Same story as healthcare, pump more money into a shitty system and you get a worse outcome. Terrible for everyone except special interests. I didn't realize it was that bad re policing though until now.

Not a bother.

Don't know why they made it so easy. Idiots. :lol:

Anyway, re the article. The author recognizes systemic racism exists here:

"Certainly, poor blacks are hurt by racial discrimination -- mostly in biased police behavior and draconian drug-sentencing laws that result in horrendous incarceration rates for young men. "

But then points to other factors she thinks are more important. That's fine. It's not an unreasonable position to debate.

E.g. I agree that it shouldn't be the case that "Any problem associated with blacks is simply assumed to be racist in origin."

So, again, @Hanover I don't know what the precise bone of contention is.

Ooh, got it hehe. On the Washington Post all I do is turn off javascript and it works.

https://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/16/opinion/racism-is-not-the-issue.html — Hanover

Can't get through the paywall on that one. Got a hack?

Jim Crow laws no doubt played an important role in the American psyche for both blacks and whites. To call them "systemic" racism does a disservice to those oppressed, abused, and murdered. Not affording protections against blacks against such practices (and even explicitly legalizing such practices) denies human beings of their most basic human rights. — Hanover

E.g. Are you talking to me here? I already made this distinction:

E.g. if you've got a justice or policing system embedded in a culture that's only recently emerged from the acceptance of explicitly institutionalised racism, you need extremely strong safeguards to avoid the continuance of implicit racism in whatever ostensibly non-racist institutions are substituted. — Baden

So, maybe the language is tricky (and actually I was aware of that when I was writing the above) but explicitly institutionalised racism is not what we're talking about now. It's implicit in the supposedly non-racist structures that remain (or some of them at least).

Don't know why you don't just use the term that describes what's being talked about, which is systemic racism. No-one here is claiming some absolute determinative power for it (of course, multiple factors affect outcomes). In fact, the argument in this thread is simply whether it exists or not. So, we agree on that, I guess. But if there is something I said you don't agree with, just quote me. Because I can't figure out what it is or whether it's someone else you disagree with.

I wouldn't refer to your examples above as systemic racisms, but instead as institutionalized racism — Hanover

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism

"Institutional racism (also known as systemic racism)"

Why is the title referring to systemic racism in particular and not just racism in general? — Congau

Mostly for conciseness's sake. I thought about writing racism and systemic racism in the OP title but it sounded awkward so I just specified that you can talk about both afterwards:

Please put comments on racism, systemic racism, and police brutality in the US, along with the public reaction to these phenomena, here. — Baden

Not debating this here, Brett. If you really feel strongly that systemic racism doesn't exist in the US and you can reasonably demonstrate that with evidence and data etc, you can attempt an OP on that subject. I expect you won't because I expect you know as well as I do that it does exist. Anyway, right now, we're off-topic.

I would like to think so. :fire:

Baden, you’re basically saying that one can’t disagree with the OP, that if you want to participate then you must agree with the OP. Very totalitarian. — Brett

No, I'm saying stay on topic. You can start your own topic about the existence of systemic racism somewhere else. This conversation is about how to stop systemic racism (and about racism in general). It's specified in the OP.

This discussion is not intended to debate whether racism exists but why it exists and what to do about it. — Baden

The idea that it's totalitarian to ask posters to stick to the OP topic as defined doesn't hold up seeing as off-topic posts are regularly deleted in OPs.

Systemic racism obtains when a system(s) function (regardless of explicit rules) to favour certain racial groups over others. It doesn't require overt individual racists (though it may protect and even reward them) nor does it necessarily require any conscious acts of racism at all (and obversely you could have conscious acts of racism in a system where no systemic racism exists, only rather than being performative of the system, they would be antithetical to it). Systems are culturally contextual, they're embedded in cultures and how they function depends on their relationship to the culture they're in. So, often it's what the system allows rather than what the system demands that's important. E.g. if you've got a justice or policing system embedded in a culture that's only recently emerged from the acceptance of explicitly institutionalised racism, you need extremely strong safeguards to avoid the continuance of implicit racism in whatever ostensibly non-racist institutions are substituted. Not having those safeguards in place means the explicit racism of before doesn't just disappear but finds footholds in the new institutions and festers there looking for opportunities to express itself.

Systemic racism occurs in all areas of social life, policing, housing, education etc. And again, it's not primarily about explicitly racist acts or explicitly racist policies or legislation but how things work in practice to disadvantage communities of color. Here's an example relating to housing.

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2019/08/07/472617/systemic-inequality-displacement-exclusion-segregation/

"For much of the 20th century households of color were systematically excluded from federal homeownership programs, and government officials largely stood by as predatory lenders stripped them of wealth and stability.

In the decades preceding the Fair Housing Act, government policies led many white Americans to believe that residents of color were a threat to local property values. For example, real estate professionals across the country who sought to maximize profits by leveraging this fear convinced white homeowners that Black families were moving in nearby and offered to buy their homes at a discount. These “blockbusters” would then sell the properties to Black families—who had limited access to FHA loans or GI Bill benefits—at marked-up prices and interest rates. Moreover, these homes were often purchased on contracts, rather than traditional mortgages, allowing real estate professionals to evict Black families if they missed even one payment and then repeat the process with other Black families.57 During this period, in Chicago alone, more than 8 in 10 Black homes were purchased on contract rather than a standard mortgage, resulting in cumulative losses of up to $4 billion. Blockbusting and contract buying were just two of several discriminatory wealth-stripping practices that lawmakers permitted in the U.S. housing system."

Most likely, as with you, objections to the existence of systemic racism turn on a misunderstanding of what it is. As if it's just the type of claim that police are racist or police departments have racist policies. That's really not it. It's usually far subtler than that and, for being so, all the more pernicious.

In any case, I don't want to go off on a tangent on this. In asking how systemic racism can be solved (particularly in policing), the OP presumes its existence. If you want to participate you'll need to do so on that presumption (or at least not derail the discussion by making it about something it's not, i.e. stay on topic, please).

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/james-mattis-denounces-trump-protests-militarization/612640/

"When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside."

Hopefully more will come out of the woodwork to call out this human excrement for what he is.

What it's about is giving kids like this the society they deserve. That's all. How do we do it?

I actually did see that first video before and it is fucking insane. The stuff of nightmares. In fact, worked it into a short story I wrote. (In the second video, the officers show an absolute callous disregard for the victim but aren't actively trying to kill or injure him). Anyway, yes, absolutely, police brutality does not break exactly along the lines of race but when you look at the numbers it's skewed towards the poor and minorities.

A very basic taxonomy of systemic racism (overlapping with systemic classism).

Rich, powerful and white: Police reaction: Subservience.
Middle-class white: Police reaction: Respect
Poor and black: Police reaction: Contempt

Obviously, this is a generalization but seems close enough to the unwritten rules of US policing in enough states to be accurate.

Is there racism in the U.S., yes, but is there "systematic racism," absolutely not. — Sam26

It's been proven beyond a doubt there is.

Please delete my account. — Sam26

You can just leave for now, I suppose. We'll remove your personal details, delete your name and so on later.

Back to systemic racism.



Just make her black and poor and imagine the response. That's all it takes. (I mean at any point in the video does anyone think there's even a remote possibility they are going to lay one finger on this horrible self-entitled bitch?)

:clap:

This is brilliant.



These cops arrest a guy because he "looks like" a suspect (i.e. he's black). Turns out the guy is FBI. :fire:

https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2020/06/03/derek-chauvins-murder-charge-will-now-be-2nd-degree-3-other-ex-mpd-officers-also-face-charges/

It's working. Keep it up!

Reading that now. All too likely. Add in technological advances in bioengineering etc. applied in a polarised fashion dependent on social strata and you've got a nice little dystopia in the making.



Ooh. Bullseye!

I love the opening line: "Australia is now in line with the United States, Ghana and Botswana in terms of civil freedoms." Like - ew, not in line with the US! — StreetlightX

:lol:

Fuck, the UK is already "narrowed". Ireland is still green. Hang in their lads!

(And before someone starts shouting that we're overreacting, you're not there yet, but authoritarianism and the continued erosion of constitutional rights is the clear direction of travel. Does anyone imagine that Trump won't take it absolutely as far he can?)



That's disturbing. The UK to is probably next. Ireland is more naturally egalitarian but the neoliberal juggernaut crushes all in its path and if democracy just slows it down, who knows...

Trump's clear model for the US is Putin's Russia. Only with more Walmarts. But the left is "authoritarian" and against "freedom". Anyway, yes, it poses a huge problem: as the balance starts to tilt towards right authoritarianism, it becomes normalized. If you've got China, Russia, and now the US going this route, open democracies start to look like a weird novelty.

Yep, just that there's absolutely no corner of ambiguity for them to hide in now. Video of police flash bombing, tear-gassing, and beating peaceful protesters engaged in exercising their supposed constitutional rights, punching members of the press in the face and generally just practising for the fascist state of their dreams can't be hand waved away. What the right, as a political force, want is an oppressive state that serves the interests of a socioethnic uber-class with everyone else untermenschen only around to serve them their lattes and mow their lawns.

On the positive side, it's useful evidence to demonstrate that the American right and their representatives don't essentially care about the constitution or any other of the principles that found their hallowed slogans ("give me liberty or death" etc.), they will back anyone on their "team" no matter what the actual content of the behaviour is. They're a collection of ideologies without content, nothing but a black hole of power struggles against anyone who threatens their selfish interests (all the resources for me and those who look and sound like me, now!). So, when they talk of this or that right (guns or whatever) as being fundamental to their position as American citizens, this can be thrown right back in their faces: You supported the denial of the very same rights you're now claiming to be fundamental. Then just watch them fall into the gaping abyss of their own hypocrisy.

Anyone who continuously posts low quality like @Chester will be banned. Take him as a brilliant example of what not to do on the site. If you still can't work out why, that's fine. But we're not going to spend days and days explaining one of the most obvious banning decisions we ever made to someone who has decided they just won't accept it.

Of course, it goes without saying that not only do we consider the guidelines, we consult each other in most cases. Even with @Chester, I made a suggestion in the mod forum after he ignored my warning that someone else look at whether he merited keeping on. He didn't. But I didn't want to take a unilateral decision to ban him. Thing is, we know bans need to be justified, so we're not going to stick our necks out on them unless we're either super sure or we get a second and, in some cases, third opinion.

Honestly, @Chester didn't need baiting. He was politically, ethnically, and personally insulting anyone who disagreed with him from day one. And all that got him was a warning for low quality until he jumped the shark. Hardly unfair.

Not sure about logic, but the secret to getting us to do what you want is just to complain about us publically. We hate that and will probably give in to make you stop.

It's fair enough to complain. We mods get blind to our faults sometimes and can end up acting unfairly and intemperately. It's good to remind us when we do and keep us honest. As for @Chester, even if he had never flamed, he would have been banned. I also warned him for low quality (not flaming, which is well tolerated in the political discussions as you may have noticed). So, he was given a couple of warnings for low quality, ignored them, and got banned.

Apart from the Irish jokes, which had me in stitches. Ok, no...

His posts were garbage and he was a fool.

Yes, absolutely, those need to go. :clap:

I'm guessing we can close this now as the main issue seems to have been resolved.

Thank you, frank. :up:

As I said, frank, I realize now you were genuinely concerned about my well-being in asking me if I was drunk as you were the time when you said you thought I sounded stressed and all the rest was just a misunderstanding on my part. And, of course, this thread is a genuine attempt to uncover the systemic oppression on this site. As I've indicated, I won't mod you anymore and actually I shouldn't mod anyone I interact with, so you have my apologies and please do keep fighting your good fight.

:lol: It all makes sense now.