That’s an excellent point. Thank you. There is much to be reworked.
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There is definitely more visibility and attention but accountability is yet to be determined. And even then: throwing a handful of outright murderers in prison and prosecuting a few more high profile cases is good but not enough. It doesn’t change the background of racially targeted policing such as targeting neighborhoods with people of color for ticketing and fines, less violent harassment and intimidation, and all the other problems with the police.
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Of course, agreeded, not suggesting it’s anything like legal accountability. But… the social spotlight is powerful. 10yrs ago where would this be. Now they have to account publicly, nationally, for any (minor) incident. The 1st amendment guys take it to a whole other level. youtube : A1 Audits. Aggressive Spotlight activity
We’ve all known about this for years, and many white people have just ignored it.
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I really like Logic Razors. They help cut through some of the initial BS when sussing out the truth of something. Big Occam’s Razor fan.
However, Razors are meant as a tool to not inject speculation into a question. They are not something to be blindly followed. When there is evidence to be included, we have to abandon Razors because they are meant to be a surface level tool.
In this case, repeated issues with the Aurora police department (and others), means there is a statistical malice towards minorities. Even if one feels that may not be intentional - they are aware of it and are making an intentional decision to not correct it.
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Yeah. What if black neighborhoods have real problems that can’t be solved by cops?
It seems to me that all too often the US solution is either violence or thoughts and prayers.
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Here’s the paper if you wish to read it.
Commentary: Behavior of Slaughter Plant and Auction Employees toward the Animals
The Marshall Project reports that in Chicago, the “most dangerous” neighborhoods of the city are patrolled by rookie cops. This may be a standard practice across the US.
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That… makes it intentional. If you can see a problem and then refuse to take steps to fix it, it becomes intentional.
And anyone who is still on the fence over systemic racism is just being willfully ignorant at this point. There is so very much literature on these issues, both in academia and in more popular forms, that it’s time to finally accept that this exists as a problem and we need to take steps as a society to address it. Refusing to do so is just accepting that America is a failed state that was a flat out lie from day one and continues to be. we have the choice now to either make the pretty words we’re supposedly founded on have meaning, or to abandon this to the dustbin of history and move on to something better.
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Checks out. Arrest them.
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That’s not a mistake, that’s just gross incompetence and wanton disregard at the very least. Those officers should fired cause they clearly can’t tell the difference between an SUV and a motorcycle or their respective license plates.
Edit: Plates weren’t even for the correct state…Aurora’s finest, my ass.
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Really? Because there’s a thread on Twitter of over 800 cases of police pulling all sorts of egregious shit and not giving the tenth part of a fuck that they’re being caught on camera.
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(Vanessa Wilson) offered age-appropriate therapy to the children involved in the incident.
i.e. “gaslighting” them into believing the police meant no harm. Whatcha bet?
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Pulling a gun on an unarmed six-year-old and making her lie belly down on the pavement isn’t an act of “stupidity,” it’s an act of aggression.
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I agree. To be clear I was trying to walk through the reasoning to the person I was replying to. Their intentional decision to not correct it makes it intentional.
Or purposefully misconstruing the concept. I just wasted way too much time on a goon who said systemic racism doesn’t exist because there are no “racist laws” any more. I do hope anyone reading that thread walked away with some new understanding, but I dunno.
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Back then, just as now, this was only a big deal because somebody filmed it. These days we carry more cameras and we don’t need to send the footage to a news station, so more incidents like this are being made public. But as you said, it has always happened and I am sure even today there are dozens of cases like this where there was no one present to film it and the victims maybe don’t feel like they can speak out.
I’m not saying that to contradict your statement that we ignored it btw. I realise now that is how this comment may come across. I’m just saying that even the case of Rodney King wasn’t unusual; or rather only inasmuch as people could actually see the abuse with their own eyes rather than read about it in the newspaper (or more likely than not, not read about it)
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“On Sunday, police in Aurora, Colorado spotted a car with a license plate number that matched a stolen motorcycle,…”
-maybe the license plate matched…
-a car is not a motorcycle
-they stole a motorcycle and instead of throwing the plate away put it on a car instead?
-were the police incapable of resolving their mistake and keeping the owners of the car in the car?
-warning! if the police stop you then you are a threat
-what began as a traffic stop became intentional brutality-your choice as to what point in the stop that the brutality began
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They either do or they are willfully refuse to do so. All you can do is lay out the facts for them, but if they are so invested in the narrative that ignores reality, there isn’t that much you can do.
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For a while in the late 50s and 60s, this sort of brutality regularly made the nightly news, not just hear, but around the world.
Yes. White Americans have always been willfully ignorant about issues of race and we’ve been relatively reluctant to learn about it and to work to correct it.
“Things are changing now/they’ve got to change more…”
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That razor shaves too close.
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