the system itself is existentially dependent upon racist belief, as I've argued from/for common sense regarding this already.
— creativesoul

You mean...

Here's a bit of common sense...

Wherever there have never been racist beliefs, there could not have ever been unacceptable racially motivated policies.
— creativesoul

That's what you call an argument is it? — Isaac

Fair enough, I didn't make it explicit... However, given your cognitive abilities, I thought it unnecessary...

There is systemic racism. Hence, there are racist beliefs, or policies stemming from such, contained within it. To effectively correct the affects/effects of those racist beliefs, we must identify and remove/replace the policies and/or institutions stemming from them.

I am not saying that everyone currently in government, law enforcement, or the judicial system is racist or holds racist beliefs. There, we agree. However, to claim that there is no racist belief necessary in order to have systemic racism is like saying apples are not currently necessary to have apple pie.

It's a matter of elemental constituency. Although, philosophically we will most certainly part ways here. I mean, unless one of us changes our view, we will not agree on this. You are a physicalist, or so it seems, whereas I am of the well considered opinion that the physical/mental dichotomy is utterly inadequate for taking proper account of that which is existentially dependent upon and thus consists of both...

Racist belief, racism, and systemic racism are all such things. Thus... our differences are due to our accounting practices. Our agreements are far more important here, perhaps. Although, I think that correcting the problems is much more likely to happen by first taking proper account of them.

Cheers!

Worth noting how different the US was back then too in general, btw.

MLK might be publicly and officially revered now, but are the Black Panthers too? — ssu

It's a convenient feel-good myth that the US was 'different back then'. The most that has happened in that the forms of racial prejudice have been displaced from a lack of rights to present disenfranchisement at the level of wealth, education, housing and other places. As for the Black Panthers, they were fucking heroes and anyone who does not revere them like they do MLK ought to stop pretending they give a shit. The Black Panthers set up breakfast programs for hungry schoolchilden, provided clinics for the sick, childcare, book programs, transportation networks for the elderly and more. They unquestionably did more good at the level of concrete practice than MLK did.

Get this through your head: the US is dealing with the same problems that have existed since the end of the civil war, in many ways in worse forms, not better. More black people die at the hands of the police in the US than they did at the height of lynchings in post-reconstruction US. If the US is 'different' from 'back then', it is fucking worse along a range of metrics.

Here, it would benefit us to recognize that our differences seem to be on a ontological/metaphysical level, which amounts - in some ways - to the linguistic framework we're using to account for racism and/or racist belief. Well, and we also differ in what we espouse to be the necessary method for realizing the changes needed... for making them happen! — creativesoul

I. do. not. give. a. shit. about. belief. No one talking about 'belief' is on 'my side'. Anyone talking about 'belief' has no idea what systematic racism is and ought to go join the Klan for all the good it does.

An entire community so furious - so even the rich white kids who decide to go into a mall in an urban area and vandalize it during the riots are just....the fault of the government. — BitconnectCarlos

What rich white kids are you talking about? The overwhelming majority of those protesting were from the affected community.

People apparently don't have agency, they're just little wind-up toys to be wound up and released and whatever damage they cause is clearly on whoever wound them up. I swear you could come across a man beating a pregnant woman and you'd be thinking "god, how could the evil forces of systemic racism/classism/capitalism/etc be doing this to her!" — BitconnectCarlos

This seems to be your only argumentative tactic at the moment - take a position to it's extreme and use the consequences there to suggest the position as it stands is wrong. This is such a well-known bit of sophistry it even has its own name. Taking account of the part society plays in in the behaviour of some population is not the equivalent of assuming it is entirely responsible for everything.

If the best you've got is to create strawman arguments out of taking any position to its extreme rather than deal with it at the level it's expressed, then we're done here.

Do you apply these standards/this account to yourself. If you were to destroy a local business, would you blame yourself or something else? — BitconnectCarlos

Both.

Plenty of these rioters are not from the community being vandalized, they're from outside. — BitconnectCarlos

Evidence?

However, to claim that there is no racist belief necessary in order to have systemic racism is like saying apples are not currently necessary to have apple pie. — creativesoul

No, you've just misunderstood what systemic racism is. Any system which disadvantages a culturally defined group who do not have the power to rectify it is systemically racist. It could disadvantage that group because those running it actually hold racist beliefs, it could disadvantage that group because those running will not correct injustices created from previous policies. It could even disadvantage that group simply by chance - random and unforeseen consequence. In each case it would class as systemic racism.

To say that systemic racism does not require racist belief is part of the definition of the term, it's not something which can be established by discussion, it's just what the term means in this context. If you want to isolate those systemic practices which do always result from racist beliefs, you'd have to coin a new term as 'systemic racism' is already in use to describe something else.

As for the Black Panthers, they were fucking heroes and anyone who does not revere them like they do MLK ought to stop pretending they give a shit. — StreetlightX

Many do agree with MLK's message in his "I have a Dream" speech. I don't think they pretend. Do they even know about Huey Newton? But feel free to think that they only pretend and don't give a shit in order to create your own inherently racist America. But luckily we have you as the righteous one. So what happened to the Black Panthers, StreetlightX? If you revere them so much, perhaps you can enlighten me, really.

Get this through your head: the US is dealing with the same problems that have existed since the end of the civil war, in many ways in worse forms, not better. More black people die at the hands of the police in the US than they did at the height of lynchings in post-reconstruction US. — StreetlightX

So nothing has happened in 155 years? Things are worse. Ok.

Taking account of the part society plays in in the behaviour of some population is not the equivalent of assuming it is entirely responsible for everything. — Isaac

Both. — Isaac

I'm just thrilled you're able to acknowledge personal responsibility. As individuals we can't really control external social systems, but we can control ourselves. Once we acknowledge that people have agency and that they are at fault for doing what they're doing.... that's really all I wanted to hear from you. I understand that there's social factors at play, but one's actions ultimately come down to that individual. Presumably, since you'd blame yourself if you destroyed and looted a local business then we can draw the conclusion that the rioters are also at fault.

Who are the innocent?

Those who did not deserve the violence and vandalism—the vast majority of people. It’s why these riots are not about justice in general, and not about justice for Floyd in particular. The tearing down of statues, the firing of dissidents, the taking over of city blocks, the vandalism, the violence—this is a conformist putsch.

vandalism, the violence—this is a conformist putsch — NOS4A2

Now I don't usually reply to you, but this one just had me laughing out loud. Yes, rioting is so conformist . They just want everyone to conform to social standards, which is why they break the social standards.

You can't justifiably, or even coherently, mount an argument that is inferred from the founding principles or dominant ideology of a particular society to neutralize the ethical basis of actions undertaken in opposition to structures that inevitably flow from the way those principles and that ideology are, in practice, expressed. You've got to zoom out and look at a broader set of human values and the overarching importance of those being fundamental to any acceptable social contract. Fundamental to that perspective is the establishment of a form of equality that extends beyond the theoretical into the lived experience of all communities and social stakeholders. So, repeated focus on injuries to the property rights of those who, for the most part, are the beneficiaries of the system under question just distracts from the real injured parties and the wider ethical injury of a society that maintains an underclass disproportionately inhabited by communities of color that it expects to obediently propagate the structures that keep that underclass in its place. And from this vantage point, the primary ethical responsibility of the individual is to oppose the wider injustice and the deficit lies in those who don't, making much more of a moral degenerate of the weasel-mouthed objector to rioters and looters than the outraged victim of social injustice who burned down the wrong building.

@NOS4A2 having nothing original, interesting or remotely sophisticated to say just pops up every couple of days to repeat the party (White House) line.

having nothing original, interesting or remotely sophisticated to say just pops up every couple of days to repeat the party (White House) line — Baden

Oh I am aware. That's why I usually just ignore them. But sometimes something so exquisitely stupid comes out of the propaganda machine that I can't help myself.

To say that systemic racism does not require racist belief is part of the definition of the term, it's not something which can be established by discussion, it's just what the term means in this context. — Isaac

An all too typical 'philosophical' stance...

That's meaningless nonsensical language use. What we are referring to existed in it's entirety prior to the name. Thus, we can get it wrong, especially regarding it's elemental constituency, as is the case with everything that exists in it's entirety prior to our naming and descriptive practices focus upon it. Systemic racism was founded upon racist belief. It consists of racist beliefs and their products. Racists made the rules, often intentionally and deliberately to disadvantage all sorts of people aside from white men.



Suit yourself. Violence gets attention.

Racism and Humanism and Earthlingism is the same.

An all too typical 'philosophical' stance...

That's meaningless nonsensical language use. — creativesoul

No, that's what the word means and how it's used in academia and elsewhere. And as it can happily co-exist with explicit racism, it by no means obscures or denigrates that reality. In any case, you don't get moral brownie points just for not understanding a commonly-used concept.

Incidentally, I think the proper response in future to those who wish to complain about rioting etc. is to say that if your moral gears are so clogged that systemic racism isn't a more pressing problem for you to address, you don't need to be here as that is the actual topic of the thread and I'm trying to keep it on-topic. Maybe start your own thread on why rioting is always bad and why we should always cry about it. You're not contributing anything here to the substantive issue.

Mob mentality is a form of conformity, whether you laugh or not. Flagged, as they were, by the hashtags and virtue-signalling of corporate and political interests, and the censorship of dissenting views, it is not just conformity, but orthodoxy.

Stop filling the thread with stupidity and go elsewhere.

No, that's what the word means and how it's used in academia and elsewhere. And as it can happily co-exist with explicit racism, it by no means obscures or denigrates that reality. In any case, you don't get moral brownie points just for not understanding a commonly-used concept. — Baden

Oh perfect...

No wonder there's been no real results based on it... Again academia is a bit lost.

I've lived it for half a century.

Fair enough. The thread was full of tripe anyway. Can’t even take a little opposition.

It's not opposition to spout thoughtless low-quality rubbish. You are just too stupid for this thread and refuse to deal with the actual OP. Others who disagree aren't and have made an effort. You can come back if you can find it in yourself to write something a five-year-old couldn't come up with.

I'm sure we agree on the egregious nature of racism, but if we don't agree on standard terms, we're just going to end up talking past each other. I can't force you to use the term in the standard sense, but it's going to be a mess of confusion otherwise. Your call.

Fundamental to that perspective is the establishment of a form of equality that extends beyond the theoretical into the lived experience of all communities and social stakeholders. — Baden

We get it - you want equality: Who doesn't? Who wouldn't want a more fair America?

I definitely get it. Showing you my victimhood card here - I am disabled. I have a disability protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act and I can tell you that discrimination against those with disabilities is pretty rampant. Yet, you don't see us setting buildings on fire or demonizing abled people who contribute to structures of systemic blah blah blah. We have our solutions and we support each other - it's not like we're totally indifferent about things.

And from this vantage point, the primary ethical responsibility of the individual is to oppose the wider injustice — Baden

Yes, when you divide people into oppressed and oppressor the oppressed is justified in doing what he needs to do to even the score. Any calls to the misdeeds done by the oppressed are just products or sympathizers of the oppressive system. The oppressed aren't individuals or moral agents - they're just an amorphous, oppressed blob whose singular purpose is to dismantle systemic injustice and if they need to break a few eggs to make the omelette then so be it - they're fighting evil. It's all just black and white - no shades of grey. Oppressor vs. oppressed. Poor vs. Rich. Black vs. White. People are defined by these identities.

If you choose this vantage point, that's on you.

have a disability protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act and I can tell you that discrimination against those with disabilities is pretty rampant. Yet, you don't see us setting buildings on fire or demonizing abled people who contribute to structures of systemic blah blah blah. — BitconnectCarlos

Why not?

Yes, when you divide people into oppressed and oppressor the oppressed is justified in doing what he needs to do to even the score. Any calls to the misdeeds done by the oppressed are just products or sympathizers of the oppressive system. The oppressed aren't individuals or moral agents - they're just an amorphous, oppressed blob whose singular purpose is to dismantle systemic injustice and if they need to break a few eggs to make the omelette then so be it - they're fighting evil. It's all just black and white - no shades of grey. Oppressor vs. oppressed. Poor vs. Rich. Black vs. White. People are defined by these identities are nothing more.

If you choose this vantage point, that's on you. — BitconnectCarlos

I think we both know that's a caricature of my position. Without committing to "anything goes" (not something I've advocated either), do you agree with the following or not?

...the primary ethical responsibility of the individual is to oppose the wider injustice — Baden

Got to say I still don't get how after 400 years of slavery, 100 of Jim Crow, and over 50 of systemic racism, all some posters here have to say to those who suffered all that is, "Don't break any windows". :vomit:

Questioner: So how do we solve systemic racism?
Conservative: Don't break any windows.
Questioner: Um, ok, but how do we solve systemic racism?
Conservative: Or do any other property damage.
Questioner: Yeah, but how...?
Conservative: You're saying burn stuff?? How dare you!
Questioner: But...
Conservative: Anarchists! Vandals! Mob! Conformists!
Questioner: ....

An attempt at a left criticism of the movements, in the spirit of the forum's old advocatus diaboli.

I will not deny the suffering of people in poor neighbourhoods. It is understandable that those within them sometimes feel the need to turn to crime. That holds regardless of the race of their inhabitants; the same held for the Irish in 1800's London, inhabiting the slums and demonised for the effects of the poverty in the media of the time. The colour of someone's skin only matters insofar as history has made it matter; and it has been made to matter a lot. If someone deprived of opportunities seeks to better their communities through politics or business, they should be applauded insofar as what they do is moral.

What is moral must be, minimally, permissible to do. I don't mean by the standards of law, I mean by the standards of morality that all people have; amplifying the agency of themselves, those around them and of humanity in general. In this regard, severe or violent action must be weighed in terms of its efficacy at addressing severe and violent conditions - and let's not be stupid about it, violence must be permissible as a bargaining tactic of last resort against an oppressor; appealing to the moral sense of an oppressor has never and will never work (pace Assata Shakur). The situation in poor communities in America is dire; powerlessness, lack of representation, racialised police violence; the same or structurally analogous issues since the early 1900's; the state has not and will not save anyone, that much is clear.

The same history that condemns the American state as continually racist condemns almost all acts of protest against it in terms of sheer efficacy; it's been the same shit for hundreds of years. Appealing to the moral conscience of an oppressor, however loudly, bloodily and on fire, so long as those actions remain merely symbolic, protest is begging a racist state to be less racist. Even the best likely outcome of the protests in their current form is the harm reduction of less police brutality inflicted upon the racialised; well fought, well won, not enough. Symbolic violence alone is a spectacle of waste.

Perhaps more organized force is required for enduring change on the level rightly desired by the movement. If you are of a more liberal persuasion, you will probably stop reading there; freely treat this as a disjunctive syllogism regarding stopping the merely symbolic violence of property destruction in the context of a recalcitrant system of racism; why cause undue harm when it merely appeals to the moral conscience of an oppressor, and thus falls almost entirely on deaf ears? It creates minor harms for the unlikely possibility of minor harm reduction.

Perhaps a reader may be thinking, "what you say is true, but the incremental gains of symbolic protest alone far outweigh the minor harm to people that destroying property does". Such a question however is flip-flopping; a standard argument that interlocutor makes goes like:

The American state is recalcitrantly racist and dealing with the same problems now as it was 100 years ago and thus violence against property is ok.

Really? When the same history finds at best minor gains, against countless murders and traumatisation of citizens by police, against the sheer weight of systemic discrimination done by both the state and the economy? And be under no illusions; without massive changes in state budgeting, a change in the American policing and legislative models, and a massive shift of the role of prison in society and industry... The same shit will be dealt with after the flames have settled.

How many more years of merely symbolic protest must be endured? All it creates is minor collateral damage, leaving the conscience of every oppressor fundamentally unswayed. The harm done so far is nothing but prayer.

Why not? — Baden

Because it's incredibly unproductive and some of the those businesses we burn might even belong with disabled people. Or maybe siblings or parents of the disabled.

We can advocate for changes in legislation, but I wouldn't really count on it too much. Far better to network through other people in the community and form those connections. The best way out of dependence - and this applies just generally, not only in the context of disabled people - is getting wealth, and when you destroy local businesses often owned by those of the "oppressed" class you're really just shooting yourself in the foot. Financial independence is huge for overcoming systemic bias.

...the primary ethical responsibility of the individual is to oppose the wider injustice

Injustice ought to be opposed where ever it is. If Jews in 1935 started destroying German shops I'd condemn that - no problem (there are Holocaust victims in my family.) We shouldn't turn a blind eye simply because someone who committed the injustice is an oppressed class, and when we do that we actually end up dehumanizing them because we're not holding them up to the same standards as everyone else.

Of course in the case of Jews rioting the wider injustice is Nazi Germany. When I say that the Jews shouldn't have done that or that the rioters shouldn't have done that that's not saying "oh bring in the tanks" or that we need a heavy handed response. I'm just saying that they shouldn't do it.

The funny thing about the "it's unproductive" response is that it is so totally, utterly wrong, at every empirical level. Pieces of shit like NOS will play their script-fed lines about how this is just virtue signaling despite the fact that these protests have done more to move the needle on racial injustices in the US since the civil rights movement. There has literally never been a more 'productive' moment in racial politics for the last however many decades, and these shit-for-brains will literally look reality in the face and tell you the opposite. These people are projecting their own shitty discomfort as though it reflected anything more the state of their little-dicked anxiety and try to pass it off as grandma's hard-lived wisdom. Anyone like twobitCarlos who plays the 'unproductive' line is either stupid, a liar, or both.

Fear works, antagonism works, discord is wildly productive.

Because it's incredibly unproductive and some of the those businesses we burn might even belong with disabled people. Or maybe siblings or parents of the disabled. — BitconnectCarlos

Why is hypothetical unsourced harm more important to you than real harm done on a daily basis? Why does it weigh heavier in your considerations regarding the protests than the lived reality?

By the same token, you can think of all the hypothetical instances of police brutality agitating against police brutality and for police reform would do.

Because it's incredibly unproductive and some of the those businesses we burn might even belong with disabled people. Or maybe siblings or parents of the disabled. — BitconnectCarlos

The question was meant to tease out whether you'd answer morally or strategically. I guess it's both, but especially in light of the example of the Jews in your post, I differ in that I see more options as justified morally and for those, it then becomes about strategy. So, my objections to property destruction would largely be strategic. However, I completely agree that not every target is morally permissible. I don't, for example, advocate random destruction of property where much of it belongs to members of the very community being harmed. Getting back to the example of the Jews, why shouldn't they have rioted? I think your position is extreme here. Their very existence was under threat. I would say their scope for justified counter-action was wide open. For me, based on a straightforward utilitarian and consequentialist position, pretty much everything was permissible for the Jews if, of course, it would have contributed to their safety as individuals and as a people. So, strategy aside, on what ethical basis, if any, are you objecting here? Why is it wrong? You have a dominant party aimed at destroying an oppressed minority. If anything they have an obligation to do everything possible to defend themselves, right?