to be removed from terrorist watchlists and for the bounty on her to be removed, again, on the basis that her crimes being distinguished in this way is an example of de-legitimizing black political activity.
By quality leadership I mean the way to improve racial prejudice. The economic angle wasn’t really what I was thinking about with that line.
I can’t say I feel redistribution of wealth is the best solution either…too many flaws in the implementation. People who had nothing to do with it get pulled into the sanctions, like, well, successful African Americans. And Hispanics. And Asians. And pretty much anyone, even white, born after the civil war. And how do you know if those economic measures are doing any good and not being squandered? And when does it end? I know it sucks but no one can turn back the clock.
What I would hope for is not necessarily forced or artificial economic equality but the means to achieve it organically via opportunity equality. Note that this doesn’t mean I don’t think there aren’t some programs taxes can pay for to help, just that it isn’t as simple as playing Robin Hood.
Anyway, I came in to ask a question about the choice of the movement’s name, and I believe I got a reasonable answer. Thanks to all who responded and I do appreciate all of you for the largely civil discussion, regardless of whether we agree or not.
Glenn Beck - Glenn fucking Beck! - does some soul searching about BLM.
[quote]
“All of us are sitting around a table, and we’re all friends,” he said. “It’s time for dessert, and everybody gets pie except for me and you. And you say, ‘I didn’t get any pie.’ Everybody at the table looks at you and says ‘I know. All pie matters.’ You say, ‘but I don’t have any pie! What about my pie?’”[/quote]
That approach worked great before video. The problem isn’t bugs in the software, it’s that the software doesn’t match the design doc and video is making people take notice.
Ever since Rodney King, video has been showing a police force marked by excessive brutality by a number of its members and a disinclination to “Serve and Protect”, but rather maintain order by any means necessary with minimal accountability.
To a degree, it doesn’t matter if black citizens are killed more often than white citizens or not, the problem lays with a police culture in which there is minimal accountability for the use of excessive force (for folks of all races, but a much higher relative percentage for minorities), because in the past a certain amount was deemed acceptable due to out of sight, out of mind. That era has ended with ubiquitous cameras and cell phone video, and if the police force doesn’t figure that out soon, then all citizens will lose faith in the police force, and not just the minorities.
We as a society delegate a lot of power to the police, and they have a duty to use it appropriately, or face consequences. When the police don’t face consequences for misusing their authority and power, it undermines the entire legal system.
[quote=“Telefrog, post:264, topic:120215, full:true”]
Glenn Beck - Glenn fucking Beck! - does some soul searching about BLM.
What fucking planet am I living on where Newt and Beck are the voices of reason on the conservative side?
It is hard to deny the power of video. What is not always spoken about though is how often in many of these cases the police in the video are a minority themselves. The emphasis should be on 'all police" and the “culture” instead of a white vs black thing.
Well, it really depends on what the problems are. For example, if you made it free for specific minorities to go to college, that would be a significant, racially-based redistribution of wealth. If you instead put your money into better primary education in poor neighborhoods, that would help too, but it would focus on living in a poor neighborhood as the qualification for help, instead of heritage. Both of these tactics would directly improve the opportunities of people who took advantage of them, but they would do little end the problems that make doing schoolwork nearly impossible for children in struggling families. Giving the same amount of money directly to those families would make their lives easier, would give their children the time to focus on schoolwork, and would make it easier to pull their neighborhoods up out of cycles of violence and poverty caused by conflicts over scare resources and illegal revenue streams. You can’t just helicopter-drop cash, though, you need to create a sustainable income that people can rely on and put to work, and you’d have to fund it via higher taxes on other folks. This is basically exactly how competitive balance works in baseball. In other sports it is even harsher, flat out preventing expenses that go beyond a certain level. This would be like putting a cap on the total cost of housing, child care, medicine / medical procedures, and education-related expenses (including cost of broadband and devices and services that use it). That would also work to help give poorer families better opportunities, though one assumes that the richest folks would still find ways to skirt the caps. It would drastically alter the economy, though, so I don’t see that happening any time soon. Even a watered-down version that created luxury taxes on these things for any expenditures above a certain fixed value would probably be political suicide for any candidate directly proposing it (“My opponent wants to put a tax on tylenol and day care! College doesn’t cost enough already? My opponent wants to double the price!”). The only really easy way to do this (politically) would be to create an obfuscation like insurance or social security, but I don’t know how to convince wealthy, well-educated adults that they might suddenly become a poor minorities who had to find ways to fight or avoid bullies and scratch out some extra cash to eat or buy clothes rather than learn calculus.
So again, we come back to the idea of how to get disadvantaged groups to be less disadvantaged - whether you believe that racial groups should be valid ones to focus on or not, the idea that you can just wave a wand and make more opportunity without hurting anyone doesn’t really make sense - you either work to make all people truly equal, or you work to preserve the status quo. Making everyone play by the same rules while preserving existing advantages is not treating everyone the same. It’s true that no one alive today was directly responsible for slavery, but the current owners of the Dodgers aren’t responsible for the As having a lower budget, either, and yet we like the idea of taxing their outlandish spending. We like it because the idea is a long-term and general one, and not directed at specific people. I think the best way to get there for the economy is for some far-sighted people to agree to an incremental plan that redistributes from nebulous future rich people to nebulous future poor people to create a future with less inequality and therefore more opportunities.
The police who do this are a minority definitely, however, they aren’t held accountable ever. Thus, they keep doing it, and the culture is perpetuated. 538 did a very good, data-driven study in Chicago:
A data-driven mechanism to reduce police misconduct would be
extremely valuable to the Chicago Police Department and the city of
Chicago. Even laying aside the moral imperative to prevent abuse, the
financial cost of police misconduct to the cash-strapped city is
immense. Direct costs, in terms of legal fees and the funds disbursed in
settlements, exceeded $500 million over 10 years, according to a Better Government Association study. The McDonald case alone was settled for $5 million.
Van Dyke had at least 20 complaints
against him in his career, many alleging excessive force, before
McDonald’s shooting. Overall, the data shows that officers who rack up
many complaints against them are more likely to end up having a
complaint sustained, suggesting that they really are bad cops.
In my analysis of the Invisible Institute data, I found that the
number of complaints an officer receives in a certain year predicts
whether and how many complaints he or she will have in the following
year.1
Over multiple years, the signal becomes even stronger. Officers with a
baseline history of one or two complaints in 2011-13 have a 30 percent
to 37 percent chance of receiving a complaint in the following two
years.2
But repeaters — those with 15 or 20 incidents in the first part of the
data set — are almost certain to have a complaint against them in
2014-15.
Not only a “minority” but a “minority”. Half the cops in the Freddie Gray case were black. The cop in the Minnesota case was Latino, as was the guy in the Florida case I think. There are so many it is hard to distinguish them. But in many of the cases it’s not a question of white cops.
No it isn’t always a race thing in terms of the cop’s race, I’m pretty sure there’s even data to show that some black cops are even more likely to turn to violence when the suspect is also black, but I’m not 100% sure about that.
Media framing false BLM narratives. How CNN framed what Milwaukee victim’s sister said:
What she actually said has a slightly different tone:
Every time the media does stuff like this, it’s just red meat for the haters. Mind-boggling stupidity.
And the left is supposed to be the smart ones.
So you think the media is going to what, silence her or is this another one of those CNN is in the left kind of spiels. This woman is lashing out. Believe it or not, that’s not an abnormal response to grief. I’ve not seen anyone on the actual left hold her as an example of anything other than a family member of the victim.
Anyone criticizing a person who just lost a close family member for losing it in public is a fucking asshole.
Color me utterly unsurprised by who’s responsible for it here.
I could easily see myself declaring in the heat of the moment “fuck them all, burn it all down” if my child was unjustly killed by a police officer.
But I just wish white people cared as much about other white people rioting after a sporting event as they care about an oppressed population rioting after being systematically destroyed over a matter of decades.
And while riots might not be the most productive action a population can take, there is evidence that they do work:
As a guy who used to live a stone’s throw from Fenway Park during the Sox run-up to their second World Series of the Aughts, I will thoroughly and vigorously vouch for the horrifying nature of White People Riots.
Nice job with the false framing yourself, as I was clearly criticizing CNN, not the sister. That said, if some white person had a loved one shot, and they responded by saying to go burn down the inner city, I somehow doubt you would be any more sympathetic than I would.
Hey, nobody said the right wasn’t extremely clever with dog whistles. You certainly weasel-worded your way around coming out and saying “look at this black lady actin all crazy” by using the hoary old media conspiracy chestnut.
“That said”. LOL.
“Don’t bring the violence here” seems like a pretty accurate summary of her point. It’s true that it doesn’t explicitly mention her suggestion that if you’re going to riot you should do it in the suburbs, but “false narrative” is a pretty strong claim for what they actually did. The point of her rant is that they shouldn’t be burning shit down “here”.