Yep, we've already established that in some cases some types of reform can be achieved through peaceful means, we're talking about the cases and reform types where peaceful means seem to have failed in a timescale those suffering from the injustice feel is no longer reasonable to ask them to wait. — Isaac

I'm sure there's more you'd like to change about the US outside the scope of BLM. Hell, plenty of people think the tax code is unfair are we going to throw rocks through windows and assault business owners until that's fixed? Also, what is an appropriate timescale? If everyone followed your idea, we'd just be in a constant state of rioting because everyone has complaints about the law and the government.

No, it's not about sidetracking to some other issue. It's fundamental to your argument that the properties and livelihoods being damaged in the riots are both innocent and a net loss to the community. — Isaac

Lets back track.

I presented a claim which was something along the lines of 'Intentionally destroying innocent local businesses is evil.' I didn't present much of an argument for it... I was just asking you whether you agree or disagree. Lets just start there. You sometimes argue against points which I haven't really made.

I don't think I do need to look it up, because it's probably Latin.

It's basically a conclusion which doesn't logically follow from the premises.

the consequences of rioting are either trivial (in the case of a bit of bystander property damage)

It amazes me how destroying someone's livelihood and in some cases personal business that they've saved up for their entire life is "trivial." It's only trivial to you because you have no skin in the game. If it was your business it probably wouldn't be trivial.

You're wanting to take that away from them on the ground that a few people might have to find another job. — Isaac

You can be as angry as you want, it's fine. Just because I'm angry doesn't condone me punching you or destroying your business. Honestly, you learn this at like 5 years old. If you had your own business in one of those streets would you be okay with people destroying it? Honest question - they're just angry about racial injustice, who are you to deny them that expression? Would you let them destroy your home? It's just property, you can get a new one... maybe.

One can always use 'so far' as an excuse. It's a non sequitur because it's unfalsifiable. — Isaac

I think you need to look up the meaning of non-sequitur.

In any case, there already have been these transitions and reforms without massive riots so the idea that peaceful means don't accomplish anything is just wrong. If you want to extend things even further boycotts are a legitimate method. There are steps between peaceful, non-violent protest and indiscriminate destruction of local businesses.

I've literally just detailed exactly what they've done wrong, it's several thousand times greater loss of legally owed earnings than burning down the store lost. — Isaac

Ok but you're sidetracking the argument. You asked me what my position was and I basically said "X" - now you're like "Well what about A-Z? but you're not taking issue with X. All I'm going for here is X. We can talk about A-Z another time.

Right, I'm not familiar with the history there, but presuming you're right, at the very least we can say that sometimes peaceful means work and sometimes they don't. The question is what to do when they don't. — Isaac

All you can say is that peaceful means have have not worked so far. What are even the demands exactly? I have no idea what dismantling systemic racism in the entire US actually means. Give us concrete proposals.

Causing people some financial hardship is 'evil' is it? — Isaac

No, that's not what I said. A boycott is not inherently evil. I'm saying arbitrarily destroying local businesses that have done nothing wrong is evil. If there's just cause for the financial penalty we can have a discussion about that.

You can't just say that political lobbying doesn't work. I'm not a police expert by any means, but I know in Camden they did some reforms or in other parts of the country there have been more community-oriented approaches which were achieved through other means besides violent rioting.

And it is evil. Many Americans live paycheck to paycheck and when you destroy and loot their places of work you are effectively cutting off their livelihood.

Do you seriously think this hadn't been tried already at various points in last five years during which police brutality has just been getting worse?

Ok we're gonna break more windows and burn stuff down that'll get America on our side.

In any case, don't do evil so that good may come.

It's good that you and I can deal with both of them as separate things and maybe not have our opinion of the goals of the protests be affected by the consequences of the disturbances but most people can't.

Then that's their problem. Those people are just bad at thinking. I think it's imperative that we deal with them as separate things. No problem at all with sympathizing or supporting the protests and the message, while condemning the rioting.

So it's tactical to ignore one of them because of the importance of the other in light of the tactics of the other side.

I understand - in the media or just in everyday life if someone is paying an enormous amount of attention to only one side of the coin it's really suspect. That person probably has an agenda. I figure since we're on a philosophy forum we should be able to call a spade a spade.

OK. Why is that a problem in your view?

Because a position which doesn't distinguish between protesters and rioters places itself in the same camp as authoritarians. The US Constitution guarantees the right to protest peacefully, but authoritarians regard all challenges to the state under one banner. Protesting - in and of itself - is as American as apple pie, but rioting can be incredibly destructive and often just ends up hurting those who are most already most vulnerable.

I guess I'm more forgiving and much more of a collectivist than you to subscribe to "ultimately". What if I poke you every second all the time? Are you ultimately responsible for hitting me in the face or did I have it coming? The US had it coming especially after voting in a racist like Trump. In that respect I consider the restraint of the black community this time around rather legendary, when compared to the reaction to the ludicrous judgment in the Rodney King case in 1992.

I feel like a more apt comparison would be if you kept poking me and then I eventually lashed out and punched Baden. Destroying a mom & pop corner shop or a sporting goods store is not "punching up" or "fighting the system" - if anything, it emboldens the far right and worries the centrists. Take to the polls or raise money for your candidates. Talk to local community leaders who have connections with the police force. By destroying local communities the riots are placing more people in poverty and it takes years for a community to recover.

On the subject of responsibility I just think its important for someone to take ownership of themselves and their actions. If we deny this we basically take away their personhood. In other words, in my mind you're basically treating them like a child who is not responsible for his actions. I understand that there's plenty of injustice that goes around and everyone's been damaged or hurt, but how the individual handles this is a direct reflection on their character and maturity. In fact, I'd say how a person deals with injustice/pain is probably the most defining aspect of their character.

Is it really important to know who lit up what building or is it important to understand the social and civil unrest leading up to these sorts of disturbances? I'm in favour of the latter.

I don't understand why it's an "either/or" scenario... why can't we find both important? I understand you might not care about a building being set on fire but you'd probably care if it was your workplace.

Second, I'm not convinced a hard distinction can be made between protesters and rioters, which makes the effort futile - leading to endless discussions. — Benkei

The rioters are the violent ones. It's concerning that you don't seem to draw much of a distinction between people who peacefully protest and those who destroy and loot local businesses.

Protests and riots are symptoms, say, emergent properties of the system. — Benkei

That's fine and we can discuss that, but we shouldn't ignore the other side of the coin which is that people are moral agents who are capable of making decisions and possess moral autonomy. People are ultimately responsible for their actions even if the cards have never been in their favor.

I think calling people, who are by far mostly peaceful protesters, "rioters", is harmful to any possible progress because to many it would invalidate the grievances of the protesters (because, unfortunately, poisoning the well is totally effective as a rhetorical device and affecting public opinion, even if it's a fallacy).

We need to make a sharp distinction between protesters and rioters. I have no problem with protesters. I am not calling peaceful protesters rioters, I am calling those who destroy businesses and property and assault business owners in the name of this cause "rioters."

I disagree that condemning the rioters invalidates the grievances of the protesters. I hope you agree that just because someone supports X, doesn't mean that they are condoned to achieve X at virtually any cost.

I'll call that collateral damage and insist that it doesn't affect the righteousness of the cause being pursued, much as, when a bomb is dropped on a strategic bridge, we don't care about the loss of life of non-combatants.

I can tell you that as someone in the Air Force, we do care about collateral damage. Even if we were targeting bin laden himself (I know he's dead) we don't have a blank cheque to, say, destroy a city in order to kill him. There's a serious discussion to be had over how much collateral damage is permissible, but no one is saying that everything is acceptable in the name of achieving an objective or that the loss of life from collateral damage doesn't matter.

In any case in this scenario we're talking about the actions of individuals, not potentially imprecise bombs or possibly faulty intel being dropped on an enemy. Collateral damage implies a degree of inevitability, but we need to be seriously careful about this whether we're talking about an actual war or social change. Reasonable people agree with fighting Hitler, but disagree with some of the bombing runs - say, Dresden. Be careful in the name of fighting a monster that you don't become one yourself. This is always one of the dangers of war.

If things don't materially change so that US society becomes more just because the political institutions are either a) incapable or b) unwilling to affect change, then riots definitely become an option in my book and ethically defensible. Just more collateral damage.

I would strongly advise using other means to achieve your goals. I think rioting and destroying local private businesses is almost never excusable - even if the system is unchangeably rotten to the core. I wouldn't have excused Jews rioting in Nazi Germany and destroying German businesses even after the Nuremberg laws were passed. It just wouldn't have been the proper response on several fronts, and I say this as someone with family killed in the Holocaust. If we're talking about targeting government officials that's a different story.

Ok if you don't support the "disturbances" that's fine. Your quote did imply it though.

As to whether I'm gunning for a fight... am I just not allowed to engage people who I disagree with? Should I only respond to you to express agreement? I'm sure we'd have great discussions just going back and forth telling each other that we agree with each other.

But don't you support the riots against police brutality? It's just Americans doing their civic duty.

Violence is the continuation of politics by different means. It's a matter of dispute resolution and therefore looting and rioting can be a means, and should be if the social institutions are incapable of change when they perpetuate injustices.

Interesting how if a group of white people went out and destroyed a black owned business everyone would be upset, but if the same action were done because these white people were outraged over police brutality it's just them expressing their virtue and they the group should be praised.

I have a 10 hour video for you to watch on race. I'd like you to watch it and then respond with an 8-10 page paper properly annotated (MLA format). Until then I refuse to engage you on this topic!

I read somewhere that of the top 200 times in the 100m dash all of them are held by black men (this was a few years ago but have things really changed much?) Would you like to see the stats for the 200m? Or the 50m? I'm more than happy to go through the stats here. Just curious, is there any point where you'd like "hey, maybe there's something up here...." It's not just Jamaicans, you've got blacks from all across the world but what I believe they have in common is west african ancestry.

No, I'm not going to take 50 minutes out of my day before I'm allowed to respond. What then, do I need to address every point in the video? I have 3 books on the subject in mind that you can read in the meantime.

Take a look at the top 100m sprinters in the world. They come from all over the world - not just Jamaica, but also the US, Canada, Africa, even Great Britain and France. It's actually a relatively diverse group from various cultures.

Do you know what they all have in common though? I shouldn't even have to say this because you already know.

By all means, lets look at the list for the 200m record holders or 400m record holders.

Skin color is just another type of variation within the human genome. Racism is a category error where one's skin color is inferred to have a casual relationship with some other characteristic where it doesn't - like one's performance on the job or on the track, or in this case - that if you have white skin then your white skins makes you hate blacks.

I don't think it's skin color strictly speaking, but why do blacks dominate on the track? The most straight-forward, common reason relates to the quantity of fast-twitch muscle fibers and bigger bone structure we see in black athletes.

If you someone wants to deny this then I guess they'd need to argue that white runners, hispanic, runners, and asian runners apparently just don't work as hard or it's not in their culture which is stupid.

In any case it's important to look at the whole person rather than just immediately define them by a superficial aspect of them. I think that's what a lot of racism is - considering race as central to identity.

The reason blacks are faster is because they have I think on average a higher amount of fast twitch muscles. That's just the case. I'm pretty sure even sociologists accept this explanation. Of course there are plenty of slow blacks too.

Do you have an alternative explanation for why blacks dominate sprinting?

Tim, it's not just American blacks. Blacks from all over the world dominate sprinting; it's not even close. You have Jamaican blacks, Canadian blacks, doesn't matter.

In any case I agree that race is largely socially constructed and even if one race tends to be better at athletics or any particular area on average that doesn't mean that they're "superior." Genetics is not fate. The Irish, Greeks, Italians and Jews were at one point not considered "white" and to me the question of whether they really are "white" is ridiculous.

Are we on the same page as accepting the science that there is no such thing as race?

I believe race is to a large extent socially constructed, but I can't ignore biology entirely: It's no mistake that our greatest athletes and fastest sprinters are black. That relates to fast twitch muscles, but I don't think there's an immutable biological basis.

Maybe not 99.9%. Maybe 100%, Or maybe 96.2%. And some more racist than others. The point is that you have not defined racist and I have. Being something-ist seems to be as water to a fish. Why do not you take a moment and try to figure out exactly what you think racism is - maybe you will understand then that it's all not-so-simple, although aspects of it certainly should be.

Ok, I'll define it as someone who holds the belief that one race is superior to another. I'd also include in the definition the idea that racial groups inherently possess certain qualities that their members exhibit.

99.9%.

99.9% of white people are racist? Are you white? If so, then you're basically admitting that you're racist. Why should I listen to a racist on the subject of race relations? If you're not white then how do you know that virtually all whites are racist.

Damn it, ya got us. Why'd Atwater have to spill the beans? He told you not to quote him! Guess us neolibs got a lot of repair work to do now.

On a more serious note, when the other side isn't just misinformed - but also have racist intentions or motivations - productive rational discussion isn't really worth it anymore. Discussion breaks down and everyone just starts trolling each other when we give up actually trying to reason with the opposition. Good, rational discussion was the reason I came to this forum and it's a part of good philosophy. It's a shame that apparently it's no longer possible when it comes to politics or one's political philosophy.

I am tired of the systemic Asian Supremacy of the United States. We need to stop the systemic Asian supremacy immediately.

(1) You acknowledge the reality of global systemic racism.

Depends on the definition. If we say a given policy - even if not intended to be racist - can have consequences which disproportionately harm a minority group then sure. If we're talking about explicit racism then I don't think so. I'll agree that people tend to favor their in-group.

(2) You know that it's almost always white supremacist in nature,

This is a difficult discussion to have since it's extremely broad and we need to take into account social, political, and economic factors. You could have one without the other: For instance, in South Africa while whites are likely to be richer due to historical injustices today they will never attain political power as a disliked minority and they are subject to racial attacks at a fairly high rate. You also have strong affirmative action laws which systemically disfavor whites. In China a white man may be able to find a job, but I would doubt his ability to enter into positions of real power. Same with Japan. This topic is extremely complicated partially because I don't consider the world as having really even a unified system. I think it's more plausible to just to consider it a collection of countries each with its own unique culture and perspectives. To call India or China "white supremacist" seems silly to me.

Let me clarify, sure, if I was told "hey, you're about to be born somewhere in the world, would you rather be white?" I'd say yes. If I was told "hey, you're about to be born into such-and-such a country or community, would you rather be white?" My answer could very well be "no." Sometimes strongly no.

Whole world mate.

Sure, if we took the entire world in aggregate I would rather be white but if we were to confine our discussion to a given community or country you'd often choose not to be white in our pre-birth scenario.

Prosaically, the chances of being in a position of economic, social and political opportunity depend heavily on whether one is white or not.

We're talking about the US, I take it? In other countries I take it we could talk about black or Asian privilege? Did you know that Asians actually have higher median household incomes than whites in the "white supremacist" United States?

There's no plan! It's all been a happy accident.

Ok great, we're on the same page now. If there is such a plot then we live in a horribly disgusting racist state. Or maybe it's just the police department... or does the policy go higher? In any case you being able to recognize this plot indicates an enormous degree of insight that I just haven't attained yet.

Disproportionate murder of black people by police or just in general? Blacks in the US disproportionately commit murder, and when they do murder they disproportionately murder other black people. If a given group commits a greater share of the crime in a country then you'd expect them to have disproportionate contact with the police.

We could still have a problem here - it's hard to get clean statistics - but we're leagues away from the holocaust unless you believe that there is a universal covert plan in police departments to just murder black people. Is this what you believe? Do police departments have secret plans to kill black men?

Ok.

When the US has explicit policy forcing black people into ghettos or encourages the boycott or destruction of black owned businesses you let me know and I'll join up with you.

Are you familiar with the Wannsee conference? Are you familiar with the official racial policies of Nazi Germany? They didn't even try to hide it.

White men get lynched by state apparatuses on a regular basis as well. Cops must hate white people.

I'm willing to accept the disproportionate murder or Jews but certainly not the systemic murder of Jews. Don't make everything about race.

The way Jews were treated in 1930s Germany is not remotely comparable to the way blacks are treated in the US currently.

Did the war save Jewish lives or cost Jewish lives? I don't think it is knowable; we only have the war happening, not the alternative. Not to mention all the other lives.

The war certainly saved Jewish lives - not just Jewish lives, but also gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled, etc. Without the war there would have been no limit to Hitler's regime - no counterforce. Hitler would have just continued unopposed into more and more countries and Europe's Jewish population would have been virtually wiped out.

This is difficult, and I urge you to caution. It was before my time that Britain declared war on Germany and plunged the world into a conflagration that cost millions of lives, mainly on the basis that "Jewish lives matter."

No, it was because the Nazis invaded Poland.

As consumerism is a recent issue, most philosophers in the past didn’t discuss much about it, at most some criticised capitalism which is the roots of consumerism.

The roots of consumerism (i.e. an obsession with purchasing and material things often as a means of status signaling) is as old as time. It's a part of human nature and we can see it in antiquity well before capitalism was remotely a thing. Capitalism just allowed people to indulge it a little better given capitalism's propensity to create and encourage wealth creation.

I wouldn't be surprised if personal experience plays a bigger role in making someone a racist than we might at first realize. Bad experiences with another group can really color someone's perspective and I don't know how many people are truly immune from this. Maybe after the first bad experience we might reason "oh well that's only one bad apple" but after two or three you could start to think "well my people would never behave this way!" and once that thought starts creeping in you're already over the hill.

Great post. Thank you for sharing your experiences.

I don't know about organic, but I think this conception of the state is an interesting one and I've been thinking about it for a while. I was originally just tempted to view it as a collection of individuals and that does seem to be the most straight-forward approach but... I'm kind of liking the one I've been thinking of now. Feel free to poke holes or add to it.

It's interesting to think about. Imagine two tribes back in ancient times and the individuals in the tribes are generally friendly, however one of the tribes gradually starts becoming much, much more powerful than the other. Even though the individuals may still remain friendly, the relationship between the groups has likely changed. If a grievance or dispute were to arrive everyone knows who's the boss. An interest of the smaller group here may be to band together with other weaker tribes even if the leadership of the tribe doesn't recognize this and personally likes the individuals in the stronger tribe. Who knows how things will be in later years.

I understand it's people, but it's also rules and laws and judges. It's a complex system. A threat can still exist to a state even if no one in the government grasps it as a threat. A state can still have interests even if no individual mind grasps it as well.