“All lives matter” protesters drop the mask

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

plus, all this talk of white privilege and All Cops are Bastards may turn away people who would have otherwise, be on your side, thus, making the problem worse, not better.

Meh could be worse.

[Dragon Ball Fan]

plus, all this talk of white privilege and All Cops are Bastards may turn away people who would have otherwise, be on your side, thus, making the problem worse, not better.

Meh could be worse.

just saying that one can be color blind and realize that there are people coming from those who are not.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

plus, all this talk of white privilege and All Cops are Bastards may turn away people who would have otherwise, be on your side, thus, making the problem worse, not better.

Meh could be worse.

just saying that one can be color blind and realize that there are people coming from those who are not.

And not all of them might not have friends to adequately explain it like us.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Not seeing race is a great and easy way to not see Racism.

People constantly trying to shove "this person is a different race to you" in your face when you would've otherwise paid it no more attention to the difference in the colour of your hair is a good way of making sure racism doesn't die out.

Because racism didn't exist before people started calling attention to it?

[GreyICE]

Not seeing race is a great and easy way to not see Racism.

People constantly trying to shove "this person is a different race to you" in your face when you would've otherwise paid it no more attention to the difference in the colour of your hair is a good way of making sure racism doesn't die out.

Honestly Riedquat, give me a summary. For how many problems in your life has "ignoring it" actually caused it to go away? Just think of your personal experience. How often does ignoring problems solve them?

Do you really think ignoring racism is going to solve racism? Because what I see is a constant barrage of attempts to discredit the fact that the police in this country unjustly and disproportionately target black people, excuse violence against black people, perpetrate violence against black people, frame black people for crimes, and talk and act in a racist manner. And those attempts start "Why are you pointing out race? That's the actual root cause of racism!"

No it's not. The root cause of racism is two things. The first is a bunch of pseudo-scientific theories like phrenology that Europeans created which, alongside various religious doctrines, they used to justify the Atlantic slave trade. These pseudo-scientific theories were expounded on at length by pro-slavery advocates, and are often repeated, more or less verbatim, today.

The second reason is to stampede people into voting which... y'know, let me just quote Lee Atwater, Republican Campaign Strategist:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/

And you can listen to that interview, if you wish to verify that quote. Maintaining a strong voting block that didn't rely on the Christian Right was always one of the cornerstones of the Republican strategy (the Christians are prone to going off the rails with things like the Satanic panic, the attack on video games, the Tea Party, a bunch of generally tone deaf actions that push people towards the Democrats when the Republicans become the "party of the right wing Christian". Every single person who played Mass Effect and listened to Fox News' "Mass Effect is a rape simulator" is one potential person who got pushed away from Fox News permanently)

[Riedquat]

Not seeing race is a great and easy way to not see Racism.

People constantly trying to shove "this person is a different race to you" in your face when you would've otherwise paid it no more attention to the difference in the colour of your hair is a good way of making sure racism doesn't die out.

Because racism didn't exist before people started calling attention to it?

That's really a non-sequitor, or at any rate smacks of taken a very widespread, simple generality and applying it unthinkingly universally.

[Riedquat]

Not seeing race is a great and easy way to not see Racism.

People constantly trying to shove "this person is a different race to you" in your face when you would've otherwise paid it no more attention to the difference in the colour of your hair is a good way of making sure racism doesn't die out.

Honestly Riedquat, give me a summary. For how many problems in your life has "ignoring it" actually caused it to go away? Just think of your personal experience. How often does ignoring problems solve them?

I said nothing about ignoring a problem. But I do see people whose behaviour keeps the problems alive, and who keep differences going that should've died out long ago. What I'm seeing is exactly the sort of behaviour that keeps feuds going generations after whatever the initial cause was, that keeps people thinking "them and us." We need to get past these differences, not perpetuate them. And the idea that there's something wrong with people who already have done is both absurd and vile.

And I do hope you're not seriously suggesting that there's only shove it in your face or ignore - only two very simple ways of looking at a problem. Oversimplification of ideas to an absurd degree is a real problem, one that should stay in childhood but one that unfortunately far too many people never grow out of.

[GreyICE]

Not seeing race is a great and easy way to not see Racism.

People constantly trying to shove "this person is a different race to you" in your face when you would've otherwise paid it no more attention to the difference in the colour of your hair is a good way of making sure racism doesn't die out.

Honestly Riedquat, give me a summary. For how many problems in your life has "ignoring it" actually caused it to go away? Just think of your personal experience. How often does ignoring problems solve them?

I said nothing about ignoring a problem. But I do see people whose behaviour keeps the problems alive, and who keep differences going that should've died out long ago. What I'm seeing is exactly the sort of behaviour that keeps feuds going generations after whatever the initial cause was, that keeps people thinking "them and us." We need to get past these differences, not perpetuate them. And the idea that there's something wrong with people who already have done is both absurd and vile.

Ah! I get the source of your problem, you think this is something that's over and done with. If that were the case, I would agree with you - there's no need to dig up ancient history. Unfortunately, these are ongoing issues today.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/07/data-police-racial-bias

In San Francisco, “although Black people accounted for less than 15 percent of all stops in 2015, they accounted for over 42 percent of all non-consent searches following stops.” This proved unwarranted: “Of all people searched without consent, Black and Hispanic people had the lowest ‘hit rates’ (i.e., the lowest rate of contraband recovered).” In 2015, whites searched without consent were found to be carrying contraband at nearly two times the rate as blacks who were searched without consent.

5. The Department of Justice’s investigation into the behavior of police in Ferguson, Missouri, found “a pattern or practice of unlawful conduct within the Ferguson Police Department that violates the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, and federal statutory law.” The scathing report found that the department was targeting black residents and treating them as revenue streams for the city by striving to continually increase the money brought in through fees and fines. “Officers expect and demand compliance even when they lack legal authority,” the report’s authors wrote. “They are inclined to interpret the exercise of free-speech rights as unlawful disobedience, innocent movements as physical threats, indications of mental or physical illness as belligerence.”

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0858-1

We assessed racial disparities in policing in the United States by compiling and analysing a dataset detailing nearly 100 million traffic stops conducted across the country. We found that black drivers were less likely to be stopped after sunset, when a ‘veil of darkness’ masks one’s race, suggesting bias in stop decisions. Furthermore, by examining the rate at which stopped drivers were searched and the likelihood that searches turned up contraband, we found evidence that the bar for searching black and Hispanic drivers was lower than that for searching white drivers. Finally, we found that legalization of recreational marijuana reduced the number of searches of white, black and Hispanic drivers—but the bar for searching black and Hispanic drivers was still lower than that for white drivers post-legalization. Our results indicate that police stops and search decisions suffer from persistent racial bias and point to the value of policy interventions to mitigate these disparities.

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/04/24/usa-today-revealing-misconduct-records-police-cops/3223984002/

Most misconduct involves routine infractions, but the records reveal tens of thousands of cases of serious misconduct and abuse. They include 22,924 investigations of officers using excessive force, 3,145 allegations of rape, child molestation and other sexual misconduct and 2,307 cases of domestic violence by officers.
Dishonesty is a frequent problem. The records document at least 2,227 instances of perjury, tampering with evidence or witnesses or falsifying reports. There were 418 reports of officers obstructing investigations, most often when they or someone they knew were targets.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/06/us/police-reports-lying-videos-misconduct-trnd/index.html

It's fairly common for officers to lie in police reports, said Philip Stinson, a criminologist and professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University.

Stinson has tracked arrest cases of nonfederal sworn law enforcement officers who have been charged with at least one crime from 2005 to 2014. His research shows that out of more than 10,000 officer arrest cases, about 6.3% involved false reports or statements. About a quarter of those cases involving false reports or statements also involved alleged acts of police violence -- and he said the problem is probably more common than the data suggests.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/29/us/lapd-officers-cases-review/index.html

(CNN)The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office is now reviewing hundreds of criminal cases that involved three Los Angeles police officers who were charged earlier this month with allegedly falsifying evidence.
Officers Braxton Shaw, Michael Coblentz and Nicolas Martinez were charged in a 59-count complaint for allegedly falsely identifying people as gang members or associates. The officers falsified identities and evidence that would later be entered into a state gang database, according to Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey.

Does this help to clear up your misconceptions?

[Riedquat]

Ah! I get the source of your problem, you think this is something that's over and done with. If that were the case, I would agree with you - there's no need to dig up ancient history. Unfortunately, these are ongoing issues today.

No, I don't think it's something over and done with. I didn't say that and I didn't say "ignore it" either. You keep putting words in my mouth and attacking your strawman.

There are attitudes that target problems, that don't shove differences in the face of people who have already moved past them whilst dealing with the people who haven't, and that don't attempt to perpetuate differences by shouting "US AND THEM!" at the top of your voice. Then there are attitudes that perpetuate grudges and feuds. There is a great deal of the latter involved here.

[GreyICE]

o, I don't think it's something over and done with. You keep putting words in my mouth - first saying that I was asking people to ignore the problems, and now saying this.

At this point it's looking like you're deliberately trying to fail to understand what I'm saying. Or you're unable to see things in anything other than extremely oversimplified one extreme or the other terms ("He doesn't agree with what I say so it must be the opposite!")

You are indeed correct, I don't understand what you're saying. The first two lines of your previous post were these:

I said nothing about ignoring a problem. But I do see people whose behaviour keeps the problems alive, and who keep differences going that should've died out long ago.

To me this seems to be the thesis statement of your post, based on both the subject we were discussing, and what you wrote: that people who discussed racism were actually the ones keeping racism alive, because the actual root problems died out long ago. That seems a reasonable reading of your post. And when we examine the entire thing, I believe this is supported:

I said nothing about ignoring a problem. But I do see people whose behaviour keeps the problems alive, and who keep differences going that should've died out long ago. What I'm seeing is exactly the sort of behaviour that keeps feuds going generations after whatever the initial cause was, that keeps people thinking "them and us." We need to get past these differences, not perpetuate them. And the idea that there's something wrong with people who already have done is both absurd and vile.

We can see multiple similar references here. "Keeping problems alive," "Keeping feuds going", "Generations after the initial cause", etc. This is all rhetoric that suggests that the protests are based around issues that happened long in the past, and that racism in the police force is not a currently ongoing problem.

And yet you say you are aware it is a currently ongoing problem. To me, this seems to invalidate your entire post, because certainly noting injustices that are being perpetrated in the present day, and fighting against them is valuable and meaningful political discourse, and very, very different from perpetrating feuds over injustices that have long since passed into history.

So perhaps you can tie it all together for me and explain what you actually meant to say?