I found a really comprehensive research paper on the precise issue which this thread seeks to discuss. It is currently a working paper with the National Bureau of Economic Research by Roland Friar titled : "An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force" . ( http://www.nber.org/papers/w22399 )

The approach of this paper has been to gather as much data on the circumstances of actual instances of police use of force (from police reports, public records, police-contact surveys, arrest records, etc...) in order to actually control for varying circumstances that may have contributed to the use of police force (such as the interaction taking place in a high crime area, the behaviors of the civilian, whether or not there was an arrest warrant, etc...), with up to 300 or so identifiable variables that they attempt to control for. The purpose of this is to compare like with like by isolating interactions between police and civilians where the only difference was the race of the civilian, in order to better assess if race alone increases the chances of police using force.

The two main takeaways are as follows: When it comes to the use of non-lethal force (i.e, pushing, punching, batons) the study could not identify any factor beyond race in order to explain the 50% greater occurrence of police use of force on hispanic and black civilians. However, when it comes to the use of lethal force (i.e, using tasers and discharging firearms), after environmental, circumstantial, and behavioral factors are taken into account, the study found that race does not actually factor in to the decision of police officers to use lethal force.

To reiterate, the study found that if you're black or hispanic you're 50% more likely than whites to have non-lethal force used against you in any interaction with the police. However, blacks and hispanics are no more likely than whites to be subjected to the use of lethal force, or to die as the result of having been subjected to the use of lethal force by police.

To state it again in another way: Race does not factor in to the police deciding whether or not to use lethal force, other factors do, but race may very well factor in when it comes to the use of non-lethal force.

The findings of this study do demonstrate that when you control for individual circumstances blacks and hispanics are no more likely to be killed by police than whites, however they also indicate that race may be a factor which determines whether or not a police officer is going to use some form of non-lethal physical force. It could be that the study, which is still looking to gather more data to reinforce it's findings, is simply not able to detect the necessary variables to explain the remaining 50% increased use of non-lethal force disparity, or it could very well be that the 50% increased chance of having non-lethal force used against you while black or hispanic is the direct result of a prejudiced police force.

There are many other findings in this study, some of them are quite shocking in fact, but it does seem to dispel the contemporary notion that American police are more likely to use lethal-force on someone because of their race.

I responded to this on pf...not sure if got through as that site seems to be broken.

I pointed out that it is odd that paper finds that race may account for non-lethal violence (you are 50% more likely to have non-lethal force used on you if you are hispanic or black) but that there is no link between lethal violence and race.

This is odd to me because to my mind non-lethal violence is more likely to lead to lethal force.
For example if you are attacked by the police without provocation and defend yourself it could quickly escalate to lethal force on behalf of the police.

At any rate it is also irrelevant to the issue in my mind.
As it stands now in the media the cases shown are examples where lethal force was quite clearly unjustified and yet there are no consequences for the officers involved.
To me race is irrelevant to that issue.
It does not matter if a white unarmed man is gunned down by police or a black unarmed man.
The issue is a failure of oversight of law enforcement and the resulting injustice.

Regarding the oddity of the findings you point out:

You're right that it is an odd statistic, all other things being equal we might presume that if police are using some force more often on blacks that should lead to a disparity of lethal force being used on blacks because of escalation, but this might not be the case for several possible reasons.

Firstly, the actual decision making process that police undergo when deciding to use lethal force might be very different than how they decide whether or not to use non-lethal force. Initiating non-lethal force itself might actually render lethal-force a less likely outcome (I.E, the civilian gets restrained before the police decide to use lethal-force). It could also be that police take the use of lethal force very seriously compared to non-lethal force and thus take the decision more seriously and without bias.

Another thing to consider is that the study did not exactly demonstrate race as a definitive factor in the use of non-lethal force in the same way that it demonstrated race is not a factor on the use of lethal force. It was able to show that if you twist a bunch of control knobs you can demonstrate that in the same situations whites and blacks have the same chances of getting shot or killed by police. Regarding non-lethal force, they demonstrated that most of the racial disparity can be reduced by controlling for circumstances, but failed to discover the factors (if they exist) for a final 50% increased risk disparity in the use of non-lethal violence. That 50% could be race, or it could be largely due to yet unexamined environmental/behavioral/circumstantial factors.

Regarding the point you bring up about the issue of police killing unarmed civilians in the first place and not being held accountable, I'm not entirely convinced It's as prevalent an occurrence as we are lead to believe. Granted, police operating procedures seem to me too aggressive and the judicial process america uses for police seems extra-non-transparent. I have been supporting police reform for many years now but you must understand that my motivation for writing this thread is not the intent of broadly defending the police.

There's a cultural phenonemon taking place right now, I mentioned it in my reply on PF (threads don't update properly anymore, the place is basically garbage now, so I'll probably be living here from now on :) ). Racism has been redefined to mean "systems of oppression" and this definition has been broadly applied to the west. People are advocating for the checking of white privilege and presuming thatevery racial disparity that exists is perpetuated entirely thanks to on-going systemic racist oppression by the privileged white race who reaps constant benefit from it at the expense of all minorities.. The Black Lives Matter movement is rallying around the central idea that the issue is that blacks are being specifically targeted for death by a racist police force.

The extent to which crime/circumstance/behavior in and of itself (caused by things like poverty) is responsible for the increased rates (broad statistics) at which blacks are subjected to police violence of any kind, is the extent to which addressing the issue as "predominantly caused by racist systems of oppression" will fail to actually instigate any change in these disparities. Not only does the issue obscure the causal reality behind the events which have motivated contemporary protests, it stokes a good deal of resentment and tension toward the white race as a whole, let alone white police officers. Current events shock me to say the least. Writing about this topic feels difficult and tedious to me; I don't enjoy it. I'm motivated to do so however because I'm afraid of the detrimental impact that the claim this thread examines is having on the world.

The issue is a failure of oversight of law enforcement and the resulting injustice. — m-theory

Obama has a history of sponsoring legislation to monitor racial profiling and to videotape homicide investigations (this was before he became president). Knowing that, I listened to his comments with interest. Basically, he said that all Americans should be paying attention to what happened this summer because it's not an anomalous. He said that "best practices" have already been drafted and adopted by some communities, but not all.

He mentioned that the goal is to create trust between cops and communities. IOW, if cops are brutal, people are more likely to run and fight back. If people run and fight back, there's more likely to be police brutality. That's likely to be at least part of the problem.

Are policemen racist? Some, I'm sure. There are racist lawyers, racist doctors, racist dentists, racist just about everything. There's no such thing as outlawing racism. We legislate behavior, not opinion.

Hi Vagabond! Nice to see you! And you too M-theory!

The paper mentions that it does not factor in how use of non-lethal force escalates to lethal force so there are no findings on that matter.
I believe it is relevant and I did skim over the paper and agree with its conclusion.
To quote the papers final message...

The importance of our results for racial inequality in America is unclear. It is plausible that racial differences in lower level uses of force are simply a distraction and movements such as Black Lives Matter should seek solutions within their own communities rather than changing the behaviors of police and other external forces.

Much more troubling, due to their frequency and potential impact on minority belief formation is the possibility that racial differences in police use of non-lethal force have spillovers on myriad dimensions of racial inequality. If, for instance, blacks use their lived experience with police as evidence that the world is discriminatory, then it is easy to understand why black youth invest less in human capital or black adults are more likely to believe discrimination is an important determinant of economic outcomes. Black Dignity Matters.

To address your concern about the extent to which law enforcement commits unjustified homicide without consequence...I believe it should not be happening at all...and suggesting that it only happens rarely is not the solution to the problem that it has been happening.
Granted if it was more prevalent that would be worse...but the stories in the news are no less disturbing from having only happened rarely in police interactions with society.
I also doubt that it is consoling to the families of the victims.
I for one am not comforted by the idea that "it only happens rarely so that makes it ok."

Thanks for the welcome...I was slow to migrate over here...but the other site is plagued by constant coding problems so I finally decided to embrace this new format.

I

Howdy Mongrel! Feels great to be back on a living network with familiar faces! (well, familiar pixels :) ).

Every single police officer guilty of an "unjustified killing" (contains the possible euphemism "justified killing") should be de-badged and prosecuted to a perhaps even fuller legal extent than we would use to prosecute a civilian for a similar crime.

It's never O.K, but it is an inevitable occurrence. We can work to reduce the occurrence, but we are never going to get rid of it entirely in the foreseeable future.

The point that I would most like to have taken away from this thread is that a great deal more can be done to preserve black lives by examining the economic and cultural realities currently facing black communities which is leading to a host of deleterious behaviors rather than focusing on only part of the problem (police procedures). Being more likely to resist arrest or brandish a gun against police are some examples of what I would call possible deleterious behaviors that might be caused by economic, cultural, and environmental circumstances.

Almost nobody, including myself, wants to bring up the fact that the magnitude of the problem of police killing unarmed civilians is utterly dwarfed by the problem of black on black homicide. It might seem like I'm trying to make it seem like police behavior is not a problem, but all I really want to do is point out that this is a problem too, and a highly related and interconnected one at that. We need to make room, the BLM movement needs to make room, for these questions.

I agree that minorities communities are responsible in some way with being part of the solution.

But I also agree that policies changes are probably in order among law enforcement.
Better training and better oversight.
I do not envy a law enforcement officer their job...it is no doubt a difficult one...but that fact should not excuse them from justice when they are in error.

There's a cultural phenonemon taking place right now, I mentioned it in my reply on PF (threads don't update properly anymore, the place is basically garbage now, so I'll probably be living here from now on :) ). Racism has been redefined to mean "systems of oppression" and this definition has been broadly applied to the west. People are advocating for the checking of white privilege and presuming thatevery racial disparity that exists is perpetuated entirely thanks to on-going systemic racist oppression by the privileged white race who reaps constant benefit from it at the expense of all minorities.. The Black Lives Matter movement is rallying around the central idea that the issue is that blacks are being specifically targeted for death by a racist police force.

I believe there is still some systemic oppression of minorities and that we should be vigilant and aware of that as a society that would wish to be considered just.
It may be tempting to reassure yourself as a society that "it's not as bad as it used to be" but if there are still blatant examples of institutional discrimination of minorities...well I believe we should seek to eliminate that if possible...again, that is if we wish to deem ourselves a just society.

I don't agree that the central message of black lives matter movement is that only blacks are being targeted. You can choose to interpret their message in that way I suppose (fox news sure does)...but I do not agree that what they seek politically falls in line with that interpretation.
What they intend to accomplish politically is more oversight in police shootings...especially involving the unarmed.
In my opinion that would be beneficial to everybody...not just blacks.

Like I said before race should be irrelevant to the real issue...which is the failure of oversight for law enforcement.

Raw racism isn't the only factor in play here.

• Cultural divergence is a factor: black culture and white culture are not miles apart, but they are increasingly different.
• Poverty may increase the incidence of crime, but conviction for crime contributes to future poverty (regardless of race). I would argue that even engaging in crime (without apprehension) probably increases poverty, since crime doesn't seem to be an effective poverty exit strategy.
• "The culture of poverty" is real and discourages initiative. People (any race) who are the product of multi-generational poverty have made adaptations to being poor which comprise the culture of poverty. COP features very short term thinking, minimal initiative, fatalism, and so on. It's rational, but still self-defeating. IF, for instance, one finds $100 on the street, the most sensible thing to do with it is spend it immediately on having fun -- because, something that isn't fun will otherwise use up the $100, and extra cash is very rare.
• That poor blacks often have criminal records, that their personal presentation may be markedly different that that of the dominant culture, that black language and style may be either off-putting (or sometimes, unintelligible) discourages hiring by dominant culture employers.
• Affirmative Action is seen by many people to be an unfair assist to unqualified people.
• Poor school performance results in fewer skills to present at employment interviews. The black culture of poverty seems to aggravate this. Black children's language development is significantly handicapped by adult communication styles. Black children hear significantly fewer words (millions fewer), more negative words and more command words (shut up, stop that, etc.), and fewer positive words. By the time they reach first grade, many poor black children have a deep language deficit that immediately restricts performance, and continues to be a problem into the future.

Blacks aren't the only group that have, or have had, divergent cultural practices; and generally people have found that divergent cultural practices are not very well rewarded, if not actually punished. Back in the 1970s, for instance, white 'counter-cultural' practitioners got the cold shoulder in job interviews fairly often.

Where racism isn't a foreground reality, it is quite often a background reality, and sometimes is not the cause of an individual's behavior.

This time last year I would have agreed with you that the BLM movement isn't specifically about race or racism, even despite the race based slogan that is it's moniker. As time has gone by and the movement has grown it has also become more diverse. There are people in the BLM movement who would agree with you and say All Lives Matter, this is an issue about police behavior not race (I am one of them I guess), but this nuance has since been widely rebuked. I don't watch a whole lot of fox, but from just about every media outlet I expose myself to I'm seeing more and more the same over-simplified narrative: It's racist white people's fault, this is a problem facing blacks

This gets into the claim that race based systematic or systemic oppression is still a large causative force in the west. However to me they are invisible systems and their structures covert, perhaps because of my necessarily inherent white privelage, as some would argue.

Perhaps I am not abreast of the organizations political intentions.

It was my understanding, not so long ago, that the primary political intent of the movement was promote more oversight of law enforcement...particularly surrounding cases of officers killing the unarmed.

If they have become a movement seeking only to benefit black people and are unconcerned with other races that would be a disappointing development that would be more harm than benefit because it would only serve to further divide people along racial lines.

I do not envy a law enforcement officer their job...it is no doubt a difficult one...but that fact should not excuse them from justice when they are in error. — m-theory

I don't envy their job either.

rI feel that they resort to deadly force too quickly -- but they don't have much time in many cases to make a decision. A recent traffic stop in Milwaukee resulted in the death of the driver -- who got out of the car and ran, and was carrying an automatic gun (with 17 rounds in the magazine). Deadly force seemed reasonable there. It seems much less so when a subject is on the street, is not holding a gun, and appears to be deranged. Killing them because they would hurt the cop if they got close enough seems like... overkill.

I agree...they are trained "there is no such thing as a routine stop" they are trained to always have their guard up and to be ready to escalate to violence if necessary.
Is that necessary though?

But I do not think it would hurt to look at the facts of the data and ask is it always necessary to be ready to escalate to violence?
The vast majority of stops are routine after all.

Should we be training the police that they should be ready to escalate at the slightest sign of concern?

Should we be more lenient on police when they do make a mistake because of this training?

Does having a hard job make it ok for you to loose your cool and go off the handle violently?

That is the debate we should be having...we need to decide as a society if being a police officer means you are allowed to shoot first and think about it later or if we are going to hold the police to the same standard we hold citizens to.

If we decide that we should hold law enforcement officers to the same standard as citizens then we need to put better oversights in place...oversights that avoid the conflicts of interest I see in the current regulation system.

You always seem to have ready to hand a list of relevant and quite specific information for many topics, BC, for which I commend you. Do you know where you got the info for your present post?

Ignore this if it seems derailing, but in regard to violence is the US... isn't it partly that we're somehow proud of it? Like we're all bad motherfuckers? What's up with that?

If there isn't any useful information on a topic, I just make it up. You'd be surprised how well that works, sometimes. Mostly just joking.

Information on the culture of poverty came from a seminar at the MN Dept. of Health for MDH-funded projects working with poor people, about 8 years ago, "Bridges Out of Poverty" Ruby K. Payne.

Information on the relationship of poverty, crime, imprisonment, and employment has been discussed at great length in the NYT, The Nation, NPR, PBS, etc. over several years.

Information on the relationship of the kind and quantity of spoken language and performance in schools came from NPR and NYT articles about the Harlem Children's Project.

It's simple, really: work in a variety of unrelated jobs, read widely, remember a lot--especially useless information unrelated to making a living, and digest it at one's leisure.

I see. An assemblage of sources rather than a specific book. I thought it might have been the latter, hence my curiosity.

I see. An assemblage of sources rather than a specific book. I thought it might have been the latter, hence my curiosity. — Thorongil

You sound disappointed, but lots of books are essentially assemblages of sources.

I've been thinking about class, crime, poverty, and race for quite a while. I don't know, maybe 30 years--not as a criminologist, but politically, religiously, morally. I believe that there are explanations for criminal behavior that present mechanisms and rise above stereotypes. People don't just commit crime because of age, race, and place of residence. The bullets in the list were instances of good explanatory mechanisms I remembered. Some of them come from books, some from seminars, articles, and the like.

If you want a book quote, Stephen Pinker noted in THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE that blacks are almost living in a different nation. He was talking about both exclusion and divergence (language, clothing, styles of personal presentation, etc.). It's a nice thick book with a single author, lots of references, dense prose, footnotes, graphs, etc.

I think there is a great deal of truth to the points you raise.

One point in particular that I find very pertinent is the relationship between crime and poverty. Initially it's very easy for many to understand how poverty might motivate for-profit crime, but it's also very true that the more someone engages in rime, the more likely they are to get caught, and when, caught, their economic future economic success becomes even more unlikely.

Poverty leads to crime, and crime leads to poverty; it's a self reinforcing feedback loop.

On top of this, It seems that the american penal system does anything but rehabilitate those it incarcerates. The colloquialism is "con-college" (convict-college) and there's a great deal of truth to it. The supremely low standards of american prisons and jails create an environment bereft of the civilized morals we sent them there for supposedly lacking in the fist place. Whichever came first, the impoverished egg or the criminal chicken; it matters not. This particular cycle requires broad changes to certain economic and judicial structures seemingly inherent in american institutions in order to be interrupted.

Cultural divergence is a necessary requirement for cultural conflict to emerge in the first place, and it also stands to reason that it would be the minority culture usually being at risk, but if we take asian american culture as an example, they are a somewhat divergent minority group which happens to be in the best economic position on average, performs the best in school, commits the least crime, and have the lowest chance of an interaction with the police involving violence. It seems difficult to know what might be a useful or detrimental cultural difference. With that said, there are blatant aspects of hip-hop culture, which is heavily associated with black culture in some ways, which do nothing but support detrimental attitudes and outright criminal behavior. Free speech and all that, I support their right to say whatever they want in their songs, I even like some of them, but it seems quite obvious to me that this is something which is contributing to that on-going feedback loop between crime and poverty, and represents just one of the many causal factors that prevent it from being extinguished.

The third issue I find intriguing is for somewhat tangential reasons: state welfare. In some ways I think that welfare programs, while necessary for many reasons, can also in some ways be a hindrance. Wealth accumulation generally does not occur when people are the beneficiaries of welfare programs. It's not that I think welfare programs are necessarily bad, it's just that if people stuck on welfare ever want to have better living standards, either welfare benefits need to be massively increased or currently impoverished families/individuals need to get the opportunity to generate their own income. When I was a kid I was grateful for food stamps, food banks, thrift/charity bins, and welfare checks, but the amount of food we could get was not as nourishing as it could have been and the clothes could have made me stand out a fair bit less. My overall "privilege" was lacking, shall we say. Not that I didn't benefit from it, it was all there was at the time for a single mother of two, but it was not enough to escape poverty, and the welfare system itself.

everything you said is true.

The upper, ruling class -- before the very first colonial governors on down -- have always loathed the poor, and have not had a lot of fondness for the "working class" either. They all came from wealth and judged goodness in terms of wealth. Everybody else was dirt under their fine leather boots. Throughout American history, the ruling class has always begrudged assistance to the poor, and would sooner hang a thief as pay for his upkeep in prison.

Poor assistance has been grudging, stingy, complicated, punitive, demeaning, insufficient, shaming, (and more) since the get go. The ruling class (pretty much everywhere, I suspect) ranks "sloth" as the very worst sin among working people. GET BACK TO WORK!!! It certainly worried the founding fathers subsequent administraitors, wonks, do gooders, etc. They feared that any assistance would increase workers' tendency to be "work shy". Food distributed during the great depression, according to a book on depression-era food, was of the blandest variety without any seasonings, so that people would go back to work to earn money for flavoring!

Given our history, it is not surprising that our social benefit programs have been burdensome to beneficiaries.

WHITE TRASH
The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America
By Nancy Isenberg
Illustrated. 460 pp. Viking. $28.

White Trash reviewed

"Perhaps I am not abreast of the organizations political intentions.

It was my understanding, not so long ago, that the primary political intent of the movement was promote more oversight of law enforcement...particularly surrounding cases of officers killing the unarmed.

If they have become a movement seeking only to benefit black people and are unconcerned with other races that would be a disappointing development that would be more harm than benefit because it would only serve to further divide people along racial lines"

-----
The BLM movement has become so large and diversified that it's really not possible to say whether it is distinctly more inclusive or distinctly more exclusive in terms of race and solutions to the problems the BLM movement is protesting. I really am hesitant to give specific examples because any number of anecdotes I could bring up which show this disturbing racial exclusivity could also be done showing examples of inclusive BLM protests and rhetoric. I am however fairly convinced that certain positions currently gaining traction within the movement (or have gained traction in the previous years) are having a very tangible impact in furthering real and perceived racial divides.

Here are some clippings from a 2004 work called "Chronic Disparity: Strong and Pervasive Evidence of Racial Inequalities: POVERTY OUTCOMES" produced for a "Race and Public Policy conference" out of UC Berkeley. Most of the document is spent (re)defining terms which amounts to to an ideological world view given the suppositions contained in many of their proposed definitions:

"

• "RACISM: Racism is race prejudice plus power. (Definition, by People’s Institute. I
  use “white supremacy” as a synonym for racism.)"
• " WHITE PRIVILEGE: A privilege is a right, favor, advantage, immunity, specially granted to one individual or group, and withheld from another. "
• "A RACIST: A racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality. By this definition, people of color cannot be racists, because as peoples within the U.S. system, they do not have the power to back up their prejudices, hostilities or acts of discrimination. (This does not deny the existence of such prejudices, hostilities, acts of rage or discrimination.) "
• "REVERSE RACISM: A term created and used by white people to deny their white privilege. Those in denial use the term reverse racism to refer to hostile behavior by people of color toward whites, and to affirmative action policies, which allegedly give ‘preferential treatment’ to people of color over whites. In the U.S., there is no such thing as “reverse racism.”. "

To me it seems very rational that if the above definitions can aptly be applied to the west then severe moral repulsion is warranted. When BLM leaders bring up things like wealth redistribution (in some form) to address poverty it will inexorably take the form of "reparations" (i.e, wealth being redistributed specifically and only toward blacks (as opposed to impoverished people of all races)). When they talk about addressing necessary cultural changes, it will likewise inexorably take the form of "the racist white oppressors need to change and fix the problem, not people of color".

So with two of perhaps the most important avenues for change made in-navigable by the unhealthy focus on race in trying to explain poverty and crime, the third relevant remaining avenue for change, which is more police oversight, is now at risk of being marred by a similar strategy of blaming white supremacy. The disproportionate number of blacks subjected to police violence understood through the lens of the above definitions stirs repulsion and resentment to the point that nobody seems to be bothering with the specifics of any actual litigation or comprehensive reform strategies. The BLM movement lacks organized direction and specific objectives and instead broadly seeks justice. But unless their ideas and protest objectives on the ground align with what is rationally or actually justice, they may wind up achieving a good deal of the opposite.

Thanks for pointing this out...I did not realize the rhetoric of BLM had shifted to such a divisive tone.
That to me is tragic not only because it is nonproductive to my mind but also because I believe the only hope for addressing these issues is greater unity and cooperation among communities.

The "us" verses "them" mentality is a step backward not forward.

I believe there is still some racism in our society to be sure...but I do not agree that racism permeates all of our societies institutions and policies.
So I don't agree with that message.

The fact of the matter is most of our society is white, that is true, but that in and of itself does not mean that our policies and institutions are necessarily intolerant of other minority ethnicities.
Starting from that assumption does not address the issue...there are problems on both sides of this issue.
Within black communities there needs to be some change of culture...and within law enforcement there needs to be a change of culture.
There should be a common goal that each side is helping one another to achieve in my opinion.

Simply laying off all the responsibility onto a racists system is a cop out and promotes a culture of victimization that only serves to diminish the possibility of living with dignity.

If only the masses could have conversations like these...
sigh

To me it seems that race is merely an excuse for failing to be introspectively. It seems that for most people, violence and antagonism, "war" and the perpetuation of problems, the pinning of issues upon identifiably distinct "oppressor" groups and such is easier than introspection. Honestly, if one really cares about an issue because it is important to them, I'd expect the rational thing to be to find the optimal state to reduce the issue, taking the action of things in one's control to make things better...then again, sadly, many people are not very rational. I'm not gonna lie, it makes me question democracy.

There's really a lot going on with the BLM movement...

One part of the movement is the reactionary protests to police killings of black civilians. This is the origin and core of the movement, and ideologically speaking it's only inherent message is "state killing of civilians is bad, with the awareness that blacks are being subjected to it way more often than any other race", which is quite unassailable, morally speaking. It's also in my view the main phenomenon which renews and expands BLM activism on the whole as a sustaining force. It is a very emotionally evocative entry point into the movement. When we see video of police literally murdering an unarmed black man, the thought "There is a serious problem." rightfully passes through our minds, but I think our extreme moral disgust over what we just witnessed primes us to have emotion and bias cloud, oversimplify, or otherwise inhibit our attempt at understanding the issue with sufficient depth and clarity.

Sometimes protests are more organized and leaders with actual formed messages or demands emerge, and while they all seem to have fallen under the moniker of "#BlackLivesMatter", they can have somewhat different standards, messages, and approaches. This is where a major layer of diversification and simplification occurs. The emergence of specific slogans and chants is one obvious example that shows diversity in the movement. "Hands up, don't shoot" is one that cuts very close to the real issue of police practices when interacting with civilians, as well as civilian behavior when interacting with police; I could not come up with a better slogan. ""We have nothing to lose but our chains" has seemingly become quite popular among university crowds, and I find it fascinating. The interesting history of this phrase is somewhat irrelevant to how it is wielded and the point I'm making, but originally it was a popularized English interpretation of a slogan from the communist manifesto "Workers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!". Re-coined with modern meaning by Assata Shakur, a polarizing figure to say the least, it is a part of a larger quote that is chanted repeatedly and with frequency by protest groups, and also repeated as a kind of oath at some speaking events. It strikes me that the picture of America that this paints is figuratively no different than institutionalized slavery in the southern U.S states circa 1830. There's an inherent contradiction to being a university student and having nothing to lose but chains, but that aside, this slogan is exceptionally emotionally evocative, and it also stokes racial resentment/guilt. The final slogan I'll use as an example to show this diversity has seen much less actual usage than the others I've mentioned, which I'm grateful for, because it's terrible and represents the worst of and a minority of the BLM protestors. It speaks for itself: "Pigs in a blanket, fry em like bacon"...

The most organized leaders in the BLM movement are well connected with campus groups, are very savvy with social media, and have been able to reach may traditional media platforms such as news and talk show interviews. These leaders are typically very intelligent and in my opinion very moral people. They distance themselves and the BLM movement as a whole away from any rhetoric that might call for violence, but the grassroots and reactionary nature of some BLM protests on the ground unfortunately renders them somewhat less of a governing force than might be ideal. Of these most organized and well connected leaders, most of them subscribe to the same school of thought when it comes to viewing inequality in the west. In many social science departments of many western universities, they now teach that the west is fundamentally patriarchal, and fundamentally white supremacist. Racism is "power + privilege". They accept it as a brute fact that whites have all the power and all the privilege in the west, making all white people racist. It's hard to believe that this comes out of actual university curriculum, but it's becoming more and more evident. We're being told that as white men we're unaware of the naturally ingrained systems of oppression, which can be complex and subtle, that benefit us at the expense of women, of people color, even more so at the expense of women of color (and so on with a litany of possible identities which might entail facing any sort of obstacle in life which white men might not face). "Intersectionality" they call it, which is in itself worthy of it's own discussion.

In some ways, any would be leader of the BLM movement is going to somehow have to put the "black" in "#BlackLivesMatter". It is very difficult to do this without amplifying a racial lens, but my own approach would be to address the issue of police use of force without focusing on racism or race as a fundamental causative factor behind the problem, and to also address the larger issue facing the black community, which leads to many of the events which spark BLM protests, which is crime in and of itself in black communities. The discussion must necessarily involve economics, politics and culture, and while it runs the risk of being obfuscated by likewise presuming that the economic, political, and cultural realities facing many black communities are symptoms of that larger white supremacist system contemporary schools of thought point to, it could still bare fruit. In summation, the BLM rhetoric at large is not outwardly "us against them", it is rather an idea lurks just under it's surface, and because of lost complexity and some inherently evocative underpinnings, it's now beginning to rear it's ugly head.

In many social science departments of many western universities, they now teach that the west is fundamentally patriarchal, and fundamentally white supremacist. Racism is "power + privilege". They accept it as a brute fact that whites have all the power and all the privilege in the west, making all white people racist. It's hard to believe that this comes out of actual university curriculum, but it's becoming more and more evident. We're being told that as white men we're unaware of the naturally ingrained systems of oppression, which can be complex and subtle, that benefit us at the expense of women, of people color, even more so at the expense of women of color (and so on with a litany of possible identities which might entail facing any sort of obstacle in life which white men might not face). "Intersectionality" they call it, which is in itself worthy of it's own discussion. — VagabondSpectre

I don't agree with this...I would argue that academia teaches that because blacks are a minority that they will have a psychological propensity to view the majority white culture with suspecion especially in a historical context.
I imagine that if I was a minority ethnicity it would have some psychological effect on me as well.

The view that this automatically amounts to racism is more popular among minorities sure...but I would still suggest the majority of minorities don't believe it.
And certainly the majority of whites do not believe it.

We have real examples of history to informs us what white supremacists institutions and policies look like.
And that is not what our current system is.

The same goes for patriarchy, we have real examples of cultures where women amount to property...and that is not how the west operates in terms of social values.

At least in my experience most people don't agree with such views...I would say that is more of an extremist fringe.

In some ways, any would be leader of the BLM movement is going to somehow have to put the "black" in "#BlackLivesMatter". It is very difficult to do this without amplifying a racial lens, but my own approach would be to address the issue of police use of force without focusing on racism or race as a fundamental causative factor behind the problem, and to also address the larger issue facing the black community, which leads to many of the events which spark BLM protests, which is crime in and of itself in black communities. The discussion must necessarily involve economics, politics and culture, and while it runs the risk of being obfuscated by likewise presuming that the economic, political, and cultural realities facing many black communities are symptoms of that larger white supremacist system contemporary schools of thought point to, it could still bare fruit. In summation, the BLM rhetoric at large is not outwardly "us against them", it is rather an idea lurks just under it's surface, and because of lost complexity and some inherently evocative underpinnings, it's now beginning to rear it's ugly head. — VagabondSpectre

Agree that BLM should have a more inclusive tone...after all police brutality affects all of our society.

I did do a google search and reviewed two different BLM sites.
The rhetoric was very racially charged and as a white male I felt alienated by that message.
As though my support or involvement would not be welcomed as anything but part of the problem.
That is sad to me...I am certainly not motivated to be sympathetic to such a view.

We have real examples of history to informs us what white supremacists institutions and policies look like.
And that is not what our current system is.

The same goes for patriarchy, we have real examples of cultures where women amount to property...and that is not how the west operates in terms of social values. — m-theory

I tend to agree with this, and It would be nice if it were possible to talk in a more nuanced way about things. But I think it misses an important feature of the lived experience of women and of black people in the culture.

I speak as a white middle class dude who likes to think he is liberal and for equality in such matters. Having a partner and children who are mixed race has rather changed my perspective about things.

I would like to distinguish racism as a belief system held by a few and not implemented in social institutions beyond marginal groups, from prejudice, an unconscious attitude that alters behaviour based on race or gender as the case may be. This latter is what your account leaves out, and since it is more or less universal, it is quite devastating in its effects.

Mrs Un goes into a shop, and is immediately under suspicion; if there is a random check at the airport or the roadside, she is randomly chosen. Every relationship is tainted by not only racial prejudice, but also the performance of non-prejudice. White women in particular go out of their way to talk and act friendly, in a somewhat patronising way that quickly turns to resentment when it is not particularly appreciated. They want to have her as a friend as a symbol of their lack of prejudice - but at a safe distance, especially from their menfolk.

This plays out in wider society cumulatively; each little incident is deniable, no racist language is used, no views expressed, but when one dude is stopped twenty times in his car by the police, and another never, with no violation recorded for either, there is something going on statistically that is unidentifiable in any single incident.

Given that our recent past is that white supremacy and patriarchy were institutionally sanctioned and enforced, it is inevitable that there is a legacy of prejudice. And given the experience of this prejudice alongside its universal denial, it is inevitable that there is some anger and paranoia amongst the sufferers. It is especially the denial of the existence of a problem that is the daily experience of black people that becomes - maddening.

So I do urge all you thoughtful people to investigate a little more carefully and sympathetically the complaints that are made. It's not special pleading, there is a real problem for black people day in, day out, and it is fair-minded folks like us that are the source, if we do not pay close attention to ourselves and to those 'others'.

I tend to agree with this, and It would be nice if it were possible to talk in a more nuanced way about things. But I think it misses an important feature of the lived experience of women and of black people in the culture. — unenlightened

This is valuable insight unenlightened...to get their points across both sides will resort to exaggeration.

Forgive me if I exaggerated the extent to which minorities experience differences in attitudes that whites do not.

I would like to distinguish racism as a belief system held by a few and not implemented in social institutions beyond marginal groups, from prejudice, an unconscious attitude that alters behaviour based on race or gender as the case may be. This latter is what your account leaves out, and since it is more or less universal, it is quite devastating in its effects.

Mrs Un goes into a shop, and is immediately under suspicion; if there is a random check at the airport or the roadside, she is randomly chosen. Every relationship is tainted by not only racial prejudice, but also the performance of non-prejudice. White women in particular go out of their way to talk and act friendly, in a somewhat patronising way that quickly turns to resentment when it is not particularly appreciated. They want to have her as a friend as a symbol of their lack of prejudice - but at a safe distance, especially from their menfolk.

This plays out in wider society cumulatively; each little incident is deniable, no racist language is used, no views expressed, but when one dude is stopped twenty times in his car by the police, and another never, with no violation recorded for either, there is something going on statistically that is unidentifiable in any single incident.

Given that our recent past is that white supremacy and patriarchy were institutionally sanctioned and enforced, it is inevitable that there is a legacy of prejudice. And given the experience of this prejudice alongside its universal denial, it is inevitable that there is some anger and paranoia amongst the sufferers. It is especially the denial of the existence of a problem that is the daily experience of black people that becomes - maddening. — unenlightened

There has been a great deal of effort in the west to insure that intuitions and policies do not discriminate despite possible prejudices held by those that create those intuitions and policies.
While I grant the system is not a perfect one, it should not be denied that these efforts are made and are the concern of many in positions of power, be they one race or the other, such that these efforts are still continuing to be made.

If this fact is lost in narrative of systemic segregation of equality it creates the impression that whites are collectively deliberate in their prejudices as well as the impression that whites are unwilling to change and that fosters resentments within minority culture.
Whites do not collectively as a majority conspire to agree upon how minorities should be prejudiced against so political narratives surrounding racial issues should not encourage that view.

I believe that this is counterproductive and should be avoided.

That is not to deny the experiences of minorities or that those experiences do not have any role in political discourse about racial issues.
It is only to say that being white should not be considered synonymous with being racist or being prejudice anymore than being a minority should.

I would like to distinguish racism as a belief system held by a few and not implemented in social institutions beyond marginal groups, from prejudice, an unconscious attitude that alters behaviour based on race or gender as the case may be. — unenlightened

(Y)

I remember a thread on the Dutch Zwarte Pieten when you opened my eyes to that prejudice in me and around me. Thank you for that.

A major point of contention in the ideological foundation of many social justice activists is that we should make effort to distinguish "racism" (power plus privilege) from "prejudice" (traditional definition of racism, i.e: unjust discrimination based on race). I'm certainly O.K with redefining terms, but very often people wielding this definition turn around and say "all white people are racist, and minorities simply cannot be racist". This is a major part of what I'm trying to address with this thread, and some of the statements you make come very close to requiring this redress.

"This plays out in wider society cumulatively; each little incident is deniable, no racist language is used, no views expressed, but when one dude is stopped twenty times in his car by the police, and another never, with no violation recorded for either, there is something going on statistically that is unidentifiable in any single incident.

Given that our recent past is that white supremacy and patriarchy were institutionally sanctioned and enforced, it is inevitable that there is a legacy of prejudice. And given the experience of this prejudice alongside its universal denial, it is inevitable that there is some anger and paranoia amongst the sufferers. It is especially the denial of the existence of a problem that is the daily experience of black people that becomes - maddening.

So I do urge all you thoughtful people to investigate a little more carefully and sympathetically the complaints that are made. It's not special pleading, there is a real problem for black people day in, day out, and it is fair-minded folks like us that are the source, if we do not pay close attention to ourselves and to those 'others'. " — Unelightened

You're equating past patriarchy and white supremacy with a "legacy of prejudice" that exudes constantly from "fair-minded folks"... I think you implicitly meant fair-skinned folks here because surely it is possible for a fair minded person to not actually discriminate against black people in any meaningful or perceptually significant way. If it is not then how can we possibly reduce prejudice? A cloud of prejudice looms over all our heads as a part of the legacy of white supremacy, but exactly how thick and covering is this cloud? How prejudiced is the white race as a whole? How widespread or homogeneous is this prejudice?

I know prejudice exists, but you make it seem like every single black person in America experiences racism "day in - day out", and we're all to blame. I'm acutely aware that some police departments have problems with pulling over black people when they are driving expensive cars, and that many store managers will be more likely to suspect a black youth of being a shoplifter, and that there are many other examples of prejudiced interactions taking place - and that they happen every day in America - but they do not happen to every black person every day in America. The actual impact these aggressions and micro-aggressions are continuously having on the black race is certainly tangible; the impact exists, but the intensity and prevalence of this impact needs to be accurately projected when trying to assess the general question "What are the major problems, and their causes, which are currently facing the black demographic of America?".

The geography of racial prejudice in America certainly is not an even spread. The strongest argument that I can muster for the legacy of prejudice that you describe is that it exists in the minds of prejudiced individuals, and where there are higher densities of these prejudiced individuals this leads to increased racial discriminations against persons of color. I can readily accept that some police departments are downright filled with racists, some whole towns even, but in order to make this argument really stick to "America", fair minded folks like you and me must also be painted with some shade, albeit a lighter shade, of bigotry. When I entertain the idea that I'm a bigot who is too stupid to realize it, I always wind up asking whether or not the civil rights movement accomplished anything at all, and whether or not it is even possible, given decades of exposure to the relevant progressive moral teachings, to accomplish anything at all toward reducing racial discrimination in a multi-racial society. I cannot buy into that. All we need to do in today's world is to point out racist discrimination when and where it occurs, and social or legal sanctions levied against prejudiced individuals, businesses, and police forces will continue to address racial prejudice as I believe it has been doing, with great success, for a few decades.

When it comes blacks getting pulled over by police way more often for driving expensive cars (under suspicion of having stolen it), yes it is prejudiced discrimination on the part of the police; it's not fair to make a presumption of guilt based on race ("presumption of guilt" is unlawful entirely). But there's an underlying problem that is totally missed when we think to ourselves "Ahh, these police who pull over blacks more often are simply racists". It's an uncomfortable reality that vehicle theft is a crime very prevalent in black communities. Cops in certain areas are actually arresting blacks for auto theft way more often because they happen to be committing vehicle theft much more often. The police then go on and allow these experiences to affect their decision and judgment of who to randomly (a questionable act in and of itself) pull over, and wrongfully so. It's in my view not actually a legacy of racism that makes some police more likely to pull over blacks, it's the result of ongoing stereotyping caused by disproportionate vehicle theft rates in the black community. That is a much more significant and direct causal factor in giving rise to this ongoing discrimination than is our historically inherited prejudices. That is to say, this prejudice some police departments exhibit is not caused by history; it is learned contemporarily. The factors which lead to increased rates of car theft committed by blacks are very likely many of the same factors which lead to very disproportionate crime of many kinds, including black on black murder, which to me represents the most severe effect of the underlying causes.

Police reform is certainly something I support, but no matter how much police reform we attempt the same problems will continue to persist in high degrees. We also need economic and political reform (political reform if only to accompany the economic reform) to more directly address the prevalence of crime itself in black communities. We need judicial and punitive reform to not only better decide what we lock people up for, but also how we lock them up, and whether or not prison itself is about "punishment and deterrence" or "reform". We need to look for and confront each and every reality that comes to bear on why many black (and de-facto, why many white) communities are trapped in cycles of poverty and crime. Fair minded folks being unaware of their own prejudices in today's world is but one drop in that massive and complex causal bucket. Acknowledging my white privilege is neither going to make actual bigots less bigoted, nor address the factors that see young black men disproportionately resorting to lives of crime and the resultant incarceration, being shot and killed by the police, and being shot and killed by each-other in massively higher numbers.

Edit: The wider discussion at hand may or may not warrant a separate thread.