All this sounds like a nurture issue to me. If the parents expose their child to new things and embrace new and different themselves, you’ll end up with kids who aren’t racists. If, on the other hand, a child is raised by someone who spouts racists bullshit, acts afraid of different races, and does not embrace differences, you’ll get kids like these. Now, which of those two models do you think this kid raised by a cop was exposed to?
All this sounds like a nurture issue to me. If the parents expose their child to new things and embrace new and different themselves, you’ll end up with kids who aren’t racists.
I have to disagree. As I pointed out above, my brothers and I were raised under the same roof, and much like the police chief, my dad wound up with 3 normals and a racist.
Further anecdote: The racist’s son (my nephew) is part of the Democratic Socialists of America, and regularly protests fascism and racism. If anything, he drove him to the opposite extreme with his racist b.s.
13 Likes
My nephew and 4 of his friends were killed by a policeman’s son. I wonder how common this actually is.
Yep, this. This is what the father should be judged by.
2 Likes
Best case, he recuses himself from the process, except as necessary as a witness. It wouldn’t benefit anyone in the family or the public for him to tip the scales in either direction.
5 Likes
It’s almost as if growing up the son of a police chief makes a person unaware that consequences exist.
Good luck to that kid next season as his celebrity gets him named The Bachelor.
I think too an Atta-Boy for the Manteca Police Department for not being corrupt or not giving a white discount or a blue discount to this person.
1 Like
The nature/nurture debate marginalizes social influences. We can squeeze society into nurture, but that isn’t really how it is used. It is used to mean the specific nuclear family a child was raised in. We can’t let racism off the hook by focusing on only genes or family.
Union City is in the Bay Area. It is hard to get more racially mixed than here. So then questions beyond nature or nurture might be what crowded did this man fall into? What was the culture that supports beating up a Sihk man? What societal forces prevented this man from refraining from non-racist behaviors?
Yet in America they rarely are, oddly enough.
Hatred IS taught.
And ‘tribalism,’ especially the kind based on the idea that ‘they don’t look like me, they must be my enemy,’ is a relic of primitive thinking.
3 Likes
It’s a shithole that was mostly known for having a pretty good water park. Now that’s gone and it’s just racists.
And picking a fight with a Sikh? That’s either brave or really stupid.
2 Likes
I should explain: “Manteca” means butter, and it’s used as a slang term for heroin. At least it was in the area once known as Spanish Harlem.
It sounds something like this:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=s2Tt6W-TxXs
2 Likes
I know McAlliser sounds Celtic, but has anyone actually looked at the picture of the kid? He isn’t getting a white discount.
2 Likes
Better name than “The Leftovers” El Sobrante.
2 Likes
I thought manteca was lard, and mantequilla was butter (but both are fats).
5 Likes
Good catch, there. Blue discount, then.
I agree that is mostly the case today in the US. But not too long ago it wasn’t, as various European countries were looked down upon by other Europeans (and their decedents living here). ETA - as well as religions, specifically the “foreign” Catholics.
And from a non US-centered point of view it still rings true. Other regions of the world with civil wars and strife are often homogeneous in race, but different in “nationality” (not the best word, but can include smaller regions than just a nation), religion, languages, and/or other cultural differences. One of the biggest screw ups from colonialism is the modern boarders often don’t take into account who was/is living there.
History does matter, but we live in the now.
And we live in the US, where this hate crime happened.
1 Like
I had much he same experience with my ex’s family. Four siblings raised under the same middle-class roof; two passionate about progressive politics; one indifferent to politics (and humans more broadly); and one racist f*wit. In this case, their father was an old-school white Australian racist, so perhaps the positive interpretation is that three out of four turned out ok despite his influence.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
