Here and elsewhere, I've seen or heard some variation of this, "You never hear about stories where a black cop shoots a white kid." Now that I've seen it umpteen times, it sounds like one of those dog whistle messages that only a certain segment are able to hear because they are attuned to sources delivering that message. Let's be clear though, MSNBC is no slouch when it comes to delivering similar messages. The messenger here is not really the point.
When I lived in Chicago, plenty of black people were killed by the police and it wasn't national news. Why? IMO, there are a few reasons. First, it's not shocking. In the rough, all black neighborhoods, violence is a daily occurrence that seldom gets coverage unless there is a political gain to be made, whether it is by those who want to perpetually describe blacks as animals, or by those who wish to make a point that nobody cares about those communities. Second, when a black person is killed in Chicago, there aren't riots. No riots, no story. I think more than anything else, this is why we hear so little nationally about police shootings regardless of the race of the officer or the deceased.
Observations and Questions
I've wondered why white people don't riot when they perceive an injustice and I'd love to hear the theories here on why that is. I do believe of, course, that part of the reason is because white people seldom get hassled to the extent that black people do. Once in my life, I did get pulled over when I was in my teens and was driving my beater car through a rich suburb. Aside from that, I've never been questioned or just stopped by police and asked what I was doing, and I also have never been stopped and frisked, "just because". Whether someone believes the stops are justified is relevant I guess, but I wonder what any of us would feel like if we were stopped 3-4 times a week, every week, every year, on and on. On the surface, I think most of us tell ourselves that the blacks wouldn't be hassled so much if they weren't breaking the law so much. Below the surface, I don't think many of us really give this issue much thought at all. This is not an invitation to start a hyperlink war of biased articles.
In comparison to black people, I also think white people are very quick to disown those they consider "white trash". When some tatted up idiot doing meth gets gunned down robbing a store, I think few white people feel any sense of pity, regardless of how crappy life may have been for that individual. Nor do they feel any sense of pity when a similar looking guy gets into a minor altercation and gets his ass kicked for lipping off to a police officer who arrives to sort things out. White people, I believe, generally trust the police because they seldom have a bad encounter with one for anything other than a traffic ticket.
I haven't read everything in the reports yet, and I don't have a rioting sense of outrage. I'm not surprised the officer wasn't indicted and I don't think he wasn't indicted out of a sense of racism. IMO, I believe that when the officer got out of his car, he fully intended to kill this kid, whether it was out of racism or not is immaterial to me. I believe it was premeditated, but there is absolutely no way to prove that. Undoubtedly, there is a failed government policy angle to be described that I'm confident someone will cover that in exhaustive detail for us. Be that as it may, I'll ask the question anyway, when you see people erupt like they did in Ferguson, do you ever ask yourself why they are so outraged and consider for just a second if they might have some bigger reasons that have nothing to do with the event allegedly sparking the outrage?
unless there is a political gain to be made,
ReplyDeleteSays it all.
Jermaine Jones’s family did will not share turkey and gravy with their son. On October 18, Jones, 29, stood with a few friends on a street in Berkeley, Mo., adjacent to Ferguson. Police say an unknown black male opened fire, killing Jones and wounding three other black men near him. (Strangely, Jones’s sister, Margaree Dixson, was shot fatally a half-mile away, just three hours earlier. In her case, too, police suspect yet another unidentified black man.)
Why has Jones’s death not unleashed riots and looting? Simple: Jones was killed by a fellow black man. Therefore, his death and his loved ones’ agony generate silence.
Twelve grand jurors studied the evidence for three months and did not think the officer should be indicted.
ReplyDeleteMax watches Maher and MSNBC and thinks the officer performed premeditated murder.
Mental insanity.
This is the typical response when you have nothing to say. I suppose if never did anything but post the words of others, I might assume no one else is capable of coming to their own conclusions. Plenty of people do things that are illegal and are not charged or are set free because the standard of proof is high. I admitted I don't know what the cop was thinking, and neither does the grand jury. In a court of law, all that matters is what you can prove or what you can convince others is true.
DeleteMax, with regard to grand juries, I think it is important to remember that the burden of proof to indict is fairly low... ‘Probable cause’ and the panel hears no defence witnesses other than the testimony of the defendant. A jury trial requires a higher burden of proof ... 'reasonable doubt' and of course everyone down to a character witness is capable of being called to testify. All the prosecutor had to do was produce enough evidence that Wilson was not doing his job in a correct manner… apparently they could not.
DeleteDon't get me wrong, I agree with you that policing in America is and has been out of control, particularly in black communities, for a very long time but it is time that we are as thorough with all police involved shootings as there was here.... It might just be a case that THIS cop was doing his job, cause they can't all be bad... can they?
How differently are lives lived in our two countries, Lou makes the most telling point in any debate here in months, Max has given us enough to think about for days and not because of some hypothetical learned debate but because people have unnecessarily died.
ReplyDeleteHere in Australia the nation is in shock and mourning the death of a sportsman who was one the fringe of regaining selection in the national cricket team for an international match his week.
Philip Hughes was playing in a match early in the week when he was felled by a ball which struck him just below the helmet he was wearing. Unfortunately, Hughes died two days later despite round the clock treatment in the best head trauma hospital in the country. This is the first death from a head injury in the history of first class cricket and the international, match due to begin on Thursday next is likely to be postponed. There are many memorial services and other events planned and the country as a whole is deeply concerned.
Look now at the situation in your country. Perhaps I am wrong but it does appear that every few months there is a situation where a black person is shot by a white man and the ensuing violence is categorized as rioting by blacks. I must observe that these events appear to be flare ups of latent racism lying just below the surface ready to explode given an excuse. Look at the situation described by Louman, an all black affair which can be categorized from the facts as revealed by Lou as a payback killing within a certain demographic. I suspect if the same thing occurred within a group of whites there would also be no civil disturbance.
Of course there has been improvement in the way authorities and blacks interact since the Rodney King affair some years ago. That particular episode did more to harm the image of America abroad than almost anything since the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. It is not unusual to hear condemnation around the dinner tables here of the American ethos by those who simply want to find a way to condemn a nation many consider being ungovernable by politicians so corrupt that honor and decency has left Washington forever.
My own opinion is based on correspondence with Americans both on this site and others and with the interchange of emails with many of your citizens through a variety of formats. It is my belief that you have not made the most of the opportunities given you since the end of WW2.America has been so engrossed in cleaning the sewers of the world that you have neglected the shit in your own backyard.
I do not have the solution, racism is endemic still in your country .Fault is on both sides and as far as I can see, it is going to be several generations before people of both black and white races can live together in peace and harmony. Perhaps as this is the thanksgiving weekend, some thought should be given to the subject.
In closing, we too have problems of a racial origin, not as noticeable as you but in common with US, we have a much greater population of blacks in our prisons than whites;
Cheers from Aussie
Look now at the situation in your country. Perhaps I am wrong but it does appear that every few months there is a situation where a black person is shot by a white man and the ensuing violence is categorized as rioting by blacks. I must observe that these events appear to be flare ups of latent racism lying just below the surface ready to explode given an excuse. Look at the situation described by Louman, an all black affair which can be categorized from the facts as revealed by Lou as a payback killing within a certain demographic. I suspect if the same thing occurred within a group of whites there would also be no civil disturbance.
DeleteFerguson is within the St. Louis metropolitan area. The FBI’s latest homicide-rate data ranked St. Louis as America’s fourth deadliest city. Its 38 killings per 100,000 residents in 2013 put it behind only Nos. 1 to 3, Detroit, New Orleans, and Newark.
Drawing on FBI figures and his own research, University of Missouri–St. Louis criminologist David A. Klinger counts 1,265 murders in his city from 2003 through 2012. Approximately 90 percent of those killed were black, reports Klinger, a former LAPD officer. Among these 1,138 decedents, roughly 90 percent (1,025) were slain by other blacks. Klinger found 32 blacks killed by cops, with 22 of them shot dead by white officers. So, across 10 years, white cops killed a whopping 2 percent of St. Louis’s black homicide victims. Investigations indicated that all of these police killings were legally justified.
The question is, is media inciting the people to riot??? Are unscrupulous people taking advantage of the situation?
Yes we do have a level of racism however does the media play a larger part than necessary in their effort to get the big story?
The question is where's the outrage of the media for the black on black violence? Where's the nationwide outrage from the protestors?
DeleteIn the 90's, when I still lived in Chicago, there actually WAS an outrage of the media and church leaders over black on black crime. Since the verdict, I have been hearing the "if a black cop shoots a white kid......"and now the reality that most black men who die of violence are killed by other blacks. If these are supposed to be proof that there is no racism in this country, it's not an argument I buy.
DeleteAs a person born in 1967, I clearly remember the term nigger being used well into the 80's by my father, kids I went to school with, and people where I worked. I remember having a black manager at the grocery store where I worked, and most of the other managers perpetually said derogatory things behind his back. Whether this shooting was the result of a racism is somewhat immaterial to me. The cop pumped a lot of rounds into the kid and they left the body laying there for a long time which gave the neighborhood plenty of time to observe and stew on the matter. When the people did start to protest, they were met with a military level of force. Whether that was required is a fair debate to have, but I don't think the media had anything to do with the rage people in that neighborhood were feeling.
In the stats above you list, 22 black people were killed by white cops and there weren't riots after everyone of those to my knowledge. Is it possible that the police in Ferguson made a lot of shitty decisions? Nothing justifies the looting, but when I saw the police pursuing people into residential neighborhoods while firing tear gas canisters into private property and when I saw a cop on camera point a AR-15 (or some variant) into the face of a kid while telling him, "I'll fucking kill you", I didn't have a ton of sympathy for the police. I'm trying to be objective Lou, the police displayed some absolutely horrid behavior. Rand Paul may have been grandstanding, but it didn't mean he didn't have a point.
Is the rage stoked by the media??
DeleteWhere's the coverage of the media for the black on black crime? It's missing in action.
You are correct, the police also make bad decisions as they are just people. If someone uses colorful language against looters is it racism or are they caught up in the heat of the moment?
For me, I wasn't there. I am clueless as to how and why it happened. I am reading through the grand jury documents which will take time.
Did the grand jury reach the right decision? No telling as neither of us were there.
The absolutely disgusting thing I see happen is the looting of the businesses that serve their community. What will they do should those business owners say, it's just not worth it.
I don't defend what the police did or didn't do. I understand the pain of a parent losing a child but for them to totally deny any responsibility and place it all on the police is equally irresponsible as the police over reacting.
King,
ReplyDeleteAs i mentioned in a comment just above here, it was common and acceptable to hear the word nigger well into the late 80's. I heard that word from my father, who grew up in rural Kentucky in the late 40's and 50's, and I heard the word at school and I used it myself. Being in the military had a strong impact on setting my views on race straight.
I spent some time studying the history of race in this country and a thought I always come back to is that it was white fear and idiocy that killed people like King and Medgar Evers. White people have paid as dearly for that as have black people in this country. As TS can attest to, like a stopped clock that is right twice a day, some well meaning government interventions to address race have backfired. Not all IMO, however. Still, any time a leader steps up, we find a way to put him down. Rather than using Obama as an example of what black youth can look forward to if they pull their head out of their ass, we have instead focused on bullshit like Obama's birth certificate because basically, he is uppity.
White against black racism has existed since the inception of this country. While it may no longer be acceptable to run a TV show like Archie Bunker and openly discriminate against people of color, we nonetheless have countless groups of skin heads and other white supremecist groups. Some would like for us to believe that black people face excessive police scrutiny and are incarcerated at exgeratted rates because they far and away commit more crime than whites do, which is a subtle way of saying, "It's just their nature". I don't think all younger white people today feel this way, but an abundance of those my age and older still do. If people want to just be stupid small minded bigots and it didn't affect me, I wouldn't care. But the fact that an overwhelming majority of black people live in poverty and violence does affect me. We pay for it with prisons. We pay for it in lost productivity. We pay for it in public assistance and violence. We pay dearly for it on countless levels and everyone is affected by it. But it's like everything else, if a left example of race can be shown, it can be nullified by three examples from the right that say it's all bullshit.
I think max is owed a debit for raising this subject in the manner he has. I suspect we have all needed to re-examine our ideas or be left behind by the quality of the debate here.
ReplyDeleteLouman has as always provided factual evidence rather than rhetoric to make his point in his response to my post.Max has followed up his initial effort with a most concise and thought provoking final post on the thread as it now stands. Above all, and in a purely selfish way, I feel you have all directed your responses in such a way that I can feel totally included in the debate.
Lou asks “The question is, is media inciting the people to riot??? Are unscrupulous people taking advantage of the situation?” Probably a fair enough question, particularly when we examine the statistical evidence Lou provides. Lou also asks if the media is simply looking for a sensational story (my interpretation) and from personal experience of popular journalism world wide, I can attest that this is the case. In any EU country, here in Australia and in much of Asia we can see sensationalized journalism on a daily basis.
What, in my view that makes the unrest in America different to other countries is the history of black suppression since 1619 up until the Kennedy administration. Even then, in many areas the total emancipation of the Negro population was more in the word than in the deed. What I am trying to say is that Afro Americans, now having total freedom and better chances than ever before of advancement according to their ability, still harbor a grudge and are simply trying to get used to their new power in a land which for so long denied them everything.
I think Max has clarified the argument in his last post, his own experiences and his political leanings allow Max to interpret the situation differently to others. I am sure Max is correct in his comparison of the material inequality of Whites and Blacks. What none of has been able to do is to enunciate a solution to the problem. As I said in my initial post, it will take generations to eradicate the wrongs stretching back almost 400 years.
Cheers and my thanks
From Aussie
King congrats to you to know that slavery occurred for 400 years in America. These revisionist historians on here would have you believe that slavery in America only lasted for 84 years. Prior to that it was a British problem. Never mind that it was the same families enslaving the same families for multiple generations regardless of what America was called. British colonies/ United States it's all the same.
DeleteWhite, black, or as HRC would say, what difference does it make? If this punk had been white the outcome would have been the same except no outrage from the media and no grand jury.
ReplyDeleteIn rememberance of Rollingdude, 'nuff said.
You guys except Max just don't get it. It wasn't a white cop killing a black teen that was the outrage.... well not completely. This is a predominately black community ruled by a predominately white police force. Any one here ever lived in Ferguson Missouri? Anyone here ever even been there? We don't know what kind of relationship this community and it's police force had/has but by all known accounts it hasn't been good for a long time. This is just the fuse that set it all off.
ReplyDeleteI grew up in St. Louis and currently live about 30 minutes south of Ferguson. I know the area well. The biggest problem with the Ferguson police is that aren't enough minorities qualified to join the department.
DeleteDemographic population totals of Ferguson
DeletePopulation by Races
Race Population % of Total
Total Population 21,203 100
Black or African American 14,297 67
White 6,206 29
Two or More Races 421 1
Hispanic or Latino 260 1
Asian 103 Below 1%
Total population in Ferguson
Total Population: 21,203
Male Population: 9,501
Female Population: 11,702
And the point is it's not LA.
As Giuliani noted, blacks die violent deaths almost exclusively at the hands of black criminals. But attempting to accommodate that reality in any serious way does not pay any political dividends for the Left. It does not put any money in Jesse Jackson’s pockets or create any full-time jobs for graduates of grievance-studies programs.
And thus we have the very peculiar situation in which “Black Lives Matter!” but black perpetrators don’t. Only white perpetrators matter.
Black on black violence is common place in America today left unaddressed.
Nice lou thanks for all the figures, but you still don't get it. Not even close. Real or perceived the blacks of Ferguson feel long time racial pressure as do many other blacks in America. We can't just keep making excuses, we need to fix the underlying problems. Same with the problem of the poor and welfare. There are underlying problems that we need to address to get people working and to get people off welfare to get people off the streets. But since you are obviously far superior to anybody else, and I judge that from your demeanor, you really don't give a rat's ass about the real problems in America. All you care is what it's costing you. Lou be proud of where you are and what you have accomplished in life. I truly mean that but don't forget where you came from. And don't forget that there are thousands that have a whole lot farther to come then you ever did or could imagine. Try to see things outside you little box that you live in.
DeleteThere is little to gain from a response to your comment and personal attack.
DeleteEnjoy your world as fewer people live there every year.
You didn't build that Iou. And by the way, it's your fault that there was a slave trade in the 17th century.
DeleteDon't you get it Iou?
Yes it is all my fault as a second generation American.
DeleteYes it is. Quiet down. Know your place.
DeleteThanks for the condescending bullshit Rick
DeleteYou will never change. Always the apologist.
Rick, you are the reason I have moved on from this site and return to see the same tripe occasionally.
DeleteOver 200,000 supporters of officer Wilson have raised over $500,000 on two Facebook pages.
ReplyDeleteTo donate to help officer Wilson whose wife is pregnant and is forced to relocate his entire life because he performed his Police duty contact "I am Darren Wilson."