The Nature of Racism in America

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by Bowser, Oct 19, 2016.

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  1. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

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    I've been following the issue lately and do have my own opinions. There have been some terms floating around that really need to be addressed: Systemic Racism, Subconscious Bias, and White Privilege. With the BLM movement taking a platform in recent discussions, I'm curious what people here might be thinking on the topic.
     
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  3. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Would you care to offer your actual thoughts, this time? See, the only concern I have about this discussion, Bowser, is that it will go like your rape advocacy "rape culture" thread, in which you posited an inquiry from ignorance, ignored other people's answers, and then set about answering your own question in a morbidly farcical way suggesting the only information you could find about the proposition of rape culture came from objectors.

    Tulia, however, provides an example of all three. There is no way a drug-addicted white cop with a history of stealing from employers, offering no corroborating evidence and even no drugs because he apparently used them all up, should be able to compel mass arrests orphaning one fifth of a town's black children. Tell me a black cop could do to white people in Texas what happened in Tulia↱.

    Systemic racism is generally a product of racial privilege, in our question white privilege and supremacist tendencies always a key component of the American heritage result in basically racist outcomes. The Southern Strategy brought us the War on Drugs, and it had its intended effect in black communities. When sixty-five percent of your crack users are white and ninety-four percent of your convicts black, there seems an obvious question. That sort of thing.

    A white guy with a rifle threatening to kill you is less dangerous, apparently, than an unarmed black man with his back to you as he walks away. Sentencing disparity. Just as consistent as our society's prejudice against female speakers and presenters is our society's prejudicial inflation of the danger of dark skin. It's one thing to say we have to let police officers protect themselves, but when skin color itself is a valid criterion of danger, this is a systemic problem. Indeed, it is one of the most functionally literal examples of systemic racism we don't even need to look for since it's sitting right there in front of us like a corpse left in the street while police justify themselves.

    So, yeah, just checking. What are your opinions? And why do you need to withhold them at the outset?
     
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  5. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    All useful terms. Unconscious or subconscious bias is a racial prejudice that has been conditioned, and effects conscious behavior. This can apply to members of any racial subgroup. Systemic racism is a system such as the prison-industrial complex, where prison labor generates income, which corrupts politicians into being tougher on "crime" and police into supporting a harder interpretation of the law (if you aren't white) in order to create more cheap labor, in effect arresting minorities for nothing and selling their labor like slaves. This was common after the civil war and continues in some form even today. White privilege is the advantages you didn't even know you had due to your white identity. For instance, white sounding names get more callbacks from potential employers than black sounding names.
     
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  7. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

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    My opinion is that the problem with racism is actually black culture. If you grow up in an environment that constantly tells you that some shadowy force will hold you down in life, there isn't much incentive to try.
    If you believe the statistics involving black crime are skewed by racism, and have no weight on the issue, that's your opinion. I believe they speak quite clearly on the issue regarding the high rate of incarceration. I don't believe it reflects so much racism as it does black culture.
    Unconscious bias? I suppose it's possible, but what are you going to do about it? I suppose we can just assume we're all racist because, hey, we're white.
    White privilege? My view is that we have a system of equal opportunity, not equal outcome. It applies to everyone. Nobody is denied the right to pursue happiness.
     
  8. Daecon Kiwi fruit Valued Senior Member

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    I don't think Bowser's bias is unconscious...
     
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  9. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

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    Very thought provoking response, Daecon. Look, when 13% of the population is responsible for 50% of the homicides, there's a larger issue going on within that group of people. If you look at the number of fatal police shooting in relation to the number of black on black deaths, it's easy to see where the real danger sits. Racism isn't the underlying cause of their problems, it's cultural. Just claiming there is racism doesn't fix anything, and I would argue that it does more harm than good.

    https://plus.google.com/u/0/ BarackObama/posts
     
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  10. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    Racism is natural in us human .
    Jesus give us the commandment to overcome Racism , ( love thy fellow man as yourself ) Happen to be is very difficult get it out of our nature .
     
  11. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

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    I'm not saying that racism doesn't exist. My point is it has become the default excuse for everything that has gone wrong within the black community. Also, when elected officials play on that idea, they help create more division in the larger community.
     
  12. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    Why would God create racist creatures?
     
  13. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    Why not pick some examples of where there is racism and focus on improving that?
     
  14. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    You mean if blacks were just like whites, there wouldn't be racism? Likely true, but the same is true of you - if you didn't obey the edicts of white culture, and instead adopted the culture of anyone you were in conflict with, there wouldn't be racism either. Should you be required to change?
    And if you grow up in an environment where you are told constantly that blacks are likely to be criminals, you'll start to believe that.
    No, it doesn't. When there is a systematic bias against blacks, then opportunity is not equal. We've come a long way since the 1950's but we're not there yet.
     
  15. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

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    That would be a good way to start, but what I'm seeing is the manufacturing of racist intent. Do you really believe that the police are racist by default? Is every incident of a cop shooting a black racially motivated? They have become the KKK within a short time.
     
  16. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    It's not every case but it's too many cases. The cops have too much power and discretion and that is what is dangerous. It simply plays out with worse results in the black community because no one cares.

    Let's bring back the "caring".

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  17. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Recycling old talking points, Bowser?

    When you treat people poorly over an extended period, these things do happen.

    A version from fantasy fiction:

    ...Walking through the filth in the streets made me want to retch, but I hid it. Anyway, we all know Easterners are filthy, right? Look at how they live. Never mind that they can't use sorcery to keep their neighborhoods clean the way Dragaerans do. If they want to use sorcery, they can become citizens of the Empire by moving into the country and becoming Teckla, or buying titles in the Jhereg. Don't want to be serfs? They're stubborn, too, aren't they? Don't have the money to buy titles? Of course not! Who'd give them a good job, seeing how filthy they are?

    ―Steven Brust

    Like I said of the War on Drugs: "When sixty-five percent of your crack users are white and ninety-four percent of your convicts black, there seems an obvious question. That sort of thing."

    I'll digress for a moment to tell you a joke that isn't funny. Every once in a while I have these moments with my age peers, or sometimes people who are a bit older than me. That is to say, I can't always account for people who are fifteen years younger than me and don't remember politics before Bill Clinton. But every once in a while I run into people who are my age or older and apparently don't remember the history of their lifetimes. But it's always a bit morbid when I encounter age peers who just don't remember basic ideas.

    I know people my age who claim they never heard the phrase "women's lib". I also know people who claim they never heard rape jokes. The bit with locker room talk is kind of interesting, these days. I want you to imagine someone between my age and yours, and, I don't know, they want to make a point, so you say something like, "What about the Cold War?"

    In fact, great; think of it that way. There's this weird thing going on with Republicans right now where they are preparing to delegitimize Hillary Clinton's presidency much as they've spent the time claiming Barack Obama isn't really president because he was born in Kenya, or whatever. It's uncertain quite how this one goes, but Hugh Hewitt just handed me a piece by speaking a line I'd halfway been waiting for. (The other half―the realistic half―forgot for long enough the simple fact that Mr. Hewitt is a conservative, and thus was not expecting him or anyone else to come right out and say it.) But before Hugh Hewitt went on msnbc and seems to have complained that Democrats nominated the Republican nominee―still waiting for the footage and transcript, but the rewind test made it clear―there was this guy named Shawn Steel. He's a member of the Republican National Committee, and he just sent an email to Politico explaining, "Should Hillary get 'elected' she is immediately delegitimized", which, in turn, is what it is, except the committeeman from California thinks this is true because he apparently believes the banks are part of a "massive Left Wing Conspiracy".

    Think about that for a minute: A Republican says the banks are in with the Communists.

    No, seriously, so much for the Cold War, eh?

    At any rate, I think the old joke is that David Duke called and wants his talking points back. This, however, is the year of the Trump, so who knows, the reboot is that maybe there's a milestone edition in print.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Brust, Steven. Yendi. New York: Ace, 1984.

    Cheney, Kyle. "RNC members agree with Trump: It's rigged". Politico. 18 October 2016. Politico.com. 19 October 2016. http://politi.co/2ekGhfv
     
  18. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

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    A culture of violence and crime? No, I wouldn't want to be part of that culture.

    We have statistics that show there is a problem in that community. If you want to ignore them, that's your choice. I don't believe it speaks for all blacks, and I believe many work hard to escape that environment.

    But I see no evidence of systematic bias. It's just an assumption. Tiassa points at the justice system, I point at crime statistics.
     
  19. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

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    That's the nature of their job. The guy who entered my house nearly went down for reaching behind his back.

    In 2015 the police shot 494 whites and 258 blacks. I need to ask, what would motivate a person to become a police officer?

    That's a nice sentiment, but it would seem that the answers are not so simple.
     
  20. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

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    They are their worst enemy, Tiassa. They are attacking the same people who try to hold their community together--the police.
     
  21. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    It is unreliable, at best, to omit history in order to complain about its results.

    On edit: Neither is labeling "them" that way. Your generalization about people of color is the worst sort of uneducated racism.
     
  22. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    That's my point, the answer isn't as simple as "black people commit crime" and therefore get shot.

    You're statistics show how many whites vs blacks got shot. You didn't mention the percentage of the population that is white vs black.

    I'm not saying that most police are out of control and are racists. I'm saying that you probably wouldn't want to be an educated black man in America because you would receive different treatment in many cases from the police.

    In some communities they seem to shot first and ask questions later. Everyone can have a bad day but it's worse when that person is carrying a gun.
     
  23. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

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    If a community has a higher rate of crime, I would think there would be more police involvement in that community. But I think the issue is more than just noting crime statistics. Another consideration should also be the family dynamics...
    http://newsone.com/1195075/children-single-parents-u-s-american/

    I would need show the statistics concerning white crime in contrast to black crime in proportion to the two populations. If you take the time, I'm certain you can find the statistics yourself

    I think a black who has been shot in the street would receive the same response as would a white. The police would investigate, they would call emergency services if he was still alive, etc. What they confront while in the "hood" is a reluctance of the community to cooperate. Would a black receive disproportionate attention from the police simply because they are black? I think it would depend on the circumstances. I think it more likely in a community where crime is rampant.

    That sounds more like a generalization. But assuming that is true, would the level of personal danger for the officer explain a tendency towards pulling the gun? The police do value their lives.

    What is your solution? Disarm the police? Maybe BLM has the solution, which is reduce the number of police officers. Would that serve the community better? In a way that's already happening. There's evidence that the police are becoming more reluctant to police the black community, because the possibility of being labeled a "racist" is becoming a real issue.

    This is the tragedy of the whole racism controversy of late. In the long run, I believe it will work against the black community rather than do any good.

    NOTE: I understand there are 5 other posts that I haven't addressed. I apologize. It's like 2:30 in the morning and I need to hit the sack. If I find time I will try to reply.
     
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