The Shooting Gallery: Police Violence MEGATHREAD

[jimmy olsen]

 

https://twitter.com/laurennmcc/status/1274878862757892096

Today in Columbus my husband was downtown at the protests & saw the cops hit & mace an unarmed kid and then STEAL HIS PROSTHETIC LEGS.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Columbus/comments/hdf4hu/cpd_just_hit_and_maced_a_double_amputee_bravo_you/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

[grumbler]

So race is a social construct, what exactly is a meaningful "therefore" here?  What would race being a biological construct allow for than race being a social construct wouldn't?

The "therefore" is that we should keep our focus on eliminating racism, not explaining race.  Racism is the problem, not some fairy tale about "races."

[grumbler]

Other examples of social constructs: language, countries, money. It's real because we make in real. Saying race doesn't exist is like saying money doesn't exist. I mean it's true in the most semantic sense, but I can still throw a quarter at your face.

Other social constructs include gods, social classes, and professional ethics.  Saying that these things don't exist in the natural world helps us understand their utility or lack thereof.  This isn't a difficult concept.  Social constructs are only "real" to those that believe in them, and they change over time.

[viper37]

Who is talking about collective guilt?

I don't know, really.  Help me a little... there's this expression sys... systa... sytas... no, systemsomething?
How is that not collective guilt?  Since disagreeing with this makes you a racist, how is it not about collective guilt?

And reparations are, for better or for worse, tied to existing states and polities. As far as I know, that movement is aimed at the existing polities of the US, or the UK (and maybe France), who both sponsored and used enslaved labor, while wishing to uphold democratic values and aspirations.

Canada had slaves for a while. Quebec religious communities had slaves, indians or blacks.  Indian communities had slaves.  Do way pay indemnities to Pawnees and the possible descendants of black slaves?  Since Quebecers did not own as many slaves and not for as long as the British settlers, do the English Canadians pay more than we do, irrelevant of modern population?  Since the British government later fought against the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, is this a downpayement on any reperation?

In the US, who's a descendant of slave?  If someone's grandparents comes from Haïti, is he/she entitled to a compensation by the US government for slavery, abolished in 1865?
Despite the Civil war not being about the emancipation of slaves, but since it was the end result, should the dead white Union soldiers count as a downpayment?  Do the death of black soldiers on the Union sides and the black slaves on the Confederate side get included in the count?

And how is that going to change anything?  The Whites will now have a lot more respect for their black co-citizens?  The Trump Republicans will become believers in a just and fair world for everyone?  The US police force will be much less brutal in the future knowing that their victim is now richer?

If someone who can trace its ancestry back to a runaway slave in 1863 dies without children before reparations are made how is it fairer than someone whose ancestors were never slaves receiving a compensation despite living through segregation?

Do indians used as slaves get compensation?  Do indian tribes practicing slavery in the past get to chime in the pot?

It's a silly issue, and it should be dropped in favour of more attainable measures.  At some point, you got to choose your fights.  Windmills may be dangerous, but there are much more dangerous ennemies out there.

[Valmy]

Reparations paid to whom? And how? Talk about a bureaucratic mess.

Another reason I am in favor of Universal Basic Income. The black communities need money and support, how about $1000 dollars per person per month? And you don't need some big system trying to figure out who is entitled to some one time cash payment that ultimately won't help much.

[viper37]

I'm quite certain that people in Muslim majority countries have torn down statutes before, for various reasons. If Muslims in those countries want to tear down statues of prominent slavers, I doubt American or European leftists would complain.

The fact that American and European leftists are not travelling to Muslim majority countries to tear down statues there does not seem to me evidence of hypocrisy or inconsistency.

It's when there's talk of collective guilt, or white men's guilt for slavery and racism.  The slave trade was hardly confined to White men hunting down Africans in the deepest jungles.

Talking of reperation for slavery by only talking about 2 or 3 countries is a non starter.  Either you include everyone or you don't include anyone.  Blacks, Muslism, Europeans, Americans, Canadians, South Americans, does not matter, if reperation must be done to citizens whose skin colour is a shade of black, everyone guilty has to pay reperations. 

If a white person today has black slave ancestors, I don't see why that person should not be eligible to a form of compensation, since we're going to include a lot of people who never had a single slave ancestor in our countries.

[viper37]

I just wish they would be honest in their aims.

Ah.  If we don't agree with the left's vision of society, we are either racist or dishonest.
Should have known.

I'm slow to understand these things.  Next time, spell them properly for us in the beggining, please.

Thank you for your cooperation.

[viper37]

By the way did anybody read the amazing article Syt posted earlier? I mean not to hijack the statue thread or anything.

The one written by a former police officer?  Yes, I did. 

There are some interesting suggestions there, some that have been discussed over here (mental health issues), and some arguments that seems downright silly, like "if everyone's basic needs were satisfied we wouldn't need law enforcement". 

That's just pure leftist utopia right there.  We have several examples of what happens when there is no police: anarchy.  People don't buy drugs because they're dirt poor and have their basic needs not satisfied.  Having cops taking a depostion after the crime has been commited is not "bullshit", it's the first step in obtaining justice.
The ones who say "robbery" is not a real crime should have all their things stolen, their houses defaced, their cars vandalized and receive a good mugging on top of it so that would know that a lesser crime hurts as much as a serious crime.

[Valmy]

Yeah that is what I said earlier. Yes if everybody's basic needs were met and there were not crushing depressing poverty in large sections of the country that probably would substantially decrease crime.

But we all know that plenty of people commit crimes for reasons that have nothing to do with any of that. Even things like petty theft. Some people steal shit just for fun or they have some kind of irrational compulsion to do it. They may not even need or want or even care about the thing they stole. And that is just for a crime you would think would largely be driven by poverty. I recall that study that the overwhelming numbers of people who stole packages off people's doorsteps were just doing it for the thrill.

So that was kind of weak. I thought it was interesting many of his other ideas though. Like having different groups better trained for handling specific areas. Now I understand that might only be practical for very large forces in large cities but hey that is where many of the problems are occuring anyway.

Also it confirmed a lot of my concerns about training and how the police operate.

[viper37]

In other words, as a North American historian, you think that North American style slavery had a much more profound effect on the world than Eurasian style slavery. Splendid.

As a North American historian who has team-taught classes about freedom and slavery with colleagues working on the Ottoman Empire and China, yes. It's absolutely a point I would argue. Conversely, early-modern Chinese imperialism may have had a more profound effect on the world than early-modern European imperialism. Neither means that slavery in Persia, or warfare in the Andes was great or benign. 

A useful distinction, in the history of slavery, is between "societies with slaves" and "slave societies". The first are societies where slavery existed. The second, where slavery structured the very polity itself. None of the East Asian societies that I know of structured themselves around the institution of slavery the way that, say, Jamaica did. The Ottoman Empire, and its Janissaries, is perhaps the most hybrid case.

I'm speaking to the void... but anyway.
the problem is you focus only on the US.
Of course Atlantic chattel slavery shaped community and racial relations much more than the Ottoman&muslim slave trade when it comes to the US.

When it comes to Europe, it definately shapes how other groups view one another.  You have a pretty good example with Tamas, of which you dismissed the testimony, since he's a middle class white man.

The legacy of the Ottoman Empire has shaped how Turkey views its neighbours, how it views non Turk people inside its borders, how it views outsiders.  It's not something that magically appeared with Erdogan.  It also shaped how Turkey's neighbours see them.  It also shapes how some mulsim countries and their citizens perceive the West.
The term "mécréant" can be often heard in some of Montreal's universities by a certain category of students.  It's not something that suddenly appeared with Salafism or Saudi financed schools in Africa and Europe.

There's no black or white, clearly demarcated lines here.  Lots of blacks don't like whites at all.  Some black personalities will even publicly declare they'll never date whites.  Some black artists never miss an opportunity to spit on whites and disparage victims of black gangs.

But the worst?  Just like Stalin, they have their useful idiots to help them propagate their hate.

[DGuller]

So race is a social construct, what exactly is a meaningful "therefore" here?  What would race being a biological construct allow for than race being a social construct wouldn't?

The "therefore" is that we should keep our focus on eliminating racism, not explaining race.  Racism is the problem, not some fairy tale about "races."

I don't see how one in any way follows from the other.  I mean, of course we should be focusing on eliminating racism, but how does that follow from race being a social construct?

[viper37]

Maybe they didn't know who it was.

Some people can't differentiate one white guy from another 

[grumbler]

I don't see how one in any way follows from the other.  I mean, of course we should be focusing on eliminating racism, but how does that follow from race being a social construct?

Okay, you don't see it.  I can live with that.

[viper37]

All H. Sapiens sapiens can breed with viable breeding offspring.  No regional phenotypes cannot breed with other H Sapiens sapiens (there are, of course individual problems), so it is one race biologically.

But H. Sapiens sapiens did breed with Neanderthal and likely produced different H. Sapiens sapiens since some population (Africans have 0%) have as much as 4% Neanderthal genes. I'm guessing the portion of N. genes wasn't stable at 4% over time and it was signicantly higher when the mating first occured.

If race, as a biological concept does not exists and a species is a group that can produce viable offsprings among each other, how does that classify earlier form of humans?  Or should we rather say that despite obvious biological differences, H. Sapiens is the species, and H. Sapiens Sapiens is a subspecies?  But then, since we whites have 4% Neanderthal dna and Africans have 0%, do we belong to different sub-species?

Not my field of expertise, I am genuinely interested in this discussion.  Despite being an evil racist for not agreeing with the extreme left.

[viper37]

Ok, biological race for humans only works for the entire species, including extinct branches, with H. Sapiens sapiens being a race because it is the flow-to strain for other strains in the evolutionary sense.  In essence, the species and the race are now identical but only because other strains are gone - and those had morphological and genetic differences that may well merit being taxonomic differentiated.

up to what point can we up to the extinct species and say "we are of the same species"?  And that point, if the offspring of the generation that is not the same species as us is of the same species as their "parent", how do we fit in all this?