"On the other hand the conviction of Derek Chauvin was remarkable, trailblazing, pivotal, because for most of my life a policeman who murdered a black man in cold blood could do so without fear of reprisal, not even the loss of a day's pay."
I wonder if this is a generational thing, but I honestly wasn't surprised by the Chauvin verdict. I was *relieved*, but not surprised. And I wouldn't have been particularly tempted to blame his acquittal on racism even if he had been acquitted.
As you say, police have been getting away with killing civilians for a long time. Not just black civilians, civilians. Most of those cases don't even make it to trial. The case of Tony Timpa, for example, was dropped and all three officers involved in his killing returned to active duty. Barely a word in the press.
And the fact that there was a time when a black man with a PhD couldn't get a job higher than a janitor, and today the idea is unthinkable, is exactly the kind of progress I'm pointing to. My awareness of how racist America was in the past is precisely why I'm so aware of the progress that's been made.
Racist attitudes haven't improved in some people and places. You're sadly absolutely right. And yes, those people are angrier than ever. But they're angry because they're *losing*. They're angry because their bigotry is dying out. They're dying because for all their efforts, black people are gaining the respect they deserve. I don't take these bigots lightly at all. But their tears are delicious to me😁.
This comment is generic and not aimed at anyone's comment. I often wonder if we would get a better result on fixing race problems with less focus on race. I often see the raw number vs. per capita argument pertaining to the police being immune to justice when they wrongfully kill someone. If we all pile onto the issue without the "it's a bigger problem for my group" stuff and get a better police force, black people benefit along with everyone else. Isn't a good result good, even if it's for everyone?
Would more white people (even the racist ones) join in the effort if they didn't perceive it as all about black people?
Hey Dave, I touch on it in "Confessions of A Race Writer". I'll be posting paywall free versions of it and the rest of December's articles in this week's subscriber thread.👍
Statistics on police convictions are astounding; anyone could be excused for thinking that a badge was a license to wanton murder.
But you know as well as I that while, yes, white people get shot by cops too, PoC are such victims entirely out of proportion to their representation in population,
I too revel in the rage and pain of racists. But I worry more than revel; these are irrational and hate-crazed people and the fact that they are losing makes them feel that violence is more justified than ever. They believe their cause is righteous.
"PoC are such victims entirely out of proportion to their representation in population"
Yes this is true. But as I said in a conversation here recently, black people are also quite dramatically overrepresented in violent crime and homicide. Sadly, with the state of policing, if you encounter the police more often, bad things will happen more often.
Black people are still overrepresented in police shootings if you account for this. And there are many other measures that demonstrate police bias against black people (rates at which we're pulled over, police verbal/physical aggression during non-criminal interactions). But it's important to look at the whole picture.
And yes, I hear you. I don't take racists lightly. I worry too. Especially given the idiots doing everything they can to stir up racial hatred in the name of "antiracism".
Too busy right now for a long answer but ... traffic stops. Let me see your license. Man reaches into his jacket for his wallet. Cop blows his brains out. Doesn't happen too often to white drivers.
I think anyone who calls the cops on a black man for being somewhere like a park should be indicted for attempted murder.
Your last sentence says a lot about the mental state of the nation, alas.
Police kill around 15-25 unarmed Blacks every year, out of 42 million, and out of tens of millions of interactions by 700,000 officers. That's well under 1 in a million. Among the risks that all of us face, that is a very small one, objectively.
However, white liberals when surveyed tend to overestimate by literally a factor of 10 to 1000 or MORE, believing that staggering numbers of Black men, women and children are gunned down in the street every year by police for no reason except racial animus.
I'd be pretty emotional if that were true, too. But it isn't.
As a result of their internal models being many orders of magnitude out of touch with reality, some well intentioned people sincerely believe that each interaction between (unarmed, as in a park) Black people and the police is really, really likely to result in a death - like 50/50 rather than less than one in a million. If the person in question doesn't fight with the police or try to resist arrest, the risk is probably well under one in ten million.
So with this distorted misunderstanding, they can with good conscience assert that any person [which presumably includes any Black person by the way] calling the police about a Black person should be indicted for attempted murder. Just imagine what it would be like to live in a world where such people came to power and could implement the policies they advocate. Even good intentions can have horrific effects if untethered from reality.
Where I live, even a (white) victim of theft or assault by a Black person, can be assailed by progressives if they go to police about it, because of the irrational believe that's that's pretty much a death sentence for a non-capital offense.
From any rational analysis, that's seriously bonkers. Staggeringly so. A society with as widespread delusion that big is in trouble (a society with a similar number of people who think that Trump won the last election is in trouble too; this troubling irrationality comes from both sides).
But it's so darn emotionally satisfying to imagine that one is fighting a noble crusade against a horrendous evil epidemic of unrestrained open season on Black people by cops. Accepting a criminal attack without accountability is a heroic action which will most likely save a Black life from the killer police. Actual facts are like a wet blanket to that fiery payoff, so it's hard to discuss this rationally with those who have been misled by the fuzzy "impression" they got from politically biased sources intentionally misleading them. (Yes, the professional activists are often privately aware of these numbers, but they say what gets them power).
There are many other facets to consider (like whether we should expect proportionality to raw population or to crime, comparisons among all racial/ethnic groups in the US, etc) which would be interesting to discuss. We could look at Roland Fryer's research which dug into finer details and accounted for factors missed by crude numbers. But we can't begin to have a reasoned conversation until some people recognize how grossly distorted their mental models of what's happening have become.
As I said before, if this was happening as frequently as many liberals imagine, I too would have a very different take on it. I do care about disparities, but I believe we have to understand the true nature and scope of a problem before we can implement effective remedies, not go off half cocked based on delusions.
"On the other hand the conviction of Derek Chauvin was remarkable, trailblazing, pivotal, because for most of my life a policeman who murdered a black man in cold blood could do so without fear of reprisal, not even the loss of a day's pay."
I wonder if this is a generational thing, but I honestly wasn't surprised by the Chauvin verdict. I was *relieved*, but not surprised. And I wouldn't have been particularly tempted to blame his acquittal on racism even if he had been acquitted.
As you say, police have been getting away with killing civilians for a long time. Not just black civilians, civilians. Most of those cases don't even make it to trial. The case of Tony Timpa, for example, was dropped and all three officers involved in his killing returned to active duty. Barely a word in the press.
And the fact that there was a time when a black man with a PhD couldn't get a job higher than a janitor, and today the idea is unthinkable, is exactly the kind of progress I'm pointing to. My awareness of how racist America was in the past is precisely why I'm so aware of the progress that's been made.
Racist attitudes haven't improved in some people and places. You're sadly absolutely right. And yes, those people are angrier than ever. But they're angry because they're *losing*. They're angry because their bigotry is dying out. They're dying because for all their efforts, black people are gaining the respect they deserve. I don't take these bigots lightly at all. But their tears are delicious to me😁.
This comment is generic and not aimed at anyone's comment. I often wonder if we would get a better result on fixing race problems with less focus on race. I often see the raw number vs. per capita argument pertaining to the police being immune to justice when they wrongfully kill someone. If we all pile onto the issue without the "it's a bigger problem for my group" stuff and get a better police force, black people benefit along with everyone else. Isn't a good result good, even if it's for everyone?
Would more white people (even the racist ones) join in the effort if they didn't perceive it as all about black people?
"I often wonder if we would get a better result on fixing race problems with less focus on race"
I absolutely think we would. I actually wrote this in an article recently.
After deleting my old Medium account which erased all the toxic exchanges, I created a new account. That was the name of that article?
Hey Dave, I touch on it in "Confessions of A Race Writer". I'll be posting paywall free versions of it and the rest of December's articles in this week's subscriber thread.👍
Thanks Steve.
Statistics on police convictions are astounding; anyone could be excused for thinking that a badge was a license to wanton murder.
But you know as well as I that while, yes, white people get shot by cops too, PoC are such victims entirely out of proportion to their representation in population,
I too revel in the rage and pain of racists. But I worry more than revel; these are irrational and hate-crazed people and the fact that they are losing makes them feel that violence is more justified than ever. They believe their cause is righteous.
And I'm a-standing at the crossroads.
Please be careful.
"PoC are such victims entirely out of proportion to their representation in population"
Yes this is true. But as I said in a conversation here recently, black people are also quite dramatically overrepresented in violent crime and homicide. Sadly, with the state of policing, if you encounter the police more often, bad things will happen more often.
Black people are still overrepresented in police shootings if you account for this. And there are many other measures that demonstrate police bias against black people (rates at which we're pulled over, police verbal/physical aggression during non-criminal interactions). But it's important to look at the whole picture.
And yes, I hear you. I don't take racists lightly. I worry too. Especially given the idiots doing everything they can to stir up racial hatred in the name of "antiracism".
Too busy right now for a long answer but ... traffic stops. Let me see your license. Man reaches into his jacket for his wallet. Cop blows his brains out. Doesn't happen too often to white drivers.
I think anyone who calls the cops on a black man for being somewhere like a park should be indicted for attempted murder.
Your last sentence says a lot about the mental state of the nation, alas.
Police kill around 15-25 unarmed Blacks every year, out of 42 million, and out of tens of millions of interactions by 700,000 officers. That's well under 1 in a million. Among the risks that all of us face, that is a very small one, objectively.
However, white liberals when surveyed tend to overestimate by literally a factor of 10 to 1000 or MORE, believing that staggering numbers of Black men, women and children are gunned down in the street every year by police for no reason except racial animus.
I'd be pretty emotional if that were true, too. But it isn't.
As a result of their internal models being many orders of magnitude out of touch with reality, some well intentioned people sincerely believe that each interaction between (unarmed, as in a park) Black people and the police is really, really likely to result in a death - like 50/50 rather than less than one in a million. If the person in question doesn't fight with the police or try to resist arrest, the risk is probably well under one in ten million.
So with this distorted misunderstanding, they can with good conscience assert that any person [which presumably includes any Black person by the way] calling the police about a Black person should be indicted for attempted murder. Just imagine what it would be like to live in a world where such people came to power and could implement the policies they advocate. Even good intentions can have horrific effects if untethered from reality.
Where I live, even a (white) victim of theft or assault by a Black person, can be assailed by progressives if they go to police about it, because of the irrational believe that's that's pretty much a death sentence for a non-capital offense.
From any rational analysis, that's seriously bonkers. Staggeringly so. A society with as widespread delusion that big is in trouble (a society with a similar number of people who think that Trump won the last election is in trouble too; this troubling irrationality comes from both sides).
But it's so darn emotionally satisfying to imagine that one is fighting a noble crusade against a horrendous evil epidemic of unrestrained open season on Black people by cops. Accepting a criminal attack without accountability is a heroic action which will most likely save a Black life from the killer police. Actual facts are like a wet blanket to that fiery payoff, so it's hard to discuss this rationally with those who have been misled by the fuzzy "impression" they got from politically biased sources intentionally misleading them. (Yes, the professional activists are often privately aware of these numbers, but they say what gets them power).
There are many other facets to consider (like whether we should expect proportionality to raw population or to crime, comparisons among all racial/ethnic groups in the US, etc) which would be interesting to discuss. We could look at Roland Fryer's research which dug into finer details and accounted for factors missed by crude numbers. But we can't begin to have a reasoned conversation until some people recognize how grossly distorted their mental models of what's happening have become.
As I said before, if this was happening as frequently as many liberals imagine, I too would have a very different take on it. I do care about disparities, but I believe we have to understand the true nature and scope of a problem before we can implement effective remedies, not go off half cocked based on delusions.