you are assuming its based on skin colour — DingoJones

No, I'm not, actually. I'm assuming he's the only one who knows (or could know) what it's based on. And the idea of asking us is a waste of time. And all the not-dressed-like-Obama, bandanna, loud clothes stuff is funny to me.

You did make your point about being against violence several times. Now, can I ask you: Why is systemic racism happening and what can be done about it?

Why the fuck are we talking about Ted Bundy? @BitconnectCarlos The topic is "Systemic racism in the US: Why is it happening and what can be done?" I hope that at some point you get around to answering that. Thank you.

[Cross-posted with Street]

Seems like a silly question. Are you intimidated by white people with bandannas and loud clothes? Do you wake up from sweaty nightmares where you're being chased by ethnically diverse baggy-pants wearing gangs? Does the very thought of tattoos and non-Obama hairstyles make you want to shit your pants? Or... is it mostly that they're black? You don't need Sigmund Freud or us for this, just a little self-reflection.

"Happiness" is a stupid word anyway and should never be used in any context requiring thought. Just say "pleasure", "self-esteem", "satisfaction", "euphoria", or any other word that's actually meaningful enough to have a discussion over.

self-knowledge and will. — Baden

better police training and screening, there was a video I watched showing that American cops need only 5 months of school after high school but in Norway they need 3 years — Gitonga

:up:

Tomorrow, I'll realize happiness is neither about desire nor suppressing desire but self-knowledge and will.

If you get an embolism or something from it, please let me know so that doesn't happen to me. :victory:

I desire some heroin. Who'd have thunk it was so easy. Happiness here I come. :party:

Ah, cool. I'm just near the end of chapter 4 now. :party:



That and more, I think. I started the hypoxic running today. Weird to run while feeling like you're suffocating but then you kind of get used to it and I can see potential. Good to be reminded that you have a body and not just a head full of thoughts.

You didn't have to go and call him a homosexual now. — Outlander

I suppose you're trying to be funny, but if Froot Loop=homosexual where you come from, it's the first I've heard of it.

There is a debating feature on this forum. It does not get sufficient use. — Banno

True. The debates were quite fun on old PF. And for some reason we've let it slip here.

Pretty much. I don't accept that targets like property or even civilians are absolutely out-of-bounds in a conflict situation, especially the one described where an entire people is under threat of being exterminated. The severity of the possible consequences justifies a proportionately severe response. But I'm not against certain rules applying to conflict per se.

E.g. on this:

If it's the entire society you should have no problem carpet bombing German cities which had no connection to the war effort. — BitconnectCarlos

If that would have stopped (or contributed to stopping) the holocaust, I would have been all for it. Done purely for punitive reasons, no.

So you think Americans will be divided by the use of flag? — ssu

I don't know. It's possible. You'd have to ask them. But to me any flag is only as important and valuable as it's recognized as being so across different sectors of society as well as within them. If there's a schism on that then, yes, they'll be divided.

I'm Ashkenazi Jewish with family killed in the Holocaust. — BitconnectCarlos

I know you said you're Jewish, but even if you weren't I think I would see the general point of principle even though I thoroughly disagree with it.

American symbols like the flag or anthem don't have a sacred right to survive in perpetuity. They either represent Americans as a whole or they don't. And that's up to Americans and the various communities among them to decide. It's not long ago that the confederate battle flag was not seen as racist enough to be removed from Government buildings, but now it largely is. Shit changes.

Perhaps more organized force is required for enduring change on the level rightly desired by the movement. — fdrake

When one aspect of systemic racism is disproportionate levels of violent state oppression against a given community then, failing other methods, more organized force can be justified in my view. The level of violent force justified being proportionate to the level of oppression and the accuracy of the targets. In the most extreme case, for example, with the Jews in the 1930s, not only imo would have they been justified in assassinating leading Nazis (if they had the capacity) but inflicting civilian casualties too if strategically beneficial. A less extreme case would be the Republican struggle in Northern Ireland where Catholics weren't under genocidal threat, but were, similarly to blacks in America, denied fundamental fairness re jobs, housing, and political franchise and were being murdered on the street by British armed forces. Here, targeted violence against occupying security forces and officials was justified in my view, but not attacks on civilian targets. I won't comment on the present situation in these terms in case I'm accused of some form of incitement, but I'll say this if, when getting down on a knee, you are not only ignored but treated with contempt, you take it to the next level and if that's ignored you keep going to the limit of what can be justified in context and nothing is a priori ruled out.

Because it's incredibly unproductive and some of the those businesses we burn might even belong with disabled people. Or maybe siblings or parents of the disabled. — BitconnectCarlos

The question was meant to tease out whether you'd answer morally or strategically. I guess it's both, but especially in light of the example of the Jews in your post, I differ in that I see more options as justified morally and for those, it then becomes about strategy. So, my objections to property destruction would largely be strategic. However, I completely agree that not every target is morally permissible. I don't, for example, advocate random destruction of property where much of it belongs to members of the very community being harmed. Getting back to the example of the Jews, why shouldn't they have rioted? I think your position is extreme here. Their very existence was under threat. I would say their scope for justified counter-action was wide open. For me, based on a straightforward utilitarian and consequentialist position, pretty much everything was permissible for the Jews if, of course, it would have contributed to their safety as individuals and as a people. So, strategy aside, on what ethical basis, if any, are you objecting here? Why is it wrong? You have a dominant party aimed at destroying an oppressed minority. If anything they have an obligation to do everything possible to defend themselves, right?

Frantz Fanon - Black Skin, White Masks — StreetlightX

Also reading. :up:



Read that. Yeah, fascinating. Have my doubts about some of the science in the book but an idea definitely worth pursuing.

Got to say I still don't get how after 400 years of slavery, 100 of Jim Crow, and over 50 of systemic racism, all some posters here have to say to those who suffered all that is, "Don't break any windows". :vomit:

Questioner: So how do we solve systemic racism?
Conservative: Don't break any windows.
Questioner: Um, ok, but how do we solve systemic racism?
Conservative: Or do any other property damage.
Questioner: Yeah, but how...?
Conservative: You're saying burn stuff?? How dare you!
Questioner: But...
Conservative: Anarchists! Vandals! Mob! Conformists!
Questioner: ....

have a disability protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act and I can tell you that discrimination against those with disabilities is pretty rampant. Yet, you don't see us setting buildings on fire or demonizing abled people who contribute to structures of systemic blah blah blah. — BitconnectCarlos

Why not?

Yes, when you divide people into oppressed and oppressor the oppressed is justified in doing what he needs to do to even the score. Any calls to the misdeeds done by the oppressed are just products or sympathizers of the oppressive system. The oppressed aren't individuals or moral agents - they're just an amorphous, oppressed blob whose singular purpose is to dismantle systemic injustice and if they need to break a few eggs to make the omelette then so be it - they're fighting evil. It's all just black and white - no shades of grey. Oppressor vs. oppressed. Poor vs. Rich. Black vs. White. People are defined by these identities are nothing more.

If you choose this vantage point, that's on you. — BitconnectCarlos

I think we both know that's a caricature of my position. Without committing to "anything goes" (not something I've advocated either), do you agree with the following or not?

...the primary ethical responsibility of the individual is to oppose the wider injustice — Baden

I'm sure we agree on the egregious nature of racism, but if we don't agree on standard terms, we're just going to end up talking past each other. I can't force you to use the term in the standard sense, but it's going to be a mess of confusion otherwise. Your call.

It's not opposition to spout thoughtless low-quality rubbish. You are just too stupid for this thread and refuse to deal with the actual OP. Others who disagree aren't and have made an effort. You can come back if you can find it in yourself to write something a five-year-old couldn't come up with.

Stop filling the thread with stupidity and go elsewhere.

Incidentally, I think the proper response in future to those who wish to complain about rioting etc. is to say that if your moral gears are so clogged that systemic racism isn't a more pressing problem for you to address, you don't need to be here as that is the actual topic of the thread and I'm trying to keep it on-topic. Maybe start your own thread on why rioting is always bad and why we should always cry about it. You're not contributing anything here to the substantive issue.

An all too typical 'philosophical' stance...

That's meaningless nonsensical language use. — creativesoul

No, that's what the word means and how it's used in academia and elsewhere. And as it can happily co-exist with explicit racism, it by no means obscures or denigrates that reality. In any case, you don't get moral brownie points just for not understanding a commonly-used concept.

@NOS4A2 having nothing original, interesting or remotely sophisticated to say just pops up every couple of days to repeat the party (White House) line.

You can't justifiably, or even coherently, mount an argument that is inferred from the founding principles or dominant ideology of a particular society to neutralize the ethical basis of actions undertaken in opposition to structures that inevitably flow from the way those principles and that ideology are, in practice, expressed. You've got to zoom out and look at a broader set of human values and the overarching importance of those being fundamental to any acceptable social contract. Fundamental to that perspective is the establishment of a form of equality that extends beyond the theoretical into the lived experience of all communities and social stakeholders. So, repeated focus on injuries to the property rights of those who, for the most part, are the beneficiaries of the system under question just distracts from the real injured parties and the wider ethical injury of a society that maintains an underclass disproportionately inhabited by communities of color that it expects to obediently propagate the structures that keep that underclass in its place. And from this vantage point, the primary ethical responsibility of the individual is to oppose the wider injustice and the deficit lies in those who don't, making much more of a moral degenerate of the weasel-mouthed objector to rioters and looters than the outraged victim of social injustice who burned down the wrong building.

Not buying that he drank a whole glass of water; like the stadium, I bet the glass was only half full.

Are you moving my thread to the lounge? — TheMadFool

Yes, stuff like this:

The population to consider is all females and if the fraction of them who won Nobel prizes is less than the fraction of men who bagged a Nobel then, it seems I'm forced to conclude men as more intelligent — TheMadFool

is mind-bogglingly bad reasoning bordering on parody.

Silliness factor too high. Moving to lounge.

Nah, Bay-den like the town in Germany.



Don't know where @andrewk went. Good guy. Good mod.

You lost me as to why I lost you. Maybe my definition of 'racist' is stricter than yours, but I have no intention of being down the wrong end of the pitch so the goal is wide open and feel free to score.

The rest of your A and B example is ridiculous and it makes wonder if you actually received your degree as a surprise from a box of Froot Loops. — Harry Hindu

:lol:

You can have the last word, Harry. Like I said, it's off-topic and posters can make up their own minds on which one of us is the Froot Loop here.

@Hanover

Oh, sorry, did I break a rule??

Policies don't have beliefs. Positive discrimination is a policy. By your own logic, it can't be racist. Of course it's not in any case, it's reparative of racism. The idea that you can start a clean slate as soon as you dispose of those directly affected by explicit racism is rubbish. Wealth and privilege are passed down. America's wealth was built on and stolen largely from slaves and then concentrated and channeled through generations of those who made them slaves. If I steal all your shit and use it to put generations of my family in a better position socially and economically than yours, my ancestors don't get to turn around and tell yours everything's just hunky-dory now because the direct party to the exploitation is dead.

Please go on; explain. — 180 Proof

That I don't draw an equivalence re racism between racist cops and those who know about them but don't protest them (whether they be other cops or not and whether their neglect be due to apathy or akrasia). It's possible not to act against racism without being racist. However, you can't escape culpability. If you don't act, you are culpable, and every one of the quotes above I agree with 100%.

...he should have done something and he didnt and thats a serious part of the problem too imo. — DingoJones

And why? Maybe he was a racist too. Maybe he didn't give a shit. Maybe both. And maybe the culture and system he was a part of militated against action. In every case, culpable. But the latter is where systemic racism comes in and where maybe the balance can be tipped against the racists and towards those who might do something if they had the backup.

No, because there would be a conflation with actively being racist and not trying to prevent racism. Being apathetic about racism doesn't equate to racism. But if I'm missing your point, let me know.



Well, no, it depends on the statistic you use and how you analyze it. You can't obviously draw sweeping conclusions from a single data point without some level of interpretation. And it's a strawman to suggest that that is where the idea of systemic racism arose. For example, I just provided Harry Hindu in the other s.r. thread with a statistic on drug arrests that had a whole study backing it up to show the significance of race in the disparity found.

The other point is that conscious racist motivation isn't required for systemic racism to obtain even though it is obviously there to a degree. The way the system functions is the root problem. Individual racists are important insofar as the system allows them to act with impunity, insofar as it allows environmental racism to filter through, but, theoretically, you could have a systemically racist system with no overt racists in it and just cops following procedures that disadvantaged/disfavoured minority communities.

Again, I don't know what the big block is here. The phrase is pretty much self-defining. Even Trump has recently acknowledged the existence of systemic racism, only he's tried to downplay it. But at least he's implicitly taken on some responsibility for dealing with its results on a systems level.

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.

American citizens are entitled not to have a systemically racist and regularly brutal police force. The US is supposed to be a modern democracy not an authoritarian state. So, the protestors shouldn't have to lift a finger, and the fact that they do is an indictment of the system not of them.