No, because this is not about voters.

Contributory, yes. You work to excuse injustice.

If you cannot answer the question of what it would take, then you were never interested to begin with. Real problem found.

Apparently not to you.

No, I don't. Because apparently the multitude of research, the protests, the media publicity, the anguish, none of it is good enough for people like you. And when asked, you have no idea either. So at this point, I have no idea.

It's almost like being asked to 'prove the point' is meaningless bad-faith misdirection that cannot be given any content.

What would it take?

Race is a circumstance.

Does it not twig with people that yes - you too will be fucked by a cop, given the chance and circumstance - all the more reason to support what is happening now. Like gosh, please shower me in examples of non-racist police brutality - abuses of authority and brutality against the poor and those seeking to express their right to speech - great, everyone's got a dog in this fight.

Well spotted sir. Pack up and go home everyone, captain observation here has done it.

That entire contingent of cops who stood around while a man lay bleeding from his head has now resigned from being emergency responders - not from being cops, just a particular role. And they did so - in solidarity with their two collegues who got suspended.

Exactly how is anyone supposed to believe there are 'good cops'? How? I don't understand. Because they kneel with protestors? But those cops kneeled too, the day before.

Well, I said what that might be in my first post - the violent crime rate of each group. — Hallucinogen

Except this is factually wrong:

"From a criminal justice perspective, there appears to be little connection between police killings and violent crime. Some cities with high rates of violent crime have fewer police killings than those with higher violent crime rates, a situation that can make police killings feel wanton and baseless."

Via the same article.

The paltry two examples you listed - Eric Garner and George Floyd - were certainly not violent criminals. All violence involved in their murder belonged to the police.

Yes, absolutely, all men too should be absolutely furious at the rate at which they die by the hands of police. Why aren't you? With so much in common, why aren't all men in absolute solidarity with BLM?

It's population proportion, not population size. If you need this explained then please find a discussion venue more appropriate for your intellectual capacity, like a kindergarten maybe.

"Controlling for population (that is, looking at killings per million people) shows that it is black Americans who are most likely to be killed by police officers — that they are nearly twice as likely to be killed as a Latinx person and nearly three times more likely to be killed than a white person. Black Americans are also about 1.4 times more likely to be unarmed in fatal interactions with police than white Americans are (and about 1.2 times more likely to be killed unarmed than Latinx Americans).

This disparity is such that in eight US cities — including Reno, Nevada; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and Scottsdale, Arizona — the rate at which police killed black men was higher than the US murder rate. And from a criminal justice perspective, there appears to be little connection between police killings and violent crime. Some cities with high rates of violent crime have fewer police killings than those with higher violent crime rates, a situation that can make police killings feel wanton and baseless."

https://www.vox.com/2020/5/31/21276004/anger-police-killing-george-floyd-protests

WhY iS EvErYoNe MaKiNg ThIs AbOuT RaCe?

see Tucker Carlson — Hallucinogen

Absolutely do not do this.

-

Also anyone who blames people for their own deaths by hands of others is a propagandist and does not deserve to be taken seriously. Kindly rethink your life.

Via Doug Henwood:

"In New York, we have 5,500 cops in the schools. They’re unarmed but uniformed, and a visual shock for someone like me who grew up in less policed times. That’s ten times the number of school psychologists; almost twice the number of guidance counselors; and four times the number of social workers. With about 1.1 million students in the public schools, the cop/student ratio works out to 50 per 10,000, which is significantly higher than the city as a whole. And New York has one of the highest cop to population ratios in the country. This is brutalizing and perverse."

Now we read in Mike Allen's Axios product this morning:

"A bunch of big cities are rethinking the presence of school resource officers as they respond to the concerns of thousands of demonstrators — many of them young — who have filled the streets night after night to protest the death of George Floyd, AP's Gillian Flaccus reports. Portland Public Schools, Oregon's largest school district, yesterday cut its ties with the Portland Police Bureau. Other urban districts — including Minneapolis, St. Paul and Denver — are considering doing the same."

Anyone who says these protests are ineffective either does not know what they are talking about, or are intentionally lying.

I was attacked by paramilitary unicorns! — Benkei

I thought I was the only one!

Among the more publicised incidences of police violence that have been given airtime right now, among the most vicious is this one in which a grey-haired civilian is pushed over while talking to some cops, and then lays there, bleeding from his head and ear. The ear being a sign of severe head trauma. The news going around about it is that two officers have been suspended (just suspended?) over it. Cuomo himself called the actions a disgrace.

But that news is burying the lede. More horrifying still are the throng of officers - maybe 10 to 20 or so of them - who walk past this incapacitated man without so much as giving him a glance. A cop who bends down to help - after the initial assaulting officer simply walks away and out of frame - is pulled off the man by another cop, who encourages him to ignore the man with the head-bleed. He does, and also walks away. Every single one of those cops is a bad cop as far as I'm concerned. That just two officers were suspended is the story. Not that they were.

And most telling of all (@ssu):



These are not just uniforms that people are hating on.

Well, this is my police department that he is referring to, and my internal affairs section that worked to weed out and prosecute these officers. — Wolfman

That's really cool! If what I'm reading is right though, you're about one of fourteen or so police departments out of roughly 18,000 who are involved in similar arrangements. And interestingly, under the order of Jeff Sessions - and hence Trump - federal oversight efforts were explicitly scaled back. And although I won't pretend to know the details, OPD reforms look like they are still ongoing. So all of this definitely seems promising, but the scale and drive to national implementation seem to have alot to be desired. Looks like Chicago PD's going your way though - as a direct response to these current protests.

Speaking for myself, I have been speaking, and more importantly, acting. — Wolfman

I misworded myself. You're right - it's not words I want. Nor performance, as with police taking knees and so on (). Especially when we've seen plenty of cases where knee-taking police officers then go about gassing protesters an hour later. It's advocacy and action for the kinds of things we've both spoken about. Calls by police, for police reform - institutional change. And I get this is hard. Much militates against it. Institutional change always meets resistance from vested interests. Usually change on this scale is motivated externally (as it seems was OPD's reforms were) - and right now things are 'external' as they might possibly get for a while.

And I don't want to dwell too much here on individual cases and actions. Always my imperative is to look outwards, at structure. The stories of the officers you wrote of are terrible, and it is obviously the case that tools ought to be available to deal with extreme situations when necessary. But that extreme situations are extreme is of enormous import, it seems to me. The kinds of things that we're seeing happening on American streets are not extreme, contrary to what certain sensationalist media is saying. The protesters are not roving crowds of murderers. And the force being deployed against them is disproportionate, widespread, and, it seems - reflective of deep rooted culture and training. If the standards you hold yourself to hold more generally, quite literally hundreds of cops right now should have their jobs on the line. And that's definitely not what's being seen.

What all of this amounts to is simply - I don't doubt your experience. I do doubt that it is generalizable.

It's just the city, from what I can find.

Did you know there's actually a very good economic argument to pay unemployed people well? Unemployed people are necessary to grease the wheels of the labour market. If everyone was employed, how are you going to replace that non-performing employee? You couldn't. So the unemployed perform the all important function of creating flexibility for companies and companies should be taxed for that opportunity so we can pay the unemployed a fair amount for their critical role in the functioning of the labour market. — Benkei

I'm familiar with these arguments! I'm curious as to how widely known they are. I've spoken to economists who have been against full employment on precisely these grounds: that unemployment has a structural function in maintaining a high quality labour force. The challenge is, as you've said, making sure they don't play this role without being, well, compensated for it.

A related interesting perspective I've heard is that - pre-COVID - the main social issue to tackle isn't unemployment, but good employment. Pre-COVID, unemployment - at least in developed nations - was trending to be at almost historically low levels. The gravity of the issue lay in precarious, unwaged, 'flexible' labour, with jobs but only barely - zero-hour contracts, lack of insurance, no holiday or sick leave, minimum wage jobs, etc. There's a whole thing to say here about the outsized role of finance economies (as opposed to industrial economies) in encouraging this sort of thing, but that's for another thread. In this connection, it means people are going to live shitty lives, and will more likely turn to - crime (with my Marxist hat on, this means that defunding police will work best with - a change in the mode of production).

Holy shit. The NYPD budget is $6 billion.

Behind the scenes, sorry

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/06/new-york-times-tom-cotton-staff-reaction.html

A pretty extraordinary BTS look at Times staffers pushing back vigorously against management and the publishing of that piece.

I didn't say you had broken any rules, I rendered a judgement about the very silly thing you said.

Yes, and there was alot to be 'gained' from Unit 271 experiments too - experiments which are rightly abhorred by any human today. Your statement is irresponsible and reprehensible.

People's lives are not a bloody scientific experiment for your intellectual edification.

Will respond a bit more later but for now - the job of the police is to put themselves out of a job. Their violence sure as hell doesn't do that.

Now seems a uniquely bad time to ignore Trump. His actions and inactions are becoming less and less palatable for a great deal of people, former and wavering supporters included. If anything this is precisely the time to foreground Trump, and associate all the trash that has been happening precisely to his person.

Why mass protest works to make your shitty leaders slightly less shit:

"Faced with staggering unemployment numbers that are likely to remain elevated through the election, Senate Republicans are reversing their positions on ending a federal increase of state unemployment benefits after July.

GOP senators fear that the wave of protests, riots and other forms of social unrest that has rocked major cities around the country is linked to the bleak economic picture and that their majority is on the line.

But many Republican senators, including members of the leadership, now say the federal government should continue to enhance state unemployment benefits or provide a back-to-work bonus of $450 per week for laid-off workers who return to their jobs."

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/501035-gop-shifting-on-unemployment-benefits-as-jobless-numbers-swell

Ha. The ~$150m LAPD 'budget cut' that I mentioned earlier is almost entirely a cut to planned budget increases - which were probably on their way due to COVID anyway. The total LAPD budget? $1.86 billion. 17% of the city's total budget. Fucking ridiculous.

Cool infographic going around.

:confused:

D'oh, of course. God I was a hundred or so years off.

Actually, reflecting on it a little, I do see where Patterson is coming from. I think there's a great deal to be said for not having every problem just put down to one's race. Like, I get that this can be patronizing. I imagine someone offering a kind of 'pity' to a poor black person, with the black person responding: "It's not because I'm black, it's because I'm poor!". It's not fair to have that label of race attached to anything. Sometimes you just want to be a poor person, without being reminded at each point that you're a poor black person (I'm thinking about an asymmetry with white people - poor white people just get to be poor; not always 'poor and white'). That added 'pressure' or association with race can be unfair and racist in itself.

So it's tricky. I think it's necessary to acknowledge the implication of race and class. On the other hand I don't think it's fair to always have to foist the question of race onto people. I suppose there's simply no general model. Just gonna have to ask people what they think or prefer.

Ah, this is good to know too, lol. Good trade :P

Hit the escape button on your keyboard before the paywall loads.

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

This was super interesting. Orlando Patterson was an incredible scholar of slavery and I've alot of time for him. I think he's right to insist that the problem is indeed, primarily economic. But I'm not convinced that one can so easily parse out economics and race. That something is primarily economic does not make it not about race - i.e. poverty is a racial problem. To steal @botheius's MLK quote form the other thread:

"In 1863 the Negro was granted freedom from physical slavery through the Emancipation Proclamation. But he was not given land to make that freedom meaningful. At the same time, our government was giving away millions of acres of land in the Midwest and the West, which meant that the nation was willing to undergird its white peasants from Europe with an economic floor, while refusing to do it for its black peasants from Africa who were held in slavery two hundred and forty four years. And this is why Frederick Douglass would say that emancipation for the Negro was freedom to hunger, freedom to the winds and rains of heaven, freedom without roofs to cover their heads".

Or this, from Kwame Ture (mostly recently made known again by Spike Lee's Blackkklansman) and Charles Hamilton:

"Racism is both overt and covert. It takes two closely related forms…we call these individual racism and institutional racism… The second type is… far more subtle, less identifiable in terms of specific individuals committing the acts. But it is no less destructive of human life. The second type originates in the operation of established and respected forces in society, and thus receives far less public condemnation than the first type… It is institutional racism that keeps black people locked in dilapidated slum tenements, subject to the daily prey of exploitative slumlords, merchants, loan sharks and discriminatory real estate agents. The society either pretends it does not know of this latter situation, or is in fact incapable of doing anything meaningful about it.”

These issues are not competing with each other. It does good to think through them together, of a piece with each other.

You'd think Americans would be familiar... them all being shit-hot financiers an'all. — unenlightened

I don't know. I'm curious. I read about it for the first time in some obscure political economy book. Had to look it up after. Have barely heard about it since. Maybe they do things differently in the US. My impression is that alot of Americans think that black issues came to an end after reconstruction and it's been more or less hunky dory ever since. What say the Americans here?

Awesome.

And if anyone would like a concise definition of systematic racism, this is as good as any:

"Social scientists often discuss these disparities as outcomes. However, inequality is probably better understood as a process - one sustained largely as a result of how systems and institutions are structured and reproduced, and the ways in which people act and interact within them across time. Systemic racism is not a product (outcome) of people holding the ‘wrong’ beliefs or feelings. It is a function of behavioral patterns - and (unjust) allocations of resources and opportunities - that systematically advantage some, and disadvantage others, within particular contexts. It persists because it is enacted moment to moment, situation to situation. It could be ended if those who currently perpetuate it committed themselves to playing a different role instead – not merely through their words or feelings, but with action" (source).