Still do. But bringing in what is and isn’t provably false - in this moment - is of debatable taste, and is not philosophizin. This is a thread about a dead black kid, not language policing. Actual policing.
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One of the problems with “taking race out of it” is… people assume that if you tackled police brutality as a whole, it’ll also help the police-brutality-against-blacks issues. And, it’s a fair assumption, it probably will, to a certain degree. Except… “complete and total victory over police brutality” is not the only outcome, and no solution is likely to be all-encompassing and evenly applied. And if it’s not, it might actually tend to be a set back.
Take, for example, crime. Crime’s a problem that affects everybody… but not to the same degrees. Except when you tackle crime as a whole, what can often happen is you end up with (in wealthier areas) gated communities, well-patrolled by the police, and suddenly low crime, and a slight reduction everywhere else.
Then the people in the gated communities think, “Well, crime’s solved, now I’m more worried about tax increases.”
People everywhere else are still worried about crime. It’s slightly better than it was, but it’s still pretty bad.
And the people in the gated communities are the ones that the politicians listen most to, not the people who live in the high crime areas, so the problem gets unaddressed and gets worse. (And the criminals get emboldened and start targetting the rich areas again and the cycle repeats).
If you try to tackle police brutality and scrupulously leave race out of the equation, you may wind up solving only police brutality against whites, and making it slightly better for others, for a while (while the discrepancy dominos outwards to other effects). It won’t be blatant, it’ll be manifested in little things, like cops being disproportionally punished based on ‘judgement calls’ when those judging happen to be aware of the race of the victim, or more unreliable video recording systems in some areas, but to me there’s a good chance it WILL happen, and too many people will think, “Well, police brutality is SOLVED though, so, these guys must really have been criminals.” That to me is far more likely than the idea that, if race is front and center, we’ll somehow end up in a scenario where police brutality against blacks is no longer a problem, but police brutality is.
By all means, suggest methods that will reduce police brutality overall, regardless of race, because it WILL help everyone if overall police brutality is reduced. But don’t take their feet off the fires about the racial elements while we do it, we have to constantly remind the powers that be that we are aware of it, it IS a problem of it’s own, and we won’t stand for it.
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Somewhat related, and very timely.
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Marcus Aurelius is a perfect example of what’s wrong with the “tone argument”. He was an emperor of the Roman Empire, the richest and most powerful man in Europe, writing about the virtues of ascetic living. The Empire was based on bloody conquest, slavery, and outright thievery, and from his elevated position, he wrote about freedom. He was, in short, a colossal hypocrite, and a model for generations of hypocrites in positions of power.
Truth isn’t told by the people repeating the “tone argument”. It’s told by young people of color in the streets of Ferguson.
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It’s pretty simple: focusing on something that should not have happened to another human being, without referencing their race, does not in any way imply that you want to remove that human being from the picture.
If you feel otherwise, then I’m afraid we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
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No one disagrees. I haven’t yet seen anyone complain about people being angry about Eric Garner’s death or sharing thoughts about preventing similar deaths in the future. Everyone who has found a way to do that that without specifically mentioning that we shouldn’t talk about race has gotten by fine here.
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This. All of this.
Well, except for the fleet of armed drones, yeah pretty much!
Whoa, something actually related to the topic! That dude’s right. Police state and all. Anyway. There’s a new thread for this. Free of debate about tone arguments.
ahem
ahem
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Soo… no one disagrees, so long as you don’t actually do it.
[edit] I can’t believe I’ve got to do this, but here, I’ll revise for you:
focusing on something that should not have happened to another human being, without referencing their race, and specifically saying that you’re doing so, does not in any way imply that you want to remove that human being from the picture.
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I was just trying to follow the point you were making. No need to make it personal.
Okay, so we’ll just set aside the entire conversation about why it is offensive to some people to leave race out of picture, about how the decision to add something to posts saying that we should leave race out is counter-productive to anyone who wants to deal with police brutality as it alienates allies, and focus solely on one semantic point:
Was @Bearpaw correct or incorrect to say that @strugglngwriter was taking the dead black man out of the discussion.
Let’s look at @strugglngwriter’s comment in full:
It is an abstract discussion about the limits of force that police officers can use without any reference to any particular case (this one or any other). Therefore, it does not reference Eric Garner, who is the dead black man being discussed in this thread. Since this thread is about Eric Garner’s death, it is natural that he be included, so it is rational to call his exclusion ‘taking him out.’
So on close examination, if we don’t care what anyone meant or how anyone feels or what is productive or about anything else that anyone would care about in a discussion with other human beings, yes, the comment removed the dead black man from the equation. In summary, I’m right, you’re wrong, nananananana.
If we do care about what people meant and what people meant to be discussing then it is pretty clear from subsequent comments that what @Bearpaw meant to express via his comment is that saying ‘leaving race out’ is a bad thing to do, and that @strugglngwriter didn’t mean to diminish racism in policing in any way.
And here we are, arguing about something surely related to Eric Garner’s death.
Oh Dragon Take Me! I know not what I do!
!!!
If a moderator would ban me for the duration of this thread, I swear I will send them cookies in the mail.
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I tried flagging, but there are no options to flag you for being evenhanded, awesome, nor fair.
Tough cookies.
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You can write it in when you flag it. I’ve flagged things and then had to describe why, it’s worked out well.
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Actually, because you ARE in favor of erasing a big part of the identy of the person this discussion is mainly about (Eric Garner, another black man dead from unwarranted police brutality) it could be said that you are, in fact, trying to minimize the human aspect of this issue. AND a big part of the context. When young black men are TWENTY ONE times more likely to be killed by police than white men race is a big part of the issue and to ignore it is dangerous not to mention disingenuous.
The whole “But race isn’t the issue!” is also a big dog whistle from racists who like to deny that racism is still a cause of a LOT of problems in this society, even though clearly that is true.
I have no idea how you expect to have a meaningful discussion on a topic by removing a huge chunk of the context from the discussion.
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Seriously?
That’s a pretty transparent way to move the goalposts.
NO. Your entire comment here is manipulative and YOU are the one moving goal posts. Or attempting to, at least, and this isn’t the first time, either.
As an aside, and I made this a separate comment on purpose, I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate your point of view, @Humbabella, and your voice. Thank you for taking the time to express yourself here. You add a lot to the conversation. Also, Nonentity is incorrect, clearly, and in my opinion, they aren’t being very sincere.
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