Racism is not a causal force or "explanation." It is a logical expression of particular social and individual states. To say there is racism is to indicate there actions and states which amount to the denial of an opportunity or disrespect for agency amongst people of particular ethnic group.

Racism isn't an idea that causes. It's the existence of an act or state of disadvantage or abuse. Whether we are talking about a cop deliberately shooting black people or the fact higher crime rates mean police action has a greater impact on black individuals, they are states of the world. A person has their life turned upside down and restrictions placed upon them.

To speak of racism as a "cause" is to ignore it's presence. It's to pretend racism is some seperate thing to people's lives in our society, so we can pretend it isn't really there.

If someone points out the white community doesn't suffer from having their families torn apart by police action at the same rate, you will dismiss the difference in opportunity, respect for agency and power. You will say: "But the police were just doing their jobs. Racism is not the cause."

But the cause was never the point. The point was black people being torn away from their lives and families. It's about the suspicion directed at black people that results in abuse. Description of what is done to black people is the point.

I'm not concealing the realities of why the police arrest black people. Even if it a justified action against criminals who commit henious acts, it still locks a black person up and tears them away from their family and friends. Opportunity, power, property and respect for agency are removed. The black community suffers from this imposition more often than the white community. My point is it is racist no matter why the police acted ( and even if they ought to).

The MTV video was mean't to be cheeky.

But, you must compare apples to apples. Comparing White on White crime to Black on Black crime is not appropriate because of the economic disparities within these groups. The following conclusions from the Bureau of Justice Statistics:
...
Cities like Chicago have areas with 40 to 60% of people living below the poverty level. Black on Black crime and White on White crime within the same economic level are near parity. — Cavacava

It's interesting that you suggest economic factors might play a role in causing higher crime rates in poor communities; that's what I've been doing in just about every one of my posts, including this being a main focus of my OP.

It's interesting because poverty leading to crime is a separate or discrete causative force from racism/prejudice leading to crime.

Please understand that I'm not bringing up "black on black crime" to make a point about blackness, I do so when people suggest that crime in black communities is all the fault of racism and white supremacy or alternatively that that there is no such thing (as the MTV video did). By our new found reckoning a possibly more causative force towards perpetuating crime in black communities is the existing poverty in black communities. If we tried to present a solution for crime in poor black communities, how good of a solution do you think we would come up with if we blamed racism for the problem while ignoring the economic factors that many (disproportionately across america) black communities face? We would get nowhere.

I believe that poor people black and white are discriminated against institutionally. Look at the Bail Bonds system in this country. A poor black or white person who cannot raise bond has to go to jail, while a person with the cash can avoid jail and work, earn money, and fight whatever crime they have been accused of committing. A poor person has to work, so the prosecutor will offer a deal, they plead guilty to a crime and they get off, even if they were innocent, but now with a criminal record. The Department of Justice just filed (http://www.courthousenews.com/2016/08/19/Bail.pdf) an Amicus curiae brief suggesting the system is unconstitutional. — Cavacava

I would love to help champion human rights on behalf of the poor, regardless of their race.

If we try this through the lens of white supremacy or institutional racism, how do you feel about "reparations"? (like it or not, it's currently creeping in to our cultural zeitgeist).

To say that the police are not complicit in their subjugation of black communities to to fly in the face of recent Department of Justice reports that suggest that cities such as Chicago, Baltimore and Ferguson are systematically racist.

"The Baltimore Police Department engaged in a pattern of stopping African-Americans without any real justification. Between 2010 and 2015, there were three hundred thousand police stops, of which less than four per cent resulted in a citation or arrest. Forty-four per cent of those stops occurred in two small, mostly black neighborhoods, and ninety-five per cent of people who were stopped ten times or more were African-American." The New Yorker 8/12/16

The Department of Justice found the " Ferguson Police Department was egregiously biased and mercenary"
Here from Washington Post 8/16/16 regarding the DOJ task force study of Chicago's police department: "The task force offered a bleak assessment of how the department treats people of color. In their report, the task force members recounted how residents said officers treat minorities poorly and then paired this with police department data that “gives validity to the widely held belief the police have no regard for the sanctity of life when it comes to people of color.”

And, these are just some of the studies cited.

No, the institutionalization of racism is endemic, to deny this is to put your head in the sand. — Cavacava

If a racist police officer or police department behaves in a racist manner, I guess that's one way to fill out the term "institutional racism" but I think it's another to assume that all police departments across America fall are fairly represented by this description.

You say it's endemic, but how endemic? Quantitative and qualitative assessments of the prevalence of racism among police officers across America may not reflect so accurately that widely held belief that police have no regard for the sanctity of life when it comes to the people of color.

You suggest my head is buried in the sand, but to alternatively bury one's head in the most severe portrayal of racist police brutality possible as the American norm is likewise not a strategy conducive to healthy sight.

I'm not concealing the realities of why the police arrest black people. Even if it a justified action against criminals who commit henious acts, it still locks a black person up and tears them away from their family and friends. Opportunity, power, property and respect for agency are removed. The black community suffers from this imposition more often than the white community. My point is it is racist no matter why the police acted ( and even if they ought to). — TheWillowOfDarkness

Your point is that the police arresting black people, regardless of why, is racist?

What is racism?

Is police arresting a white person, regardless of why, also racism?

I'm terribly confused.

Racism is an act or acting system which is a restriction of opportunity, disrespect for agency, dissolution of property or expression of power over one particular ethnicity. The presence of a society which particular hunts for black criminals, for example. Society and individuals which act on individuals of an ethnic group in a particular way.

Arresting a white person is not racist in the US. The white community does not have the same crime rate and not targeted in the same way by police (though the arresting of a white person may well be classist, as poor communities sometimes have higher crime rates and expectations of criminality).

Arresting a white person is not racist in the US. The white community does not have the same crime rate and not targeted in the same way by police (though the arresting of a white person may well be classist, as poor communities sometimes have higher crime rates and expectations of criminality). — TheWillowOfDarkness

I would like clarification on whether or not police arresting a black person is necessarily racist...

If a black cop arrests a black man, is that still racist?

What if a white cop arrests a black man in order to, let's say, free his hostages. Is that racism?

If one police officer commits a racist action in the line of duty, is the whole system therefore racist?

How did we get here....

[reply="VagabondSpectre;17761"

I am not saying it is endemic in our system, the Department of Justice is saying this, with all it reports looking at how police departments around the county. It is the system calling the system rotten.

The hypocrisy of the USA, its utter disregard its horrible history of dealing with blacks is not all over because some laws were passed. Pisses me off. To say it is over patiently absurd, upsetting and untrue.

Look at Wells Fargo's sub prime lending that targeted the "mud people" in 2005. It lent them subprime loans, which became infamous a few years latter. They ended up settling for around $355 million. The money does not matter, the ruined lives matter. The president of this bank should have gone to jail...that would have been proper reparation.

A black officer arresting a black person (whether guilty or not) is part of the society which is restricts opportunity, disrespects agency, takes power over them, etc.,etc., so yes, it is racist.

It's part of the racist system which sees a greater number of black people died opportunity, property and life (in the sense of being a self-directed person free to move, interact with their finds and family, etc., etc.)

The same is true when the white officer arrests the hostage taker. So, yes, also racist.

With the individual racist action, it's a single act of abuse by an officer, so no it does not mean the system is racist. However, such actions can be indicators of the presence of a culture of racism within the system. Or the system might be a wider imposition of the lives of individuals of the black community. Just becasue an individual racist action doesn't define the presnece of a racist system, it doesn't mean there isn to a racist system present.

A black officer arresting a black person (whether guilty or not) is part of the society which is restricts opportunity, disrespects agency, takes power over them, etc.,etc., so yes, it is racist.

It's part of the racist system which sees a greater number of black people died opportunity, property and life (in the sense of being a self-directed person free to move, interact with their finds and family, etc., etc.)

The same is true when the white officer arrests the hostage taker. So, yes, also racist.

With the individual racist action, it's a single act of abuse by an officer, so no it does not mean the system is racist. However, such actions can be indicators of the presence of a culture of racism within the system. Or the system might be a wider imposition of the lives of individuals of the black community. Just becasue an individual racist action doesn't define the presnece of a racist system, it doesn't mean there isn to a racist system present. — TheWillowOfDarkness

All I'm asking for is some kind of measurement of racism within the system. You have qualified racism as being a component of the system we live in, but how can we measure it?

You're essentially saying "everything is racist". This is an unneseccarily emotionally evocative, logically confusing and empirically false position.

I am not saying it is endemic in our system, the Department of Justice is saying this, with all it reports looking at how police departments around the county. It is the system calling the system rotten. — Cavacava

How rotten?

You say that American hypocrisy pisses you off because America's disregard for it's horrible history of treatment of blacks is not all over because some laws were passed...

Have we at least gained some regard for America's horrible history of treatment of blacks?

Since there is a central body within the rotten (a.k.a racist) system evaluating individual police departments around the country and suggesting that some of them have problems with racial bias, is it possible that the whole system is not rotten?

While TheWillowOfDarkness is convinced that the very nature of the system itself is defined by racist oppression in every way and pertains to all black persons, perhaps you are willing to take a more nuanced position on the matter?

Look at Wells Fargo's sub prime lending that targeted the "mud people" in 2005. It lent them subprime loans, which became infamous a few years latter. They ended up settling for around $355 million. The money does not matter, the ruined lives matter. The president of this bank should have gone to jail...that would have been proper reparation. — Cavacava

Surely this is evidence that racism still exists in America, but is it evidence that America is a racist system?

Here's some justice that seemingly was doled out by the rotten system. Was the judge who found merit in this particular discrimination case also rotten?

Keep in mind, it is not and was never my position that America is a completely un-rotten and fresh fruit. I'm contending that it is far less rotten than it was in the past (in terms of a racist system), and that overall, the rot of racism is much less a causative force than it once was, and in comparison to some of the other varieties of rot that currently afflict America. I contend it is not the all-encompassing and all-powerful force in today's world that many people are making it out to be.

I already said.

Are social systems and individuals such that individuals particular ethnic group is denied opportunities, has the agency disrespected, their property taken, their freedom of movement removed to a greater extent than another ethnic group? If so, there is a racism system and individuals present. Is this true of US society with respect to back people. Yes, so it is a racist.

My position is only confusing for those who have not understand what racism is, for those who think it is about some specific intention which exist separately to the social system and people's lives. You are ignoring the standard of measurement I've given. I've given it in pretty much every post I've made to you here.

"everything is racist". — VagabondSpectre

That was never claimed. Society and individuals being racist doesn't mean it's everywhere. It doesn't preclude back people being treated justly by the police or other social organisation. All it means is that there is much racism is our society embedded much deeper than just bashing someone up because they are black. Not "everything," just many instances.

Let's take a closer look at each of the criterion you have mentioned:

1) Restriction of opportunity.

No part of the American legislative or economic system explicitly restricts the opportunities of one race over another. Typically the opportunities someone has will depend on their individual circumstances such as wealth and connections. A white family can be in just as impoverished and lacking opportunity as a black family can be, and so I submit to you that access to opportunity is not distributed based directly on race, but instead a more complex set of factors.

2) Disrespect for agency.

I can only assume that by this you mean to say "racist people devaluing the lives of black people". All I can tell you is that outward or open racism is heavily frowned upon in most social and political circles in America these days. Even the mexican hating islamaphobic trumpeters who are perhaps the largest visible group of "racists" right now in America, are easily identifiable as a minority. At some point between the american civil war and the legacy of the civil rights movement, the system did in fact begin to consider that black people have agency too. White people have their agency deprived by incarceration the same as how black people have their agency deprived when they too are incarcerated. Again, I submit to you that there is an important set of factors other than racism that you are not accounting for.

3) Dissolution of property

As the prevalence of racism has subsided in the west since the 60's, and it has, so too has the prevalence of specifically racially segregated or state funded communities being gentrified into different areas as the real-estate value begins to exceed the value of those living there. In today's world the dissolution of property no longer spares white communities while specifically targeting the black ones; it targets all communities where corporate or state control can be enacted on a community for long term utility or profit. The government at large, corporations at large, and the american public at large look down upon impoverished communities with fairly equal disdain and pity regardless of a given community's racial demographics. Race is certainly often stigmatized by the surrounding inhabitants of an impoverished area, "they're poor because they're mexican", "They're poor because they're black", but an equally popular stigma is "They're poor because their white trash". That said, stigmas have a hard time dissolving property on the basis of race...

4) Power over one ethnicity; Death at the hands of police.

You could say that addressing this issue is the entire purpose of this thread. The sheer fact that police use of force exists and that black people experience it at disparate rates is not being debated or denied. If you want to argue that the mere existence of a disparity between races is the definition of racism, that's fine, but I'm interested in understanding the full scope of causes which lead to these disparities in the first place. The ensuing argument about whether or not the existence of a statistical racial disparity of any kind (your definition of racism) is evidence of racism in the first place, is circular.

------------------

I'll try asking you one last question to see if we can at least somewhat get on the same page semantically speaking:

"If a black person is mass murdering other black persons, and a black police man arrests the mass murderer, thereby saving countless black lives, is that racism?

The difference between white immigrants and black people in the USA is that most white people came here voluntarily (more or less) while black people came here as products. This difference created a very, very deep cultural, economic, and social rift.

Yes, Americans are hypocritical (as is the entire human species--it's what we do, it's what we are). Very little was done to undo the racial rift until roughly a century after slavery ended. Since Brown Vs. Board of Education in 1954, a great deal of effort and money has gone into compensatory programs. There are programs in education (like Head Start), health (like Medicaid, food aid), welfare, housing (like HUD), employment (like EEO programs), civil rights legislation, and so on. Many, many billions of dollars have been spent on these programs. But the rift still exists.

Parts of these programs were unsuccessful. Everyone who knows about endemic racism knows how the programs failed (and at the same time ignore the ways in which the programs succeeded).

Police have always had a repressive role with respect to all groups the ruling classes have not liked. Blacks are one of the groups the ruling classes are least fond of, and much of working classes aren't either. Hence, continued discrimination. Some of the discrimination is subtle, some gratuitous, and some egregious.

The hard part about finding solutions is that the black community itself is largely not in a position to do much about it's own situation. They are trapped just as many other communities are or have been trapped. Is this just blaming the victim? As Jesse Jackson once said, if somebody knocks you down, that's their fault. If two weeks later you haven't got up yet, that's your fault. Sometimes that's the problem. At other times a general rejection of white culture closes avenues of advancement. Developing a subculture of strong difference doesn't help either. There's always the problem of insufficient resources, the missing input from previously successful generations, and so on.

None of this is a new crisis, it's an old one which has been addressed again and again for around 65 years. I don't see any new thinking in the current criticisms that suggests the outcomes will be different now than in the past. Sorry deeply sensitive, consciousness raised, anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-imperialist, etc. thinkers: you're not saying anything new, insightful, or likely to succeed.

Very little was done to undo the racial rift until roughly a century after slavery ended. — Bitter Crank

I used to think that too. It's more complicated than that. Black people in the South were making progress entering into politics, starting businesses, accumulating wealth (it takes time to do that.. generations.) Blacks and whites were working side-by-side. They associated as friends.

That all came to an abrupt stop in the economic depression of 1890's. White supremacists rose to prominence and hired thugs called red-shirts (the KKK wasn't active at the time.) The thugs were used to stop blacks from voting by scaring the crap out of them. That was one method for taking over Southern governments. Another was to run standing governments out of town (as happened in Wilmington, NC. Black votership dropped from around 50-70% to 3% in the South.

Whites who protested (such as a professor at UNC) were threatened. The vibe was: you're either with us or you're against us.

But where was the National Guard when this was happening? Why didn't anybody in the rest of the US object?

1. They didn't know.
2. They knew, but they didn't know what to do about it.
3. They knew and they agreed with it.

Yes, the laws that have been put in place over the last 70 years have had the effect of mitigating overt racism. Lynching is not occurring (last one in 1981 in Mobile, Alabama, by two Ku Klux Klan members), black people do not have to sit at the back of the bus, and, while it is still being contested in some states, blacks can vote unmolested. The police as upholders of the law, have not choice but to obey it.

No, racism is not gone, but it has gone undercover. Voter id registration laws, stop & frisk programs, the US bail system, an other legal means keep racism alive. Some police department have to do much better.

Humans discriminate naturally, we know what we like and how it differs from what we don't like. Prejudice in the wide sense of the word, is natural. We live on the surface of a world that appears in its various forms and characteristics. As I stated previously I think racism is chromatic. (think about the George Zimmerman fiasco), in agreement with Parmenides 'like knows like'. I read a psychology experiment in which babies in the crawling stage were brought into a room and set between two groups of women. One group of women were white and the other group black. The babies tended (like 80%) to crawl to the group of women most closely matching their skin color. The author of the study speculated that these infants did so because they felt more comfortable with the color they knew.

I remember my grandmother giving me a bath, drying off my toes, saying

Eeny, meeny, miny, mo
Catch a nigger by the toe
If he hollers, let him go
Eeny meeny miny mo

It was common then, and while I doubt many mothers or even grandmothers today use this version of the rhythm, it along with other not so nice expressions are embedded in the history of our culture. These expressions, the chromatic quality of race as well as our lack of comfort with difference in general are ingrained in who we are as a people. We can outlaw racial discrimination, but we cannot stop it.

While I don't think this means that we are doomed to be a racist society, I think it does mean that we must be cautious for racial bias, in ourselves and others. Powerful organizations, such as the police, the symbol of law and order in our society must be carefully monitored, or we not like the consequences.

These expressions, the chromatic quality of race as well as our lack of comfort with difference in general are ingrained in who we are as a people. We can outlaw racial discrimination, but we cannot stop it. — Cavacava

People who appear to be able to hire a lawyer will be treated better by cops no matter what color they are.

To some extent, I think we're swinging to and fro on the dog's tail. The dog is a broken political system that allows too much economic disparity. People of any color who have money will find life pretty enjoyable in the USA.

Not that money is power. Knowing who you are.. that's power.

I am not familiar with a period of black southern progress in the late 19th century. I thought that white resistance to black autonomy was pretty much continuous from post reconstruction onward. Are you describing the backlash to reconstruction? What was it about the 1893 panic and depression that disrupted progress toward racial harmony?

Certainly Jim Crow laws were a very caustic fact of life post reconstruction through the 1890s and on up into the1950s. Are you familiar with the book Slavery by Another Name: The Re-enslavement of African Americans from the Civil War to WWII ?

What was it about the 1893 panic and depression that disrupted progress toward racial harmony? — Bitter Crank

It gave white supremacists an opening. By that time frustration was deep-seated in the South. There was some pretty serious grinding poverty. During any depression the crime rate increases. The crime rate amongst black men went up in the 1890's. White supremacists combined concern over that increase with a fascist message. 'Stop feeling so badly about yourself. It's not your fault. It's what we've been telling you for years... it's black people." The white supremacist message is that white people are endangered by association with blacks.

The cure is to separate the races. That was primarily the point of Jim Crow. I used to know a lady whose mom remembered the change. She said it became dangerous to be seen in public with a black person. Definitely couldn't eat publicly with them and couldn't even share a carriage.

Whites who didn't conform received death threats. The point of lynching was to suppress and control the black population.

Great post BC!

I'm concerned that the greater economic realities at hand that contribute to many white and black communities' cyclical poverty might be too difficult for society to isolate and address or even to overcome if they can indeed be isolated.

According to Bernie et al, (I've never seen actual numbers myself) the middle class is currently shrinking. That correlates with what I've been seen first hand and given the undeniable reality (whose numbers I HAVE seen) that more and more of the newly created wealth flows to the existing economic elite (which may or may not influence the shrinking of the middle class and the growth of poverty) it's really not surprising.

In a world where upward economic mobility is by default unlikely (below a certain wealth threshold), even if we could suddenly solve the culture of crime and the other exacerbating and cyclical forces, we would still require some sort of drastic change in the economic landscape of the west in order to see change in the future prospects of poor communities.

A stronger economy would be one possible landscape change; Reaganomically speaking if there are enough scraps to go around a lot of the raw realities facing the poor could be addressed, although relative poverty could still come with some deleterious effects. Another possible landscape change would basically be a reorganizing of the tax structure such that the middle and lower economic classes receive more benefits or shoulder less burden. The classical dilemma with this approach is of course whether or not over-taxation will cause economic stagnation in the overall economy to the point that it winds up costing more than the wealth being redistributed in the first place. In order to actually make state welfare or state mandated wealth distribution actually work (state funding of universities to make them free for students, for example) I am of the opinion that it would require nothing short of fundamental and sweeping economic changes to the current landscape of American business and industry in addition to the necessarily cultural adaptations that would need to accompany them.

A minimalist welfare system can function as a safety net for those who trickle downward, as it were. In an economic landscape where there is adequate chance of upward economic mobility, wealth redistribution of this kind only needs to act as a temporary charity until people do that boot-strap-self-hoisting thing. But in an economic landscape where unless you're already at the minimum required economic status then you're on the way down, state welfare will inevitably function as a permanent means of existence for the masses trapped at the bottom. If the economic world we live in is the latter, and I do believe it is, then the current form of taxation and entitlement programs needs to be re-arranged and amplified such that the basic standard of living for those requiring these programs is actually something above that invisible equitable minimum required to stay afloat.

While I don't think this means that we are doomed to be a racist society, I think it does mean that we must be cautious for racial bias, in ourselves and others. Powerful organizations, such as the police, the symbol of law and order in our society must be carefully monitored, or we not like the consequences. — Cavacava

In the complex system of today's national and global societies, racism certainly continues to play a role in influencing the outcomes of many individual events, and by most reckoning surely has an impact on the statistical trends that we find worrisome. A thorough understanding of the magnitude of this impact however is extraordinarily difficult to grapple with for a host of reasons (complexity, controversy, etc..).

It is definitely important that we closely monitor our institutions for the range of errors we know from history such constructs are want to commit, not least among them discrimination based on race, but we would be remiss to only focus on our social institutions themselves as a means to explain social disparities of any kind between demographics.

For instance, violence and incarceration being inflicted on an individual by police is something which disproportionately affects black men when compared with white men. In order to understand why this is the case, one approach would be to hypothesize that unfair or arbitrary discrimination based on race is the "main or major contributing factor" leading to this disparity (specifically, the thing that when eliminated also eliminates the prevalence of the disparity). We could (and should) closely monitor the police for acts of arbitrary discrimination based on race in order to force accountability and reduce discrimination (and other malpractices), thereby eliminating the statistical disparity of who violence is applied to by the police. However, if racist discrimination from police officers is not in reality the sole or even the main contributing factor which creates this disparity, then no amount of transparency and accountability, nor the height of any standard on the part of the police will actually succeed in eliminating the disparity itself.

I'm not trying to argue against more oversight of the police per se, rather I'm trying to show that there is an upper limit on the efficiency and the difference that more and more oversight can make toward reducing the statistical disparity of police use of violence used against black men. If we assume that police racism is the singular cause behind force being used against black men, then the other fundamental factors which contribute to the statistical disparity will remain obscured and unchanged while we would continue to place more and more suspicion of innate responsibility and blame for these statistically disproportionate outcomes broadly upon the police force as a whole which we would inexorably come to understand as thoroughly racist. At some point, spending more and more money on improving police quality will do less and less to alter crime trends and the accompanying results. We're perhaps not yet even near such a state but I would argue that we may currently be at a point where divesting our attention to a broader scope than just "police racism" is required if we're going to improve the efficiency with which we can actually reduce the statistical disparity or reduce the problem of widespread police use of force as a whole.

I don't disagree with anything you have outlined. I think there are endemic issues in our system that may not have had racial implications when implemented but because of social stratification have had disproportionate effects on the poor. Mandatory minimum sentencing, the bail/bond system and perhaps other judicial systems have a much greater effect on the poor.

The gentrification of cities is also affecting the poor. Why should poor people not have a place to live as in cities like San Francisco ( here 'poor' is not necessarily at poverty level). I think this is and will be a major challenge for our society.

According to the National Science Foundation one in five Americans insists the sun revolves around the earth and forty years of studies have finally concluded that the republican party is organized along the lines of a flock of chickens. What both studies indicate is that their behavior can be easily predicted using a simple memory centric networking systems logic along the lines of Three Stooges slapstick and Gonzo the Muppet. This organizing around memories that defy observations explains things like Rwanda where white colonists simply divided the local blacks according to arbitrary features that had nothing to do with their tribal divisions and pitted them against one another economically producing their own home bred form of racism where no distinctions had ever been made before. They are collectively arguing for argument's sake over the definition of stupid and who is the better example because it reinforces their memories of who to attack and who to run from and works as a sort of governor that prevents them from over reacting even more like so many startled chickens. Its now only lowbrow humor, but the simplest possible way they can collectively organize.

This was a nicely nuanced post. No disagreements. Let me draw a contrast that might further illustrate the problem.

I'm not trying to argue against more oversight of the police per se, rather I'm trying to show that there is an upper limit on the efficiency and the difference that more and more oversight can make toward reducing the statistical disparity of police use of violence used against black men. — VagabondSpectre

In the 1970s and through most of the 1980s, there was a lot of hostile interactions between gay men and the Minneapolis Police Department, particularly among the Vice Squad and Park Police. These two units had the official charge and the opportunity to act oppressively toward the gay male community.

Over a 10 year period of time, gay community-police relations evolved into a more positive and/or at least tolerant attitude on both sides. There were sacrifices on both sides, and gains too. Evolution was fostered by efforts in the courts, public relations efforts, some heavy weight political pressure, and community activism.

If the black community and police departments are to similarly evolve into a more beneficial relationship, more (much more) of the same sort of efforts will be required as was required by the police and the gay community.

One of the differences between the gay community and the black community is that in the latter part of the 20th century, the political, social, even religious acceptability of the gay people was in the ascendent. The period of black ascendency is over; what was rising is no longer. If anything, black people seem to be on a descending track (economically, and hence socially and politically).

Theoretically, carefully designed, properly deployed, and adequately funded social engineering can improve police/black community relations, but not in isolation from economic, political, and social trends. IF black people are to rise, then changes need to be made that will also help the large white working class, and other minority working class groups rise too.

Changing the nation so that all working class people can advance economically is where we hit the reinforced concrete wall that defines the lower limit of what is going to happen under the current regime. (The upper limit isn't even in sight).

This is one small example of how prejudice is self sustaining. Because it is 'known' that black people are more likely to be involved in car crime, black people receive more attention from the police; because they receive perhaps twenty times more attention, more black people are discovered to be involved with car crime. So the statistics prove the prejudice. It's an excellent of how the legacy of racism is an ongoing sustained stereotyping. — unenlightened

God damn that is some intense mental gymnastics you've got there!

Why are people so afraid of facts? Black people get caught driving stolen cars more often than other races because .... they steal and drive more stolen cars than other races. Black people are involved in more non lethal violent encounters with police than other races because .... Black people instigate violence towards police at a far greater rate than other races. Black people get murdered more often than other races, not because of white systemic racism but, surprise, they murder each other at a disgusting rate compared to other races. And to the cherry on the cake here is that there is increasing evidence that blacks are actually, when the far higher rate of overall criminality is accounted for (for nearly every category of crime in America blacks are SIGNIFICANTLY over represented as offenders.

BLM is founded on a false victim complex helpless narrative, their members advocate black supremacy, violence towards police (and whitey) and the only thing they've achieved is to further destroy and damage their already fragile communities. You have to quite frankly be a complete imbecile to Believe that setting your neighborhood on fire and looting what remains (while blaming whitey for your base behavior) is going to do anything but further antagonize people towards you, break down the already fragile law and order within the black community, and INCREASE the very thing you're supposedly protesting against (unjustified police shootings) - because this animal behavior does nothing but increase the chances of a violent police encounter.

What's missing from this whole picture is black responsibility. Poverty doesn't make you murder your neighbor or abandon your children (at the disgusting rate of 80% freaking percent), it doesn't make you strong arm rob a store owner of their cigars, or refuse to drop a loaded gun while being commanded to by multiple armed police. Poverty or police brutality or 'systemic racism' (whatever that means) is not responsible for your actions, YOU (and only you) are.

Here's a hypothesis: black people per capita, simply choose to commit crimes at a far higher rate than other races. The good thing about this hypothesis is that it's so easy to correct - all that needs happen is blacks to choose not to commit crimes at such a society destroying rate.

BLM, to who? Certainly not to other black people. The most dangerous thing to a black man is not a racist 'pig', or an evil white supremacist society - no, the most dangerous thing is it another black man.

The criminality of the black male (although black females also choose crime at a higher rate than other females - by and large the problem is young violent criminal black men) is the problem. Some of the stats are shocking, for example if New York City were all white, the murder rate would drop by 91 percent, the robbery rate by 81 percent, and the shootings rate by 97 percent. In an all-white Chicago, murder would decline 90 percent, rape by 81 percent, and robbery by 90 percent.

You buy an illegal firearm and commit a robbery, or commit murder, or assault someone, it's nobodies fault but your own. And the only thing that caused your actions is your own immorality.
Black people need to be held responsible for the dire state of their own community. It's a cop out to blame some racist white boogie man. Asians faced historical oppression in America, Jews races historical oppression in America, so did the Irish. The only difference between them and black people is they didn't use that oppression as an excuse to abandon their children, sell drugs, join a street gang, and commit violent crime en mass.

I am so sick of this (false) victim narrative. If blacks truly are equal to white people (which they are) then they should be held responsible in the same way. It's not white peoples responsibility to give you money or fix your community. A good start would be to stop murdering each other, and start taking care of and loving your own children. Nobody make 8/10 black males abandon their own sons and daughters and the mothers of their children like their trash.

The black community really has some truly reprehensible, immoral and disgusting features. And I suspect the only reason wider (mostly white) society isn't as outraged as they OUGHT be, is because deep down they don't truly believe black people are their equals and hold them to a lower behavioral and moral standard.

If there was say an Italian community in the USA with the same rampant homophobia, single motherhood, fatherhood abandonment, child abuse, sexual assault, gun/thug glorification, anti-intellectualism, tall poppy syndrome, victim-hood, entitlement, violence, welfare dependency, police/law and order disrespect, criminality, and outright murder, people would be utterly and rightly disgusted and outraged. Why is it any different for black people? Because they're black?

BLM is a violent black supremacist and separatist hate group. Something has gone terribly wrong when your response to a black man getting shot by a black cop in a city with a black mayor and chief of police because he refused to stop endangering everyone around him with a loaded gun, is to corner innocent motorists, trash, burn and loot their trucks and cars (even thse containing children), break into stores, Walmart, vandalize and steal private and public property, shoot other black people in the process (even killing one), and just generally act like an out of control escaped chimp from the zoo - and ALL of this is racists whitey 'dey evil pigs' fault. It's disgusting and immoral. You hate whitey, oh but it's also up to white people to fix your problems (which seems to mean nothing more than literally giving you cash)? Quite frankly, fuck off.

/rant

Some relevant (and shocking) stats and information can be found here: http://www.amren.com/archives/reports/the-color-of-crime-2016-revised-edition/

Major Findings

The evidence suggests that if there is police racial bias in arrests it is negligible. Victim and witness surveys show that police arrest violent criminals in close proportion to the rates at which criminals of different races commit violent crimes.

There are dramatic race differences in crime rates. Asians have the lowest rates, followed by whites, and then Hispanics. Blacks have notably high crime rates. This pattern holds true for virtually all crime categories and for virtually all age groups.

In 2013, a black was six times more likely than a non-black to commit murder, and 12 times more likely to murder someone of another race than to be murdered by someone of another race.

In 2013, of the approximately 660,000 crimes of interracial violence that involved blacks and whites, blacks were the perpetrators 85 percent of the time. This meant a black person was 27 times more likely to attack a white person than vice versa. A Hispanic was eight times more likely to attack a white person than vice versa.

In 2014 in New York City, a black was 31 times more likely than a white to be arrested for murder, and a Hispanic was 12.4 times more likely. For the crime of “shooting” — defined as firing a bullet that hits someone — a black was 98.4 times more likely than a white to be arrested, and a Hispanic was 23.6 times more likely.

If New York City were all white, the murder rate would drop by 91 percent, the robbery rate by 81 percent, and the shootings rate by 97 percent.

In an all-white Chicago, murder would decline 90 percent, rape by 81 percent, and robbery by 90 percent.

In 2015, a black person was 2.45 times more likely than a white person to be shot and killed by the police. A Hispanic person was 1.21 times more likely. These figures are well within what would be expected given race differences in crime rates and likelihood to resist arrest.

In 2015, police killings of blacks accounted for approximately 4 percent of homicides of blacks. Police killings of unarmed blacks accounted for approximately 0.6 percent of homicides of blacks. The overwhelming majority of black homicide victims (93 percent from 1980 to 2008) were killed by blacks.

Both violent and non-violent crime has been declining in the United States since a high in 1993. 2015 saw a disturbing rise in murder in major American cities that some observers associated with “depolicing” in response to intense media and public scrutiny of police activity." —

And some relevant info on justified and unjustified police shootings:

"In the absence of government data, the Washington Post investigated every reported case of a fatal shooting by the police during 2015. It found 990 cases, with the following racial distribution of victims:

White: 50.0 percent (495 victims)

Black: 26.1 percent (258)

Hispanic: 17.4 percent (172)

Asian: 1.4 percent (14)

Other/Unknown: 5.2 percent (51)

Given their proportions in the population, a black person was 2.45 times more likely than a white person to be shot and killed by police, a Hispanic was 1.24 times more likely, and an Asian was only one third as likely. It is reasonable to expect people of different races to find themselves in potentially lethal confrontations with the police in proportion to their likelihood to commit violent crime, with blacks most likely and Asians least likely.

As noted in Table 4 above, in California — a large state that keeps consistent statistics on race and ethnicity — blacks are arrested for violent crimes at 5.35 times the white rate, and Hispanics at 1.42 times the white rate. The low likelihood of Asians being killed by police is in keeping with low Asian arrest rates for violent crime. The black and Hispanic multiples for police shooting deaths are well within the arrest multiples — the black multiple is less than half — and certainly do not suggest undisciplined police violence.

Moreover, FBI data show that from 2005 to 2014, blacks accounted for 40 percent of police killings. Since blacks were approximately 13 percent of the population, it meant they were 4.46 times more likely than people of other races to kill a police officer.

In its study, the Post found that men were 22.9 times more likely than women to be shot and killed by officers. No one suggests that law enforcement bias accounts for this huge multiple, which is undoubtedly caused by differences in behavior between men and women. In the case of racial multiples, police bias cannot be ruled out, but it is reasonable to assume that the multiples are explained by race differences in behavior.

The Washington Post noted further that all but 93 of the 990 people fatally shot by police were armed, usually with a firearm or knife. The unarmed victims had the following racial distribution:

White: 34.4 percent (32 victims)

Black: 40.8 percent (38)

Hispanic: 19.4 percent (18)

Asian: 0 percent (0)

Unknown: 5.4 percent (5)

An unarmed black was therefore 5.6 times more likely than an unarmed white to be shot by police, and a Hispanic was 2.6 times more likely. The black multiple is certainly high, though not that much higher than the California violent-arrest multiple of 5.35 noted above.

There is no obvious explanation for why unarmed blacks were shot and killed at a white multiple that was twice that for armed blacks. If police bias is the cause, there is no clear reason why it should be worse in the case of unarmed suspects. The sample size of 93 is small, so random events produce a large effect.

It may be that race differences in how suspects behave when they are arrested explain at least part of the difference. There are no national data, but a five-year study of non-felony arrests in San Francisco found that blacks were 9.6 times more likely than whites (including Hispanics) to be charged with resisting arrest, and whites were 8.6 times more likely than Asians to be so charged. In Chicago, from September 2014 to September 2015, blacks accounted for 77 percent of arrests for obstruction of justice and resisting arrest (page 4 of report), meaning they were 6.8 times more likely than non-blacks to be arrested on these charges. If these findings are typical, they help explain why the arrest of a black non-felony suspect — who would more than likely be unarmed — could escalate into potentially lethal violence.

The Post’s analysis was intended to throw light on police bias but failed to indicate the races of the officers involved in fatal shootings. This would be useful information. A 2015 Department of Justice study (page 3) of police shootings in Philadelphia found racial differences in “threat perception failure,” that is, cases in which an officer shot an unarmed suspect because the officer thought the suspect was armed. Black officers were nearly twice as likely as white officers to shoot an unarmed black (11.4 percent of all shootings by black officers vs. 6.8 percent of all shootings by white officers). The percentage of such errors by Hispanic officers — 16.7 percent — was even higher.

Black officers may be somewhat more prone to error in general. About 12 percent of police officers in the United States are black. Between 2005 and 2015, 16.6 percent of the 54 officers criminally charged for fatally shooting someone while on duty were black.

Homicide is a serious problem for black men. Since at least 2002 and up to 2013 (the latest data available), murder was the leading cause of death for black men, ages 15 to 34. Their murderers are almost always other black men. According to a Department of Justice report, (page 13), from 1980 to 2008, 93 percent of black homicide victims were killed by blacks.

By contrast, the 256 police judicial killings of blacks in 2015 would be only 4.2 percent of the 6,095 blacks who were murdered in 2014 (the most recent year for which national data are available). The 38 unarmed blacks killed by police accounted for just 0.6 percent. Police shootings of unarmed blacks is a very small problem compared to murder in the black community." —

Pretty shocking stuff!

It seems to me that the most obvious explanation for these statistics is that there is a not insignificant biological component to criminal behavior. So what I mean is something like 'people of Asian descent are significantly less likely to commit violent acts than Black people, and a large part of this can be explained by biological differences between the two sets of populations.' A lot of this difference (I believe) can of course be explained by social/environmental factors such as poverty, education, family structure, etc, but not all of it. Controlling for factors like these still ends up with significant racial differences in crime rates. These remaining differences I think are due to biology - things like IQ differences between races, prevalence of 'warrior type genes' between races, testosterone differences, - and perhaps even the amount of muscle the different races have (I have no stats for this but anecdotally Asian men seem to be less 'muscly' than black men, with perhaps more muscle meaning someone feels more confident committing acts of violence or robbery - just a thought). I certainly don't think the remaining differences in crime rates can be explained (for blacks) by an appeal to some vague, invisible, ill-defined thing like 'systemic racism' or 'a legacy of oppression'.

Nobody seems to want to go anywhere near racial biological factors in crime rates! It's as if even thinking about perhaps maybe just entertaining the mere hypothesis makes one automatically a racist. But nobody (sane) thinks its sexist to state that men are biologically more prone to violence, so I don't see why its any different when it comes to race. Politically uncomfortable sure, but willful ignorance gets us nowhere.

I have agreed with quite a few of the point you have made recently, but now I am a bit worried here about where that leaves my reputation on the Left-Right Divide.

http://www.amren.com/archives/reports/the-color-of-crime-2016-revised-edition/ — dukkha

The site does, indeed, have a lot of information. Quite a bit of the site is frankly slanted in favor of conservative racial inferiority/superiority viewpoints. Of course, that doesn't mean that it is all wrong, but it merit some blinking bright orange traffic warning lights.

So what I mean is something like 'people of Asian descent are significantly less likely to commit violent acts than Black people, and a large part of this can be explained by biological differences between the two sets of populations.' — dukkha

That is the sort of statement that gets a warning beacon.

At the present time, Asians may be the group of people least likely to launch the next major Crime Wave, but it is absurd to suggest that they are less capable of violence than another group. Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians--to name the examples that readily came to mind--all proved themselves eminently capable of sustained and severe violence--WWII, the victory of the Chinese Communists over the Chinese Nationalists, the Korean War, the war in Vietnam, the khmer Rouge, Pol Pot, the Cultural Revolution, the pacification of Tibet, etc.

There are a number of aspects of American black culture that many people think are really unwholesome, but we do not have nearly enough information to blame genetics. It's far more likely that unwholesome black cultural traits are the result of sustained and enforced social forces -- like exclusion from paths to prosperity, like exclusion from civil society, and so on.

White people may be behaving more or less nicely right now, but Whites, just like Blacks, Asians, American Indians, and all other racial groups are perfectly capable of behaving in gawd-awful ways that bring shame upon the species as a whole. NO GROUP is better than any other group -- when viewed in even the intermediate run--never mind the long run.

So while we can say "Many blacks are performing very poorly in the United States." we should be looking at possible causative factors about which something can be done. Societies can be reformed. Genetics can not (not on the time scale with which humans are capable of working). Besides that, there used to be successful black communities in most major cities. I think it is safe to say that many of these communities were crushed through urban renewal programs, interstate highway construction, conspiracies by banks and the government to deny credit to black communities, and so on. There was certainly a time when other groups -- among them Jews and Italians -- ran the criminal rackets. There was a time when dangerous slums tended to be white. White hippies, for instance, could run into serious trouble in very square, unhip Irish Catholic South Boston in the 1960s.

The huge market in illicit drugs and licit/illicit guns can't be overlooked here. Guns and drugs are highly corrosive agents in most communities. But guns and drugs are way, way too big to blame on blacks. These two huge industries are largely controlled by and feed white appetites. Blacks are not manufacturing guns, and as far as I know, ghetto riff raff are not in charge of high-level wholesale drug importing, distribution, warehousing, or marketing. Sure, down at the street level blacks are dealers. They shoot each other. A few steps up the ladder, and there won't be too many blacks (as far as I know).

So, some welfare clients are smoking dope--wasting the state's money, and starving their children. Of course that happens sometimes. There's a few white welfare parasites doing exactly the same thing. But higher up the supply chain and there are no welfare recipients in the criminal enterprises. There are no uneducated, socially retarded blacks running the show. Higher up it's a sophisticated criminal enterprise spawning dysfunction and misery coast to coast. It's largely not pot. It's heroin, cocaine, meth -- hard stuff. And it's very dangerous pharmaceuticals being added to the mix. The upper levels of the drug business involve South Americans, Chinese, SE Asians, Africans, Europeans, Americans, Afghanis, Pakistanis, Russians, and so on. At the upper levels we're dealing with tonnage, not ounces.

And guns. They don't grow on trees and ammunition is not a backyard crop. Big business makes the stuff, and the big businesses are mostly white owned.