fuck the police general

[electrowizard]

Just curious, did it bother you more as a kid in school? Because it seems to be a huge issue with adolescents

[sdadasdas]

I was never really introduced to any form of Asian culture (adopted from Korea at 3 months old), so no.

[electrowizard]

Ah, that makes sense. My roommate (also Korean) talks about his experience with it a lot and having to act completely differently at school and at home and how it messed with him a lot in middle and high school.

That age group is more susceptible in general because all adolescents are trying to piece together their identity

[big_ass]

Modern social justice movement erases the voices and needs of minorities in pursuit of regressive, authoritarian political goals

‘The protests were whiter than the police department’

It is ultimately black and Hispanic communities, Moskos says, who will pay the price for all this. Defunding or defanging police is ‘going to cause more people to die, and more black people to die’, he says, bluntly.

(What he actually means are "poor." Minority communities are disproportionately poor. This is why you don't get particularly grounded takes on something like this from LBJ but you do from Refspi.)

Police have to be part of the solution, he says, and this is why the anti-police narrative and the misleading claims about endemic police racism need to be challenged.

‘The idea that this is a national emergency, or that police are out executing black men, it’s demonstrably false, we know from the numbers now’, he says. ‘Yes, there’s a racial disparity, but there’s a racial disparity everywhere in America. The racial disparity doesn’t seem to be incredibly out of whack when taking other variables into account, including perpetrators of violent crime.’

A study by Harvard economist Roland Fryer found in 2016 that while black people are more likely to be manhandled and pepper-sprayed by police, there is no racial disparity in terms of lethal force when all context is taken into account. Fryer, an African-American, called it ‘the most surprising result of my career’.

Far more important to look at here, Moskos says, are regional disparities in police killings.

‘If we could get California down to the national average, California alone, that would save one hundred or two hundred lives. That seems kind of doable, but then we have to move away from the laser-like focus on race.’

‘To put it bluntly’, he adds, ‘white people get shot too, and for a long time, people didn’t believe that, because usually those shootings don’t become national news because there’s no racial angle’.

For Moskos, it seems, the anti-police movements of today fit into this tradition of progressive paternalism, of well-meaning white reformers pushing their morality and ideological experiments on to the poor.

‘It’s a bunch of white progressives telling black people that they don’t need police’, he tells me. ‘They could try it in their neighborhood first, but they don’t want to do that.’

‘Before I would just say it’s paternalistic or wrong. Now I’m just saying this is racist. If you’re white and telling other neighbourhoods they don’t need police, and they’re getting killed… it’s horrible.’

Indeed, another disparity we often don’t talk about is the one between white and black attitudes to police numbers. In 2015, a Gallup poll found black Americans were 20 per cent more likely than white Americans to say that they wanted more police on their streets.

He goes on to share some interesting ideas about prison reform/abolition. I have to say I don't entirely agree some of what he says - crediting the NYPD for the drop in murders in NYC in the '90s seems questionable, for example - but I appreciate the perspective of someone who is both well-researched, well-educated, and has lived and worked alongside these people in order to get a complete picture of the situation.

[hbotz]

movements are made of people. people all have different motives. so i am hesitant to criticize the movement, because i dont know what you mean by that. the movement means different things to different people

[hbotz]

is it accurate to say "BLM wants to abolish the police"? i think its enough to just be against the specific extreme takes. do that many people even want the police abolished?

[big_ass]

I am talking about the white twit-osphere that is pushing the abolish the police / racism as original sin / black people are "subaltern" (lol) mentality

[hbotz]

dont care the twitosphere it is a poor sampling of people

[big_ass]

Specifically - the people in this thread. Who are fairly typical of the group if somewhat disconnected/more extreme.

[big_ass]

I think your approach to this is silly, there's a massive political movement here and you're saying "Who do you mean??" "Can you reference specific ppl / those specific ppl aren't important"

I suppose it's fair but only from a theoretical finger-in-the-eye perspective

[hbotz]

well, i would be supporting you if the police were in danger of being abolished.

i think theres not even close to enough support for that and its just the extreme takes being blown up.

[hbotz]

and its not very good to confuse people into thinking BLM is a dangerous movement that wants to abolish the police. i dont think thats true.

[electrowizard]

@big_ass

What he actually means are "poor." Minority communities are disproportionately poor. This is why you don't get particularly grounded takes on something like this from LBJ but you do from Refspi.

Lmao reduction of racism to economics is bullshit. Here you go:

@big_ass

‘The idea that this is a national emergency, or that police are out executing black men, it’s demonstrably false, we know from the numbers now’, he says. ‘Yes, there’s a racial disparity, but there’s a racial disparity everywhere in America. The racial disparity doesn’t seem to be incredibly out of whack when taking other variables into account, including perpetrators of violent crime.’

Hmm, when white people and black people consume weed at around the same rate per capita, why is it that black people get arrested far more? Could it be targeting by the police? Could that also be why violent crime seems to be more heavily perpetrated by black people? Could their status as the subaltern of the US mean that they're forced into a position where violence is their only means of advancement?

And yeah, this dude was a cop. Of course he's kissing the ass of the police. Blue wall lmao

@big_ass

there is no racial disparity in terms of lethal force when all context is taken into account.

Yeah, the context of them being more likely to be pursued and accused of violent crime, more likely to have to live a life of criminality after getting hit with a felony for smoking some weed and being unable to get a job...

@big_ass

‘To put it bluntly’, he adds, ‘white people get shot too, and for a long time, people didn’t believe that, because usually those shootings don’t become national news because there’s no racial angle’.

"All Lives Matter"

@big_ass

has lived and worked alongside these people in order to get a complete picture of the situation.

You know the blue wall of silence is a thing, right? And it's expected after you leave the force too?

[electrowizard]

@big_ass

I am talking about the white twit-osphere that is pushing the abolish the police / racism as original sin / black people are "subaltern" (lol) mentality

Where's the evidence this is a white thing? That poll was already shit on and is unusable. And the book I keep citing is written by a black man lmao

[hbotz]

what does it mean that slavery is and connotes an ontological status for Blackness?

are you saying white slaveowners owned black slaves not because it was profitable but because they were black?

[hbotz]

racism cannot be reduced to mere economics but a lot of the effects of racism are economic in mechanism (and, in my opinion, might be significantly ameliorated through direct anti-poverty efforts.)

[electrowizard]

It was profitable, but white chattel slavery would've been more profitable. First full paragraph of the second image. The citation given is:

Eltis, Europeans and the Rise and Fall of African Slavery, pages 1405 and 1422

[electrowizard]

@hbotz

racism cannot be reduced to mere economics but a lot of the effects of racism are economic in mechanism (and, in my opinion, might be significantly ameliorated through direct anti-poverty efforts.)

The more convincing argument, imo, is that capitalism is the enforcement mechanism for racism in societal structures. But solving the enforcement mechanism doesn't solve racism

[hbotz]

what is your interpretation of the mechanism behind why the north rejected slavery and the south rejected rejecting slavery? i think its basically economic. what about you?

[electrowizard]

@hbotz

what is your interpretation of the mechanism behind why the north rejected slavery and the south rejected rejecting slavery? i think its basically economic. what about you?

It wasn't economically beneficial. But northern states still returned escaped slaves. They still segregated their shit without explicitly codifying it in law like the south did with Jim Crow