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> Try googling "over-represented race in incarcerations", "over-represented race in police shootings" Why did you leave off "over-represented race in violent c

> Try googling "over-represented race in incarcerations", "over-represented race in police shootings" Why did you leave off "over-represented race in violent crimes"? > Michael Jackson tried to turn himself white So that makes him not black? Are the people who idolize him confused and don't realize he's black? People loved him before his transformation. One funny anecdote is Michael Jackson, refusing that he "turned himself white", said that his grandmother told him that the reason they called them colored people is that they come in all different colors. :) > MLK Jr was conveniently murdered Conveniently? I'd say tragically. Abraham Lincoln was also assassinated. I don't know how this changes that both are among the most admired people in America today. > Muhammad Ali was persecuted by the state As were many white people who openly violated the draft or spoke out against the war (I'm not saying avoiding the draft is a bad thing or that Ali wasn't a legitimate conscientious objector). > Barack Obama is routinely called racist slurs despite being the president. Not routinely by any major national publications or widely popular figures. Also, being the current president doesn't mean people don't call you mean things, if anything it means you're called more mean things. People said plenty of mean things about Bush or Clinton while they were president.

tptacek 10y ago
Abraham Lincoln was assassinated because he ended the slavery of African Americans. Obama doesn't face slurs "routinely from widely popular figures"? The fucking GOP Presidential nominee was the head of the birther movement!
- sandisk5 10y ago
  > The fucking GOP Presidential nominee was the head of the birther movement! I wasn't aware that claiming someone wasn't born in the US is a "racist slur." Particularly since most African-Americans were born in the US, so it would be an odd slur to use against them.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    Please stop.
    - sandisk5 10y ago
      Please stop what? Sharing a different opinion? Replying to replies to my comments? Correcting incorrect statements in the original story and replies to my comments?
- achievingApathy 10y ago
  Lincoln had absolutely no interest in freeing slaves. His main purpose was to maintain the union at all costs. “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery.”
  - idlewords 10y ago
    Really you have no idea how Lincoln felt about slavery, nor how those feelings changed with time. His public statements are the carefully crafted words of a master politician. For a guy with no interest in freeing slaves, he sure freed a lot of slaves.
    - achievingApathy 10y ago
      "I cannot swallow whole the view of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator. As a law professor and civil rights lawyer and as an African American, I am fully aware of his limited views on race." -- Someone who might know a little bit about being a politician
      - tptacek 10y ago
        This is fun and all but it has nothing to do with my point. Someone upthread provided a short list of African Americans who were murdered as a result of their notability. In an attempt to refute the argument that to be a notable black in America is dangerous, Abraham Lincoln was introduced as an example of a notable white leader who was killed. There were any number of white leaders that could have been introduced as counterexamples, but, amusingly, the commenter chose one who was murdered because of white enmity towards blacks. The question of whether Lincoln had any ambivalence about freeing slaves has little bearing on the question of why he was murdered. Had Lincoln not emancipated the slaves, he would not have been murdered. His death clearly belongs in the tally of "people killed because it's dangerous to be a successful black person in America".
  - aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 10y ago
    http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/hodges.htm http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/hodges.... "I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling."
coldtea 10y ago
>Why did you leave off "over-represented race in violent crimes"? Because those crimes are (for anything above the baseline for people in general at the same poverty levels) are results of centuries of being abused, held down and denied opportunities. Even if all white people (and people in power) in some city X stopped being racist, it wouldn't automatically mean that the blacks there living in the wrong side of the tracks, in an underfunded school district, and working shit jobs, will suddenly have the same opportunities as the average white person. For one, as parents they will still be the same poor folks that didn't have a good education and can't afford (or know) to raise their kids properly and send them off to some good school. This things take generations to overcome, slowly trickling upwards (and in an era when the middle class is squeezed down and the working class is fucked, that's even less likely to happen). If you believe in blacks being inherently more violent etc as a race outside of systemic causes (poverty, bad school districts, lack of opportunities, etc, caused by centuries of slavery, double standards and racism) then you might as well believe that they have inferior DNA. >So that makes him not black? No, that makes him an example of the kind of forces of American society towards blacks, where even idols can't be satisfied in their black skin. >Conveniently? I'd say tragically. Abraham Lincoln was also assassinated. I don't know how this changes that both are among the most admired people in America today. It's easy to admire a non-threatening murdered person, especially if you make him into a convenient sugary version of what he stood for. Unlike Lincoln he wasn't much admired by white American society in his day, and a black rights advocate in his vein wouldn't be that admired today. >Also, being the current president doesn't mean people don't call you mean things, if anything it means you're called more mean things. People said plenty of mean things about Bush or Clinton while they were president. About their race? Were they drawn as monkeys? Asked about being muslim?
- sandisk5 10y ago
  >> Why did you leave off "over-represented race in violent crimes"? > Because those crimes are (for anything above the baseline for people in general at the same poverty levels) are results of centuries of being abused, held down and denied opportunities. Then it fits and should have been included. The other things on your list (over-represented in incarceration, police shootings, and poverty) were examples/evidence of the results of racism/oppression/abuse, and here and elsewhere you're saying that, if there is any over-representation in violent crimes controlling for poverty, unless one is a DNA-flavor racist, it's obviously the result of racism/oppression, so it seems like it fits in with the other evidences/examples on your list. Except it's weaker rhetorically, because the reader will have a hard time not seeing people who commit violent crimes as actors instead of objects, responsible for their own actions. Also, it, on the surface at least, seems like it might explain some of the other examples (if African-Americans commit disproportionate amounts of violent crimes, it makes sense they'd be disproportionately incarcerated or shot by cops, even if there were no racism involved). > If you believe in blacks being inherently more violent etc as a race outside of systemic causes (poverty, bad school districts, lack of opportunities, etc, caused by centuries of slavery, double standards and racism) then you might as well believe that they have inferior DNA. I don't think blacks are inherently more violent. Racism/systemic oppression and DNA aren't the only two possibilities. African-American culture (actually more narrowly "black ghetto" culture) is another possibility, one that is espoused by African-American economist Thomas Sowell in "Black Rednecks and White Liberals."

tptacek 10y ago

Abraham Lincoln was assassinated because he ended the slavery of African Americans. Obama doesn't face slurs "routinely from widely popular figures"? The fucking GOP Presidential nominee was the head of the birther movement!

sandisk5 10y ago
> The fucking GOP Presidential nominee was the head of the birther movement! I wasn't aware that claiming someone wasn't born in the US is a "racist slur." Particularly since most African-Americans were born in the US, so it would be an odd slur to use against them.
- tptacek 10y ago
  Please stop.
  - sandisk5 10y ago
    Please stop what? Sharing a different opinion? Replying to replies to my comments? Correcting incorrect statements in the original story and replies to my comments?
achievingApathy 10y ago
Lincoln had absolutely no interest in freeing slaves. His main purpose was to maintain the union at all costs. “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery.”
- idlewords 10y ago
  Really you have no idea how Lincoln felt about slavery, nor how those feelings changed with time. His public statements are the carefully crafted words of a master politician. For a guy with no interest in freeing slaves, he sure freed a lot of slaves.
  - achievingApathy 10y ago
    "I cannot swallow whole the view of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator. As a law professor and civil rights lawyer and as an African American, I am fully aware of his limited views on race." -- Someone who might know a little bit about being a politician
    - tptacek 10y ago
      This is fun and all but it has nothing to do with my point. Someone upthread provided a short list of African Americans who were murdered as a result of their notability. In an attempt to refute the argument that to be a notable black in America is dangerous, Abraham Lincoln was introduced as an example of a notable white leader who was killed. There were any number of white leaders that could have been introduced as counterexamples, but, amusingly, the commenter chose one who was murdered because of white enmity towards blacks. The question of whether Lincoln had any ambivalence about freeing slaves has little bearing on the question of why he was murdered. Had Lincoln not emancipated the slaves, he would not have been murdered. His death clearly belongs in the tally of "people killed because it's dangerous to be a successful black person in America".
- aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 10y ago
  http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/hodges.htm http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/hodges.... "I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling."

coldtea 10y ago

>Why did you leave off "over-represented race in violent crimes"? Because those crimes are (for anything above the baseline for people in general at the same poverty levels) are results of centuries of being abused, held down and denied opportunities. Even if all white people (and people in power) in some city X stopped being racist, it wouldn't automatically mean that the blacks there living in the wrong side of the tracks, in an underfunded school district, and working shit jobs, will suddenly have the same opportunities as the average white person. For one, as parents they will still be the same poor folks that didn't have a good education and can't afford (or know) to raise their kids properly and send them off to some good school. This things take generations to overcome, slowly trickling upwards (and in an era when the middle class is squeezed down and the working class is fucked, that's even less likely to happen). If you believe in blacks being inherently more violent etc as a race outside of systemic causes (poverty, bad school districts, lack of opportunities, etc, caused by centuries of slavery, double standards and racism) then you might as well believe that they have inferior DNA. >So that makes him not black? No, that makes him an example of the kind of forces of American society towards blacks, where even idols can't be satisfied in their black skin. >Conveniently? I'd say tragically. Abraham Lincoln was also assassinated. I don't know how this changes that both are among the most admired people in America today. It's easy to admire a non-threatening murdered person, especially if you make him into a convenient sugary version of what he stood for. Unlike Lincoln he wasn't much admired by white American society in his day, and a black rights advocate in his vein wouldn't be that admired today. >Also, being the current president doesn't mean people don't call you mean things, if anything it means you're called more mean things. People said plenty of mean things about Bush or Clinton while they were president. About their race? Were they drawn as monkeys? Asked about being muslim?

sandisk5 10y ago
>> Why did you leave off "over-represented race in violent crimes"? > Because those crimes are (for anything above the baseline for people in general at the same poverty levels) are results of centuries of being abused, held down and denied opportunities. Then it fits and should have been included. The other things on your list (over-represented in incarceration, police shootings, and poverty) were examples/evidence of the results of racism/oppression/abuse, and here and elsewhere you're saying that, if there is any over-representation in violent crimes controlling for poverty, unless one is a DNA-flavor racist, it's obviously the result of racism/oppression, so it seems like it fits in with the other evidences/examples on your list. Except it's weaker rhetorically, because the reader will have a hard time not seeing people who commit violent crimes as actors instead of objects, responsible for their own actions. Also, it, on the surface at least, seems like it might explain some of the other examples (if African-Americans commit disproportionate amounts of violent crimes, it makes sense they'd be disproportionately incarcerated or shot by cops, even if there were no racism involved). > If you believe in blacks being inherently more violent etc as a race outside of systemic causes (poverty, bad school districts, lack of opportunities, etc, caused by centuries of slavery, double standards and racism) then you might as well believe that they have inferior DNA. I don't think blacks are inherently more violent. Racism/systemic oppression and DNA aren't the only two possibilities. African-American culture (actually more narrowly "black ghetto" culture) is another possibility, one that is espoused by African-American economist Thomas Sowell in "Black Rednecks and White Liberals."