The class-race connection StreetlightX highlights has the interesting implication that a lot of structural racism can be fixed without explicitly addressing race at all. If you help all poor people equally regardless of race, you disproportionately help black people automatically because the poor are disproportionately black. — Pfhorrest

I am convinced that segregation is as dead as a doornail in its legal sense, and the only thing uncertain about it now is how costly some of the segregationists who still linger around will make the funeral. And so there has been progress. But we must not allow this progress to cause us to engage in a superficial, dangerous optimism.

[...]

It is now a struggle for genuine equality on all levels, and this will be a much more difficult struggle. You see, the gains in the first period, or the first era of struggle, were obtained from the power structure at bargain rates; it didn’t cost the nation anything to integrate lunch counters. It didn’t cost the nation anything to integrate hotels and motels. It didn’t cost the nation a penny to guarantee the right to vote. Now we are in a period where it will cost the nation billions of dollars to get rid of poverty, to get rid of slums, to make quality integrated education a reality. This is where we are now. Now we’re going to lose some friends in this period. The allies who were with us in Selma will not all stay with us during this period. We’ve got to understand what is happening. Now they often call this the white backlash … It’s just a new name for an old phenomenon. The fact is that there has never been any single, solid, determined commitment on the part of the vast majority of white Americans to genuine equality for Negroes. There has always been ambivalence … 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.

[...]

The second evil that I want to deal with is the evil of poverty. Like a monstrous octopus it spreads its nagging prehensile tentacles into cities and hamlets and villages all over our nation. Some forty million of our brothers and sisters are poverty stricken, unable to gain the basic necessities of life. And so often we allow them to become invisible because our society’s so affluent that we don’t see the poor. Some of them are Mexican Americans. Some of them are Indians. Some are Puerto Ricans. Some are Appalachian whites. The vast majority are Negroes in proportion to their size in the population … Now there is nothing new about poverty. It’s been with us for years and centuries. What is new at this point though, is that we now have the resources, we now have the skills, we now have the techniques to get rid of poverty. And the question is whether our nation has the will …

Now I want to deal with the third evil that constitutes the dilemma of our nation and the world. And that is the evil of war. Somehow these three evils are tied together. The triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism. The great problem and the great challenge facing mankind today is to get rid of war … We have left ourselves as a nation morally and politically isolated in the world. We have greatly strengthened the forces of reaction in America, and excited violence and hatred among our own people. We have diverted attention from civil rights. During a period of war, when a nation becomes obsessed with the guns of war, social programs inevitably suffer. People become insensitive to pain and agony in their own midst … — Martin Luther King, speech May 10, 1967

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:

Excellent. Thanks for this. :up:

:clap: :100:

The past is never dead. It's not even past. — William Faulkner

For what it's worth, consider this 'genealogy' of America's Oligarchic White Supremacy problem:

the United States - a LEGAL history since 1789:

(I) SLAVE State (slave patrols, US Senate + Electoral College, 2nd Amendment, etc) 1789-1865

(II) APARTHEID "JIM CROW" State (klu klux klan, poll taxes, US Senate filibuster rule, etc) 1877-1968

(III) MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL NATIONAL SECURITY State ("Cold War" to "War on Terror"-Patriot Acts) 1947-NOW

(IV) PRISON-INDUSTRIAL POLICE State (slave patrols redux? - Nixon's "War on Drugs" to Clinton-Biden "Crime Bill") 1971-NOW

The answer to what is to be done?, in broad strokes (devilish details notwithstanding), is to completely dismantle (IV) and, as much as practically possible, rollback (III); that is, demilitarize the State and Economy to 1940-levels in order to give up Empire abroad and class-race Oligarchy at home.

In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate. — Toni Morrison

:point: "Class" & "Race"

:clap:

I think it’s possible that the police force is not racist but that there are cops who dislike their job and the people they deal with until they reach the point where they have a hatred towards these people. It’s possible the job has damaged these people. Somewhere along the line they must have exposed what was happening but nothing was done about it. — Brett

But that would still be a systemic problem, and still a problem that would disproportionatiely affect black people, so it could reasonably be called institutional racism.

Those cops don’t have any others skills so they’re not likely to resign and look for another job, policing is the only thing they know. — Brett

Yeah, I agree that asking cops to resign is neither realistic nor very helpful. They're caught in the same economic system, they just occupy a different spot in it.

It seems to me there have been many examples of cops crossing the divide in a positive way. Obviously bad cops are more newsworthy and get more coverage. But what I’ve seen over the last week or so makes wonder about the idea that the cops are “racist”. — Brett

There have been positive examples of individual cops. Saying the police is, as an institution, racist, doesn't mean that all individual cops have racist beliefs. That's what's so sinister about the problem, really. In a setting where certain behaviours and policies are encouraged while others are discouraged, you can end up disproportionally targeting black people with aggression without ever noticing the blip on your moral radar.

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?)

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.

If you think police brutality is something for black people only...

1:

Oh and they just skipped the part where they spray him to death, because youtube and not liveleak.

2:

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.

Great quote. I often point out in race-and-poverty-related discussions that point about addressing poverty regardless of race being sufficient to counteract the racism left after explicit legally enshrined racism is eliminated, and often people attack that idea as itself racist faux race-blindness. It’s heartening to see that MLK himself had things very much along those lines to say too.

Great quote. I often point out in race-and-poverty-related discussions that point about addressing poverty regardless of race being sufficient to counteract the racism left after explicit legally enshrined racism is eliminated, and often people attack that idea as itself racist faux race-blindness. — Pfhorrest

Yes, I pretty much agree that had universal health care been passed decades ago (or even just one decade ago), equal (at least more equal) education been implemented, and homelessness been solved, that the US would not be in this current situation.

It’s heartening to see that MLK himself had things very much along those lines to say too. — Pfhorrest

Yes, he was killed essentially the moment he started to address white poverty, which for him would be his new allies going forward, as they are the whites that have as much to gain from ending poverty, but, if successful, would "cost billions". He was fully cognizant that rich white people were only allies during the legal phase which doesn't cost anything and because having to see police brutality "shocks the educated conscience", whereas poor whites would view desegregation (at first) as somehow "taking from them something"; but that in the second phase the rich would abandon them and they would need to grow the movement to solve poverty regardless of race by organizing the poor.

I am fully convinced that had MLK and others, including white civil right leaders such as Bobby Kennedy, not been killed, the US today would be "a normal country" by the standards of the democratic world.

However, by killing all the leaders, such organization MLK had in mind was no longer possible.

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

If you think police brutality is something for black people only... — EpicTyrant

You are completely correct that it is better to first consider that there is much more pervasive and severe systemic police brutality against the poor (the untermensch) and that within this system of systemic police brutality there is an additional and even more brutal system for black people and in particular the black poor (the double untermensch). A rich black man in a suite is treated similarly to a poor "white punk", still harassed but not over a line that might bring in the rich black man's lawyers or then the white punk's parents lawyers to make trouble.

There is, beyond race, an even more deeply rooted unequal application of the law in terms of rich and poor. The rich are not prosecuted for their crimes no matter how heinous, as the Epstein network of elite child rapists demonstrates.

For poor people more generally, police brutality is only one component of a wider justice system brutality. Whereas the brutality against black people can be simply spontaneous, against poor people more generally the brutality is dished out after bankruptcy, after repossessions, after eviction, after losing it, after "justice"; after, albeit more lenient, still incredibly harsh drug or thievery sentencing in the same traumatic and inhumane prisons. The police officer is only one cog in a much larger brutal machine. And indeed, for black people it is the same, a justice brutality involving many more intellectual jobs and not merely a police brutality, there is simply an additional brutal component that is most visible in direct physical abuse and killings by the police and easier to understand (but as you point out, not uniquely reserved for this class of untermensch).

In my opinion, the riots are very much expressing outrage of all poor people, and their few middle-class allies, at the whole system on behalf of blacks and equally themselves. However, because blacks "have it worse", because the particular outrageous killing of George Floyd, and because exactly how the system is unjust to whites cannot be so easily interpreted by the average poor person, as the middle class whites continuously tell them it's their fault for being poor and police are just "doing their job", whereas, the blacks have literally centuries of analysis to understand racism, but the traditions that built up understanding of poverty more generally, anarchy and socialism, were wholly eradicated; black identity preserved this understanding, transposed into a black context, because, for black people, it is impossible to ignore and forget for even a single day. The white poor, by standing and fighting with their black brothers and sisters, are also standing and fighting for themselves. Because there are no real intellectual leaders of the poor nor the black community today, because such people have simply been murdered, what I describe is not an intellectual thing, but an intuitive one, a gut feeling of, in effect, "Fuck the Police" and an application of the simplest and most direct means available of expressing such a feeling. Within such a context, an intellectual approach to morality is no longer really applicable. The facts of history are unfolding and it serves no purpose to tell leaderless people they should have "a more morally perfect strategy of change".

The only morally certain thing we can say is "If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness."

"No Justice, No Peace" expresses the simple and unavoidable consequence of educated elites breaking the social contract in such obvious ways that even the uneducated poor can see through their crimes and their bullshit. It is not a peaceful slogan inline with the educated elites' conception of the law and of order.

Addendum:

(IV) PRISON-INDUSTRIAL POLICE State (Nixon's "War on Drugs" to Clinton-Biden "Crime Bill") 1971-NOW

The answer to what is to be done?, in broad strokes (devilish details notwithstanding), is to completely dismantle (IV) ... — 180 Proof

The night a NYC grand jury failed to indict any of the 6 police officers who, in broad daylight with witnesses present and video recorded, summarily executed Eric Garner, I tried to think through (some reasonable) National Reforms to US Policing, and then wrote the following on another forum:

A. IN ORDER TO MINIMIZE POLICE-VS-COMMUNITY OPPOSITION - As a condition for (essential services) federal funds, each state legistlature is required to establish statutory (phased-in) residency requirements (MINIMUM 5 YEARS) for all Municiple & County civil servants including, and especially, Police and Prosecutors so that they are required to live in the communities (i.e. neighborhoods, towns, cities & counties) in which they have sworn "to serve and protect"; the 5 YEAR MINIMUM is intended to prevent former police officers FIRED FOR A CRIMINAL COMPLAINT to be rehired soon thereafter by any other Police Department;

B. IN ORDER TO REMOVE CONFLICTS OF INTEREST THAT INHIBIT LOCAL PROSECUTORS FROM POLICING LOCAL POLICE MISCONDUCT - Each state governor / legistlature must establish a dedicated, Special Prosecutor's office - or appoint the state Attorney-General - to investigate and convene state grand juries to consider all criminal complaints for Use of Excessive Force and Killing by Police Officers;

C. IN ORDER TO INCENTIVIZE POLICE DEPARTMENTS TO POLICE AND/OR PURGE THEIR OWN "ROGUE" OR "CRIMINAL" OFFICERS - Civil monetary settlements to victims of Police Misconduct must be paid from the Police Pension trust-fund and not paid by State, County or Local taxpayers (i.e. the Public);

update (4.15.21) – Repealing qualified immunity would be the most direct and comprehensive way to go since 'police unions' are most often not disaggregated from (general) public service pension funds.

D. IN ORDER TO DEMILITARIZE POLICE - US Department of Defense, state National Guards & US Justice Department must be prohibited by Federal law from transfering surplus military-grade weapons, vehicles, equipment and other gear to State, County or Local Police Departments;

E. IN ORDER TO ESTABLISH OPERATIONAL TRANSPARENCY AND NATIONAL POLICING STANDARDS - By Federal statute and as a condition of receiving federal funds, each State County & Local Police Department (1) must biannually report statistics - by Color/Ethnicity of the victims - on all Police Killings and other Criminal Assaults by Police to the following:

• US Public Health Service (PHS)
• US Department of Justice (DoJ)
• US Congress (re: appropriate committees & subcommittees, etc)

and (2) disclose in sum each month the identities of both Police Officers and their victims to local print & electronic media outlets.

Much more, of course, will be needed to "completely dismantle" the Prison Industrial Complex, etc; but the immediate, proximate, ongoing injustice of extra-judicial police killings of Black, Brown & Poor people in this country cry out for the kind and scope of reforms contemplated here which, unfortunately, nothing like them can or will be implemented soon enough - especially given the racist, neo-fascist, crime family currently occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. :shade:

Perhaps that's what all human relationships boil down to: Would you save my life? or would you take it? — Toni Morrison

Is there any legislation in the works along these lines that you know of? Anything that someone might contact their representatives to support?

No. I've emailed Congress members and written Op-Eds during the Obama Administration to no effect. None. Not even a courteous "fuck off".

:sad:

@180 Proof I like most of your suggestions, but I think this one needs a caveat, which I’ve been thinking about for some time:

A. IN ORDER TO MINIMIZE POLICE-VS-COMMUNITY OPPOSITION - As a condition for (essential services) federal funds, each state legistlature is required to establish statutory (phased-in) residency requirements (MINIMUM 5 YEARS) for all Municiple & County civil servants including, and especially, Police and Prosecutors so that they are required to live in the communities (i.e. neighborhoods, towns, cities & counties) in which they have sworn "to serve and protect"; the 5 YEAR MINIMUM is intended to prevent former police officers FIRED FOR A CRIMINAL COMPLAINT to be rehired soon thereafter by any other Police Department; — 180 Proof

I see potential for community-sourced police to be corrupted by local community biases in a way that non-local police would not. Say for instance the local crime scene is dominated by a particular gang, (or divided among several, one of) who then infiltrate and capture the police force (the way white power gangs already capture police forces), and look the other way on crimes committed by “their people”, while aggressively going after “the competition”. In less specific terms, a majority is not always right — a bunch of local white cops accurately serving the community will of their racist mostly-white community is not good for the handful of black people who live there too.

For this reason, balanced against your concerns, I’ve long thought that police should operate in pairs, one of whom is a long-time local and one of whom is an outsider, to check and balance each other against these respects concerns.


On the broader note of police reform, I think the long term optimal goal, compatible with anarchism even, is for the law to spell out explicitly what kind of acts are permissible for ANYONE to take in response to what kind of criminal offenses (basically what violence is accepted in response to what other violence), and for the police to simply be ordinary citizens with no special powers or privileges above and beyond those, merely paid to go do the job that anyone is allowed to do, just to make sure somebody is doing it. Then whenever police have to use violence, a trial is held exactly as it would be if a civilian had done the same, to determine if it was indeed a just application of violence. This this discourages police from escalating situations unless it is clearly and unambiguously necessary to use force, because if they jump the gun with their guns they’re as likely to be convicted of murder as some vigilante would be.

I think there is an interesting discussion to be had on what social functions the current police fulfills, what functions it should fulfill, and which ones should be transferred to other kinds of institutions.

I don't know enough about American beat cops, in my experience with the police, they're mostly on beat so they can respond to calls from the area quickly. Not sure what else their job is besides "making people feel safe", which obviously doesn't apply to many black communities in the US. — Echarmion

https://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/history-policing-united-states-part-1

I think this is well trod territory. It's not so much a discussion as much as dispelling actively believed myths about police.

You're caveat addresses 'community-based policing' but I'm concerned with the flagrant hazards of 'militarized policing' by officers who lack (humanity as well as) vital stakes in the communities in which they work. Apples & oranges.

That’s why every non-local cop has to have a long-time local partner (just like you describe) to keep them in check.

And the locals have to have an outside partner to keep potential local biases in check too. Perhaps dispatched from some kind of inter-community “exchange officer” program: everyone has to be a long-time local of somewhere, and then each local department sends some officers to this program to serve as outside checks on locals elsewhere, accepting another from elsewhere in exchange.

Checks and balances.

Your right of course, if systemic racism is a fact. But I’m just referring to the research and the fact that you viewed it only in terms of statistical shootings. I’m not saying it proves anything, only that you had viewed it narrowly.

Edit: though I don’t see how a black cop shootings a black could be regarded as an act of racism.

It can be difficult sometimes to point to some particular policy within a law enforcement agency and say, “There. That one is racist.” I think what mainly has to occur is more training at the individual level for police officers. The main thing to address, I think, is how to combat prejudices and biases that may exist at the subconscious level. Because it can happen to anyone -- even to a black, educated cop from the very community she is serving. She might be an altruistic person who joined the police department for the best of reasons, but if she works in a city where a lot of black crime is occurring, eventually she will develop biases. It is human nature.

I grew up in East Oakland, which is a dangerous part of the country people often refer to as “Baby Iraq.” I was raised in a Chinese household, and my white dad left when I was about 3. My childhood wasn’t great. I was abused badly by my step-father and I ran away from home multiple times. I was homeless on and off when I wasn’t able to find a couch to sleep on. But my childhood still wasn’t as bad as some of my friends.

The first time I was robbed at gunpoint was in middle school. When I was 16 one of my best friends died in my arms after he was shot during a drive-by shooting. I’ve been robbed at gunpoint at multiple times, and I have been the victim of other violent crimes even more times. When I look back at everything that happened to me, I realized that 9 out of 10 times, the person or people who victimized me was black. It might have been easy, at that point, for me to dislike black people, but thankfully I was educated better than that. I had a very liberal education and I knew that black people were responsible for more crime in my city not because they were innately bad, but mainly because of existing socioeconomic circumstances that trace back to the times of slavery and beyond. I knew my friend Dre was a D-boy that hit licks not because he was an evil person, but because he had no father and his mother was a prostitute who smoked crack. Whenever I visited with him, we ate mayonnaise sandwiches that his mom made. We got our condiments by taking handfuls of packets from fast food restaurants and squeezing them into a bottle. Later on in life I knew that I couldn’t reasonably expect Dre to be a perfect law-abiding citizen precisely because of the circumstances he grew up in.

In my early 20s I was somehow able to turn my life around. I began living with my grandparents and took classes at a local junior college until I was able to transfer to UC Berkeley and graduate. I joined the police department shortly thereafter and mostly worked in the internal affairs and personnel assessment section. Most of the people in the police department are good people. Most of the younger people are college-educated minorities, which I think is a good idea since the department should reflect the community it serves. Still, every person in the department is susceptible to developing subconscious prejudices and biases, so I’m a big advocate for doing as much training as possible.

Most of my friends in the department support the protests. It can be difficult though. If you’re standing on a skirmish line and people are yelling at you, cursing, throwing paint, animal blood, bags of urine, feces, and Molotov cocktails, it can break you down. “Fuck you, pig. Why you dressed like Darth Vader? We ain’t in Iraq you bitch ass nigga.” Sometimes you’d want to say something back. We are here because there are some small mom and pop businesses behind us that we are trying to protect. If we are not here, they will be looted. And I would prefer not to wear this bulky, sweaty gear either, but if I take it off, those rocks and other things that are being thrown at me will hurt even worse.

Most protestors are not like this, but there are many that are; and they ruin it for everyone (similar to how a bad cop can ruin it for everyone). But just as I could have easily disliked black people for being the repeated victim of black crime, I realize it is easy for individuals to dislike all police because some individual ones are bad. So if I am on a skirmish line with people calling me every name in the book, I won’t take it personal. I know it’s not me that they are targeting. It is the uniform. They don’t know me anyway. They don’t know who I am or what I stand for. They don’t know that I taught prisoners at San Quentin prison for years or volunteered at a homeless shelter every week for over a decade since I was 17. They don’t know that I am an activist myself and walked in the same protests as they do now. They don’t know that I love my community and want to make it better in every possible way. They only know that they are angry and I wear the uniform. Even with this being the case, I’d rather be a human pinata that understands than have someone else standing in my place who doesn’t. It’s hard though. Even good cops are still human. But most want to do the right thing.

My best friend is a Black Lives Matter activist. We talk about this stuff all the time. We disagree on a few things, but by approaching our debates in the most difference-minimizing spirit we can muster, we usually always reach agreement. The main thing we always come back to is that people need to be educated. It’s too easy to become susceptible to hasty generalizations and group-think. A lot of this stuff is a part of human nature, I think, but it’s not stuff we can’t be [mostly] trained out of.

In any case, I think there’s a number of things police can do better. I don’t like how some police officers are so prideful, and even arrogant. I think law enforcement agencies need to do better in encouraging an ethic of humility throughout their departments. My lieutenant always told me, “Just because you wear the uniform, doesn’t mean you are above the people you serve. You serve them.”

I also don’t like any idea or symbol that serves to separate police officers from the people they serve. I wouldn’t allow officers to wear those thin blue line patches as an accessory on their uniforms. I understand it is meant to support officers, but it isn’t necessary and many times serves to reinforce an imaginary bifurcation of citizens and officers -- the latter of which belongs to the former anyway.

I don’t like how many officers wear dark sunglasses when they are talking to people. It seems rude to talk to someone when you can’t see their eyes. It also can be intimidating.

I think command presence is very important. It keeps officers from getting killed. However, some officers need to realize that they can go overboard. Every citizen, whether they are from the “1%” or the very “bottom” of society, needs to be treated with some base level of respect. Even criminals deserve this. You will be surprised by how much you can get accomplished, and how many dangerous situations you can avoid, by being calm, mild-mannered, reasonable, and respectful. Thankfully most police departments in the country are adopting better training regimens that put heavier emphasis on de-escalation techniques. Of course more can always be done.

Officers need to undergo more training in regards to cultivating more racial sensitivity. They need to learn more about Black, Latino, Asian, etc., history and culture, and in particular they need to learn more about why people, like my friend Dre, do the things they do. Of course even with all of this additional training and understanding, you still need to arrest people who are doing actual crimes, whether or not they had a rough childhood, and whether or not you feel where they are coming from. This is where the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation comes in -- or rather should come in -- but that system has problems of its own as well.

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! — Baden

This is wonderful news. But also look!:

Great post. Thanks.

That is awesome. Maybe if that actually happens and works well they can serve as a model for police reform around the country.

Outstanding post.

Great post. Thank you for sharing your experiences.

Well I just started this in another thread, but perhaps you are the one who needs to think about this.

I used to live in a 'mixed' neighborhood, which is a misnomer, because every single house on one side of mine was filled with unemployed black families on state support. I was there for 10 years, during which their children grew up and wanted a place to live, and I was in the way. So they burgled my house four times, shot my cat, stole my identity wrote $7,000 of checks on me, stole my Obamacare, and then started shooting at my windows during drivebys. It turned out, they had shot already murdered another white person around the corner, and the police did not want to start a block war, so I had to call the FBI in the end.

Every single of those blacks knew who was in the gang, where they lived, and what they were doing. Not one black person helped me. they all pretended like nothing was happening, and the police had just strung up tape around the white person's house who'd already been murdered for fun or something. The first time they actually shot at my windows, I packed an overnight bag and left. 18 months later, after the gang moved into my abandoned house, took drugs, and set my furniture on fire, two of them were finally sent to prison for life and I could go back to where I used to live, pick up some of my undamaged property, and sell my prior home.

Not only did I never get one ounce of sympathy for what I went through from any black person, many of whom I wrongly used to think of as friends. they all just completely pretended like nothing was happening. I was victimized like hell by them. So this last week, on Sunday I saw another one of the gang caught on videotape stealing from a downtown store, and on Monday, the street tried to organize a flash mob to raid the local Walmart, for which reason the entire neighborhood was cordoned off by the National Guard.

When I share this on Facebook, I am told I am a 'privileged white sh*t who is exactly causing the problem.' No one at all on Facebook groups even voices any concern that the same happens to other people as happened to me. And I guess you are going to say much the same thing now.

And I guess you are going to say much the same thing now. — ernestm

Actually no. I'm writing a reply to you, in your thread.