The Police Murder of Tyre Nichols - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15263326
Pants-of-dog wrote:@wat0n

I have no idea how that is a reply to anything I have said.

Let us address one issue at a time:

Are you arguing that systemic racism would make it impossible for police to hire black people?

Yes or no?


As it turns out, both whites and blacks are slightly overrepresented in the police forces relative to their share of the overall US population.

https://datausa.io/profile/soc/police-o ... #ethnicity

Are you done with this tangent?

Wellsy wrote:
Agreed, they aren’t barred from becoming cops but I don’t see the significance of this other than the extreme case of overt discrimination in law which largely gets eroded or reframed in more abstract laws.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/tnamp/

But such presence doesn’t negate the point that practices and institutions can tend towards white supremacy.
To try and drive home how an increase in a demographic doesn’t automatically promote their interests against dominant norms.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/sen-critical-voice.pdf


Or maybe systemic racism is one of the tell all explanation the left has for everything, just like the patriarchy and capitalism.

Global warming? Systemic racism
Earthquakes? Systemic racism
Cancer? Systemic racism

You are assuming it is the skeptics who bear the burden of proof here. I'd say it falls on those who want to put it as a tell all explanation for pretty much anything you don't like to provide it. Same for the patriarchy and capitalism.

Wellsy wrote:And I would even give the example that a black american raised predominantly among whites tends to have a complex with themselves as they do not have the community support and resources against racist bullshit that pops up. A great example in the new Bel Air show is how Will is confused and offended with Carlton being okay with some white kids he goes to school with saying the n word. Will doesn’t tolerate that shit but what Will doesn’t understand about his cousin is that he likely accepts it as an adaption to that environment. He might’ve learned that he can’t effectively challenge it or that he doesn’t have the means to change it as one person.


Sen's argument seems like a non sequitur: Why does it matter if pregnant women prefer to abort girls? If anything, I thought they had the right to do as they pleased with the fetuses, including aborting them if they thought the father is Black or if it'd be a girl if it were born.

Are you saying their rights should be limited or what?

Wellsy wrote:As in to give a picture of how often people aren’t killed by police when they’re unarmed, without a mental health crisis and such. Disproportionally I imagine many encounters don’t escalate to death but they do attract attention because its quite a severe outcome and police are given the authority to act in such a manner, and often there isn’t mere tragic circumstances but excessive force and recklessness which harkens back to concerns of what underpins such violent practices among the US police resulting in higher deaths relative to most industrialized nations.


As in, what's the probability that an encounter between a Black person and a cop will end in the former being killed? And for a white person?

Also, what's the probability a cop will encounter a Black person to begin with? What affects it? How much discretion does a cop have to initiate an encounter, is this something officers decide or it's driven primarily by 911 calls?

Wellsy wrote: even with that priming though we expect a level of professionalism in how a threat is detained and there are examples of dangerous shooters who have been successfully detained without killing them. Makes one curious why unarmed blacks might be killed relative to those who are armed.


...But it does provide a plausible explanation that is not really systemic racism. In this case, it could be about training. Or it could be more related to the callers. Or maybe the callers are not racist and the encounters are, in fact, justified (a cop is more likely to find an armed Black than an armed white). We don't know, and don't have the data to know either.

I think that the racism of the caller probably has something to do with this, based on the Karens you mentioned. Just how much it is driving these differences, I don't know.

Wellsy wrote:It could simply be them aggro and they escalated their own situation and he ran and they just amped up en more. But such aggression still seems tied the culture of policing which has to deal with violence but increasingly examples show a lack of professionalism and deescalation tactics.


Maybe, it's just too hard to know with the current info.

Wellsy wrote:Why assume racism is less in the north these days? Because they were the free states? More blacks live in the south and grow up along side whites. In the north they are so segregated that they may not know any black people except the stereotypes. It’s not like you go north and its a racial utopia, shit was still nasty when the black diaspora had people moving for new opportunities and got redlined and shit.
There may be differences around racial relations, like my example above of actually knowing black people. But neither undermines the issue of racism as the south can still get ugly.


It's not just about the North being the free states. The northern states also got rid of Jim Crow laws before the South.

And there are states that didn't even exist when the Mason Dixon line was a thing, but it would seem they show the same patterns. Shouldn't that at least raise some eyebrows?

Wellsy wrote:Yes, unions are a means of propelling the cops to out severe political pressure on local governments as is seen with a lot of black mayors having to concede to them and even pander a little after BLM anti police sentiments snd protests. On another subject, coo city in Atlanta is such an issue of huge contention for Georgians there.


And also to get good salaries, pensions, etc just like any public sector union tries. It is the fact they have this type of power - an issue inherent to any modern state - that is the issue or, more precisely, the issue is that this type of power needs to be checked.
#15263332
wat0n wrote:
If systemic racism is the most relevant explanation for this incident, why were these Black cops allowed to join the police force to begin with?



You're conflating the institutional racism of *policing*, with the *personal* domain of interpersonal interactions ('subjective social reality') -- personal *prejudice*, if any, isn't the same thing as *institutional* bad-practices like officially tolerating killer cops and police brutality.


Worldview Diagram

Spoiler: show
Image



---


wat0n wrote:
Does it make sense to think these cops are individually bigoted against Blacks as a likely cause? Maybe they are, but it seems it would need to be proven.



On-the-whole it doesn't / wouldn't matter if particular cops are individually bigoted or not, *or* what their race is -- obviously, from this latest killer-cops incident.

All we have to do is ask why this latest killing isn't being treated immediately as a 'homicide' -- to the bourgeois government it's basically 'collateral damage' of civilians.
#15263335
wat0n wrote:Or maybe systemic racism is one of the tell all explanation the left has for everything, just like the patriarchy and capitalism.

Global warming? Systemic racism
Earthquakes? Systemic racism
Cancer? Systemic racism

You are assuming it is the skeptics who bear the burden of proof here. I'd say it falls on those who want to put it as a tell all explanation for pretty much anything you don't like to provide it. Same for the patriarchy and capitalism.

But hyberbolic but I get your point that a phrase can become a catch all that explains nothing like how one doesn’t state a process but says things are a result of complexity and emergent properties.
But yes my own sentiment isn’t that its going to have a golden bullet but the level of skepticism at the very idea of racism structuring US society and policing in the US seems to also need to overcome the idea that it is somehow above and beyond it. But looking below I take it you have a poor view of social influences.


Sen's argument seems like a non sequitur: Why does it matter if pregnant women prefer to abort girls? If anything, I thought they had the right to do as they pleased with the fetuses, including aborting them if they thought the father is Black or if it'd be a girl if it were born.

Are you saying their rights should be limited or what?

The best I can speculate here is you hold an abstract individualist notion and the liberal idea of freedom from influence and don’t see human development as a social process which in turn can undermine a persons or demographics autonomy such that they make decisions that under different conditions, they would make different choices. You seem offended at the idea of evaluating some norms having a prejudiced basis and determining an alternative trend in a demographic as desirable. Apparently a devaluing of women in culture is a matter of individual choice in the notion that one would prefer a society in which they are more valued is nonsensical because its simply a matter of choice indifferent to the conditions of that choice that women abort their daughters or you’re just being obtuse to imply some sort of forcing upon s womans decision to abort being a gotcha against liberal ideas of women getting abortions which isn’t implied in Sen’s position.

But do you think all desires are equally valid? At the extreme is the desire in want boys over girls simply an individual matter independent of society or is it a norm based around other factors in which having a boy is more valuable due to other sexist structures in the society that make them more desirable whether economically or what ever. You seem to have little question in regards to the development of peoples desires of the conditions of their choices but if people are raised to devalue girls, I think it intuition one would prefer conditions in which they are more valued and that sexist hegemony affects women just as much as men even while we might think women to having a greater interest in overturning such norms.

https://iep.utm.edu/ge-capab/
One may have reservations for this justification in situations where a person has underdeveloped (that is, intuitions that have not been challenged by competing intuitions) or mistaken intuitions. In response, Nussbaum argues that underdeveloped and mistaken intuitions must be rejected, and replaced with diversely experienced people who have tested their intuitions against competing beliefs. Although Nussbaum notes the primacy of intuitionism, she also argues that proceduralism has an ancillary justification for the capabilities approach.

Nussbaum’s proceduralism begins not with an intuition, but with a decision procedure, and it is the procedure that confers justification on the outcome. She is sympathetic to this form of proceduralism since it is rooted in Kantian discourse ethics (adopted by Jean Hampton), and has accordingly built into it a conception of equal human worth. In that sense proceduralism is similar to the intuitionist justification. However, there are stark contrasts. What is proceduralism, then? The version Nussbaum is concerned with claims that one consults the desires or preferences of another who is impacted by the outcome of the decision at hand. Similar to the concern above, Nussbaum fears that many people’s desires (like intuitions) will be corrupt, and thus produce a morally repugnant conclusion. Therefore, she seeks not just any desires, but ‘informed desires,’ that is, desires constructed by treating people with dignity. However, because not all desires are informed, and yet proceduralism calls for us to consult all desires affected by the decision, the capabilities approach would be placed on too weak of a foundation. Thus, in virtue of all the mistaken desires, proceduralism merely plays an ancillary role. Yet, it’s fair to say that if everyone had informed desires, then Nussbaum would grant proceduralism as a primary justification for the capabilities approach.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/help/foucaul1.htm
So when, for example, my male chauvinism confronts your feminism, it is not true that both are equally true, nor that the truth of each are incommensurable, or that the truth of each is in my life and your life, or yours is true for middle-class Western women and mine for backward males, nor surely that "truth" is meaningless, or something trivial that interests only dogmatists!? Nor that I make a better, more convincing, politically-correct defence of my position which is published in a reputable journal, or vice versa, or that I get more votes than you. But nor can I make the claim that my idea reflects what objectively exists, independently of human experience and yours not - what an absurdity! Perhaps we can say that yours is liberatory and mine repressive, and although neither is true, one is good and the other is bad, and that is all that matters? Perhaps we could settle the matter by arm-wrestling?
We must not get this question confused with the right of an individual to hold a view. This is of course a basic bourgeois right. But that is not the point; I do not thank you for allowing me the right to walk across a mine-field. I am interested in whether my idea of the best way home is objectively correct or not.

The structuralists were right when they identified the location of truth in the social practice of a culture, but limited by the conception of culture in anthropological static isolation (dynamic, static or partial "equilibrium"). The truth and error of my view and your view (continuing the metaphor from above) is a really-existing patriarchal society of which we are both a living part and which is undergoing transformation under the impact of the socialisation of women's labour and your struggle for the value of your labour. That is the source of the concepts (of "feminism", "male-chauvinism", "sexist language", etc.), that is the criterion of truth and that is what is changed by the material struggle of our ideas, that is the meaning.
If we were try to interpret the clash of ideas in individual terms - your idea versus my idea - we cannot but rely upon and reinforce the Utilitarian ethic of Universal Egoism (formulated in theoretical terms by John Stuart Mill in 1861). The road to liberation which is founded on you versus me, is the fundamental and dominant modus vivendi of bourgeois society. The displacement of this ethic to that of, for example, collectivism - our idea versus your idea - hardly cures the problem. It goes perhaps, halfway back to structuralism that is all. The politics of identity.
Now, just as Mach played a "confusing but necessary" role in the 1890s, preparatory to the natural scientific revolutions of the turn-of-the-century, Foucault's war on "naïve structuralism", his insistence on halting at the presumption of what lies behind the trace, of all those categories like "influence", "author" and geographical, temporal or social continuity, is a "necessary but confusing" obstacle.
What lies behind the trace is materiality. One cannot go beyond that without slipping into dogmatism. One cannot deny that and avoid scepticism.

Basically not all opinions and views are equally valid and to pretend as such is typical to liberalism to the extent it maintains an indeterminate consensus and has no liberal basis for justifying social change, only accepting norms retrospectively.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/macintyre2.pdf
Maintenance of the illusion of “objectivity” is essential, and MacIntyre sees the universities as playing a crucial role in the maintenance of this illusion. Since academics rely for their livelihood on disproving each other’s theories, the resulting interminable and esoteric debate continuously re-establishes the impossibility of consensus. “In the course of history liberalism, which began as an appeal to alleged principles of shared rationality against what was felt to be the tyranny of tradition, has itself been transformed into a tradition whose continuities are partly defined by the interminability of the debate over such principles. An interminability which was from the standpoint of an earlier liberalism a grave defect to be remedied as soon as possible has become, in the eyes of some liberals at least, a kind of virtue”. (p. 335) Far from this failure to find any firm ground undermining liberalism, MacIntyre believes that it reinforces it, because one of the fundamental bases for liberalism is the conviction that no comprehensive idea (to use Rawls’ term) can enjoy majority, let alone unanimous, support. This then justifies the ban on governments pursuing the general good.


In each of the historical settings that MacIntyre investigates, he is able to show that the type of justice and the type of rationality which appears to the philosophical spokespeople of the community to be necessary and universal, turns out to be a description of the type of citizens of the community in question. Accordingly, the justice of liberalism and the rationality of liberalism is simply that justice and that rationality of the “citizens of nowhere” (p. 388), the “outsiders,” people lacking in any social obligation or any reason for acting other than to satisfy their desires and to defend the conditions under which they are able to continue satisfying their desires. Their rationality is therefore that of the objects of their desire.



As in, what's the probability that an encounter between a Black person and a cop will end in the former being killed? And for a white person?

Also, what's the probability a cop will encounter a Black person to begin with? What affects it? How much discretion does a cop have to initiate an encounter, is this something officers decide or it's driven primarily by 911 calls?

Wouldn’t know but one would expect ideally that even with the racism of a caller misrepresenting the situation, a cop could still effectively handle a situation without escalating it unnecessarily.



...But it does provide a plausible explanation that is not really systemic racism. In this case, it could be about training. Or it could be more related to the callers. Or maybe the callers are not racist and the encounters are, in fact, justified (a cop is more likely to find an armed Black than an armed white). We don't know, and don't have the data to know either.

Well I don’t see the culture of more aggressive and militaristic policing as independent racial anxieties and animus. Hence the point that in areas where races are segregated are more likely to support and receive military equipment. It is plausible that such training and equipment is in large part motivated by fears and perceptions of black americans.


I think that the racism of the caller probably has something to do with this, based on the Karens you mentioned. Just how much it is driving these differences, I don't know.

Indeed callers can exacerbate the issue but only because there is already a sense that an encounter with police can escalate and result in death and injury for black Americans. If that wasn’t an issue then it would be largely an inconvenience for all involved.



Maybe, it's just too hard to know with the current info.

Indeed.

It's not just about the North being the free states. The northern states also got rid of Jim Crow laws before the South.

And there are states that didn't even exist when the Mason Dixon line was a thing, but it would seem they show the same patterns. Shouldn't that at least raise some eyebrows?

I think this sounds plausible on the surface but why assume notions around race don’t effect other parts of the US? Even if in the sense of my earlier example of ignorance and stereotypes for lack of direct experience which one gets exposed to through different social avenues. Such states aren’t entirely insulated from the rest if the US. But I would expect differences where there are a lot more black americans. For example Chicago can be rough but it was also a hot spot for diaspora from the south so ideas might be more solidified than areas with very few black americans. But other areas aren’t innoculated to stereotypes and ideas about black americans as discussed in the public sphere and media. Tolerance can be easy from afar and hence the idea that a lot of white liberals seem very accepting until it becomes a reality of actually interacting with people.



And also to get good salaries, pensions, etc just like any public sector union tries. It is the fact they have this type of power - an issue inherent to any modern state - that is the issue or, more precisely, the issue is that this type of power needs to be checked.

Indeed, although I also push back against the framing within modern economics which is simply about the extent to which the state intervening is justified or not but largely share the same set of ideal assumptions about the dynamics of the economy. Unions come in different qualities but are one of the only significantly means for any worker to argue for an increase in working conditions and wages otherwise they simply do not get s cut even as things improve.

However with police with are the legitimize authority and violence of a state, and aren’t strictly antagonistic to it as they are relied upon by the state which is what helps their leverage and why politicians readily make concessions more so.
#15263348
wat0n wrote:As it turns out, both whites and blacks are slightly overrepresented in the police forces relative to their share of the overall US population.

https://datausa.io/profile/soc/police-o ... #ethnicity

Are you done with this tangent?


Are yiu arguing that this disproves the existence of systemic racism?
#15263369
ckaihatsu wrote:You're conflating the institutional racism of *policing*, with the *personal* domain of interpersonal interactions ('subjective social reality') -- personal *prejudice*, if any, isn't the same thing as *institutional* bad-practices like officially tolerating killer cops and police brutality.


Worldview Diagram

Spoiler: show
Image



---





On-the-whole it doesn't / wouldn't matter if particular cops are individually bigoted or not, *or* what their race is -- obviously, from this latest killer-cops incident.

All we have to do is ask why this latest killing isn't being treated immediately as a 'homicide' -- to the bourgeois government it's basically 'collateral damage' of civilians.


I already answered this: Racist institutions discriminate in hiring. That doesn't seem to be the case here.

Wellsy wrote:But hyberbolic but I get your point that a phrase can become a catch all that explains nothing like how one doesn’t state a process but says things are a result of complexity and emergent properties.
But yes my own sentiment isn’t that its going to have a golden bullet but the level of skepticism at the very idea of racism structuring US society and policing in the US seems to also need to overcome the idea that it is somehow above and beyond it. But looking below I take it you have a poor view of social influences.


Social influences can explain reality, but they can only go so far. Furthermore, this historicist approach presumes societies don't change, which is also quite obviously false. Indeed, it is so obviously false that we wouldn't even have this discussion if this was the 1950s US South, no one would be particularly concerned about this issue and some would openly say it's fine. The mere fact that Americans discuss this says something.

In the case of policing, I wonder if the racism primarily shows in 911 caller priming prior to encounters. Why? Because, for starters, there is far more control over whatever the cops do than whatever threshold civilians have for making calls. Save for some aberrant cases (like Karens making obviously bogus calls or swatters), it seems extremely hard to prove that a civilian was calling the cops in bad faith or that he wouldn't have done so if the alleged perpetrator was white. Unfortunately, I don't think there is any data to test this hypothesis and it seems hard to produce it in practice.

Wellsy wrote:The best I can speculate here is you hold an abstract individualist notion and the liberal idea of freedom from influence and don’t see human development as a social process which in turn can undermine a persons or demographics autonomy such that they make decisions that under different conditions, they would make different choices. You seem offended at the idea of evaluating some norms having a prejudiced basis and determining an alternative trend in a demographic as desirable. Apparently a devaluing of women in culture is a matter of individual choice in the notion that one would prefer a society in which they are more valued is nonsensical because its simply a matter of choice indifferent to the conditions of that choice that women abort their daughters or you’re just being obtuse to imply some sort of forcing upon s womans decision to abort being a gotcha against liberal ideas of women getting abortions which isn’t implied in Sen’s position.

But do you think all desires are equally valid? At the extreme is the desire in want boys over girls simply an individual matter independent of society or is it a norm based around other factors in which having a boy is more valuable due to other sexist structures in the society that make them more desirable whether economically or what ever. You seem to have little question in regards to the development of peoples desires of the conditions of their choices but if people are raised to devalue girls, I think it intuition one would prefer conditions in which they are more valued and that sexist hegemony affects women just as much as men even while we might think women to having a greater interest in overturning such norms.

https://iep.utm.edu/ge-capab/

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/help/foucaul1.htm

Basically not all opinions and views are equally valid and to pretend as such is typical to liberalism to the extent it maintains an indeterminate consensus and has no liberal basis for justifying social change, only accepting norms retrospectively.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/macintyre2.pdf


I still don't get it. Firstly, last time I checked fetuses are not persons according to our progressives. As such, we can't think of them as boys or girls. It's definitely a bad example.

Secondly, no, not all opinions are worth the same. But I also don't believe we can do anything about them. So you think the patriarchy is strong in India and China? So what? Are you going to force those societies to westernize? Are you going to moralize and be ignored at best, piss everyone off at worst?

In the case of police brutality, using force will eventually backfire (as it has to some extent), while moralizing the issue is smarter and more effective being fanatical about it will also backfire. When even in this case everything is just blamed on systemic racism, you just look dumb to everyone else.

Thirdly, you may now say "OK but this does show this type of norms can be sticky over time". Yes, it does, but does this mean it has to show in each and every government act? That it is the cause of all the inequities between men and women in China and India or Blacks and whites in the US? No, not really.

Wellsy wrote:Wouldn’t know but one would expect ideally that even with the racism of a caller misrepresenting the situation, a cop could still effectively handle a situation without escalating it unnecessarily.


I would definitely not expect that. The type of situation where your life is at stake, where the fight or flight mechanism activates, is one that makes it hard to make that type of rational decisions. It is no different of how in war, much of the efforts by any army are simply of making sure hostilities don't trigger the flight response - and soldiers receive more training than cops do. Policing in that sense is more complicated, not only you don't want them to flee but their fight response can't just be "shoot everything up". Soldiers in war may get away with that, cops in a liberal democracy can't.

To that, also consider the other institutional realities here. No, not racism but (far more importantly) that they are unionized and have hard bargaining power.

Wellsy wrote:Well I don’t see the culture of more aggressive and militaristic policing as independent racial anxieties and animus. Hence the point that in areas where races are segregated are more likely to support and receive military equipment. It is plausible that such training and equipment is in large part motivated by fears and perceptions of black americans.


64% of Memphis's population is Black (alone, not counting mixed races). That idea doesn't seem to applicable to this case at least.

Furthermore, what would those areas be? I'm asking because I'd expect racial animus to be stronger in more conservative rural areas where few Blacks live (because of the Great Migration).

Wellsy wrote:Indeed callers can exacerbate the issue but only because there is already a sense that an encounter with police can escalate and result in death and injury for black Americans. If that wasn’t an issue then it would be largely an inconvenience for all involved.


It depends on the call. E.g. some swatting cases done against white people, ending in a fatality, featured calls alleging threats of the use of deadly force. Example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Wichita_swatting

Wellsy wrote:I think this sounds plausible on the surface but why assume notions around race don’t effect other parts of the US? Even if in the sense of my earlier example of ignorance and stereotypes for lack of direct experience which one gets exposed to through different social avenues. Such states aren’t entirely insulated from the rest if the US. But I would expect differences where there are a lot more black americans. For example Chicago can be rough but it was also a hot spot for diaspora from the south so ideas might be more solidified than areas with very few black americans. But other areas aren’t innoculated to stereotypes and ideas about black americans as discussed in the public sphere and media. Tolerance can be easy from afar and hence the idea that a lot of white liberals seem very accepting until it becomes a reality of actually interacting with people.


But then why isn't there a geographic effect?

Wellsy wrote:Indeed, although I also push back against the framing within modern economics which is simply about the extent to which the state intervening is justified or not but largely share the same set of ideal assumptions about the dynamics of the economy. Unions come in different qualities but are one of the only significantly means for any worker to argue for an increase in working conditions and wages otherwise they simply do not get s cut even as things improve.

However with police with are the legitimize authority and violence of a state, and aren’t strictly antagonistic to it as they are relied upon by the state which is what helps their leverage and why politicians readily make concessions more so.


Hence why this is an issue of checks and balances, at the local level. Fortunately though it seems checking police action is actually becoming easier, because body and street cams make it harder for them to cover these incidents up.

Pants-of-dog wrote:Are yiu arguing that this disproves the existence of systemic racism?


What proves the existence of systemic racism?

It is you who has to prove its existence and show it is relevant to a police brutality case where Black cops murder a Black person in a city where 64% of the population is Black (alone) according to the 2020 Census.

As I said earlier, it sounds like a religious dogma that by definition cannot be proven nor disproven instead of a falsifiable claim. And one that can be used as an explanation to all problems.
#15263386
@wat0n

At this point, I am going to assume that you are not going to support whatever points you think you may have made.

Consequently, there is no reason for me to think that hiring practices contradict or disprove the existence of systemic racism.

Now, what would you consider as decent evidence for the existence of systemic racism in policing?
#15263389
Pants-of-dog wrote:@wat0n

At this point, I am going to assume that you are not going to support whatever points you think you may have made.

Consequently, there is no reason for me to think that hiring practices contradict or disprove the existence of systemic racism.

Now, what would you consider as decent evidence for the existence of systemic racism in policing?


What are the usual arguments to claim so? Are they applicable?

Composition of the police force? Nope
Demographics of Memphis? Nope
Race of the officers? Nope
Did the city try to cover this up? Nope
Did the DA refuse to charge? Nope
#15263390
wat0n wrote:What are the usual arguments to claim so? Are they applicable?

Composition of the police force? Nope
Demographics of Memphis? Nope
Race of the officers? Nope
Did the city try to cover this up? Nope
Did the DA refuse to charge? Nope


How does the composition of the police force disprove systemic racism?

We will address the rest of your questions after you answer the one I have posed.

Thanks.

Also, what would you consider as decent evidence for the existence of systemic racism in policing?
#15263392
Pants-of-dog wrote:
How does the composition of the police force disprove systemic racism?

We will address the rest of your questions after you answer the one I have posed.

Thanks.

Also, what would you consider as decent evidence for the existence of systemic racism in policing?



Somebody still believes in miracles..
#15263393
wat0n wrote:I already answered this: Racist institutions discriminate in hiring. That doesn't seem to be the case here.

So policing practices and tactics can’t be in effect racist because black cops exist? This is what needs tk be unpacked because I am claiming that policing practices and the intensity and aggressiveness of it is motivated in part by racial anxieties and isn’t a neutral reaction to crime but deeply social. And having black cops doesn’t negate such practices and policies. The stepping to hiring practices and whether discrimination exists there seems to simply ignore the what is being discussed for a side point of going hey they can’t be entirely racist because look black cops exist.


Social influences can explain reality, but they can only go so far. Furthermore, this historicist approach presumes societies don't change, which is also quite obviously false. Indeed, it is so obviously false that we wouldn't even have this discussion if this was the 1950s US South, no one would be particularly concerned about this issue and some would openly say it's fine. The mere fact that Americans discuss this says something.

In the case of policing, I wonder if the racism primarily shows in 911 caller priming prior to encounters. Why? Because, for starters, there is far more control over whatever the cops do than whatever threshold civilians have for making calls. Save for some aberrant cases (like Karens making obviously bogus calls or swatters), it seems extremely hard to prove that a civilian was calling the cops in bad faith or that he wouldn't have done so if the alleged perpetrator was white. Unfortunately, I don't think there is any data to test this hypothesis and it seems hard to produce it in practice.

I emphasize the history because while one can obtain a genetic fallacy of equating the present with the past, I also think it is fallacious to present the circumstances of the present so independently of the past as it renders even an individual action meaningless as it has no broader context. It basically negates a social fabric in which people presently act. The point then becomes to frame the shape of the present institutions and actors within it. The general reference to a deeply divided and racist past is to emphasize its existence and that it gives intuitive sense that the present isn’t without its own social form of the problem unless one argues for a kind of racial utopia exists where such problems have all but been resolved.

But in regards to swatters, it doesn’t seem to be the precipitating factor where accounts of pursuing someone seems to be an ad hoc reason by police.
https://www.businessinsider.com/bodycams-reveal-omissions-in-police-report-of-tyre-nichols-stop-2023-1?amp
Memphis Chief of Police Cerelyn Davis said on Thursday that the officers had no proof to pull Nichols over, and has called the video "heinous, reckless, and inhumane."

"We've looked at cameras, we've looked at body-worn cameras, and even if something occurred prior to the stop, we've been unable to substantiate that at this time," Davis told CNN. "We have not been able to substantiate the reckless driving."

This is what makes this case suspicious.



I still don't get it. Firstly, last time I checked fetuses are not persons according to our progressives. As such, we can't think of them as boys or girls. It's definitely a bad example.

Secondly, no, not all opinions are worth the same. But I also don't believe we can do anything about them. So you think the patriarchy is strong in India and China? So what? Are you going to force those societies to westernize? Are you going to moralize and be ignored at best, piss everyone off at worst?

I knew the issue would aggravate a sense of some forced top down change which is the focus of liberals of what extent the state is justified in intervening upon civil society, the public private dichotomy inherent to every form of liberalism which draws the line differently.

But the point I think of peoples desires being corrupted than if raised in a different environment that has them more critical emphasizes need for collaboration and solidarity with peoples struggles at a local level which may assert a need for state intervention in some areas with varying effectiveness. But cultural and sustainable change does not come from decree.

https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/sen-critical-voice.pdf
Critical voice is the capacity of a person living ‘inside’ a society to form views available from a position ‘outside’ that society:

... virtually every society tends to have dissenters, and even the most repressive fundamentalist regimes can ‒ and typically do ‒ have dissenters .... Even if the perspective of the dissenters is influenced by their reading of foreign authors, the viewpoints and critical perspectives of these members are still ‘internal’ to the society. (Sen, 2002a, p. 476-77.)

Critical agency refers “not only to the freedom to act but also to the freedom to question and reassess.” The answer to the question Sen asked in 1980 ‒ Equality of what? ‒ seems increasingly to be ‘critical voice’. This does not imply that the demand for equality of critical voice necessarily has traction as a normative demand, any more than does equality of wealth. But ‘critical voice’ does more truly determine the essence of human need and is the true measure of inequality in a society.

Critical voice is both instrumental, in that it is needed in order to sustain the other elements of well-being, and constitutive, in that only the person with critical voice is truly free. That which is the means to well-being, not just apparently, but essentially, comes to be an end in itself, constituent of well-being. Thus, for example, while education is valued initially for its contribution to job-seeking, over time it comes to be valued for itself. Conversely, that which is formally the end, can only be real to the extent that it is supported by appropriate means. Thus, for example, even though everyone in a parliamentary democracy formally has an equal voice, without an adequate capability set, without an adequate functioning and wealth, this right is no more than formal.

In regards to China and India, I have no say as I do not participate in those societies.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/works/subject-position.htm
So we end up with two universal imperatives:
(1) Participants in a project decide amongst themselves what they will do. (Participation is decided by opting in opting out, and participation includes conflict and opposition.)
(2) It is wrong to conduct any project in secrecy from anyone who could be affected, or without reasonable measures to give anyone who could be affected the ability to make relevant judgments about the project.
Moral discourse which is based around events, dilemmas or relationships in which the participants in the discourse are not participants in a relevant common project, is meaningless. What should the French government do about the hijab? What position should a socialist take in Iraq today? How can there be sensible answers to these questions for someone who is not French or not in Iraq?
The above ethical obligations arise solely from the dictum: “What we do is decided by us.”


So I don’t fixate on state power but certainly favor illiberal struggles within civil society which may press changes in institutions and the state. Though the state is subject to change which cannot guarantee any policies which succeed in it.
In the case of police brutality, using force will eventually backfire (as it has to some extent), while moralizing the issue is smarter and more effective being fanatical about it will also backfire. When even in this case everything is just blamed on systemic racism, you just look dumb to everyone else.

Thirdly, you may now say "OK but this does show this type of norms can be sticky over time". Yes, it does, but does this mean it has to show in each and every government act? That it is the cause of all the inequities between men and women in China and India or Blacks and whites in the US? No, not really.

I can agree that not every act is automatically subsumed as that frames hegemony as totalizing and not possible to resist and challenge dominant trends and norms. At the same time there is a weight to institutions practices such that changing them isn’t easy.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/Article_on_Teleology.pdf
The sociologist Anthony Giddens claimed that the predictability manifested in social life is largely ‘made to happen’ by strategically placed social actors, not in spite of them or ‘behind their backs’. Far from people being driven to do what they do by remote or invisible ‘structural forces’, Giddens showed that “all explanations will involve at least implicit references both to the purposive, reasoning behavior of agents and to its intersection with constraining and enabling features of the social and material contexts” (1984, p. 179). Giddens’ research shows that individuals are generally well aware of the possible consequences of their actions, and are experts in the often lamentable situations in which they find themselves. Sociologists use Game Theory to study the various traps which confront people when are deemed to act as isolated individuals and they do gain certain insights into social problems. However, human society is not an aggregate of isolated atoms, and all manner of collective action from neighborhood solidarity to government action create and change the arrangements within which such ‘rational actors’ act. The situations in which the individuals make their decisions are the products of policy of strategic institutions. The rationality at work in the creation of institutions and customs is not a ‘univocal’ reason, but reflects a diversity of social interests and identities.

When i ask myself whose interests are best reflected through police, I don't imagine much if the public being the influential force on the shape of policing institutions. Maybe a sheriff somewhat who has to appeal to the public. But it seems to me the history of policing has long been in the practice of terrorizing black communities and isn’t an abberation in the present but with precedent so one shouldn’t be shocked that many cops are racist, many practices don’t merely target high crime but emphasize a a tough on crime approach, which itself has been supported by members in black communities across America.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/20/the-invention-of-the-police
Progressive Era, Vollmer-style policing criminalized Blackness, as the historian Khalil Gibran Muhammad argued in his 2010 book, “The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America.” Police patrolled Black neighborhoods and arrested Black people disproportionately; prosecutors indicted Black people disproportionately; juries found Black people guilty disproportionately; judges gave Black people disproportionately long sentences; and, then, after all this, social scientists, observing the number of Black people in jail, decided that, as a matter of biology, Black people were disproportionately inclined to criminality.


Two kinds of police appeared on mid-century American television. The good guys solved crime on prime-time police procedurals like “Dragnet,” starting in 1951, and “Adam-12,” beginning in 1968 (both featured the L.A.P.D.). The bad guys shocked America’s conscience on the nightly news: Arkansas state troopers barring Black students from entering Little Rock Central High School, in 1957; Birmingham police clubbing and arresting some seven hundred Black children protesting segregation, in 1963; and Alabama state troopers beating voting-rights marchers at Selma, in 1965. These two faces of policing help explain how, in the nineteen-sixties, the more people protested police brutality, the more money governments gave to police departments.

In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson declared a “war on crime,” and asked Congress to pass the Law Enforcement Assistance Act, under which the federal government would supply local police with military-grade weapons, weapons that were being used in the war in Vietnam. During riots in Watts that summer, law enforcement killed thirty-one people and arrested more than four thousand; fighting the protesters, the head of the L.A.P.D. said, was “very much like fighting the Viet Cong.” Preparing for a Senate vote just days after the uprising ended, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee said, “For some time, it has been my feeling that the task of law enforcement agencies is really not much different from military forces; namely, to deter crime before it occurs, just as our military objective is deterrence of aggression.”


As Elizabeth Hinton reported in “From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America,” the “frontline soldiers” in Johnson’s war on crime—Vollmer-era policing all over again—spent a disproportionate amount of time patrolling Black neighborhoods and arresting Black people. Policymakers concluded from those differential arrest rates that Black people were prone to criminality, with the result that police spent even more of their time patrolling Black neighborhoods, which led to a still higher arrest rate. “If we wish to rid this country of crime, if we wish to stop hacking at its branches only, we must cut its roots and drain its swampy breeding ground, the slum,” Johnson told an audience of police policymakers in 1966. The next year, riots broke out in Newark and Detroit. “We ain’t rioting agains’ all you whites,” one Newark man told a reporter not long before being shot dead by police. “We’re riotin’ agains’ police brutality.” In Detroit, police arrested more than seven thousand people.

Its hard for me to give a benefit of the doubt in many situations where the precedent is clear and it asks more of me to ignore such precedents, practices and outcomes as all arbitrary and coincidental. This only occurs in ones mind at the individual level abstracted from the larger context which informs policing instititions. The calls for reform for some tears now took time to solidify and its for a different concept of policing than the one that has been antagonstic to communties. But that has been the point for those who support tough on crime approaches, it seems justified because they perceive a criminal threat otherwise what justifies all the increase funding and resources? Merely police unions dominating local government? Perhaps one part of the problem in need of a crackdown but not the whole story by far.


I would definitely not expect that. The type of situation where your life is at stake, where the fight or flight mechanism activates, is one that makes it hard to make that type of rational decisions. It is no different of how in war, much of the efforts by any army are simply of making sure hostilities don't trigger the flight response - and soldiers receive more training than cops do. Policing in that sense is more complicated, not only you don't want them to flee but their fight response can't just be "shoot everything up". Soldiers in war may get away with that, cops in a liberal democracy can't.

To that, also consider the other institutional realities here. No, not racism but (far more importantly) that they are unionized and have hard bargaining power.

Cops and soldiers often overlap historically and presently which raises concerns on our concept of policing. One is the ideal of a calm member of the community who deescalates. The other is a figure who brutalizes the public. Such responsibility and power does require great strength of character in the first ideal.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/20/the-invention-of-the-police
M Modern American policing began in 1909, when August Vollmer became the chief of the police department in Berkeley, California. Vollmer refashioned American police into an American military. He’d served with the Eighth Army Corps in the Philippines in 1898. “For years, ever since Spanish-American War days, I’ve studied military tactics and used them to good effect in rounding up crooks,” he later explained. “After all we’re conducting a war, a war against the enemies of society.” Who were those enemies? Mobsters, bootleggers, socialist agitators, strikers, union organizers, immigrants, and Black people.

To domestic policing, Vollmer and his peers adapted the kinds of tactics and weapons that had been deployed against Native Americans in the West and against colonized peoples in other parts of the world, including Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, as the sociologist Julian Go has demonstrated. Vollmer instituted a training model imitated all over the country, by police departments that were often led and staffed by other veterans of the United States wars of conquest and occupation. A “police captain or lieutenant should occupy exactly the same position in the public mind as that of a captain or lieutenant in the United States army,” Detroit’s commissioner of police said. (Today’s police officers are disproportionately veterans of U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, many suffering from post-traumatic stress. The Marshall Project, analyzing data from the Albuquerque police, found that officers who are veterans are more likely than their non-veteran counterparts to be involved in fatal shootings. In general, they are more likely to use force, and more likely to fire their guns.)

The above I guess is based on the sense of sustained anxiety of a threat of modern warfare that one is way to amped up for the threat.


64% of Memphis's population is Black (alone, not counting mixed races). That idea doesn't seem to applicable to this case at least.

Furthermore, what would those areas be? I'm asking because I'd expect racial animus to be stronger in more conservative rural areas where few Blacks live (because of the Great Migration).

So then lets talk about memphis. Do the police better reflect the wants and expectations of the community, or are there other greater influences. Because implicit is the idea with a majority black population they should have such sway that they should’ve already reformed police if they wanted. But as mentioned earlier a lot of black americans are supportive if the tough on crime rhetoric and policies. But also considered as passive voters, change won’t come about even if they desired change. Political change cones through illiberal struggles in civil society and only later are reflected in changes in elections and campaigns. Nearly half of Atlanta are black americans, thry have often had black mayors yet cop city is getting pushed and the public are pissed. I don’t see an automatic connection to the popualtion and their interests until there is struggle and they win. For all the BLM protests there has been minor concessions in reforming policing. So I don’t see blakc americans as automatically expressing a particular interest although they may have tendencies/trends from their experiences and even then its like the gap between desires and effective demand. What sway do the public have unless they form into some movement and put pressure? And even then we have seen very partial response to the BLM.


But then why isn't there a geographic effect?

Because how radically different is policing across the US? Things are increasingly connected than insular with training of professions internationally.
The big one being with Israel.
https://www.amnestyusa.org/with-whom-are-many-u-s-police-departments-training-with-a-chronic-human-rights-violator-israel/


Hence why this is an issue of checks and balances, at the local level. Fortunately though it seems checking police action is actually becoming easier, because body and street cams make it harder for them to cover these incidents up.

This case does show a limitation in the bodycam. As they move around a lot and kept saying show your hands and stuff to make out he was resisting but a street can was able to capture more clearly how they were beating him to death.


What proves the existence of systemic racism?

It is you who has to prove its existence and show it is relevant to a police brutality case where Black cops murder a Black person in a city where 64% of the population is Black (alone) according to the 2020 Census.

As I said earlier, it sounds like a religious dogma that by definition cannot be proven nor disproven instead of a falsifiable claim. And one that can be used as an explanation to all problems.

Well let me put to you that no one can claim an individual case is an example of systematic racism. It presupposes more than one case in a trend. So what they must prove is an instance of racism. But what I point to is the idea that such outcomes are entirely out of place based on the history, policies, and practices of policing in the US and that such an outcome would be less likely in a world that had radically challenged white supremacy and the role of policing in the US. What is systematic is the targeting of black communities, disproportionate use of lethal force against black Americans, and policies that disproportionately and negatively affect black americans. Basically you can have all the good guys you want, policing can still in practice be systematically racist even with the professional cop just following policy and procedure as they target members and communities with aggressive practices like the SCORPION unit. In this case the murder of Nichol is so brutal that they have already sought to disband it.
https://www.npr.org/2023/01/29/1152383570/memphis-police-have-disbanded-the-scorpion-unit-that-fatally-beat-tyre-nichols
But such a unit would arise in the first place to try and reduce significant and serious crime is strange as it frames criminality merely in relation to police.
#15263406
Wellsy wrote:So policing practices and tactics can’t be in effect racist because black cops exist? This is what needs tk be unpacked because I am claiming that policing practices and the intensity and aggressiveness of it is motivated in part by racial anxieties and isn’t a neutral reaction to crime but deeply social. And having black cops doesn’t negate such practices and policies. The stepping to hiring practices and whether discrimination exists there seems to simply ignore the what is being discussed for a side point of going hey they can’t be entirely racist because look black cops exist.


Hold on. So do you think these cops in particular, being Black, were trained or primed to believe Black suspects are more likely to require using force?

Wellsy wrote:I emphasize the history because while one can obtain a genetic fallacy of equating the present with the past, I also think it is fallacious to present the circumstances of the present so independently of the past as it renders even an individual action meaningless as it has no broader context. It basically negates a social fabric in which people presently act. The point then becomes to frame the shape of the present institutions and actors within it. The general reference to a deeply divided and racist past is to emphasize its existence and that it gives intuitive sense that the present isn’t without its own social form of the problem unless one argues for a kind of racial utopia exists where such problems have all but been resolved.

But in regards to swatters, it doesn’t seem to be the precipitating factor where accounts of pursuing someone seems to be an ad hoc reason by police.
https://www.businessinsider.com/bodycams-reveal-omissions-in-police-report-of-tyre-nichols-stop-2023-1?amp

This is what makes this case suspicious.


So do you think these Black cops were moved by racial animus against another Black person?

You'll seriously need to elaborate here. It is indeed possible, but it would need to be proven.

As for the role of history, I think that in this case the US has made a clear and explicit effort to root racism out of its institutions. It's clear from the law and, honestly, recent history.

Wellsy wrote:I knew the issue would aggravate a sense of some forced top down change which is the focus of liberals of what extent the state is justified in intervening upon civil society, the public private dichotomy inherent to every form of liberalism which draws the line differently.

But the point I think of peoples desires being corrupted than if raised in a different environment that has them more critical emphasizes need for collaboration and solidarity with peoples struggles at a local level which may assert a need for state intervention in some areas with varying effectiveness. But cultural and sustainable change does not come from decree.

https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/sen-critical-voice.pdf

In regards to China and India, I have no say as I do not participate in those societies.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/works/subject-position.htm


I can imagine this type of argument being used to justify the white man's burden. I mean, even if you regard their desires as corrupted, that doesn't mean you can or should do anything about it.

Wellsy wrote:So I don’t fixate on state power but certainly favor illiberal struggles within civil society which may press changes in institutions and the state. Though the state is subject to change which cannot guarantee any policies which succeed in it.


It would depend on how you struggle, I think. But all revolutions end in Thermidor.

Wellsy wrote:I can agree that not every act is automatically subsumed as that frames hegemony as totalizing and not possible to resist and challenge dominant trends and norms. At the same time there is a weight to institutions practices such that changing them isn’t easy.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/Article_on_Teleology.pdf

When i ask myself whose interests are best reflected through police, I don't imagine much if the public being the influential force on the shape of policing institutions. Maybe a sheriff somewhat who has to appeal to the public. But it seems to me the history of policing has long been in the practice of terrorizing black communities and isn’t an abberation in the present but with precedent so one shouldn’t be shocked that many cops are racist, many practices don’t merely target high crime but emphasize a a tough on crime approach, which itself has been supported by members in black communities across America.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/20/the-invention-of-the-police

Its hard for me to give a benefit of the doubt in many situations where the precedent is clear and it asks more of me to ignore such precedents, practices and outcomes as all arbitrary and coincidental. This only occurs in ones mind at the individual level abstracted from the larger context which informs policing instititions. The calls for reform for some tears now took time to solidify and its for a different concept of policing than the one that has been antagonstic to communties. But that has been the point for those who support tough on crime approaches, it seems justified because they perceive a criminal threat otherwise what justifies all the increase funding and resources? Merely police unions dominating local government? Perhaps one part of the problem in need of a crackdown but not the whole story by far.


What I find most interesting about these articles is that the examples provided therein are from over 50 years ago. That alone should tell you something.

But yes, institutions are indeed manned by "people placed in the right positions" which is why the composition of the police is so relevant here but it just doesn't fit the narrative. It did in 1965, yes, but not now.

That's why I think the issue lies in something else. I'd say it's an issue of checks and balances, how do you check police unions after all?

Wellsy wrote:Cops and soldiers often overlap historically and presently which raises concerns on our concept of policing. One is the ideal of a calm member of the community who deescalates. The other is a figure who brutalizes the public. Such responsibility and power does require great strength of character in the first ideal.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/20/the-invention-of-the-police

The above I guess is based on the sense of sustained anxiety of a threat of modern warfare that one is way to amped up for the threat.


Indeed, but it's not clear if veterans are more likely to be involved in these incidents. I did however want to raise the other issue, i.e. policing requires far more self control in practice.

Wellsy wrote:So then lets talk about memphis. Do the police better reflect the wants and expectations of the community, or are there other greater influences. Because implicit is the idea with a majority black population they should have such sway that they should’ve already reformed police if they wanted. But as mentioned earlier a lot of black americans are supportive if the tough on crime rhetoric and policies. But also considered as passive voters, change won’t come about even if they desired change. Political change cones through illiberal struggles in civil society and only later are reflected in changes in elections and campaigns. Nearly half of Atlanta are black americans, thry have often had black mayors yet cop city is getting pushed and the public are pissed. I don’t see an automatic connection to the popualtion and their interests until there is struggle and they win. For all the BLM protests there has been minor concessions in reforming policing. So I don’t see blakc americans as automatically expressing a particular interest although they may have tendencies/trends from their experiences and even then its like the gap between desires and effective demand. What sway do the public have unless they form into some movement and put pressure? And even then we have seen very partial response to the BLM.


Well, this brings another question: Could it be that support for "tough on crime" policies is not, in fact, driven by racial considerations? And, that those protesting in Atlanta are, actually, a minority of the community (overall and the African American community specifically)?

Wellsy wrote:Because how radically different is policing across the US? Things are increasingly connected than insular with training of professions internationally.
The big one being with Israel.
https://www.amnestyusa.org/with-whom-are-many-u-s-police-departments-training-with-a-chronic-human-rights-violator-israel/


And yet Israeli police doesn't have the same problems American police has, as far as I am aware. As far as I'm aware, this is an American phenomenon (leaving aside Amnesty has no expertise in policing and is using guilt by association. It seems for them the problem is not systemic racism but Jews)

Wellsy wrote:This case does show a limitation in the bodycam. As they move around a lot and kept saying show your hands and stuff to make out he was resisting but a street can was able to capture more clearly how they were beating him to death.


Hence why both are complementing each other.

Wellsy wrote:Well let me put to you that no one can claim an individual case is an example of systematic racism. It presupposes more than one case in a trend. So what they must prove is an instance of racism. But what I point to is the idea that such outcomes are entirely out of place based on the history, policies, and practices of policing in the US and that such an outcome would be less likely in a world that had radically challenged white supremacy and the role of policing in the US. What is systematic is the targeting of black communities, disproportionate use of lethal force against black Americans, and policies that disproportionately and negatively affect black americans. Basically you can have all the good guys you want, policing can still in practice be systematically racist even with the professional cop just following policy and procedure as they target members and communities with aggressive practices like the SCORPION unit. In this case the murder of Nichol is so brutal that they have already sought to disband it.
https://www.npr.org/2023/01/29/1152383570/memphis-police-have-disbanded-the-scorpion-unit-that-fatally-beat-tyre-nichols
But such a unit would arise in the first place to try and reduce significant and serious crime is strange as it frames criminality merely in relation to police.


"We can't say whether systemic racism explains any particular incident but we know it explains them all". That's how this sounds - like a religion.

Pants-of-dog wrote:How does the composition of the police force disprove systemic racism?

We will address the rest of your questions after you answer the one I have posed.

Thanks.

Also, what would you consider as decent evidence for the existence of systemic racism in policing?


Proponents of systemic racism claim hiring practices will overrepresent whites in detriment of blacks. That's clearly not true.

As for what can constitute evidence for systemic racism, what does the law say? Is it like in Jim Crow, where it was openly discriminatory?
#15263409
@wat0n

It seems that you are confusing how systemic racism occurs in hiring practices with how systemic racism occurs in policing. When it comes to how systemic racism occurs in policing, it is not about the race of the person who is doing the abusing and violence; it is about the race of the person who is being abused and is a target of violence.

Systemic racism in policing means that police are effectively allowed to abuse and target black people. Whether or not they hire black people to do this does not change this fact.

And I am still asking for what you would consider evidence of systemic racism. Are you asking what the legal definition of systemic racism is?
#15263410
Pants-of-dog wrote:@wat0n

It seems that you are confusing how systemic racism occurs in hiring practices with how systemic racism occurs in policing. When it comes to how systemic racism occurs in policing, it is not about the race of the person who is doing the abusing and violence; it is about the race of the person who is being abused and is a target of violence.

Systemic racism in policing means that police are effectively allowed to abuse and target black people. Whether or not they hire black people to do this does not change this fact.

And I am still asking for what you would consider evidence of systemic racism. Are you asking what the legal definition of systemic racism is?


You can't separate both. What you are saying is that you could order a few Black persons to search for other Black persons for abuse (if not to kill them) and that they'd be fine with it. Are those the orders police gives? Care to explain how this works?

Or maybe you could say "well, they can get away with killing others for whatever illegitimate reason but only if they are Black". But that's not what happened in this case either.

As for your last question, I provided you with an example of unquestionable systemic racism. It's not the only one, but it's an obvious one - which has in fact been put in practice in the past.
#15263411
wat0n wrote:You can't separate both.


How do you mean that?

What you are saying is that you could order a Black person to search other Black persons for abuse (if not to kill them) and that they'd be fine with it. Are those the orders police gives? Care to explain how this works?


Yes, that is pretty much how it works. We can see this in the tragic case of Mr. Nichols here. Were it not for the fact that a snuff movie exists in the form of bodycam or dashcam footage, they would probably have gotten away with it.

This is, obviously, oversimplified. Many cops will refuse to do it. There is probably a higher percentage of BIPOC cops in this category, if the order is to abuse or kill a person of colour. Most will go along with it if they feel that is he prevailing culture in the police force they work in. And a certain number will gleefully go along with it.

But again. this is not the point.

The point is what happens after, when the entire force and union and DAs and city officials all talk about heroism and sacrifice and risk and the cops get away with it. Because the target was black.

Or maybe you could say "well, they can get away with killing others for whatever illegitimate reason but only if they are Black". But that's not what happened in this case either.


Since we are not allowed to even reduce their budgets, we can minimally force cops to record every single transaction they have with others while on duty.

As for your last question, I provided you with an example of unquestionable systemic racism. It's not the only one, but it's an obvious one - which has in fact been put in practice in the past.


I have no idea what you are referring to.

Please repeat your example. Thank you.
#15263412
Claiming "systemic racism" for this incident is pretty lame. He was killed by a group of 5 people of his same race. This is an abuse of people in a position of authority who abused their power and acted like a gang of violent bullies. There's a gazillion videos on youtube of white cops abusing their authority against white citizens too and I don't think it has anything to do with their skin colour but rather the fact that these assholes go on power trips. I've seen in jobs i've had, coworkers did it and the race of the person was irrelevant, they're just power-tripping. Not to say racism doesn't happen...
#15263413
Unthinking Majority wrote:Claiming "systemic racism" for this incident is pretty lame. He was killed by a group of 5 people of his same race. This is an abuse of people in a position of authority who abused their power and acted like a gang of violent bullies. There's a gazillion videos on youtube of white cops abusing their authority against white citizens too and I don't think it has anything to do with their skin colour but rather the fact that these assholes go on power trips. I've seen in jobs i've had, coworkers did it and the race of the person was irrelevant, they're just power-tripping. Not to say racism doesn't happen...


Yiu seem to be arguing that this cannot be racism because the offending officers are also black.

This seems to assume that black people cannot be racist. Do you believe that?
#15263414
Pants-of-dog wrote:How do you mean that?


Would you be a cop in the US?

And if so, would you obey an order that is clearly racist?

I'm asking because these guys clearly had agency, so the only question is obviously why did they do it. Racism? Sounds unlikely. Believing Black people are violent and therefore they were at risk? Almost 2/3 of the people they see in Memphis is Black. I somehow don't think they would go thinking most of the people they would see anywhere represented that type of risk, on top of that, I don't think they'd see themselves like that either.

Pants-of-dog wrote:Yes, that is pretty much how it works. We can see this in the tragic case of Mr. Nichols here. Were it not for the fact that a snuff movie exists in the form of bodycam or dashcam footage, they would probably have gotten away with it.

This is, obviously, oversimplified. Many cops will refuse to do it. There is probably a higher percentage of BIPOC cops in this category, if the order is to abuse or kill a person of colour. Most will go along with it if they feel that is he prevailing culture in the police force they work in. And a certain number will gleefully go along with it.

But again. this is not the point.

The point is what happens after, when the entire force and union and DAs and city officials all talk about heroism and sacrifice and risk and the cops get away with it. Because the target was black.


None of that happened in this instance, though.

And even if you think it works like that and that this encourages these incidents, then... Do you think that in this incident these guys wanted to target a Black person and if so, why?

You can't deny it's very counterintuitive. Endophobia exists but it is unusual to say the least.

Pants-of-dog wrote:Since we are not allowed to even reduce their budgets, we can minimally force cops to record every single transaction they have with others while on duty.


No disagreement here, and indeed it's what happened.

In fact, ultimately here's the actual solution: To check the police, just as we check government power in general. We need cops, yes, but we don't want to allow them do whatever the hell they want just as we don't want to allow any public servant do whatever the hell he wants. Having this clear, the issue now is about how to do this, bodycams are definitely part of the solution.

Pants-of-dog wrote: I have no idea what you are referring to.

Please repeat your example. Thank you.


The US used to have laws that explicitly discriminated against Black people. That is undoubtedly systemic racism. Do you agree?
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Pants-of-dog wrote:Yiu seem to be arguing that this cannot be racism because the offending officers are also black.

This seems to assume that black people cannot be racist. Do you believe that?

No, I just don't see evidence of racism here. I do see evidence of abuse of power.

Do you think this is white cop's fault because they taught these officers to be racist against black people?
#15263416
Unthinking Majority wrote:No, I just don't see evidence of racism here. I do see evidence of abuse of power.

Do you think this is white cop's fault because they taught these officers to be racist against black people?


No, I think this is due to more to systemic racism than to individual racism on the part of any one specific cop.

So, while I agree that that there is no instance of individual racism to be seen here, this does seem to be an example of systemic racism.

—————-

@wat0n

I am not discussing the internal motives of the individual officers and why they felt they were entitled to kill a black man. I am discussing systemic racism. If you wish to assume that black cops are immune to racism, feel free, though it seems odd to argue that black people are more moral than other cops.

And we need to address systemic racism in policing, so I want to go back to that.
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