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There was nothing incompatible about our values regarding what we saw in that video. The idea that there was a political divide about this incident is a myth.

There was nothing incompatible about our values regarding what we saw in that video. The idea that there was a political divide about this incident is a myth. Even the openly racist people I know were saying it was fucked up.

throwaway894345 6y ago
Even the police unions condemned it. It's literally the only thing we agree on, but certain people keep holding up this obviously false dichotomy that we can only care about this political violence or the Floyd murder.
- selimthegrim 6y ago
  Well, the Minneapolis police union president has just gone off the rails.
- scarface74 6y ago
  They don’t have any choice once it is filmed. They weren’t condemning all the misconduct by the same officer that wasn’t filmed.
Press2forEN 6y ago
No, but there is a predictable political divide about the fallout.
- spaginal 6y ago
  Everyone has pretty much universally agreed that what the officers did was unacceptable. Even other Police. The officer was arrested, why things didn't move sooner was a local matter to take up with that mayor and that department. It should have been handled locally, not all departments are the same. But you end up in a situation of further tragedy where people start destroying property and assaulting others, and they screwed up by doing so. The message has been diluted, lost in all the noise. Expanding it nationwide hasn't broadcast the message positively. It's juvenile and short sighted, the people are on their side, saying yes this was wrong, yes this has to stop, murder is unacceptable, etc. They are now looking at the situation with a different viewpoint, asking themselves if the police violence may be justified with this group, look at what they did to our community when WE AGREED with them and were willing to help. That isn't a political thought, that is a rational thought. Destroying communities, rioting, looting, killing people, it never brings more people into your corner. America is a civil society that respects law and order. Much of America now is just happy they don't have to live around anywhere where this is happening, that is going to be the only takeaway from this tragedy now. The chorus on social media doesn't reflect that. The riots turned average Americans against this event. A barrier, metaphorically, was quickly slammed up between people, and now it's just noise and chaos.
  - standardUser 6y ago
    Noise and chaos gets heard. You know what gets completely ignored in this country? Peaceful protest. The actions of the last week are far, far more likely to result in change than any mass protest. Just look at the anti-Iraq war protests - the largest protests in US history held in dozens of cities over months and accomplished precisely nothing at all. Civil rights, gay rights, women's right were all won with a lot more than voting and peaceful protest. A lot more.
    - spaginal 6y ago
      My child screams at me that he wants candy for dinner. He throws a tantrum, screams, yell, slams his hand against the counter. Throws his toys, tells me he hates me. It's noise and chaos. It doesn't go ignored, but it also isn't allowed. It isn't a compelling way to get me to give them what they want, unless I'm a bad parent with no direction and structure. Civility, good behavior, that gets noticed positively. You don't understand the problem, you are emotionally invested in this, which is why you think harming innocent people is an avenue to positive change. You couldn't be more wrong if you tried. In our system, you protest to raise awareness, to gain positive traction in the public awareness, you then vote and work within the system to enact the real mechanisms of change. When done with compassion, it brings everyone on board to your cause, even if a few bitch and moan about it. Martin Luther King Jr. knew this. If you think physically harming others and their property, street mob justice, if you think this is an avenue to positive change, you don't understand our system.
    - austincheney 6y ago
      There is no evidence of this. Disruption doesn’t work solely for the sake of being disruptive. If anything it just disenfranchises people resulting in opposite outcomes.
    - yaj54 6y ago
      @austincheney - Speaking as an American -- those in this country with the privilege of freedom have it because people have fought and died for it [0]. There actually aren't very many examples of people that have basic freedoms that have not at some point fought for it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War
makomk 6y ago
Yeah, pretty much everyone was on the same page about that. What was incredibly and predictably divisive is burning down cities as a response to it, and naturally the American media have been spending a lot of effort fanning those flames.
- Consultant32452 6y ago
  The worst part is not going to be the brutality that is coming when police/military put a stop to this. That will be horrific, but temporary. Six months from now, is the average white American small business owner going to be more or less likely to hire a black person? That's the fucked up shit that is going to last another decade. That's the stuff that maintains generational poverty. And there's a thousand other subtle, unspoken things like that which are going to broaden our divide.
  - makomk 6y ago
    As far as I can tell, the people burning everything down aren't even particularly likely to be black, efforts to spin this as some kind of necessary fight back against racism by people who've been suffering not withstanding. The folks cheering it on and advocating for this to their audiences definitely aren't - they're largely white, middle-class techies and journos and other well-off educated folks who aren't worried about their own communities burning. The real pain - at least on the inter-generational poverty and deprivation side - is that in six months, the average American small business isn't going to exist in heavily-black neighbourhoods, and that probably won't change much in six years, and other businesses are probably going to be pretty thin on the ground there too. Apparently some places never recovered what they lost in the sixties race riots. Though I expect that the consequences of the police actions to stop this will also be anything but temporary. It seems to take years of careful work to rebuild trust between police and the community they serve, and to restructure policing to be less hostile and dangerous.
    - Consultant32452 6y ago
      I agree with you that it seems the people sparking the looting/fires/etc seem to be mostly white. I just don't think that will matter in the minds of the average person who barely watches the news. To the extent that they are watching anything, they will see tons of videos of black people committing crimes on social media.
rayiner 6y ago
Yes, but the immediate aftermath of that showed deep disagreement about “what to do about that problem.” Leftists want to dismantle the “systems of oppression” they perceive produces that result. Libertarians want to get rid of qualified immunity and police unions. Conservatives are taken aback by the rioting and violence and for them the immediate need maintaining social order has overtaken the more long term desire to correct these abuses.
- mistermann 6y ago
  I wonder how accurate these old standby run-of-the mill memes we repeat ad nauseum really are. What data are they based on, really? And even if they are true, might it be possible that people that hold these opinions hold them because they've never been involved in any serious in-depth analysis & discussion on the topics? There's not even that much serious, accurate, unbiased material out there to base such conversations on, and I sure as hell don't know of too many people who'd be interested in getting involved in such things if purely left up to their own volition. Perhaps if we had some serious, organized, factual discussions on some of these matters (as opposed to the all propaganda all the time approach we've become so accustomed to), people wouldn't continue to hold the same opinions they (supposedly) hold at the moment.
  - mistermann 6y ago
    It's quite amazing how unpopular facts and fact based discussions are.
- syshum 6y ago
  As normal, libertarians have the correct and rational solution to the problem :)
  - Avicebron 6y ago
    Please explain how just dismantling unions is the correct and rational solution? I'm less inclined to believe in qualified immunity, but I can see that it is based on a legitimate concern.
scarface74 6y ago
After citing statistics right here on HN about how racial profiling and traffic stops and tickets targets minorities , people were making excuses because it didn’t affect them. Right here on HN posts about the protests were being flagged left and right because people are more concerned about the freedom to side load apps on iOS than minorities getting harassed.

throwaway894345 6y ago

Even the police unions condemned it. It's literally the only thing we agree on, but certain people keep holding up this obviously false dichotomy that we can only care about this political violence or the Floyd murder.

selimthegrim 6y ago
Well, the Minneapolis police union president has just gone off the rails.
scarface74 6y ago
They don’t have any choice once it is filmed. They weren’t condemning all the misconduct by the same officer that wasn’t filmed.

Press2forEN 6y ago

No, but there is a predictable political divide about the fallout.

spaginal 6y ago
Everyone has pretty much universally agreed that what the officers did was unacceptable. Even other Police. The officer was arrested, why things didn't move sooner was a local matter to take up with that mayor and that department. It should have been handled locally, not all departments are the same. But you end up in a situation of further tragedy where people start destroying property and assaulting others, and they screwed up by doing so. The message has been diluted, lost in all the noise. Expanding it nationwide hasn't broadcast the message positively. It's juvenile and short sighted, the people are on their side, saying yes this was wrong, yes this has to stop, murder is unacceptable, etc. They are now looking at the situation with a different viewpoint, asking themselves if the police violence may be justified with this group, look at what they did to our community when WE AGREED with them and were willing to help. That isn't a political thought, that is a rational thought. Destroying communities, rioting, looting, killing people, it never brings more people into your corner. America is a civil society that respects law and order. Much of America now is just happy they don't have to live around anywhere where this is happening, that is going to be the only takeaway from this tragedy now. The chorus on social media doesn't reflect that. The riots turned average Americans against this event. A barrier, metaphorically, was quickly slammed up between people, and now it's just noise and chaos.
- standardUser 6y ago
  Noise and chaos gets heard. You know what gets completely ignored in this country? Peaceful protest. The actions of the last week are far, far more likely to result in change than any mass protest. Just look at the anti-Iraq war protests - the largest protests in US history held in dozens of cities over months and accomplished precisely nothing at all. Civil rights, gay rights, women's right were all won with a lot more than voting and peaceful protest. A lot more.
  - spaginal 6y ago
    My child screams at me that he wants candy for dinner. He throws a tantrum, screams, yell, slams his hand against the counter. Throws his toys, tells me he hates me. It's noise and chaos. It doesn't go ignored, but it also isn't allowed. It isn't a compelling way to get me to give them what they want, unless I'm a bad parent with no direction and structure. Civility, good behavior, that gets noticed positively. You don't understand the problem, you are emotionally invested in this, which is why you think harming innocent people is an avenue to positive change. You couldn't be more wrong if you tried. In our system, you protest to raise awareness, to gain positive traction in the public awareness, you then vote and work within the system to enact the real mechanisms of change. When done with compassion, it brings everyone on board to your cause, even if a few bitch and moan about it. Martin Luther King Jr. knew this. If you think physically harming others and their property, street mob justice, if you think this is an avenue to positive change, you don't understand our system.
  - austincheney 6y ago
    There is no evidence of this. Disruption doesn’t work solely for the sake of being disruptive. If anything it just disenfranchises people resulting in opposite outcomes.
  - yaj54 6y ago
    @austincheney - Speaking as an American -- those in this country with the privilege of freedom have it because people have fought and died for it [0]. There actually aren't very many examples of people that have basic freedoms that have not at some point fought for it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War

makomk 6y ago

Yeah, pretty much everyone was on the same page about that. What was incredibly and predictably divisive is burning down cities as a response to it, and naturally the American media have been spending a lot of effort fanning those flames.

Consultant32452 6y ago
The worst part is not going to be the brutality that is coming when police/military put a stop to this. That will be horrific, but temporary. Six months from now, is the average white American small business owner going to be more or less likely to hire a black person? That's the fucked up shit that is going to last another decade. That's the stuff that maintains generational poverty. And there's a thousand other subtle, unspoken things like that which are going to broaden our divide.
- makomk 6y ago
  As far as I can tell, the people burning everything down aren't even particularly likely to be black, efforts to spin this as some kind of necessary fight back against racism by people who've been suffering not withstanding. The folks cheering it on and advocating for this to their audiences definitely aren't - they're largely white, middle-class techies and journos and other well-off educated folks who aren't worried about their own communities burning. The real pain - at least on the inter-generational poverty and deprivation side - is that in six months, the average American small business isn't going to exist in heavily-black neighbourhoods, and that probably won't change much in six years, and other businesses are probably going to be pretty thin on the ground there too. Apparently some places never recovered what they lost in the sixties race riots. Though I expect that the consequences of the police actions to stop this will also be anything but temporary. It seems to take years of careful work to rebuild trust between police and the community they serve, and to restructure policing to be less hostile and dangerous.
  - Consultant32452 6y ago
    I agree with you that it seems the people sparking the looting/fires/etc seem to be mostly white. I just don't think that will matter in the minds of the average person who barely watches the news. To the extent that they are watching anything, they will see tons of videos of black people committing crimes on social media.

rayiner 6y ago

Yes, but the immediate aftermath of that showed deep disagreement about “what to do about that problem.” Leftists want to dismantle the “systems of oppression” they perceive produces that result. Libertarians want to get rid of qualified immunity and police unions. Conservatives are taken aback by the rioting and violence and for them the immediate need maintaining social order has overtaken the more long term desire to correct these abuses.

mistermann 6y ago
I wonder how accurate these old standby run-of-the mill memes we repeat ad nauseum really are. What data are they based on, really? And even if they are true, might it be possible that people that hold these opinions hold them because they've never been involved in any serious in-depth analysis & discussion on the topics? There's not even that much serious, accurate, unbiased material out there to base such conversations on, and I sure as hell don't know of too many people who'd be interested in getting involved in such things if purely left up to their own volition. Perhaps if we had some serious, organized, factual discussions on some of these matters (as opposed to the all propaganda all the time approach we've become so accustomed to), people wouldn't continue to hold the same opinions they (supposedly) hold at the moment.
- mistermann 6y ago
  It's quite amazing how unpopular facts and fact based discussions are.
syshum 6y ago
As normal, libertarians have the correct and rational solution to the problem :)
- Avicebron 6y ago
  Please explain how just dismantling unions is the correct and rational solution? I'm less inclined to believe in qualified immunity, but I can see that it is based on a legitimate concern.

scarface74 6y ago

After citing statistics right here on HN about how racial profiling and traffic stops and tickets targets minorities , people were making excuses because it didn’t affect them. Right here on HN posts about the protests were being flagged left and right because people are more concerned about the freedom to side load apps on iOS than minorities getting harassed.