But, but, but----jaaaazzzzy—That fact doesn’t fit the group narrative into which they’re trying to box young black men! How terribly inconvenient.
Anyway, the problem seems to be that black men are are no longer as “docile” as they use to be (especially not the young ones). Damned Civil Rights Movement! Made them think they weren’t required to be automatically deferential to white people anymore, that they could walk down the streets of (and even live in!) virtually any neighborhood, without having to explain themselves to random white men who might choose to stalk them. Nope. It was the guy minding his own business who should have been “docile”, and who could have avoided the way things turned out that night, not the guy with the gun and an arrest record for assaulting a police officer. Dumb kid! I blame it on a lack of leadership from within “the black community”.
By the way, what is this stuff about being “taught to respect authority”? Apparently anyone in a position of authority, no matter what, has a blank check? In what way is that a virtue?
But, Consolation, don’t you know the mere fact of GZ’s whiteness, and presence in that neighborhood meant that he clearly belonged there, wasn’t someone potentially dangerous, and should be “respected” with “yes sirs” and “no sirs”? Why couldn’t TM understand that he should not have thought of himself as having a right to walk down the street in the neighborhood his father lived in, that just by virtue of the fact of his blackness alone, he would need to sweetly and “docilely” answer to the authority to the guy who clearly did belong, and was clearly no threat to him (because white guys can’t be dangerous)?
Ahh… that’s it. The FBI’s likely lumping hispanics into the super-category of ‘white’. Like the media did Zimmerman.
That cops are 2 and a half times more likely to be murdered by blacks (on a per capita basis) than almost all other ethnicities seemed hard to believe so I looked up the toll for a few other years. Figured that, rather than being the tail that’s wagging the ‘black lives matter’ dog, maybe 2012 was just blue moon happenstance.
No… 2012 was a slow year, but it averaged right away.
Personally, I’d think it’d be better to ask… make… those who are smearing all the rest with their criminality to stop, than demand a different level of police interaction.
Catahoula, I agree that blame for the heightened policing in inner-city communities falls on those who are pushing the crime rates up. I suspect this explains a portion of the racial disparity in arrests - sure, more white teens may, statistically, smoke pot than black teens, but there’s not much point in having police patrol a suburb looking for kids with a joint, whereas if you have a high police presence because of rampant gang violence, more police is going to lead to more arrests for relatively minor infractions.
However, it is one thing to say that there is justification for having more officers in a given area, and another to suggest that its OK to just accept that trained police officers should be so fearful of black men that they have carte blanche to fire the moment they feel remotely threatened. And frankly, while even one officer killed is too many, your statistics aren’t talking about massive numbers - and in fact, when you consider other statistics that suggest that more African-Americans are stopped, arrested, detained, etc, it isn’t clear to me how great the disparity is. I’m not going to look up the numbers now but if, for instance, blacks made up 40 % of law enforcement interactions and were guilty of 40 % of police killings, that would be proportionate, and an officer pulling over a black driver should have no more reason to be fearful than one pulling over a white driver. Given that most of these killings presumably happen during encounters with police, their proportion in the population isn’t the relevant statistic here.
To address the topic, Michael Brown IS a symbol of injustice. What he is not is a VICTIM of injustice. It is a shame that he wound up being the face of the movement when there are so many other black men who have genuinely been killed unjustly, his death certainly has great symbolic resonance at this point.
I am willing to bet that there are 100 pot busts in my town for every one in the neighboring town with which we share a school system, and 100 speeding tickets in my town for every one there, and 100 DUI arrests for every one there. Because my town has more pot smokers, speeders, and drunk drivers than they do? No–because we have a police force and they don’t. They depend on the State Police, and most of the time there probably isn’t even a patrolman within their borders.
Catahoula, last I checked, Hispanic is not a race, but rather an ethnicity, and persons who identify as Hispanic can be of any “race”, and thereby appear anywhere along a continuum from as black as midnight to white as chalk. GZ has identified himself on paper as being both Hispanic and white. His father is certainly white. His mother is purported to be Purvian (racially/ethnically? I don’t know) so maybe he can claim to be of mixed race. He apparently has the luxury of claiming to be white when it suits his needs, and something else when other needs arise.
I do know that the designation of “white” is a social construct so valued as a commodity, and so jealously guarded, that any add-mixture in any amount of any other racial designation (real or imagined) is often considered a disqualifier, a taint, a stain. This is why even the Irish weren’t considered white for centuries by the British, and certainly not the Jews. And in no case is this more true than when the add-mixture is black. This is why my own children, who are genetically more white than black, can’t claim to be anything less black than “mixed”/bi-racial. Risable claims by some whites of now being “the oppressed race” notwithstanding, this is why my mild-mannered Eagle Scout son got reported to the police by a George Zimmerman type for being “a suspicious looking black guy” when he was merely walking home through his own neighborhood. And even though he was “docile” and deferential enough while the police detained him for 15 minutes as they ran his stated identification information through the system (stupid kid wasn’t carrying his “papers” 8-|), he was nevertheless followed by the cop in his squad car all the way to our front door.
Absent a very convincing video, and a bunch of witnesses, ANY cop death is going to classified as ‘felonious’. You would need more information on provocation/ behavior of the cops, and degree of self-defense by the cop killers, before knowing whether blacks were really killing more cops, given the same circumstances.
Brown is not the best symbol of excessive force ---- so many to choose from — but imo he is still a victim of injustice. The punishment didn’t fit the crime — theft at convenience store, fighting with police officer, resisting arrest by running away are not capital offenses. After the struggle at the door of the police car, Brown is fleeing. Is it really necessary at that point to start shooting? Call for back up and pick him up later. It’s a small community and he is a big guy…can’t be that hard to track him down. Arrest him for the theft, assault of police officer, try him, send him to jail. He’s 18, maybe after that he turns his life around.
Instead, Brown is shot seven times, only one of them at close range because of the struggle. In the federal autopsy, the last four shots are in a downward trajectory, including the kill shot to the top of the head. It’s not unreasonable to me that members of the black community in Ferguson and elsewhere would see Brown’s death as unjust — an extrajudicial execution of an unarmed man already going down.
Some people feel that any encounter with police runs the risk of turning out badly and I’m including myself.
I agree that the number of slain police is small and the rate by ethnicity may simply be proportional to the stops, but that kind of begs the question as to whether the shootings by police aren’t also just as proportional. Higher per capita for blacks, only because they have more contact per capita.
That race is a social construct always struck me as one of the sillier things today’s intellectuals have come up with, poet. Kind of like arguing how many fat angels can do the pin thing.
What’s silly about it, catahoula? It’s a pretty well established scientific fact that there are not enough biological and genetic differences between human populations to meet the criteria of multiple human races. There is only the human race. It’s societies that designate racial demarcations, and they change over time to suit changing social and political conditions. Why else would the British Empire refuse to acknowledge the Irish as being white, despite the fact that the two populations look exactly identical? It was in order to justify subjugating the Irish, to “other” them, and thereby continue their campaign of brutal oppression that lasted for centuries. Are you suggesting that the Irish really are a different race from their English neighbors?
In some African nations, black Americans are often not considered to actually be “black” because of our long history of racial intermingling with whites, and because we lack the cultural underpinnings (such as language, religion and value systems that they define as black). Many an AFAM has returned from a trip to the “motherland” with dashed delusions of connecting with, and sharing a spiritual union with their African brethren, having been rejected as “not like us”, not black.
And how is it that East Asians (Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, etc) have been classified as both Caucasian and Asian, depending upon whom you ask? Many of them are as dark skinned as any African. Yet they are white like The Brits? Like the Germans? Like the Swedes? Did biologists and geneticists make this determination? Or are these designations social constructs meant to fulfil certain political and/or geographical criteria, and thereby liable to change over time?
Wow poet, that is one of the most jumbled arguments against the existence of race I have ever seen
This is blatantly untrue, there are numerous studies showing the great variation in genes from one ethnicity to another.
Ireland and Britain had a very conflictive history, not to mention distinct cultural and religious differences in which the two communities could distinguish each other by. This is far from an example of race being a social construct, as the misdesignation was due to political rather than racial hatred.
Which further proves that race does indeed exist, and you are generalising two distinct ethnicities by their skin colour. You’d think a dozen generations separated by culture and an ocean could just be waived by some good intentions? In addition to having
And this is the greatest faux pas of your post, your bearing of Asia is so misconstrued, I truly fear for the day you meet someone from that continent. Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis are part of central Asia, they are a very distinct group as compared to Orientals and South East Asians. The cultural and ethnical divide between Central Asia and East Asia, is as, if not greater than between the Middle East and the rest of Asia. Middle Easterns and Central Asians have a genetic profile distinct from the rest of the world, comprising of varying mixtures of Caucasoid and unknown groups. They are called Asian by some due to the simple fact that the Indian subcontinent happens to be located in Asia, not because they bear strong relation to East Asians.
Skin tone correlates with sun exposure in the environment, it would be unwise to generalise all dark skinned people as “Africanesque”. This is why Mediterraneans look swarthy. Caucasian is a designation for a specific block of ethnicities, of which Central Asians are likely to be part of. When used in it’s layman definition, Caucasian is a term to mean “white”. The two definitions are used in different contexts.
This isn’t related to the topic but I just had to address your post. One moment you jump from layman racial definitions, and the next you refer to incorrect statements about genetic relations between ethnic groups; you can’t cobble from both sides and expect a sound argument.
The kind the NYT’s loves to naval gaze at. All while they deplore police treatment of ‘blacks’, use ‘white’ as a perjorative, and worry about ‘latino’ turnout.
When they nail Elizabeth Warren’s scalp to their wall, for her one drop claim to being an Indian, I’ll reconsider how silly it is.
Nobody has “established” this fact. Races exist. Today we are seeing lots of intermixing of races, and the lines may eventually get very blurred, but to claim that something that exits doesn’t exist is just silly.
“The punishment didn’t fit the crime — theft at convenience store, fighting with police officer, resisting arrest by running away are not capital offenses.”
– It was robbery, not simple theft. Robbery is a felony.
– “Fighting with police officer” can also be a felony.
MB was an active felon who then committed another (likely) felony by going for Wilson’s gun or whatever happened during the physical altercation at Wilson’s car, MB’s first attack on Wilson. There was cause to shoot him during the altercation at the car and, later, when Brown charged Wilson.
MB attacked a cop once and tried to do it again – Wilson should not be expected to risk injury to himself by using anything less than the force necessary to stop the attacker.
Mine was honest. I’ll make another try at convincing:
‘Race is a social construct’ isn’t germane to yet another discussion of mistreatment of blacks. It’s dissembling, a rhetorical sideshow to distract from the cultural and official identity politics we lve by. (Mentioned earlier Warren’s milking of the system but that’s just a meager little drop in the bucket compared to the preference awarded on a daily basis by our government - racially.) That the ‘social construct’ crowd doesn’t see a conflict here is ironical. Deliciously so.
Zimmrman’s Peruvian mother would be more than good enough for the government that roots out discrimination but she somehow turns invisible when he shoots a black guy?
Question for you, catahoula: Does GZ’s Peruvian mother make him something other than white? And if so, what exactly is he? Don’t say Hispanic, please. That’s an ethnicity that’s entirely steeped in cultural identity and cuts across “racial” lines. How many “drops” of something other than white makes one not white? If GZ claims to be white (which he apparently does at times), is that a lie?
Funny how that works, isn’t it? My son’s white father turns “invisible” when he becomes “a suspicious black guy”…Come to think of it, his father is essentially invisible in every way, save when we are all together out in public. Hmmmmm…
Presentface: Your attempt to belittle me notwithstanding, I’m sure you’re aware that the great majority of the genetic and biological academic and research communities agree that there are no genuine “races” within the human species. It’s been my observation that those most invested in the belief that human beings can be sub-divided into scientifically identifiable races, are often the same ones most convinced that theirs is the superior one in all ways deemed to matter.
:-?