Saeko wrote:That argument works both ways.
Sure, it does, but only one of those ends in the White House. The other one ends up being infiltrated and dissolved by the FBI. I'll let you guess which is which.
Beren wrote:Different times, different context, I'd say. It's postmodernism at its highest this time.
We'll have to find out, but this is more less constant over time, for wholly understandable reasons like not really liking to see your livelihood affected by these events. There is a term for a more extreme situation,
when a Revolution goes "too far" and people get tired of all the quick changes and either repression or disorder.Normally, I'd have thought that Biden's election would be just that. You know, let's go back to something resembling a more normal administration. But what happened this week may actually lead some to conclude that this isn't going to happen and that Biden will not deliver that, and desert him. And it may lead others to conclude Biden means that, but that it's a bad thing, that it means more of the same grievances they still have, and therefore will just remove themselves from the process of this election altogether. So this is a lose-lose situation for him.
@noemon: Just like I said I don't like American police brutality and you didn't believe me, I don't believe you either. Quid pro quo is a thing, and I can tell you didn't like it - but hey if you try to moralize using present-day Greece as a template you have to expect some scrutiny of your idea. The rest is just a mix of strawmen and ad-hominems and I won't bother addressing them, but I will tell you that so far I'd like to be able to stay in the US and what Trump represents for that prospect is not good - let alone the effects on the rest of the globe. Not everything revolves around Israel, in case you can't believe that, and even in that case I didn't appreciate his attempt to prop Netanyahu up for the elections to get him a "avoid jail card".
Donna wrote:According to Émile Durkheim society would never know the full extent of the underlying grievances if people didn't act out in violent and criminal ways. Rioting, obviously, requires a lot of nuance beyond moralistic condemnation or approval.
Sure, and there are also practical, even tactical arguments against it such as those above. Police brutality is not new and neither is the grievance around it, even if it will still inevitably happen at some point even if nobody likes it. A riot, however, is unlikely to be able to solve it for good just like it didn't in 1992, for example. Not on its own for sure, and it might even be counterproductive.
And to be able to end it, you need to understand why it happens and that
also cannot be done without the proper nuance. Saying that it's just racism isn't enough, after all, why does it keep happening even when majors are publicly antirracist, when they are African American, when the Police Superintendent is African American and even when the officers themselves are African American sometimes? I mean, going beyond the optics of having a White cop doing what he did this time around, it could have perfectly happened with a Black cop too although there wouldn't have been as much outrage for some reason. After all, it's supposedly about the institution itself, and not the individuals that are part of it.
So, what's going on exactly? My guess is that it's a mix of having an armed population makes it necessary for police to be more aggressive (you never know when could someone pull a gun on you), it's a mix of societal attitudes about African Americans (both racism and statistical discrimination, particularly when it comes to jurors since they are drawn from the citizenry and are not generally full time government employees) and overly powerful police unions (good luck governing if we strike!).
Black Lives Matter helped with the second one, and with jurors in particular, both because it has led people to reflect on these issues but just as importantly (I think) it's led to a
more widespread use of bodycams among police, allowing for a more objective monitoring of their actions (it's harder to cover up) and in the Van Dyke trial in Chicago (sorry but since that's where I live I know more about it), the jurors themselves said that part of the footage was a key determinant of their decision to issue a guilty verdict in that case. Is it possible that many of these allegations in the past went uncorroborated since the cops destroyed the evidence, something they cannot do now? Of course it is. And it's also why I think this has been gradually been on its way to be addressed, but societal changes don't happen overnight. Let alone in an issue as historically explosive as American race relations.
Wellsy wrote:To clarify is your point desegregation was a result of liberal means (ie not illiberal struggle) and as such didn’t require civil struggle
Or
That that it was a top down process that enacted desegregation? And thus not a product of the civil rights movement.
Because whilst there may have been racial conflicts after desegregation, such a point simply focuses in time after the fact of enacting desegregation. But when the question is posed as to what brought about such an enactment in the first place, it doesn’t seem intuitive to think it was solely a product of the government out of their benevolence rather than in response to pressure from the public and civil rights movement specifically.
Because politics is born in the public sphere typically, the government reforms on the end of public change more so than leads the charge and even when it does take a lead it still often works with groups that have already established themselves in pursuit of such reforms.
In fact it is but part of the cycle of a movement to successfully objectify in institutional changes, even if the movement is constituted by members within that institution to revitalize its principles.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/Jamison.pdf
It's a bit of both actually. I'm aware of why it happened (it was a Cold War imperative, as Eisenhower himself made clear when addressing the country on why he sent the military to enforce the court rulings in Little Rock in 1957), but then again it didn't happen from a process coming from within - although, too, the Jim Crow system in general was not particularly liked in the North. Not all changes are obtained through violence, particularly gradual ones like the very Civil Rights Movement (this is starting, too, from the idea that peaceful protest is part of a liberal democratic system).