Ferguson

punk d:
His problem - imo - is he can't see outside himself. We all have biases but we need to be willing to first recognize them and then second mentally allow ourselves the possibility that we're wrong.
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Please let me know when you figure out how that can be accomplished.

People are stupid as hell. :)

Edit: I include myself in that blunt assessment as well, fwiw.
 
punk d:
I have a friend whom other friends of mine consider a straight up racist. This friend in fact said to me "your people perpetuate" the images that flash across the screen.

His problem - imo - is he can't see outside himself. We all have biases but we need to be willing to first recognize them and then second mentally allow ourselves the possibility that we're wrong.

I actually wrote about how we can end racism. [Shameless Plug] - you can read about it here:

http://www.golocalprov.com/news/don-roach-were-still-ignorant-on-race
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That was a very good article punk!
 
I participated in a (peaceful) "Black Lives Matter" protest, and not because of Wilson, Brown, or any other individual. I was participating because like so many other elements of our society and government, our police system discriminates against black people to a truly shameful degree. (And this isn't just my opinion - this is verifiable with cold, hard, statistics.)

The debates resulting from Ferguson, Staten Island, and now Baltimore have been far too focused on the individual cases. Instead of quibbling about what one man or cop did or did not do, we should be talking about the disgrace of our country's criminal justice as a whole.

And more than that, we should be talking about solutions. Decriminalizing low level drug offenses would be a major start. (And more broadly, reframing drug issues as public health issues, not criminal justice issues.) It is absolutely abhorrent that one out of every three black men can expect to go to prison in their lifetime, to pick one particularly damning statistic (although really, I had My Webpageso many to choose from.) We need to be talking about this - not about the particulars of any one particular incident.

(And I haven't even touched on police brutality yet!)
 
Oilgarchy:
The debates resulting from Ferguson, Staten Island, and now Baltimore have been far too focused on the individual cases. Instead of quibbling about what one man or cop did or did not do, we should be talking about the disgrace of our country's criminal justice as a whole.
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While that does seem like a smart thing to focus on the reality has to be looked at. Americans hate to focus on institutions and their function. What they love and what they can get behind is those individual cases. It was those small thing that build many foundations, everything from the gay rights and civil rights movements to the revolution. The Gay rights movement was largely started on the backs of one police raid that went bad in New York. Civil rights was largely built upon individual cases like Rosa Parks and etc. The revolution was largely organized on individual instances of violence by british troops and capture of american ships.

In all reality it is these singular instances that lead to the biggest change by catalyzing people wanting to actual act and what forces people to look at the big picture problems.
 
Democratic Donkeys:
If only human beings had the tendency to be sympathetic and aware of statistical examples, instead of the individual! Alas! What a world that would be.
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Eh its a give and take. Because making people more sympathetic to the statistic means they are less sympathetic to the individual. And that is not necessarily a good thing. I mean look at it this way, statistics are not kept on everything. It has been accused that there are too many officer involved shootings, but there is absolutely NO statistics in the US over that. Police specially do not track that one fact on any level (Maybe 2% of local police departments do and you have to specifically contact them and request the information) so the only way to rally around that is through individual incidents.

There needs to be a middle ground between the statistic and individual. But humans are wired to feel sympathy to the individual cases and not the statistic.
 
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