I do not want to make my roommate out to be a horrible person. He doesn’t understand what life is like in brown skin. I think it’s White Male brain poisoning. It’s such a devious disease, he doesn’t even know he has it.
One of his main arguments is, “You’re not there, so you don’t know that they (the black people) don’t deserve to be treated like that. Look what happened with Rodney King! They need to be stopped!”
I have no idea how to show someone like this that “he” is part of “they”, and he needs to realize it before all of his rights have magically disappeared right
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He’s producing an emotional response.
Rationally, anyone can learn from Iraq vets articles that we are using oppressive, ineffective tactics, that guns should only be pointed at something you need to kill, etc. They can easily read through a couple of the articles and understand that the police response is both ineffective and could never be appropriate.
Could you ask your room mate to read it, on his own time, and tell you how he thinks/feels about it? Strive for understanding - looking to change his mind or prove him wrong would make him defensive.
I’m a white male. I don’t know how life is in colored skin or a woman’s body. That should not stop anyone from recognizing basic human rights and caring about how our government interacts with its people. It’s just pure ignorance - just like how the Black voters of California voted to take away the right to gay marriage.
I do not intend to undermine the racial issues here as they are a factor. They were not in Occupy Oakland.
Everyone should be concerned when our government starts treating its citizens like enemy combatants. It doesn’t matter if you’re white, liberal or in the Tea Party. This is fucked up.
Every year we step a little closer to the intro movie from Fallout:
http://gfycat.com/WildUniformAlbatross (until the gif is processed)
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Isn’t the usual refrain that we’ve pretty much dismantled all the community, religious, union, etc. organizations that in the past would have handled organizing the logistics of such an event?
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Ferguson is some social experiment, right? Like - could we get away with martial law in the whole country?
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even npr refers to this as “violent protests”. i don’t know if that’s a privileged perspective, but it seems so at odds with the facts on the ground. i can only imagine most people really don’t understand what’s going on.
also that, and xeni’s " embedded reporter". it makes me very sad.
im glad there’s so much good discussion ( and honest questions like yours ) here on boing boing. i know im just one data point, but my facebook feed - once filled with occupy, school shootings, and social issues - is totally, completely silent about ferguson.
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His name is Todd https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEU0BoLbsdc
Wasn’t the occupy movement able to get things moving in these here inter-tubes? The internet is organic. Our individual networks are vast. It’s our individual will that is in question. Sometimes, that needs to be bolstered by a group. A roving gang of upstarts intent on getting people from every corner of these here Barely United Anymore States of America to march on Washington D.C., so we may keep them united just a bit longer. This is about how responsible we feel individually for maintaining not just free speech, but human rights, which are both quickly disappearing for everyone, right here, in the United States, regardless of your skin color.
I don’t know how to get something like this started, but I want to.
Nonsense. Skeletor is Love. Didn’t you know?
I heard the BBC refer to the reason for the protests as ‘the death of a local teenager earlier in the week’.
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