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It's become politically unacceptable for any African-American men to be killed by police. Given that the US is a violent country with a lot of guns and aggressi

It's become politically unacceptable for any African-American men to be killed by police. Given that the US is a violent country with a lot of guns and aggressive police, and African-Americans are a marginalized, systemically disadvantaged underclass, this is a recipe to bring a racially divided nation to the brink of civil conflict. The Dallas attack on police, carried out by a trained soldier, looks right out of a textbook on guerilla war. I think it would be quite easy for organized paramilitary groups to make many US cities ungovernable, particularly with so many veterans around. The Black Lives Matter movement makes more sense through the lens of other ethnic separatist movements, such as Yugoslavia and Northern Ireland. It might sound shocking, but if they regard any white law enforcement or government as illegitimate, their demands seem to imply separatism and African-American nationalism, in the vein of Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X.

lintiness 10y ago
there's a country founded on black separatism: liberia. how's that going for them?
- sevenless 10y ago
  Liberia was founded by a coalition of white abolitionists and slave owners as a racist mechanism to deport freed slaves. There's no question of that happening again; African-Americans have as much of a claim to American soil as anyone else, more so if anything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Colonization_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Colonization_Society
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
But what ends up happening is that this puts police officers at a serious information asymmetry disadvantage from random encounters. That's the root cause of the violence. There was a recent Frontline, "Policing the Police" about Newark. The TL;DR was "We need more 'intelligence'" which had an ominous, Big Brother tone but in the face of politically charged deaths, which is worse? I just hope your last paragraph is wrong. This especially because the reaction to it will probably make things worse. But I have to say it looks insightful. All this being said, Las Vegas has made measurable progress: http://qz.com/565011/how-one-of-the-largest-police-forces-in-america-stopped-shooting-people/ http://qz.com/565011/how-one-of-the-largest-police-forces-in...

lintiness 10y ago

there's a country founded on black separatism: liberia. how's that going for them?

sevenless 10y ago
Liberia was founded by a coalition of white abolitionists and slave owners as a racist mechanism to deport freed slaves. There's no question of that happening again; African-Americans have as much of a claim to American soil as anyone else, more so if anything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Colonization_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Colonization_Society

ArkyBeagle 10y ago

But what ends up happening is that this puts police officers at a serious information asymmetry disadvantage from random encounters. That's the root cause of the violence. There was a recent Frontline, "Policing the Police" about Newark. The TL;DR was "We need more 'intelligence'" which had an ominous, Big Brother tone but in the face of politically charged deaths, which is worse? I just hope your last paragraph is wrong. This especially because the reaction to it will probably make things worse. But I have to say it looks insightful. All this being said, Las Vegas has made measurable progress: http://qz.com/565011/how-one-of-the-largest-police-forces-in-america-stopped-shooting-people/ http://qz.com/565011/how-one-of-the-largest-police-forces-in...