Just want to leave this here:



This is a striking example of many of the problems I've sought to describe...

Complexity science and morality, especially if I get to mix the two....

For the last several years I've been trying to piece together a full blown "morality" by describing morality first as an emergent strategy or code of conduct (usually) designed for the mutual benefit of human beings, with an emphasis on how environment and circumstances affect changing pragmatic moral prescriptions. Right now my main objective is to try and better understand the scope and shape that moral landscapes take (think "your next best move in chess") given variations in environment and circumstance. A notable insight I've gleaned so far is that cooperative morality (perhaps the only relevant kind) can be evaporated via circumstance, especially when mutual survival or ability to thrive between human beings is inherently at odds. Resource scarcity, for instance, can reduce or eliminate the possibility of a mutually beneficial strategy between humans being held. If the odds of surviving or avoiding some harm are far better, or only possible, through acting in one's own interest even while it is against the interests of some or all others, then in this sense no mutually beneficial strategy can be held.

The prison environment in America (and many other countries) is a fascinating example of how environment can shape morality and what humans consider to be necessary, justified, or even praiseworthy behavior. As a new inmate enters some jail and prison environments, they are already over-crowded and overwhelmed by an internally violent pecking order like social structure. In some of these environments, you will be expected to fight your new cellmates, one by one, in order to establish your place in the pecking order and (hopefully) demonstrate that you are not an easy target. If you opt out, you will be viewed as a target for other people to use to demonstrate their own position and reputation. People will extort your commissary through violence and even your family by extension (for example, "have your family smuggle in narcotics or suffer daily attacks"). When an otherwise "moral" person is placed into this environment, short of being able to change the entire system, they can be forced to themselves become violent and aggressive, for their own protection. As gangs form, similar events play out on larger scales, where initially a gang may form for mutual protection, but like any individual in that environment must maintain it's reputation as powerful or else it will become an open target to the rest of the prison population.

Some would say that "morality" does not exist in such a place, that it cannot exist. And I would agree with them in the sense that the contemporary western morality we may share cannot exist there, but I think rather a different kind of morality exists due to the circumstances and environment that strain the feasibility of our higher moral virtues and standards in favor of virtues and standards we might consider barbaric. Rather than holding to one's own per-conceived moral notions about violence and transgression, this environment will force you to adapt to it's own. Trying to coherently conceptualize the differences in these inherent emergent norms as a mechanism of practice and production seems to provide me with unending complexity, which is a wonderful recipe for putting one's self to sleep!

The problem with using "white supremacist patriarchy" as a description of disparities rather than a description of the cause of those disparities is that it is directly misleading. The way you personally are contextualizing "white supremacist patriarchy" does not seem to even line up with the examples of it's use that I've seen in society.

By your definition, the NBA is a black supremacist patriarchy. Technically, since Asian's make more money than whites, do better in schools than whites, get incarcerated less per capita than whites, etc..., we in some ways could describe the west as being an example of a state of "Asian supremacy".

Certain minorities are facing problems at disproportional rates, but do you really think choosing to label this reality using terms which have perhaps heavier pre-existing connotations of racism and sexism than just about any other word the english language has to offer is a straight-forward way of categorizing these realities?

The traditional definition of "racism" was essentially valuing and discriminating against individuals on the basis of race (an action stemming from a cognitively held position: i.e: "Racism was a causal factor in Billy-Joe's decision to hire only white people"). I understand that the new definition of racism per inter-sectional feminism is "privilege plus power". I understand, per the theory, that since I am white, I have privilege and power, so this makes me by definition racist. I accept that I am racist per the theory, but can you also accept that redefining racism in this way is really strange given that society's previous understanding of the term "racism" might have them conflate "racism" (me being white and the existence of white privilege) with "racism" (me being biased towards/possessing hatred for/unfairly discriminating against people of certain races).? Confused yet?

For all intents and purposes this discussion is feminism's ambit. I'm a feminist, you're a feminist, and we seem to disagree; the present discussion is the ensuing debate. Have we no right to this discussion?

You say that I am issuing strikes against the very idea of feminism itself, but given that I myself am a feminist, evidently we have fundamental disagreements about what feminism should be...

Personally, my feminism is marked by the belief that women should have the same rights under the law and equal access to opportunity in society as men. This differs from the brand of feminism which I oppose, which is marked by vague and dogmatic appeals concepts like "white supremacist patriarchy" which are frequently accompaniment by the casting of aspersions against the innocence of anyone who would question the accuracy of those concepts.

How do you define your feminism?

Here in this thread, yes, we're having a conversation about feminism itself rather than feminist issues, but you must understand the point I am raising: It's unproductive to broadly blame "white supremacist patriarchy" for all gender disparities just as it is unproductive to focus on the gender, race, or sexual identity of speakers as a source of legitimacy for someone's position. It is distinctly not productive to focus on identity, be it that of the victim or the oppressor, precisely because it obfuscates "the issues" which you would like to invest your energy in discussing.

Two of the main issues whose prevalence and magnitude in the west I am skeptical of are the "gender pay gap" and "rape culture", and while this is not a thread created to get into the specific complexities of these issues, I completely disagree with your assertion that this discussion is unproductive. This discussion describes a problem that requires correction, which is a collection of good-intentioned movements which are headed in a host of unreasonable and sometimes harmful directions.

Greetings StreetlightX, fellow male feminist here!

I too wield the sensical and uncontroversial definition of feminism and liberally apply it to myself, not only because it reflects my true positions, but because like you I naively cling to the hope that doing so will encourage some other feminists to clean up their (f)acts. That said, it is idealism to believe that the ever evolving and diverging world of socio-moral/histrionic blame-rendering politics is ever going to converge toward the uncontroversial when controversy is the very fuel which sustains it's growth and existence. This does NOT mean that controversial subjects cannot be important and valid or important to consider, NOR does it mean that "blame rendering" does not have it's time and place, but it does mean that in order for "controversy-finding/blame-rendering politics" (again, not in and of itself a bad thing) to continue to exist as it has in the west, it MUST find controversy.

When we set out with the intention of finding presumably existent sexist oppression in the west (adopting a thick feminist lens) we are inherently biasing ourselves toward finding it. Not only are we made more likely to over-inflate the gravity and proportions of controversial issues that we do find, we're also more likely to completely miss or undervalue examples of "oppression" which might apply to men more so than women.

As sexist oppression against women has subsided in the west, so too has the need and urgency for justice seeking movements on their behalf. The need for our feminism in the west, has subsided. And yet, there are a group of inexplicably vocal "feminists" proliferating across the west whose primary focus is to address injustices in the west. It's simply the nature of all justice movements that the more outrage (their fuel) the stronger their support. And while these new "feminist" movements by no means represent a majority of society at large, they are the one's who are currently growing simply because they are generating the most outrage.

Because of this, the new (re)definition of various words and labels, including feminism, is important in that they are a means-to-outrage in and of themselves. From outside the "safe-space" your answer makes complete sense, and there's really no good reason for anyone to disagree with you, but disagree they will; disagree they must. In the hunt for fuel to burn, specific issues must become magnified and broader issues must also be invoked. This just happens to be the most recent news article returned after a google search of "feminism":

“Then I started discovering Audre Lorde and Angela Davis and all of these intricacies of feminism that were not being presented to me by these white feminist ‘icons.’” she continues. “It was only then that I realized how deep it is and how it’s more about undoing these walls that we have built around marginalized people — it’s not just about women and men. It’s the fact that the walls for me are different than the walls for Amandla [Stenberg].”

Because of this discovery, Blanchard’s definition of feminism has broadened. It’s not just working towards equality between men and women, but also “undoing patriarchal structures against marginalized people.” She stresses that when we talk about women, we must include women of color, as well as those who are LGBTQ and disabled.

The only thing I would point out about the above quote to make my point more clear is that when it says "we must include people of color as well as those who are LGBTQ and disabled", by "we must include", I think that in practice they mean "we must focus on...". Without this broadening of social injustice and the ensuing outrage, "feminism" would simply be an obsolete or much weaker social cause in the west. The only people that "intersectional feminism" seems to not want to include in their fight for justice are non-elderly able bodied cis-gendered (not transsexual) straight white males, because we are the only people who apparently are not a marginalized group. As such we make handy patsies when an enemy is called for who are both literally and figuratively morally obliged to always be at the back of the line.

Undoing patriarchal oppressive structures against ALL marginalized people sounds like a great political platform, but it is too broad to pragmatically come under one ultimate social theory to explain and rule them all. It creates a stronger social movement to unite disparate groups facing their own unique challenges and with their combined grievance have it's voice be heard, but this comes at great cost to the efficacy with which these different subgroups have their individual issues and their unique causes actually addressed and remedied. Individual societal issues become blurred and inter-conflated. The diversity of their sources and causes get boiled down to the single external factor which intersectional-feminism's own definitions explicitly exclude from it's fight; supremacist white patriarchy.

It is with great reluctance that I write these posts. It's really not a popular position to come out and oppose the agendas of any "equal rights movement" because it's not as if "too much equality" really seems like a bad thing... Right...? And yet, the pendulum of equality swinging away from the all-privileged white males can only swing so far before it begins to favor the opposite side. Right now about 60% of western university students are female, and while women's scholarships are not at all uncommon, the only "men's scholarship" that I currently know of was started by an MRA provocateur who is routinely censored, slandered, and otherwise silenced by the very same rabid brand of social justice campaigners that have been, at length, described in this thread. So called "mens rights talks" are routinely protested (rabidly) on the grounds that they are just anti-woman misogynist circle-jerks when in reality there are a host of societal issues facing men which really ought to be talked about and which people should have every right to talk about. Things like the prevalence of suicide among males, deaths in the work-place, a legislative and penal system which routinely and disproportionately afflicts men in both family and criminal law, the acceptability of violence being applied to men, and homelessness, all afflict men disproportionately. Regrettably something tells me that "intersectional-feminism" is not an appropriate lens through which to explore, understand, and address these problems.

In the same way that I am a "feminist" I am also a "men-inist"; more broadly I believe we should strive for a fair and egalitarian society. Give me two minutes with any westerner and I could have them assenting to this position without breaking a cranial sweat. But these are not the definitions that make any headlines, get any re-tweets, or inspire any blogs. I really cannot express how unfortunate and disappointing it is that these select few but passionate, vocal, and media-play-getting movements have become so focused upon portraying certain broad identities as victims while establishing other broad identities as aggressors, not because this portrayal accurately reflects reality or is useful to understanding contemporary problems, but instead because the state of victim-hood and the virtue of fighting against oppression are being used as the social and rhetorical currency which drives their internal ideological economy of outrage.

Satire has been as oxygen to me of late, especially with respect to the current topic of discussion. Of course, that is eminently due to the fact that I'm a racist and misogynist. :)

That article actually helped me to understand the motte and bailey a bit more clearly, when I googled it I found myself at "The Rational Wiki" which gave the following definition:



Seems like the rational-wiki has a slightly politicized description of the motte and bailey. Nominative irony?

What exactly is wrong with women having a nice status bump? Is there problem with their voices being considered authortive on issues which affect them? Are we meant to trust arguments like VagabondSpectre has made in this thread, which rejects these issues have any relevance?

One of key points here is it is not always about you. Sometimes the status of someone else is more important than yours. In some contexts, others are aware of more than you. One does not automatically have the status of being a relevant authority. — TheWillowOfDarkness

So you're essentially saying "we should not trust Vagabond's arguments because his penis makes him less aware".

Nobody should "trust arguments"; we use logic and reason to appraise their soundness, their validity, and their strength. That's what philosophy tends to look like. Do I really have to point out that it is fallacious to say "This person's position is more correct because they have X genitals and Y skin color and Z sexual identity"?

In order to perhaps facilitate a better discussion, pretend that everything I say is generated by a room filled with a million monkeys on a million typewriters. That way you cannot possibly try to assassinate my character by appealing to my gender or race as if it is some sort of flaw in my argument.

Alternatively, you could pretend that I am a gay black woman, (I assure you there are gay black women out there who do agree with my positions on the gender pay gap in the west, rape culture in the west, and sexist micro-aggressions in the west), but that might prove more difficult for you, since you feel that the identity of a speaker makes their words more and less true and given that gay black women have the most "authority" on the issues which we're discussing. I really do feel like it would be more productive to speak with you if I outright lied about my gender and race and sexual identity so you simply could not derail the discussion by making it about whether or not I have hidden and internalized misogyny, or the like.

If you would like to discuss "rape culture" or the gender pay gap, I would be happy to; I believe that these two issues do not aptly describe western society. We can get into why I hold these positions, or if you like you could just say that I hold these positions because of my penis, and am therefore wrong.

Umm, I tried to reply to your post but I accidentally hit "flag" and now I cannot un-flag :( Sorry about that!

But regarding "virtue". The anti-"regressive" crowd has popularized what almost amounts to a new kind of informal fallacy they call "virtue signaling". Virtue signaling is essentially whenever someone says or does something that is designed to give spectators the impression that the individual is very virtuous (and therefore has a more valid position), but does not necessarily address any specifics or content beyond the nature of their own virtue. It's very much a fallacious appeal to "virtuous character", but what makes it different from a regular appeal to character is that the "virtue" is applied to the individual themselves rather than being applied to any specific argument.

By applying "virtue" to one's own identity within identity politics, the audience will ascribe more inherent validity to the "experiences" of someone with virtue. For white males in the movement this is an especially important reality because without appealing to their own virtue, they have no way to justify standing shoulder to shoulder (in solidarity, or in debate) with those of oppressed identities. That is of course, if they can even make it through the progressive stack in the first place.

I try my best to ignore "virtue signaling" whenever I see it because you don't need to address it in order to win an argument unless the argument is whether or not the person is virtuous.. That said, with the particular (minority) brand of feminist we've been describing, it is important to understand it as an inherent feature of their rhetoric which stems from their focus on "identity" as a source of valid opinions. Virtue signaling is a defense to the standard intersectional feminist position which vilifies and denigrates non-victim classes by blaming them for all problems and further goes on to exclude their ideas on the basis that their identity invalidates them. It's pretty much necessary to do if you want to participate in their discussions as a white male.

I had a trouble understanding the main thrust of the entire talk. It's main focus is colonialism and only a few times goes into any specifics regarding animals. The bulk of the talk consists of citing examples of white colonialism and cultural appropriation, while also emphasizing that climate change is inherently a racial issue. What does bother me about the talk is that so often "identity" comes up in such a way that broad issues become inherently "racialized" and identity itself becomes the rhetorical basis for appraising the value of someone's ideas. There are many points in her talk were she gets side tracked on tangential points, and the Q&A section from beginning to end was essentially a repetition that white people need to step down and not talk to people of color about white supremacy and patriarchy. The solution to these problems which she did repeat fairly often was to "decolonize the mind, heart, and soul" through (her) understanding.

Here are just a few paraphrases and quotations beginning from the 30 minute mark and on for those who are unable or unwilling to view the lengthy source video:


The question section and answers portion was really not very noteworthy at all. It consisted of nothing but ideological and rhetorical correction and self-correction (from all sides) aside from the poem which was read, whose reading was itself corrected. The first main takeaway from the overall Q&A are that white people need to talk to (or "process at/with") other white people about racism and patriarchy, not people of color, mainly because to do so inflicts suffering of some kind, and also that there is no conflict of interest whatsoever given that "Women of Color Speak out" is a group sponsored by the same corporations they are criticizing.

From the start of the Q&A:

"I'm going to enforce a "progressive stack". that means that those who are from marginalized communities get to speak first. And I'm also going to give certain rules of engagement, so, one is progressive stack, the other is when you're processing all of the things that you've heard from me, from "Ahh", from so many of the amazing speakers that you've heard from today, please, if you are a white person, please do not process AT A PERSON OF COLOR! PLEASE DON'T DO THAT. They don't need to hear it. Because these things you may have been hearing maybe for the first time today, or maybe you heard it in a way that you have not heard it before, and that's wonderful and I'm glad that you're processing it, but you're hearing it today and they have been living it for their entire lives, so please don't do that." 45:25

The overall talk seeks to explore colonialism, climate change, and it's impact on animals, but it is constantly derailed with politicized positions regarding tangential issues, and constantly invokes race as a necessary measure to even begin to understand issues like climate change, let alone things like "veganism/vegetarianism" and animal rights. Too often it appeals to historical events to put down the very idea of whiteness, and uses race as a basis for genuine discrimination over the course of her talk and advocates for such within the very content of her talk. "Colonialism" becomes anything and everything "white" by the end of it, and if the whole of it is accepted, I see no other way to come away from this other than with the idea and feeling that as a white male, I'm a guilty patriarchal oppressor who has nothing but stolen culture and ideas. If rage is the rational response to these things, should I then project this rage at myself?

Glad you found it useful, I only wish that it was possible to go more in-depth without basically writing an entire book on the subject.

The speed with which these new feminist and other progressive schools of thought are emerging, spreading and evolving makes them difficult to track and overall appraisal of the movements is made difficult by the fact that the shape of it's network is broad, diverse, and with diverse and inconsistent interconnections.

There is also a wave of reactionary pundits which are emerging in response to the greater social justice movement that is occurring (largely thanks to new online social media networks), and where the "Social Justice Movement" goes too far, they seem to be there to lampoon and ridicule. The bulk of these anti-"SJW" reactionaries actually consider themselves to be a part of the progressive left. They refer to "SJW's" as "Regressives", and while they too have their overblown extremists, many of their criticisms are much more digestible to the public than the positions of those whom they label to be "regressive".

There is also a kind of media bias to consider. Campaigning in the name of eliminating social inequality is a very marketable and advertiser friendly thing. But trying to make the argument that a specific given campaign for social equality has fundamentally flawed positions is by nature negative; critical, sensitive, controversial, offensive. A gay conservative provocateur became the only person to ever have been "unverified" by Twitter, and then the only person to ever have been "banned forever" (I suspect not just because of his provocative views, but because of the way he flaunted his flamboyantly gay identity knowing that this presented a bit of a challenge to those using the lens of identity politics and intersectional feminism). At the same time, a feminist producing Youtube videos on sexist micro-aggressions in video games is able to make it onto popular talk shows and even all the way to the UN to point out that online harassment and micro-sexism in everyday life is a major problem facing western women. Not a lot of the "social justice gone wild" crowd are very marketable, but almost none of the "anti social-justice" crowd is marketable at all from the perspective of large corporations, advertisers and media operators. It is for this reason that the clash between the "SJW's" and the "anti-regressives" is going somewhat under he radar with most of it being filtered out of the mainstream, but more and more the so named "regressive left" is making it into mainstream media outlets. The nature of online social networks are such that generally they are compartmentalized in that unless you get into specific circles you might be entirely unaware of them (given how many there are) which is somewhat different from traditional media which has much less biased outreach.

In short it's all a big clusterfuck right now. The "regressive left" get's play on national media, which pours gasoline on the "anti-regressive" fire, which then ridicules the "regressive left" via social networks, which pours gasoline on the "regressive left" fire, which gets them more attention from the mainstream media, and thus the flame war self-propagates. It's really quite fascinating but unfortunately it is also quite a tedious subject. I wish I could say that I think these controversies will decline in intensity, but since the main ingredient which has seen to it's rise is only growing (social media), I think it is likely that more and more people are going to start being drawn into the specifics of this discussion and the ensuing ideological flame wars.

This particular game of uproar came about as the result of the kinds of ideologies I described becoming over-internalized.

Keep in mind that the woman who went on arguably a hysterical tirade in the video recorded it herself, and then uploaded, herself, to the internet thinking that her video evidence of sexual harassment would completely vindicate her.

Here is the message that she posted along with the video:



Here is a video of a talk given by the producer of the video which contains a great deal of insight into her particular world views and their emotional gravitas (If there is yet still doubt): (watching the first 10-20 minutes alone gives a good sense of her ideological leanings)



You're quite right that the original video does not contain a humongous amount of this persons ideology, *snicker*, but I do feel it is quite a good example of the emotional and rhetorical effects of these ideologies. When I first saw this video I instantly recognized it as the product of "identity politics". She identifies "Hugh" early on as "a person of color" as a part of her criticism that his opinions on the "bunker" (some sort of local police thing) are unwarranted, harmful, or otherwise unjustified/objectionable. This makes sense to her because she presumes that all people of color ought to have the same political opinions given that they are all victims of colonial oppression. It's not only that he disagrees with her that infuriated her so, it's also due to the fact that he IS a person of color and therefore per her theory has a valid opinion, and frankly, cannot be easily discounted as a racist.

Quoting her paraphrasing her 'guru' from the Colonization and Animals video, beginning at 3:30: ""Just so you know my guru always told me, that if you are ever speaking anywhere you should always let your audience know who you are, so that they know why you even have a right to speak on this subject. It is important you as my audience have a right to demand my credentials".

The kind of credentials she is referring to is however not the traditional kind of "credentials" that we might imagine. Here are the credentials she provides beginning at 3:58 : "I was born in England. My family is from India. And I have been a traveler in this land, shall we say, for many years. So I have experienced the racism, the colonization, the patriarchy, and the capitalism of three continents. I've felt it deeply, I've experienced it; It is in my racial memory. And this is not a superficial surface movement for me. This goes deep into my soul, and it comes from that place, because this is a spiritual movement.".

This is one of the starkest examples of identity politics being employed that I've ever seen...

This sort of feminism is so nakedly sexist that it cries out for satire if not condemnation. I'm embarrassed for the men who show up under such conditions. We have here, it seems to me, the idea of a "gendered" idea. It's an attack on gender privilege that assumes gender privilege as its MO. It's just like women being ask to cover their heads in church not so long ago, for another arguably gendered idea. Thankfully this seems to be the exception rather than the rule. Or I just know cool women who treat the men in their lives as they expect to be and are treated: with kindness, as equals. A**holes come with both kinds (or all kinds) of genitals just around the taint, of course. — Hoo

Most women actually do not call themselves feminists, and of the minority of women who do consider themselves feminist, many wholeheartedly reject reject the idea that men cannot be feminist or are inherently sexist.

This vocal minority subscribes to the notion that "micro-aggression" constitutes a vast part of how and why west is fundamentally patriarchal (micro aggressions constantly devalue and oppress women). When this idea is combined with a subscription to "identity politics", which states that the experiences of the oppressed are much more valid than the experiences of the privileged, something scary then tends to happen...

If I say something that in any way criticizes these particular feminists, as a white male, they tend to question the validity of what I'm saying on the basis of my privileged male gender. If they disagree with my position, then to them, I become the embodiment of what they despise: "A male oppressor using his invalid ideas to suppress the more valid ideas of women and thereby perpetuate the unfair privilege that as a male I constantly benefit from". Once this argument is levied emotions quickly run wild and the previous discussion is made inaccessible. Instead if I wish to continue the discussion I somehow need to begin by convincing them that I'm not actually sexist, and that my ideas might have merit all on their own regardless of my gendered experiences.

This is why safe spaces exist. This is why these feminists think they ought not to risk letting a man have a voice within or in regards to their movement. This is why we have so many examples of (mostly young/university students) immortalizing themselves in the forms of internet memes where they freak out over the smallest possible real or perceived social slight and collapse into the most cringe-worthy outrage fueled tirades imaginable.

Thankfully these kinds of people are a minority, but unfortunately they are the loudest and they are very very angry at times. Here's the most recent example of this phenomenon which has gone viral:

I've had my ear to the digital ground specifically in regards to how feminism has been manifesting online for over a year now. It's really difficult to put into words, and so I'll begin by answering the question from the OP's conclusion: What do "feminists" want men to believe and do for "feminism"?

Some want you to call yourself a feminist because feminism is simply the desire for gender equality under the law (this is also egalitarianism by definition)... Standard stuff...

Other feminists want you to declare yourself a feminist because certain gender inequalities persist across the globe and or at home in the west and it is only by focusing on the problems of the people who are most affected by inherent imbalances in societal systems that we may begin to correct the currently existent and pervasive gender inequalities which afflict us.

Still more feminists will tell you that by definition you cannot be a feminist, because as a man and have been raised in a system where because of your privileged gender you have been ingrained in, benefited from, and contributed to the ongoing and systematic oppression of women. You can be an "ally" of the feminist movement, and as such you must constantly ask yourself whether or not you are in a position of privilege which might deprive a woman of that same opportunity. At feminist rallies this means marching at the back of the crowd, or at least not at the front; it means not occupying a speaking role at feminist events (and other events in larger society) when instead a woman could be given that opportunity.

Generally the new wave of feminists that the OP encountered wants all men to confront their inherent sexism and accept that the west is currently a patriarchal system of oppression. Their main issues are bringing to attention the earnings disparity between men and women in an effort to see the disparity eliminated, pointing out sexism and sexist micro-aggressions in every-day life and culture (see: sex in in media (see: "sex-negative feminism") and sexism in video games by Feminist Frequency), and pointing out that the western culture is "rape culture".

-------
Some of this may seem like an unfair portrayal of this new wave of feminism but if anyone is interested, I will endure the cringe-worthy task of providing direct links to the source. There are actual ideological origins for this stuff, and by that I mean books containing (re)definitions of terms which paint entire narratives of the west and are being taught in western universities... And these narratives are, shall we say, somewhat less than charitable...

A part of the confusion comes with redefining sexism itself to mean"privilege plus power", which essentially means that since women have no power, while they can certainly hold prejudices towards males, since their actions would amount to nothing they therefore cannot carry out meaningful acts of sexism. This position is uncomfortably commonly wielded in what might appear to be an otherwise academic approach to understanding social dynamics. Not all feminists will assent to this position (there has long been discord between feminists regarding the specifics of their theories), and this kind of controversially worded position is a main contributor to why many if not most people, including women, would currently prefer to distance themselves from the label of "feminist" altogether.

These ideas are not so new though, and without needing to get into a history of feminism, suffice it to say it has been growing in popularity since the 90's. The source of the contemporary phenomenon that drove the OP to write his post is a combination of the ideological positions described above (and more) with easily accessible mass media and social networking platforms which inevitably condense and simplify their messages. These new online social networks also seem to magnify whatever is the most emotionally evocative with emergent trends that can gain very quick and wide-spread support. What we're then left with is a visible and vocal minority of individuals, with a very generous and passionate following, espousing very condemning views of the state of sexism in the west; they want you to agree with everything they say, and if you disagree and they get offended, it might be pointed out that disagreement in and of itself is an example of sexism.

Having considered myself a feminist for quite a long time I first got interested in this new cultural phenomenon (a new wave of full blown PC'ness) because I kept hearing and seeing things which rather disturbed me. Whenever (albeit rarely) I speak to feminists who focus on the problems that western women face (mainly an overall earnings gap, and "rape culture"), instead of deconstructing the truth of these claims I like to instead bring up the issues which I, as a feminist, am presently focused on. FGM (female genital mutilation) is currently very widespread in Africa, with some countries such as Somalia having a rate of 98%. UNICEF estimates Egypt at 91% and Guinea at 96% as of 2013. In some countries, not only is sexism systemic or systematic, actual rape is carried out systematically. Forced marriage, human trafficking, and various other forms of modern slavery are just a few of the other problems that are widespread in many countries across the globe and which afflict women the most often. Even if I did believe that in the west we have a patriarchal society which systemically oppresses women through vehicles like paying female workers lower rates for the same work and rape culture, I would sooner invest my money and time as a feminist toward initiatives focused on countries which see much more severe magnitudes and intensities of these problems. I would inform them that I am entirely unconcerned with their feelings of being offended at my lack of concern for their discontent, and that they should get over whichever gendered micro-aggression I might have happened to commit against them, it being my ingrained and inherent nature after-all.

Even with this text wall I've only began to lightly brush the surface of this topic. I find it fascinating.

If anyone is interested in looking deeper into the specifics of the ideologies these "SJW's" are wielding, look up: "Inter-sectional feminism and Identity politics". Kimberly Crenshaw is a notable proponent of these ideas, having coined the term "intersectionality" as a part of her feminist theory.

This is a phenomenon that I've encountered in my own moral and ethical reasonings which I first became aware of through a maxim that I have never been able to actually disregard: "All moral dilemmas involve "harm" of some kind. If there is no harm, there is no dilemma". Also, I feel like I may have rambled, so TL;DR at bottom!

It seems true in every case that morality is only ever relevantly employed when a person or persons are confronting some kind of harm. "Moral justifications" always take the form of an argument for an action that itself causes some harm, (where usually the justification is the avoidance of greater harm). Moral arguments that appeal to harm instead of pleasure tend to make a good deal more sense because what humans on the whole deem to be harmful is a much narrower and consistent spectrum than is pleasure, and so humans agree much more often about what is "bad" (as opposed to agreement on what is "good"). It is not the case that "harm" is a universal value we can appeal to for moral argumentation, but it is a heck of a lot closer to being universal than is "pleasure".

Humans and groups of humans can much more easily come to agreements about certain states of affairs that are undesirable or "bad/harmful" than they can about which states of affairs are the "best/most beneficial". One way of looking at it is that certain moral arguments advocate for avoiding specific states of affairs that we all agree are bad (i.e: don't murder, don't torture, etc...) which amounts to a fairly simple active moral prescription; potentially all I need to do to avoid specific states of affairs is avoid a limited set of specific actions (i.e: murder) and the moral objective of avoiding specific states of affairs will have been satisfied. Moral arguments which instead advocate for reaching specific states of affairs that they argue are "good" (i.e: no starvation, no war, health-care for all) might entail a much more complex analysis of what actions or lack of actions might be required to reach the specific desired good state of affairs.

Avoiding specific states of affairs by predicting the outcome of our actions (or how we ought to make decisions on how to act) is a simpler empirical endeavor because we only need to ensure that our actions negate a specific set of states of affairs rather than negating all possible states of affairs but one. Even if we could all agree on the one "ultimately good" state of affairs that morally we all ought to work towards, we would still have unending disagreement about how to get there; more disagreement than we would have about how to not get to a very bad state of affairs.

Pain is not actually more pressing or important than pleasure in a broad sense, it's just that the moral arguments which ensue from examples of pain are much easier to wrap our heads around and are much more broadly appealing (widely agreed upon) and are therefore more commonly wielded. Given the more subjective nature of pleasure (compared to pain) individuals have a harder time trying to impose their own personal ideas about what is pleasurable and how we should be behaving (toward a "good" end) on others in the form of moral arguments. But if your personal idea of what is pleasurable, all the things you like to do and which makes life worth living, were suddenly taken away from you, I imagine that you would feel it a transgression against you with the same degree of moral gravity as you would if direct harm were inflicted upon you rather than just the removal of your available pleasures.

TL ;DR It's not that harm is a priority in life as opposed to pleasure, it's just that pleasure seems to be much more subjective. In addition, the moral prescriptions which follow from "what to work toward" ("good") rather than "what to avoid" ("bad") tend to be much more complicated affairs.

Let's take a closer look at each of the criterion you have mentioned:

1) Restriction of opportunity.

No part of the American legislative or economic system explicitly restricts the opportunities of one race over another. Typically the opportunities someone has will depend on their individual circumstances such as wealth and connections. A white family can be in just as impoverished and lacking opportunity as a black family can be, and so I submit to you that access to opportunity is not distributed based directly on race, but instead a more complex set of factors.

2) Disrespect for agency.

I can only assume that by this you mean to say "racist people devaluing the lives of black people". All I can tell you is that outward or open racism is heavily frowned upon in most social and political circles in America these days. Even the mexican hating islamaphobic trumpeters who are perhaps the largest visible group of "racists" right now in America, are easily identifiable as a minority. At some point between the american civil war and the legacy of the civil rights movement, the system did in fact begin to consider that black people have agency too. White people have their agency deprived by incarceration the same as how black people have their agency deprived when they too are incarcerated. Again, I submit to you that there is an important set of factors other than racism that you are not accounting for.

3) Dissolution of property

As the prevalence of racism has subsided in the west since the 60's, and it has, so too has the prevalence of specifically racially segregated or state funded communities being gentrified into different areas as the real-estate value begins to exceed the value of those living there. In today's world the dissolution of property no longer spares white communities while specifically targeting the black ones; it targets all communities where corporate or state control can be enacted on a community for long term utility or profit. The government at large, corporations at large, and the american public at large look down upon impoverished communities with fairly equal disdain and pity regardless of a given community's racial demographics. Race is certainly often stigmatized by the surrounding inhabitants of an impoverished area, "they're poor because they're mexican", "They're poor because they're black", but an equally popular stigma is "They're poor because their white trash". That said, stigmas have a hard time dissolving property on the basis of race...

4) Power over one ethnicity; Death at the hands of police.

You could say that addressing this issue is the entire purpose of this thread. The sheer fact that police use of force exists and that black people experience it at disparate rates is not being debated or denied. If you want to argue that the mere existence of a disparity between races is the definition of racism, that's fine, but I'm interested in understanding the full scope of causes which lead to these disparities in the first place. The ensuing argument about whether or not the existence of a statistical racial disparity of any kind (your definition of racism) is evidence of racism in the first place, is circular.

------------------

I'll try asking you one last question to see if we can at least somewhat get on the same page semantically speaking:

"If a black person is mass murdering other black persons, and a black police man arrests the mass murderer, thereby saving countless black lives, is that racism?

I am not saying it is endemic in our system, the Department of Justice is saying this, with all it reports looking at how police departments around the county. It is the system calling the system rotten. — Cavacava

How rotten?

You say that American hypocrisy pisses you off because America's disregard for it's horrible history of treatment of blacks is not all over because some laws were passed...

Have we at least gained some regard for America's horrible history of treatment of blacks?

Since there is a central body within the rotten (a.k.a racist) system evaluating individual police departments around the country and suggesting that some of them have problems with racial bias, is it possible that the whole system is not rotten?

While TheWillowOfDarkness is convinced that the very nature of the system itself is defined by racist oppression in every way and pertains to all black persons, perhaps you are willing to take a more nuanced position on the matter?

Look at Wells Fargo's sub prime lending that targeted the "mud people" in 2005. It lent them subprime loans, which became infamous a few years latter. They ended up settling for around $355 million. The money does not matter, the ruined lives matter. The president of this bank should have gone to jail...that would have been proper reparation. — Cavacava

Surely this is evidence that racism still exists in America, but is it evidence that America is a racist system?

Here's some justice that seemingly was doled out by the rotten system. Was the judge who found merit in this particular discrimination case also rotten?

Keep in mind, it is not and was never my position that America is a completely un-rotten and fresh fruit. I'm contending that it is far less rotten than it was in the past (in terms of a racist system), and that overall, the rot of racism is much less a causative force than it once was, and in comparison to some of the other varieties of rot that currently afflict America. I contend it is not the all-encompassing and all-powerful force in today's world that many people are making it out to be.

A black officer arresting a black person (whether guilty or not) is part of the society which is restricts opportunity, disrespects agency, takes power over them, etc.,etc., so yes, it is racist.

It's part of the racist system which sees a greater number of black people died opportunity, property and life (in the sense of being a self-directed person free to move, interact with their finds and family, etc., etc.)

The same is true when the white officer arrests the hostage taker. So, yes, also racist.

With the individual racist action, it's a single act of abuse by an officer, so no it does not mean the system is racist. However, such actions can be indicators of the presence of a culture of racism within the system. Or the system might be a wider imposition of the lives of individuals of the black community. Just becasue an individual racist action doesn't define the presnece of a racist system, it doesn't mean there isn to a racist system present. — TheWillowOfDarkness

All I'm asking for is some kind of measurement of racism within the system. You have qualified racism as being a component of the system we live in, but how can we measure it?

You're essentially saying "everything is racist". This is an unneseccarily emotionally evocative, logically confusing and empirically false position.

Arresting a white person is not racist in the US. The white community does not have the same crime rate and not targeted in the same way by police (though the arresting of a white person may well be classist, as poor communities sometimes have higher crime rates and expectations of criminality). — TheWillowOfDarkness

I would like clarification on whether or not police arresting a black person is necessarily racist...

If a black cop arrests a black man, is that still racist?

What if a white cop arrests a black man in order to, let's say, free his hostages. Is that racism?

If one police officer commits a racist action in the line of duty, is the whole system therefore racist?

How did we get here....

I'm not concealing the realities of why the police arrest black people. Even if it a justified action against criminals who commit henious acts, it still locks a black person up and tears them away from their family and friends. Opportunity, power, property and respect for agency are removed. The black community suffers from this imposition more often than the white community. My point is it is racist no matter why the police acted ( and even if they ought to). — TheWillowOfDarkness

Your point is that the police arresting black people, regardless of why, is racist?

What is racism?

Is police arresting a white person, regardless of why, also racism?

I'm terribly confused.

The MTV video was mean't to be cheeky.

But, you must compare apples to apples. Comparing White on White crime to Black on Black crime is not appropriate because of the economic disparities within these groups. The following conclusions from the Bureau of Justice Statistics:
...
Cities like Chicago have areas with 40 to 60% of people living below the poverty level. Black on Black crime and White on White crime within the same economic level are near parity. — Cavacava

It's interesting that you suggest economic factors might play a role in causing higher crime rates in poor communities; that's what I've been doing in just about every one of my posts, including this being a main focus of my OP.

It's interesting because poverty leading to crime is a separate or discrete causative force from racism/prejudice leading to crime.

Please understand that I'm not bringing up "black on black crime" to make a point about blackness, I do so when people suggest that crime in black communities is all the fault of racism and white supremacy or alternatively that that there is no such thing (as the MTV video did). By our new found reckoning a possibly more causative force towards perpetuating crime in black communities is the existing poverty in black communities. If we tried to present a solution for crime in poor black communities, how good of a solution do you think we would come up with if we blamed racism for the problem while ignoring the economic factors that many (disproportionately across america) black communities face? We would get nowhere.

I believe that poor people black and white are discriminated against institutionally. Look at the Bail Bonds system in this country. A poor black or white person who cannot raise bond has to go to jail, while a person with the cash can avoid jail and work, earn money, and fight whatever crime they have been accused of committing. A poor person has to work, so the prosecutor will offer a deal, they plead guilty to a crime and they get off, even if they were innocent, but now with a criminal record. The Department of Justice just filed (http://www.courthousenews.com/2016/08/19/Bail.pdf) an Amicus curiae brief suggesting the system is unconstitutional. — Cavacava

I would love to help champion human rights on behalf of the poor, regardless of their race.

If we try this through the lens of white supremacy or institutional racism, how do you feel about "reparations"? (like it or not, it's currently creeping in to our cultural zeitgeist).

To say that the police are not complicit in their subjugation of black communities to to fly in the face of recent Department of Justice reports that suggest that cities such as Chicago, Baltimore and Ferguson are systematically racist.

"The Baltimore Police Department engaged in a pattern of stopping African-Americans without any real justification. Between 2010 and 2015, there were three hundred thousand police stops, of which less than four per cent resulted in a citation or arrest. Forty-four per cent of those stops occurred in two small, mostly black neighborhoods, and ninety-five per cent of people who were stopped ten times or more were African-American." The New Yorker 8/12/16

The Department of Justice found the " Ferguson Police Department was egregiously biased and mercenary"
Here from Washington Post 8/16/16 regarding the DOJ task force study of Chicago's police department: "The task force offered a bleak assessment of how the department treats people of color. In their report, the task force members recounted how residents said officers treat minorities poorly and then paired this with police department data that “gives validity to the widely held belief the police have no regard for the sanctity of life when it comes to people of color.”

And, these are just some of the studies cited.

No, the institutionalization of racism is endemic, to deny this is to put your head in the sand. — Cavacava

If a racist police officer or police department behaves in a racist manner, I guess that's one way to fill out the term "institutional racism" but I think it's another to assume that all police departments across America fall are fairly represented by this description.

You say it's endemic, but how endemic? Quantitative and qualitative assessments of the prevalence of racism among police officers across America may not reflect so accurately that widely held belief that police have no regard for the sanctity of life when it comes to the people of color.

You suggest my head is buried in the sand, but to alternatively bury one's head in the most severe portrayal of racist police brutality possible as the American norm is likewise not a strategy conducive to healthy sight.

For a series that portrays itself as a "decoder" of controversy, it really does a poor job of doing so.

The speaker in the video very passively acknowledges that the black community is concerned with gun violence, and this somehow is meant to be equated with the BLM movement, while nearly the entire remainder of the video is spent explaining how the BLM is specifically an issue about police killings of civilians. She states:

"The truth is black people are not likely to commit crimes than anyone else. Because of a history of institutional racism, black communities have higher poverty rates, suffer from poorly funded schools, and are more likely to be targeted by police." — Franseca Ramsay

It's great that she brings up actual contemporary problems, but unfortunate that she equates it all to "institutional racism". She goes on to unequivocally state that "black on black crime is not a thing" and justifies this claim by bringing up the fact that most people who are murdered are murdered by someone of their own race. What she tacitly ignores, which is the actual contextual meaning of the term "black on black crime", is that blacks are killing other blacks at around four to five times the rate that whites are killing whites. She goes on to say that bringing up black on black crime is just a diversion to delegitimize outrage at police killings of black civilians, so if there was any doubt that her version of the BLM movement is specifically concerned with the police vs blacks, let it be put to rest.

Without getting into a discussion of broad economic theory, the point I was making is that the minimum wage has not risen comparably to inflation and the cost of living. Minimum wage may or may not be a good thing, but since we've got it we might as well appraise how it's been performing.

Regarding economic vs cultural factors of crime specifically, there is a lot of inter-play between the two. Economy does have at least something to do with the prevalence of absentee fathers in black communities, which itself goes on to have broad economic and cultural implications of it's own. Being poor doesn't necessitate criminality, but it does incentivize economically motivated crimes. That said, I share many of the same sentiments that you do. The BLM movement needs to make room for all black victims of crime, not just the victims of crime carried out by the police. If it is unable to do so, it will in fact have demonstrated that it doesn't actually care about the lives of black people.

I quite understand that white folks don't see it and don't want to see it. I could present experimental evidence, as I have in the past, and reference psychological theories to support my position, but if you deny my direct experience, then you will easily deny the supporting evidence, so I won't trouble. — unenlightened

Frankly it is very easy to deny your direct experience because my own direct experience contradicts it. The kind of evidence I'm looking for is two fold: firstly I'm looking for evidence that will give me understanding or predictive power over the numerous causative factors which perpetuate certain inequalities evident in many black communities (namely but not exclusively, police use of violence), and secondly, data which will give me a better view of the overall scope and magnitude of the aforementioned inequalities and their causes.

Your experiences alone simply cannot help me get a picture of the overall magnitude of the problem of racism, all they can really do is give me examples of how racism plays out day-to-day. This could be useful since these examples of racism, if prevalent enough, surely could contribute to the continued economic depression that traps many black communities. You have however opted to provide examples of subtle racism; micro-aggressions. And while micro-aggressions are very prevalent, they simply do not amount to much in the way of keeping whole communities economically depressed.

I understand that it can be a horrible experience to be collected as a token black friend, or to question the beauty of your own skin, or to be stared at because you are different, but frankly this kind of prejudice concerns me the very least because all it hurts are people's feelings. I'm much more concerned with whether or not the police themselves are allowing prejudice to affect how they carry out their policing, and the direct factors which are currently leading to more crime, incarceration, and death in black communities. Are young black men killing each other in such terrifying numbers because of day-to-day prejudice? Do the psychological theories you have referenced explain it? Do your personal experiences have anything at all to say about this?

It is, alas, the smallness of each incident that makes it deniable; how the good looking people always 'accidentally' get the best table at a restaurant, how the concerned citizen chooses to intervene on the occasion when the suspect just happens to be black, how the store detective just happens to be watching the foreign woman for some very good reason. You know it took me a while to notice it myself; perhaps if you chat to some of your black friends and neighbours about it they will start to point it out to you as you go about town. Each time it will look like bad luck, or coincidence, until eventually that cannot be sustained. — unenlightened

There are many differences between the set of factors that keep individuals and whole communities (black or white) impoverished and afflicted by perpetual crime, and the set of social pangs that being a minority can come with. There is some overlap, but the contribution that a prejudiced individual picking on a minority individual has in comparison to the wider set of cultural and socioeconomic factors at hand, is minimal.

I'd say it's just the opposite. The "non-prejudical" aspects aren't separate to social problems and how our society is failing black people. Consider the higher crime rate. What does this mean? What happens when someone is committing crimes? They become targets for the police.

The police are quite literally out to get black people who are committing crimes. Before we even get to the question of specific racial abuse enacted by police, there is already a racially charged element which affects the black people-- the police, by their very mission, are out to get more black people and have an impact on the individuals in their community.

Racism is not merely a question of one individual abusing another. It's also about the social context and the impact it has on people's lives. To be poor, committing crimes and to be sort after by the police (even if the person is guilty and justly pursued) are factors of prejudice themselves. — TheWillowOfDarkness

The way you say it though, "police are quite literally out to get black people", is unnecessarily divisive and somewhat misleading given the larger context of the question we're asking which is "How much of a causal force is racism against blacks regarding police use of force". The answer to that question is informally contained in the mantra "police are out to get black people".

You must understand that in order to get an accurate picture of how much a factor "racism" is in the use of force by police, we also need to get an idea of the "non-racism" factors which lead to police use of force (incompetent police/procedures, deleterious criminal law, and also the behavior of the civilians themselves (i.e: behavior; are they brandishing a weapon, are they responding to commands, are they attacking an officer, etc...))

If we want to say with any kind of confidence and accuracy the role that racism plays in today's world, we MUST separate it out from other worldly causes, or at least TRY to.

The fact that police (of any kind) have increased presence in high crime communities exacerbates tensions between police and civilians, which indirectly contributes to even more negative interactions between police and civilians, and is a causal force we ought to make an effort to understand, but this is not even inherently a racial issue. Many poor white communities which see higher rates of crime than the rest of society also have increased police presence and also have a staunch resentment and hatred of the police.

By saying that "the police by their very mission are out to get more black people" you're concealing the other realities as to why police end up arresting disproportionately more blacks than whites. It's not so cut and dried; prejudice does not explain all.

You say that to be poor, committing crimes, and being sought after by the police are all symptoms of prejudice. How is this racial prejudice responsible for the disproportionate rates at which poor white people are sought by the police for being criminals? Would it not be a different kind of prejudice?

A "non-racial-prejudice" perhaps?

And one learns, not only from experience, but also from the culture, and culture is the presence of history. So I am saying there is a natural proclivity for prejudice on the one hand and that one, not inevitably, but inevitably if one does not struggle to make oneself aware of them, inherits the prejudices of one's culture. — unenlightened

"Culture is the presence of history"...

So you're not saying that all white people are inherently prejudiced, just that white culture itself is prejudiced, and unless we as white people struggle against our culture, we will inevitably succumb to that racist prejudice?

Yes, I do not wish to deny the fact that crime rates in black communities are higher. But please try to see that the 'true to some degree' has a huge impact psychologically, and hence socially. 'To some degree' the police are the enemy out to get you if you are black; even you admit it. It is really important to try to turn this around, because the police being seen as the enemy is a major contributor to crime in black neighbourhoods. So it is really important to acknowledge the limited truth underlying the perception, and act on it, in order then to be able to gain the support and confidence of the black community at large. — unenlightened

I'm not opting to be selective in trying to understand why crime rates are higher in black communities, I'm looking for as many sources as possible, nor am I making any final conclusions on the matter beyond what amounts to saying "Hey guys, I think racism is a smaller causal force in the west today than many of us feel it is". I think it's healthy for us to begin to accept that racism and prejudice are becoming less and less prevalent because, A: it's true, and B: It allows us to begin to focus on and understand the non-prejudice oriented factors perpetuating today's social problems in a way that is not distracted and obfuscated by inflated perceptions of racism and the ensuing racial tension/guilt that must then be dealt with. "Police are out to get black people" is not a rational portrayal of the American police force as a whole...

The rest of your post seems to be largely addressed to a position to which I do not subscribe - You might consider that it could be that prejudice leads you to assume that if i make this claim, then I am the kind of someone who makes that claim. — unenlightened

The rest of my post was about how presuming that everyone is prejudiced, and then claiming that their denial of their prejudice is evidence that it exists, is a divisive tautology.

I deny your presumption that every black person suffers from prejudice every single day in the west, or America. If that claim is true than it stands to reason that every single fair-minded white person in the west contributes to the oppression of blacks every single day in the west, right? I'm sympathetic to your experiences, but this is not the world that I see.

I actually discuss the Friar study in the second post of this thread. Having read a fair bit of it myself it does make many acknowledgments toward the difficulties and inherent bias contained in collecting data, including the fact that data they collect on police is sometimes collected by the police themselves. They aggregate data from multiple sources, including public contact surveys, and also analysis of information contained within individual police report write-ups themselves which otherwise are not readily available for statistical analysis.

More access to information would go a long way to strengthening the conclusions of this research paper, wherever they might lead. And even though PragerU might jump on the chance to create the most drastic impressions they can muster by cherry picking figures from the report (as is I believe their political marketing agenda), I'm not convinced that the paper is valueless. Here it is if you're interested: http://www.nber.org/papers/w22399

I'm specifically not equating them, but relating them. No, I meant fair-minded. I know from my own case that one can be minded to be fair but fall into prejudice. Indeed prejudice is how the mind works - once bitten, twice shy. — Unenlightened

If someone is prejudiced, then they're not fair minded.

Prejudice is not how the mind works... Prejudice may be a natural phenomenon of minds, but so is acceptance and loyalty, learning, and even open-mindedness.

On the one hand you say humans are just naturally prejudiced, on the other hand you say that we are prejudiced because of a "legacy of prejudice" which is due to the history of "white supremacy and patriarchy".

So which is it? Both? Which prejudices are inherent to all minds and which are the prejudices I inherited because of history?

The nice thing about carrying such a sign, is that as soon as you know about it you can take it off, and that is why folks straighten their hair with caustic soda and try to bleach their skin. — Unenlightened

You're saying that people who straighten their hair are doing so to escape the social pangs of being black in the west? A lot of them do it because curly black hair is typically notoriously hard to manage, and a lot of people like the aesthetic.

How many black women actually bleach their skin? This might sound controversial, but I submit to you that black women are not bleaching their skin (in whatever numbers they happen to be doing so) to escape social inequality and the average racial discrimination that they are want to experience while black; they're doing it because that's their idea of what is beautiful.

The culture of dark shaming that exists specifically within the black community itself (putting down blacks who are darker than you on an aesthetic level) might be the result of people thinking that there is something not beautiful about having very dark skin, but there's nothing me and my inherent prejudices can do about that.

This is one small example of how prejudice is self sustaining. Because it is 'known' that black people are more likely to be involved in car crime, black people receive more attention from the police; because they receive perhaps twenty times more attention, more black people are discovered to be involved with car crime. So the statistics prove the prejudice. It's an excellent of how the legacy of racism is an ongoing sustained stereotyping. — Unenlightened

Here's the thing though, blacks do commit vehicle theft more often in America right now. You're suggesting they're not committing vehicle theft any more often than whites, that rather a prejudiced police force simply goes after them for vehicle theft more often, simply due to prejudice, and that this explains the statistical disparity; prejudice reinforcing prejudice right?

This may be true to some degree, but there is a distinct and massive degree to which it is not true. Crime rates in black communities really are higher than any other racial demographic and no amount of police training and acknowledgement of prejudice can affect the root causal forces that contribute to this undeniable reality. The unyielding presumption that every statistical racial disparity can be explained by prejudice is outright detrimental to any comprehensive effort to understand and address crime and poverty in black communities. These are really severe problems whose causes extend far beyond just prejudice.

There is however an important difference between the racial prejudice of a minority and a majority; power. The prejudice of black folks has little impact on the lives of whites. — Unenlightened

This is exactly the rhetoric I think naturally leads to racial resentment and guilt. This is the (re)definition of white supremacy.

It's proof begins with the lived experiences of persons of color.

Individual experiences of racist discrimination are pointed out and a picture of America is painted that there is a severe on-going day-to-day white supremacist system afflicting all blacks. This is a massive leap and it has grand implications. "White supremacist" might not be your choice of words, but it IS the choice of words of the popular intellectuals who would weigh in to support your assertion, and from whom I suspect your assertions originate.

"A RACIST: A racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality. By this definition, people of color cannot be racists, because as peoples within the U.S. system, they do not have the power to back up their prejudices, hostilities or acts of discrimination. (This does not deny the existence of such prejudices, hostilities, acts of rage or discrimination.) " — Chronic Disparity : Strong and Pervasive Evidence of Racial Inequalities

At this point if I were to deny that I had been the recipient of "privilege" because of my race, I would be told that I was simply unaware of it, and that this unawareness is evidence of the privilege itself.

I repeat myself for emphasis, and to make clear that when I say 'maddening' I mean it literally. To have one's experience systematically denied by society at large is to be thrust into a solipsistic nightmare world of paranoia - is it a conspiracy or am I mad?

It is neither, of course, but it is real and it is being denied. Quite often the understandable response to having one's experiences denied is to exaggerate, to become angry, to separate from that group that is denying, and you will see all this in the media. It is not helpful, but it is understandable, just as it is understandable but unhelpful that white folks of goodwill quite honestly deny their prejudice because they fail to see it. It is the nature of prejudice that one looks through it, like tinted glasses, and doesn't look at it. — Unenlightened

What is being denied is that the experiences of individuals are necessarily representative of the entire demographic that person belongs to. I'm all for listening to people's lived experiences, but I'm also for questioning whether not individual experiences are representative of the majority, or in this case,the whole majority white race.

What is also being denied is that all white folks of good will carry out prejudiced aggressions and micro-aggressions. Whether we're talking about offensive behavior or a police officer choosing whether or not to pull someone over, I reject your assertion that prejudice is ingrained in all of us.

I reject that racism still has the institutionally and culturally reinforced power that it once had. I contend that we have in fact made progress since the 50's and the ensuing civil rights movements, and that this progress has been significant and lasting. I believe that humans beings can live among one another without being prejudiced against each other because of differences between them. Prejudice exists, certainly it does, nobody is actually denying that. Nobody is actually denying the lived experiences of individual people; what's being denied is that prejudice from white people is the main causal force holding black communities down (i.e, the factors which perpetuate crime and poverty in black communities at disproportionate rates).

I reject the assertions that all white people contribute to and benefit from this white supremacy (through inherent or historically inherited prejudice that they may or may not be aware of), and that all black people suffer and are burdened because of it, daily.

It's odd that you should accuse the entire human race of wearing the tinted glasses of inherent or historical prejudice. The assertion that we all inherently are prejudicial is itself an ideological lens all of it's own. I'm not opposed to lenses, they can help us to see things after all, but what about an economic or cultural or political lens? It's not surprising that people wielding only one of these lenses will attribute it's focus as a predominant causal force in the world where other lenses, or a combination of other lenses, would have been much more appropriate.

In that case, I guess simply maximization and minimization of the scope of what is considered "suffering" would then be a relationship or difference between the two terms.

I was reading into the "best practices" report and it actually seems very comprehensive in it's recommendations:

" The President should support the creation of a National Crime and Justice Task Force to examine all areas of criminal justice and propose reforms; as a corollary to this effort, the task force also recommends that the President support programs that take a comprehensive and inclusive look at community-based initiatives addressing core issues such as poverty, education, and health and safety." — 21st Century Policing Report

The document does deliver what seem like good strategies for reducing police violence and restoring community trust (more oversight, transparency reform, accountability reform, better and more training, better technology, more engagement between police departments and the communities they police, and more!) and even addresses some social factors which contribute to police violence indirectly (poverty and crime namely). Hopefully this report will have substantial impact.

It is however unable to address the legislative realities of the criminal code (such as the fact that drug addicts can be arrested and incarcerated for an unreasonably long time simply for possession or growing/selling marijuana) which give rise to a staggeringly high prison population (the highest in the world in fact, bar none). It cannot address the reality that many who spend time in a federal prison come out a more hardened criminal than when they went in, and with much less of a chance of recovering economically by legal means...

Ensuring that we have fair and balanced police force is a natural and I think necessary first step toward reducing the racial disparities we see in law enforcement, and though this alone is a complex task (an eminently achievable one however, in my opinion), next to the greater social, cultural and economic factors that drive crime in and of itself, it feels like less than a half-measure.

P.S: Thanks for the compliment Mongrel! I don't know why but something drives me to occasionally put a great deal of effort into Philosophy Forum exclusives. I've considered self-publishing some stuff (I most like to write about moral philosophy, atheism, and global politics) but I guess I've never found a medium that can beat the satisfaction and depth that ye olde forum has been able to provide. Any suggestions on what kind of medium might be conducive for exporting some of my better formed views?

1) Forget about it.

2) Stoicism and Pessimism are inherently different. Pessimism might be described as a negative emotional or presumptive reaction, Stoicism as a counterpart or "cousin" would be "no-emotional reaction".

3) A Stoic would narrow their definition of suffering so as to minimize the amount of it they actually experience. A pessimist would expand their definition of suffering to include as much as possible so as to better actively avoid it.

Sorry if this is not a useful response! My 3 cents...

A major point of contention in the ideological foundation of many social justice activists is that we should make effort to distinguish "racism" (power plus privilege) from "prejudice" (traditional definition of racism, i.e: unjust discrimination based on race). I'm certainly O.K with redefining terms, but very often people wielding this definition turn around and say "all white people are racist, and minorities simply cannot be racist". This is a major part of what I'm trying to address with this thread, and some of the statements you make come very close to requiring this redress.

"This plays out in wider society cumulatively; each little incident is deniable, no racist language is used, no views expressed, but when one dude is stopped twenty times in his car by the police, and another never, with no violation recorded for either, there is something going on statistically that is unidentifiable in any single incident.

Given that our recent past is that white supremacy and patriarchy were institutionally sanctioned and enforced, it is inevitable that there is a legacy of prejudice. And given the experience of this prejudice alongside its universal denial, it is inevitable that there is some anger and paranoia amongst the sufferers. It is especially the denial of the existence of a problem that is the daily experience of black people that becomes - maddening.

So I do urge all you thoughtful people to investigate a little more carefully and sympathetically the complaints that are made. It's not special pleading, there is a real problem for black people day in, day out, and it is fair-minded folks like us that are the source, if we do not pay close attention to ourselves and to those 'others'. " — Unelightened

You're equating past patriarchy and white supremacy with a "legacy of prejudice" that exudes constantly from "fair-minded folks"... I think you implicitly meant fair-skinned folks here because surely it is possible for a fair minded person to not actually discriminate against black people in any meaningful or perceptually significant way. If it is not then how can we possibly reduce prejudice? A cloud of prejudice looms over all our heads as a part of the legacy of white supremacy, but exactly how thick and covering is this cloud? How prejudiced is the white race as a whole? How widespread or homogeneous is this prejudice?

I know prejudice exists, but you make it seem like every single black person in America experiences racism "day in - day out", and we're all to blame. I'm acutely aware that some police departments have problems with pulling over black people when they are driving expensive cars, and that many store managers will be more likely to suspect a black youth of being a shoplifter, and that there are many other examples of prejudiced interactions taking place - and that they happen every day in America - but they do not happen to every black person every day in America. The actual impact these aggressions and micro-aggressions are continuously having on the black race is certainly tangible; the impact exists, but the intensity and prevalence of this impact needs to be accurately projected when trying to assess the general question "What are the major problems, and their causes, which are currently facing the black demographic of America?".

The geography of racial prejudice in America certainly is not an even spread. The strongest argument that I can muster for the legacy of prejudice that you describe is that it exists in the minds of prejudiced individuals, and where there are higher densities of these prejudiced individuals this leads to increased racial discriminations against persons of color. I can readily accept that some police departments are downright filled with racists, some whole towns even, but in order to make this argument really stick to "America", fair minded folks like you and me must also be painted with some shade, albeit a lighter shade, of bigotry. When I entertain the idea that I'm a bigot who is too stupid to realize it, I always wind up asking whether or not the civil rights movement accomplished anything at all, and whether or not it is even possible, given decades of exposure to the relevant progressive moral teachings, to accomplish anything at all toward reducing racial discrimination in a multi-racial society. I cannot buy into that. All we need to do in today's world is to point out racist discrimination when and where it occurs, and social or legal sanctions levied against prejudiced individuals, businesses, and police forces will continue to address racial prejudice as I believe it has been doing, with great success, for a few decades.

When it comes blacks getting pulled over by police way more often for driving expensive cars (under suspicion of having stolen it), yes it is prejudiced discrimination on the part of the police; it's not fair to make a presumption of guilt based on race ("presumption of guilt" is unlawful entirely). But there's an underlying problem that is totally missed when we think to ourselves "Ahh, these police who pull over blacks more often are simply racists". It's an uncomfortable reality that vehicle theft is a crime very prevalent in black communities. Cops in certain areas are actually arresting blacks for auto theft way more often because they happen to be committing vehicle theft much more often. The police then go on and allow these experiences to affect their decision and judgment of who to randomly (a questionable act in and of itself) pull over, and wrongfully so. It's in my view not actually a legacy of racism that makes some police more likely to pull over blacks, it's the result of ongoing stereotyping caused by disproportionate vehicle theft rates in the black community. That is a much more significant and direct causal factor in giving rise to this ongoing discrimination than is our historically inherited prejudices. That is to say, this prejudice some police departments exhibit is not caused by history; it is learned contemporarily. The factors which lead to increased rates of car theft committed by blacks are very likely many of the same factors which lead to very disproportionate crime of many kinds, including black on black murder, which to me represents the most severe effect of the underlying causes.

Police reform is certainly something I support, but no matter how much police reform we attempt the same problems will continue to persist in high degrees. We also need economic and political reform (political reform if only to accompany the economic reform) to more directly address the prevalence of crime itself in black communities. We need judicial and punitive reform to not only better decide what we lock people up for, but also how we lock them up, and whether or not prison itself is about "punishment and deterrence" or "reform". We need to look for and confront each and every reality that comes to bear on why many black (and de-facto, why many white) communities are trapped in cycles of poverty and crime. Fair minded folks being unaware of their own prejudices in today's world is but one drop in that massive and complex causal bucket. Acknowledging my white privilege is neither going to make actual bigots less bigoted, nor address the factors that see young black men disproportionately resorting to lives of crime and the resultant incarceration, being shot and killed by the police, and being shot and killed by each-other in massively higher numbers.

Edit: The wider discussion at hand may or may not warrant a separate thread.

There's really a lot going on with the BLM movement...

One part of the movement is the reactionary protests to police killings of black civilians. This is the origin and core of the movement, and ideologically speaking it's only inherent message is "state killing of civilians is bad, with the awareness that blacks are being subjected to it way more often than any other race", which is quite unassailable, morally speaking. It's also in my view the main phenomenon which renews and expands BLM activism on the whole as a sustaining force. It is a very emotionally evocative entry point into the movement. When we see video of police literally murdering an unarmed black man, the thought "There is a serious problem." rightfully passes through our minds, but I think our extreme moral disgust over what we just witnessed primes us to have emotion and bias cloud, oversimplify, or otherwise inhibit our attempt at understanding the issue with sufficient depth and clarity.

Sometimes protests are more organized and leaders with actual formed messages or demands emerge, and while they all seem to have fallen under the moniker of "#BlackLivesMatter", they can have somewhat different standards, messages, and approaches. This is where a major layer of diversification and simplification occurs. The emergence of specific slogans and chants is one obvious example that shows diversity in the movement. "Hands up, don't shoot" is one that cuts very close to the real issue of police practices when interacting with civilians, as well as civilian behavior when interacting with police; I could not come up with a better slogan. ""We have nothing to lose but our chains" has seemingly become quite popular among university crowds, and I find it fascinating. The interesting history of this phrase is somewhat irrelevant to how it is wielded and the point I'm making, but originally it was a popularized English interpretation of a slogan from the communist manifesto "Workers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!". Re-coined with modern meaning by Assata Shakur, a polarizing figure to say the least, it is a part of a larger quote that is chanted repeatedly and with frequency by protest groups, and also repeated as a kind of oath at some speaking events. It strikes me that the picture of America that this paints is figuratively no different than institutionalized slavery in the southern U.S states circa 1830. There's an inherent contradiction to being a university student and having nothing to lose but chains, but that aside, this slogan is exceptionally emotionally evocative, and it also stokes racial resentment/guilt. The final slogan I'll use as an example to show this diversity has seen much less actual usage than the others I've mentioned, which I'm grateful for, because it's terrible and represents the worst of and a minority of the BLM protestors. It speaks for itself: "Pigs in a blanket, fry em like bacon"...

The most organized leaders in the BLM movement are well connected with campus groups, are very savvy with social media, and have been able to reach may traditional media platforms such as news and talk show interviews. These leaders are typically very intelligent and in my opinion very moral people. They distance themselves and the BLM movement as a whole away from any rhetoric that might call for violence, but the grassroots and reactionary nature of some BLM protests on the ground unfortunately renders them somewhat less of a governing force than might be ideal. Of these most organized and well connected leaders, most of them subscribe to the same school of thought when it comes to viewing inequality in the west. In many social science departments of many western universities, they now teach that the west is fundamentally patriarchal, and fundamentally white supremacist. Racism is "power + privilege". They accept it as a brute fact that whites have all the power and all the privilege in the west, making all white people racist. It's hard to believe that this comes out of actual university curriculum, but it's becoming more and more evident. We're being told that as white men we're unaware of the naturally ingrained systems of oppression, which can be complex and subtle, that benefit us at the expense of women, of people color, even more so at the expense of women of color (and so on with a litany of possible identities which might entail facing any sort of obstacle in life which white men might not face). "Intersectionality" they call it, which is in itself worthy of it's own discussion.

In some ways, any would be leader of the BLM movement is going to somehow have to put the "black" in "#BlackLivesMatter". It is very difficult to do this without amplifying a racial lens, but my own approach would be to address the issue of police use of force without focusing on racism or race as a fundamental causative factor behind the problem, and to also address the larger issue facing the black community, which leads to many of the events which spark BLM protests, which is crime in and of itself in black communities. The discussion must necessarily involve economics, politics and culture, and while it runs the risk of being obfuscated by likewise presuming that the economic, political, and cultural realities facing many black communities are symptoms of that larger white supremacist system contemporary schools of thought point to, it could still bare fruit. In summation, the BLM rhetoric at large is not outwardly "us against them", it is rather an idea lurks just under it's surface, and because of lost complexity and some inherently evocative underpinnings, it's now beginning to rear it's ugly head.

"Perhaps I am not abreast of the organizations political intentions.

It was my understanding, not so long ago, that the primary political intent of the movement was promote more oversight of law enforcement...particularly surrounding cases of officers killing the unarmed.

If they have become a movement seeking only to benefit black people and are unconcerned with other races that would be a disappointing development that would be more harm than benefit because it would only serve to further divide people along racial lines"

-----
The BLM movement has become so large and diversified that it's really not possible to say whether it is distinctly more inclusive or distinctly more exclusive in terms of race and solutions to the problems the BLM movement is protesting. I really am hesitant to give specific examples because any number of anecdotes I could bring up which show this disturbing racial exclusivity could also be done showing examples of inclusive BLM protests and rhetoric. I am however fairly convinced that certain positions currently gaining traction within the movement (or have gained traction in the previous years) are having a very tangible impact in furthering real and perceived racial divides.

Here are some clippings from a 2004 work called "Chronic Disparity: Strong and Pervasive Evidence of Racial Inequalities: POVERTY OUTCOMES" produced for a "Race and Public Policy conference" out of UC Berkeley. Most of the document is spent (re)defining terms which amounts to to an ideological world view given the suppositions contained in many of their proposed definitions:

"

• "RACISM: Racism is race prejudice plus power. (Definition, by People’s Institute. I
  use “white supremacy” as a synonym for racism.)"
• " WHITE PRIVILEGE: A privilege is a right, favor, advantage, immunity, specially granted to one individual or group, and withheld from another. "
• "A RACIST: A racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality. By this definition, people of color cannot be racists, because as peoples within the U.S. system, they do not have the power to back up their prejudices, hostilities or acts of discrimination. (This does not deny the existence of such prejudices, hostilities, acts of rage or discrimination.) "
• "REVERSE RACISM: A term created and used by white people to deny their white privilege. Those in denial use the term reverse racism to refer to hostile behavior by people of color toward whites, and to affirmative action policies, which allegedly give ‘preferential treatment’ to people of color over whites. In the U.S., there is no such thing as “reverse racism.”. "

To me it seems very rational that if the above definitions can aptly be applied to the west then severe moral repulsion is warranted. When BLM leaders bring up things like wealth redistribution (in some form) to address poverty it will inexorably take the form of "reparations" (i.e, wealth being redistributed specifically and only toward blacks (as opposed to impoverished people of all races)). When they talk about addressing necessary cultural changes, it will likewise inexorably take the form of "the racist white oppressors need to change and fix the problem, not people of color".

So with two of perhaps the most important avenues for change made in-navigable by the unhealthy focus on race in trying to explain poverty and crime, the third relevant remaining avenue for change, which is more police oversight, is now at risk of being marred by a similar strategy of blaming white supremacy. The disproportionate number of blacks subjected to police violence understood through the lens of the above definitions stirs repulsion and resentment to the point that nobody seems to be bothering with the specifics of any actual litigation or comprehensive reform strategies. The BLM movement lacks organized direction and specific objectives and instead broadly seeks justice. But unless their ideas and protest objectives on the ground align with what is rationally or actually justice, they may wind up achieving a good deal of the opposite.

I think there is a great deal of truth to the points you raise.

One point in particular that I find very pertinent is the relationship between crime and poverty. Initially it's very easy for many to understand how poverty might motivate for-profit crime, but it's also very true that the more someone engages in rime, the more likely they are to get caught, and when, caught, their economic future economic success becomes even more unlikely.

Poverty leads to crime, and crime leads to poverty; it's a self reinforcing feedback loop.

On top of this, It seems that the american penal system does anything but rehabilitate those it incarcerates. The colloquialism is "con-college" (convict-college) and there's a great deal of truth to it. The supremely low standards of american prisons and jails create an environment bereft of the civilized morals we sent them there for supposedly lacking in the fist place. Whichever came first, the impoverished egg or the criminal chicken; it matters not. This particular cycle requires broad changes to certain economic and judicial structures seemingly inherent in american institutions in order to be interrupted.

Cultural divergence is a necessary requirement for cultural conflict to emerge in the first place, and it also stands to reason that it would be the minority culture usually being at risk, but if we take asian american culture as an example, they are a somewhat divergent minority group which happens to be in the best economic position on average, performs the best in school, commits the least crime, and have the lowest chance of an interaction with the police involving violence. It seems difficult to know what might be a useful or detrimental cultural difference. With that said, there are blatant aspects of hip-hop culture, which is heavily associated with black culture in some ways, which do nothing but support detrimental attitudes and outright criminal behavior. Free speech and all that, I support their right to say whatever they want in their songs, I even like some of them, but it seems quite obvious to me that this is something which is contributing to that on-going feedback loop between crime and poverty, and represents just one of the many causal factors that prevent it from being extinguished.

The third issue I find intriguing is for somewhat tangential reasons: state welfare. In some ways I think that welfare programs, while necessary for many reasons, can also in some ways be a hindrance. Wealth accumulation generally does not occur when people are the beneficiaries of welfare programs. It's not that I think welfare programs are necessarily bad, it's just that if people stuck on welfare ever want to have better living standards, either welfare benefits need to be massively increased or currently impoverished families/individuals need to get the opportunity to generate their own income. When I was a kid I was grateful for food stamps, food banks, thrift/charity bins, and welfare checks, but the amount of food we could get was not as nourishing as it could have been and the clothes could have made me stand out a fair bit less. My overall "privilege" was lacking, shall we say. Not that I didn't benefit from it, it was all there was at the time for a single mother of two, but it was not enough to escape poverty, and the welfare system itself.

This time last year I would have agreed with you that the BLM movement isn't specifically about race or racism, even despite the race based slogan that is it's moniker. As time has gone by and the movement has grown it has also become more diverse. There are people in the BLM movement who would agree with you and say All Lives Matter, this is an issue about police behavior not race (I am one of them I guess), but this nuance has since been widely rebuked. I don't watch a whole lot of fox, but from just about every media outlet I expose myself to I'm seeing more and more the same over-simplified narrative: It's racist white people's fault, this is a problem facing blacks

This gets into the claim that race based systematic or systemic oppression is still a large causative force in the west. However to me they are invisible systems and their structures covert, perhaps because of my necessarily inherent white privelage, as some would argue.

Every single police officer guilty of an "unjustified killing" (contains the possible euphemism "justified killing") should be de-badged and prosecuted to a perhaps even fuller legal extent than we would use to prosecute a civilian for a similar crime.

It's never O.K, but it is an inevitable occurrence. We can work to reduce the occurrence, but we are never going to get rid of it entirely in the foreseeable future.

The point that I would most like to have taken away from this thread is that a great deal more can be done to preserve black lives by examining the economic and cultural realities currently facing black communities which is leading to a host of deleterious behaviors rather than focusing on only part of the problem (police procedures). Being more likely to resist arrest or brandish a gun against police are some examples of what I would call possible deleterious behaviors that might be caused by economic, cultural, and environmental circumstances.

Almost nobody, including myself, wants to bring up the fact that the magnitude of the problem of police killing unarmed civilians is utterly dwarfed by the problem of black on black homicide. It might seem like I'm trying to make it seem like police behavior is not a problem, but all I really want to do is point out that this is a problem too, and a highly related and interconnected one at that. We need to make room, the BLM movement needs to make room, for these questions.

Howdy Mongrel! Feels great to be back on a living network with familiar faces! (well, familiar pixels :) ).

Regarding the oddity of the findings you point out:

You're right that it is an odd statistic, all other things being equal we might presume that if police are using some force more often on blacks that should lead to a disparity of lethal force being used on blacks because of escalation, but this might not be the case for several possible reasons.

Firstly, the actual decision making process that police undergo when deciding to use lethal force might be very different than how they decide whether or not to use non-lethal force. Initiating non-lethal force itself might actually render lethal-force a less likely outcome (I.E, the civilian gets restrained before the police decide to use lethal-force). It could also be that police take the use of lethal force very seriously compared to non-lethal force and thus take the decision more seriously and without bias.

Another thing to consider is that the study did not exactly demonstrate race as a definitive factor in the use of non-lethal force in the same way that it demonstrated race is not a factor on the use of lethal force. It was able to show that if you twist a bunch of control knobs you can demonstrate that in the same situations whites and blacks have the same chances of getting shot or killed by police. Regarding non-lethal force, they demonstrated that most of the racial disparity can be reduced by controlling for circumstances, but failed to discover the factors (if they exist) for a final 50% increased risk disparity in the use of non-lethal violence. That 50% could be race, or it could be largely due to yet unexamined environmental/behavioral/circumstantial factors.

Regarding the point you bring up about the issue of police killing unarmed civilians in the first place and not being held accountable, I'm not entirely convinced It's as prevalent an occurrence as we are lead to believe. Granted, police operating procedures seem to me too aggressive and the judicial process america uses for police seems extra-non-transparent. I have been supporting police reform for many years now but you must understand that my motivation for writing this thread is not the intent of broadly defending the police.

There's a cultural phenonemon taking place right now, I mentioned it in my reply on PF (threads don't update properly anymore, the place is basically garbage now, so I'll probably be living here from now on :) ). Racism has been redefined to mean "systems of oppression" and this definition has been broadly applied to the west. People are advocating for the checking of white privilege and presuming thatevery racial disparity that exists is perpetuated entirely thanks to on-going systemic racist oppression by the privileged white race who reaps constant benefit from it at the expense of all minorities.. The Black Lives Matter movement is rallying around the central idea that the issue is that blacks are being specifically targeted for death by a racist police force.

The extent to which crime/circumstance/behavior in and of itself (caused by things like poverty) is responsible for the increased rates (broad statistics) at which blacks are subjected to police violence of any kind, is the extent to which addressing the issue as "predominantly caused by racist systems of oppression" will fail to actually instigate any change in these disparities. Not only does the issue obscure the causal reality behind the events which have motivated contemporary protests, it stokes a good deal of resentment and tension toward the white race as a whole, let alone white police officers. Current events shock me to say the least. Writing about this topic feels difficult and tedious to me; I don't enjoy it. I'm motivated to do so however because I'm afraid of the detrimental impact that the claim this thread examines is having on the world.

What if we try to persuade the killer to kill themselves if we cannot dissuade them to cease killing others? That would work right?

Alternatively we could attempt to occupy their time by whatever means...

Each comment on the daily 20 pages of comments could be a cleverly crafted hook designed to grab any readers attention and pull them into a very time-consuming affair of some kind.

For instance, we could begin by cleverly agreeing with them and planting suggestions that ancient samurai style sword-play is the ultimate method of killing.

We could then waste a shit ton of their time by bombarding them with books and documentaries on the samurai fighting style, and even possibly get them into the actual philosophical teachings of the ancient samurai.

After we have wasted months of their time, thus saving many lives, we can take it even further by coercing them into believing that they must commit seppuku (hara-kiri) for some arbitrary reason, thus finally concluding the dilemma proposed by the OP.

Cheers!