What kind of fuckstickery is this shit? You think policies need to declare themselves to be racist in order to be racist? Fuck off. You're not this stupid, from which one can only conclude that you're being deliberately shit, so stop being deliberately shit you fuckstain.

No, that’s not what I think. I think policies have to be explicitly racist in order for it to be racist, for instance Black Codes, Nuremberg laws or Apartheid.

I'm done now. Your constant reframing attempts are, as ever, frustrating.

You tried to connect me to Lee Atwater.

Show me an explicitly racist policy. If they aren’t explicitly racist, or they are not exclusive to this or that race, but are to be applied evenly to each and every individual, they are not racist, They are race neutral. If someone puts their finger on the scale of justices and they are applied for or against someone because of their race, that is the result of individual racists, not the law. Does this not compute to you?

No. Not affording anything except that the rhetoric that you espoused and your self admission of unawareness is apparent that your privilege, which is such that you do not experience that I, and other 45 million (plus or minus) blacks experience and have experienced are unaware or try not to be aware or reject the notion that such exists.

I don’t deny that racism exists. My unawareness was in regards to the existence of explicitly racial policies in America, which may exist beyond what I know. I know of one explicitly racial policy here in the government of Canada, which gives preference to “visible minorities” in hiring practices.

You understood it enough to try and reframe the discussion away from it.

You used an overused quote from god-knows-when to imply I am appealing to, or are appealed by, American racists. I still cannot see the connection between what I was talking about and what Lee Atwater was talking about, however.

I don’t get the connection you’re trying to make here.

The people you support know it exists and weaponise it to appeal to American racists. The denial you have of it? Their propaganda and euphemisms working exactly as intended.

I have never supported Lee Atwater. But do you agree with his theory?

Of course you can’t such is the life of the privileged and the ignorant. Normally I’d post articles and studies but considering I’ve heard that type of rhetoric before and have wasted my time I am not going to start again

If you want to afford me privilege because of my skin color be my guest. But I reject it.

You're wilfully ignorant.

Do you believe the same as Lee Atwater?

None of those policies explicitly discriminate between races (as far as I’m aware). As such, any racism that results is the effort of individual racists, not any inherent racism in the system itself. I just can’t see any way around this.

Obama brought the country out of the Great Recession, and was re-elected. I think that even Trump’s supporters realize on some level that he’s far too incompetent to deal with the current state of affairs.

Yet, there he is dealing with the current state of affairs, in a fashion I agree with, and in opposition to interests I despise. I could not have asked for a better job.

He said a lot more than that. One should watch the whole thing than rely on out of context quotes.

I am not confident in Trump’s re-election. So you will probably get your wish, if you haven’t lit the country in flames or torn it down by then.

Nah.

He simply is inept at leadership and a very ignorant person with huge personal flaws, even if he's a great populist orator for a certain type of crowd. Trump is not the culprit of the downfall of US leadership and Superpower status, he is just contributor that makes the downfall even more rapid.

And he’s still doing a better job than any grandiloquent, Ivy-league lawyer that has dominated the position until now. That’s the best part: I get to watch Trump reveal the ineffectiveness of establishment politicians, and a better country to boot.

Only a once-in-a-century pandemic could disrupt such a term, which is amazing considering all that was thrown at it. And here you guys promised us the next Hitler...

Why not? It would give conspiracy theorists a little red meat, for which they are probably starving given the collapse of it over the past couple years.

The Flynn case, the arguments, the rulings etc. is public knowledge.

How so? He pled guilty, and the judge at his sentencing advised him to be an actively better person lest his sentence be harsher than maybe Flynn was expecting - which he wasn't. So how was justice served?

He plead guilty to save his son from the same fate, and his family from financial ruin, arguing that he had been coerced into it and that the government had withheld exculpatory evidence. His case was, from top to bottom, unjust.

A win for justice. A US appeals court orders judge Sullivan to dismiss case against Michael Flynn.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/24/michael-flynn-trump-judge-court-case

Let’s hope this comes back to haunt the unelected, anti-Trump bureaucrats who have abused their power.

Everyone deserves his inheritance because that is the will of the bestower.

It is without doubt much more fair than the feudal system, which is why I'd prefer to be an honest capitalist than a communist. But all of this is still based on that original theft. People who inherent wealth believe they deserve it, but they don't. They are no more deserving of their inheritance than a trouserless scally playing in a gutter in a street, not entirely sure if its mother is home or not.

It's a simple matter of common sense for one familial generation to toil and acquire wealth in order to provide for the next generation, and so on. And they do deserve the wealth because it is often at great sacrifice such a feat is accomplished. Better yet, anyone, even the trouserless scally, can venture to begin such an enterprise, lest his children remain as impoverished as him.

This is the nature of family more than capitalism.

Fair enough. The thread was full of tripe anyway. Can’t even take a little opposition.

Mob mentality is a form of conformity, whether you laugh or not. Flagged, as they were, by the hashtags and virtue-signalling of corporate and political interests, and the censorship of dissenting views, it is not just conformity, but orthodoxy.

Who are the innocent?

Those who did not deserve the violence and vandalism—the vast majority of people. It’s why these riots are not about justice in general, and not about justice for Floyd in particular. The tearing down of statues, the firing of dissidents, the taking over of city blocks, the vandalism, the violence—this is a conformist putsch.

Who are the guilty?

Those who commit violence against the innocent. The rioting and vandalism is often aimed towards people and things that had nothing to do with George Floyd in particular, nor police violence in general. This is why the riots are unjust and unjustified. It is simply thuggery.

But racism is a belief. So without explicit racial policies, we can only search for it in the minds and expressions of a racist, not in the general outcomes of police interactions. That’s my block. For the purpose of this thread I will assume systemic racism does exist (and I believe it does in the form of “positive discrimination”), and I also believe it exists in the minds of some police officers, so perhaps to eliminate it minds must be changed instead of policies.

One unfortunate result of denying systemic racism in policing is it puts the blame solely on individual police officers rather than on processes over which most of them have little or no individual control, including training, police culture, policing of the police etc. This speaks to the perversity of the accusation that those who point to systemic racism do so with the intention of labeling all cops as racist. If you take the systemic racism out of the equation, all the racism we point to in the system must fall on the cops, making them more not less culpable.

The problem is we can make that accusation with any given statistical outcome. Most people who are shot by cops are men, therefor the system is systemically sexist against men. I don’t think we can make that claim without knowing whether the police in fact shoot men for sexist reasons, rather than for some other reason. So I believe we do have to find which police are racist and operate on racial motivations, or to tackle the actual reasons why such and such a group are overrepresented in this or that statistical outcome.

That much I agree with, save for the systemically racist part. Unfortunately I don’t think it is as simple as everyone is making it out to be. None of it takes into account the countless, unique interactions between police and citizens.

I expect it'd be because police admissions wouldn't allow it (Minneapolis police psychological testing actually dismisses a disproportionate number of minority applicants), not everyone is suited to it, there aren't anywhere near enough vacancies and... Oh yeah, they might not want to. I can't believe I even wasted the time answering such a stupid question.

It’s less stupid than suggesting violence and vandalism against the innocent, which isn’t only stupid and counterproductive, but perverse and dangerous.

They want others to do it. They cannot be bothered to do it themselves. This is the going rate of activists.

OK so peaceful protests don't work, political lobbying doesn't work, but they're not allowed to 'do evil' either. So the choice left to them is...

If every protestor concerned about police brutality joined the force, they can essentially trade current police behavior with their own. So why don’t they just do that? Because begging or threatening leadership is easier than becoming leadership. That’s a painful irony for these protesters. They are begging others for change, or committing violence against the innocent in order to threaten to change, but never do they become the change.

What about though of us who suffer from the residual effects of such policies?

Which effects of which policies?

Barr continuing his corrupt practice of protecting Trump and Trump allies. At least this guy is fighting back.

The Durham report is coming down the pipe, and all DOJ offices may be involved with the material under review, including the Southern District of New York, The Eastern District of New York, The Eastern District of Virginia, The Washington DC District, and probably even main justice. Hopefully we get to watch the swamp drain in real time. He will be fired, just like his predecessor.

Laws have been doing that for centuries and decades in the United States which is why there is an economic gap between whites and blacks. For example, the only reason why certain minority groups that migrate to the United States and are successful is because of the civil rights campaign. So not only minorities were fighting for equality they were still left behind and even after amendments and equitable provisions have passed, black Americans still found themselves behind.

This is ultimately why affirmative action existed to at least in part tried to close the gap by providing equitable opportunities that wasn’t fairly provided before..

Racist policies, whether “positive” or “negative”, are wrong and for the same reason. They discriminate on the grounds of race.

I think it could be argued that individuals who suffered through systemic racism (by that I mean racial policy) may deserve some recompense, even if it is in the form of better opportunity. But that cannot be argued for those who never suffered through such policy, and I do not think it can be shown that everyone of that skin-color suffered through such policy.

Have you studied why such things are in place? I mean I know why affirmative action in the beginning was in place?

It seems to me that any law or provision that favors some races to the exclusion of others is both racist and systemic.

Anyone can acquire property through a fair and willing exchange, like Branson. A community can also do this, perhaps forming a community garden or farm or park. One can also purchase property and donate it to any community he sees fit. But if it is not property, and is instead anyone’s land, willing exchange and fair use are thrown out the window. Anyone mighty enough can come along and say you’re not allowed to go there anymore, and you’d have little recourse save for violence.

It sounds like a Noocracy, and it would be difficult to call it Democracy because it excludes people from the political process and denies them power based on their education and certification. Politics would becomes a debate between elites, none of which would be representative of the general polity.

Personally I’d much rather vote for someone picked randomly from the phone book than to be led by some over-educated, certified politician.

I am. The taxonomy is a false one. I repudiate it and I do not think it should be used as a lens through which to view the species. That is not to say that people are and have been unjustly “racialized”, thrown into such categories and treated in accordance with them.

Recently there was the student who petitioned Merriam-Webster to change their definition of “racism”. It is no longer just racial prejudice and discrimination, but racial prejudice and discrimination combined with social and institutional power.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jun/11/merriam-webster-racism-definition-revise-kennedy-mitchum

That sounds absurd to me.

I think we should just go back to a simpler definition: racism is the belief that the species can be subdivided into “races”. Race-ism.

I wrote it a while back. Racial discrimination is a form of discrimination. The ability to discriminate is essential to staying alive - and this is just trivial. Racial discrimination, then, means at first cut that I, we all, are equipped with some metrics for telling differences between individuals. Insofar as we do, we're racists.

I don’t know if that definition works. By assuming all members of a race to be the same the racist proves himself to be indiscriminate. He can discriminate against groups, but that’s where his discrimination powers end. He is unable to discriminate between individuals.

At most, the phenotypes of a person hints at what his parents look like. Nothing else, I think, can be derived from it.

From what I’ve seen it’s pretty vacuous in terms of politics. It reminds me of the Occupy protests. I wager everyone will just walk away when they realize they cannot operate society as a music festival for an extended period of time.