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Assembly is valuable, but there's a certain misery that comes with self-isolating for two weeks living on canned beans, having many businesses shut down, and wo

Assembly is valuable, but there's a certain misery that comes with self-isolating for two weeks living on canned beans, having many businesses shut down, and working so hard at this to protect the lives of your elderly parents or your asthmatic sibling... ... And then watching 10,000 people pack together downtown exercising their right to free assembly, and likely undoing all those months of progress.

eganist 6y ago
> there's a certain misery that comes with [...] watching 10,000 people pack together downtown exercising their right to free assembly, and likely undoing all those months of progress. Yep, that's called privilege. And I'm not even trying to be snarky. From the perspective of the protesters, taking this opportunity to protest and possibly achieve change means hopefully lowering the general mortality risk for generations to come, not just in the immediate COVID future. If the first thing that comes to our mind is "ah shit, all that progress" or "I could get sick" and not "I have an opportunity to really make a difference," it's because that difference doesn't matter as much to us compared to the risk of getting sick, and the fact that that difference doesn't matter as much is a product of privilege.
- axguscbklp 6y ago
  But are the protests really founded on something significant? If they focused simply on police brutality regardless of race, that would be one thing, but the general narrative seems to be that there is a big problem of white-on-black violence in the form of cops. Now, there is such a problem, but this ignores the wider context that in this country, black-on-white violence is a much bigger problem than white-on-black violence. Much of the media focuses on black-on-white violence but relatively ignores white-on-black violence. People who buy into the narrative end up having a very misleading notion of whether it is whites or it is blacks in this country who are menaced more by violence coming from the other group. In reality, it is whites.
  - eganist 6y ago
    > But are the protests really founded on something significant? They're founded on 494 years of slavery, segregation, and oppression of a population based on a perception of superiority by the ethnic group in power. This has been endemic, has not come close to being resolved, and as you've exemplified, has been consistently the target of a litany of efforts to erase the argument (e.g. with whataboutism, such as your claim) to maintain a vice grip on a narrative. Melding two different data sources together: * https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de... * https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219 https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219 We have the following outcome: Ethnicity | EOY-19 killed | July-19 pop est | humans per 10m ------------------------------------------------------------ White, non-hispanic | 370 | 198,256,671‬ | ~18.7 Black | 235 | 43,984,096 | ~53.5 Hispanic/Latinx | 158 | 60,067,832 | ~26.3 These numbers aren't perfect, but that's an almost 3x and almost 1.5x multiple for LEO-on-Black and LEO-on-Latinx crime as compared to LEO-on-White. --- There's been a war between upvotes and downvotes on this post; I'll let the downvotes stand as a commentary on hackernews's readership. I'm not backing off.
    - whiddershins 6y ago
      Yeah but that’s only one way to calculate it. Other ways might be to calculate based on number of encounters, or number of criminal acts, or to control for location, or control for income. Etc. I think it’s important to be really careful saying a given statistic, any statistic, says what we think it says.
      - eganist 6y ago
        Please bring one such alternative that effectively captures the impact on a per-capita basis. Otherwise, this is a false analogy, since the normalized measurement accomplishes precisely this.
        6y ago
- realtalk_sp 6y ago
  This is a baffling argument. Far more lives are threatened by coronavirus today than will be threatened by police brutality over the next several decades [1]. You're basically saying that immunocompromised and elderly persons are acceptable collateral damage. One thing that's been lost in the noise is that death by police brutality is a vanishingly small problem: less than 0.0003% of the population per year (and most of those are White people). And the ultimate irony is far more Black people are going to die as a result of these protests (since Black communities are disproportionately affected by the virus) than will be saved by whatever temporary curtailment of police brutality this yields. Those are the real facts. Not the alternative ones you and people like you would like us to focus on. It's like it suddenly became acceptable to wantonly suspend rationality because it suits certain interests. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_use_of_deadly_force_in_the_United_States#Frequency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_use_of_deadly_force_in_...
  - matwood 6y ago
    I think it's incorrect to only count deaths as the fallout from police attitude towards minorities. An entire group of people is effectively controlled and held back my the police. As we have already seen, the impacts are generational and have gotten us to where we are today. COVID-19 is the thing will most likely be forgotten next year with some sort of vaccine or herd immunity arising. Even if the protests are successful, it will still be only another step on a long road of equality.
    - realtalk_sp 6y ago
      I'm so flabbergasted by this argument on behalf of killing innocent people I barely even know where to begin. In my mind, there is almost no cause that warrants the avoidable death of even a single person, let alone tens of thousands. Clearly you have a very different morality.
      - eganist 6y ago
        > In my mind, there is almost no cause that warrants the avoidable death of even a single person, let alone tens of thousands. Yes, because you're operating from a position of privilege (regardless of your background/race). They are potentially sacrificing their own lives in an effort to mitigate the risk of potentially centuries of lives tortured or lost in the future, and that's the point you're missing. This is a generational struggle, and they have an opportunity of a lifetime to make a lasting change. And on top of that, they're making every effort to do it safely. (p.s. I'll make a point of calling out every flag and downvoter on HN - that's my protest. I'll gladly lose 22 points and counting if it means standing up for their right to life)
- whiddershins 6y ago
  Even if police shooting were brought down to zero, I think it would take like 100 years to save as many lives as we’ve lost to Covid, right? And some people think that without intervention it would be more like 480,000 in the UD alone. So ...
  - eganist 6y ago
    > From the perspective of the protesters, taking this opportunity to protest and possibly achieve change means hopefully lowering the general mortality risk for generations to come, not just in the immediate COVID future. I didn't mention police because this was never just about the police.
    - Stupulous 6y ago
      It's not clear to me how this protest attempts to solve racism, even if that is a goal of participants. Demands I've seen have exclusively been for changes to policing. The words Black Lives Matter refer to police violence. I definitely agree that it would be morally acceptable to suffer even a hundred thousand deaths in exchange for a permanent end to racism. And I could even be persuaded to believe that such actions should be taken now, as opposed to say a year from now. But that is not an outcome I expect, as I haven't even heard proposals for how that might be done. I'm all for the reform people are asking for. But it is not my belief that the net effect of this right now will be positive.
fullshark 6y ago
It's not just misery, it feels fundamentally unjust. Basically some rule violations are deemed more equal than others, so why should I care anymore? If we're not "all in this together" why should I suffer?
- throwmehaweh 6y ago
  exactly, they’ve lost all credibility and are at risk of having cried wolf now
- cmdshiftf4 6y ago
  >It's not just misery, it feels fundamentally unjust. Basically some rule violations are deemed more equal than others, so why should I care anymore? Politicans politicize all that they can in order to use it as ammo against their opposition. The mainstream media creates and editorializes narratives in the name of garnering and sustaining attention and therefore advertising dollars. If you're engaging with either, you have to approach it with skepticism, try to find balancing viewpoints, and make the best decisions for yourself, your family, etc. as a result. Unfortunately, in the current case, healthcare professionals have allowed themselves to become tools of the above parties and have massively discredited themselves and their institutions in doing so. We're now even at a point where someone could rightfully be completely confused as to whether something as small as buying/wearing masks is a fruitful endeavour or a waste of effort, which is a dire state for us to be in.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  That has long been a principle of law, not all violations are equal because of extenuating circumstances. One sizes fits all ignoring circumstances is foolishness, not justice even if it leads to 'equality'. There is a difference between smashing a window of a car to rob it or for shits and giggles, and doing it to save a life.
  - fullshark 6y ago
    Is this law? Do these governments even have the authority they claim they do to issue these selective lockdowns? It's a gray area at best, and I'm sure many judges would consider these lockdowns actively illegal as is what happened in Wisconsin.

eganist 6y ago

> there's a certain misery that comes with [...] watching 10,000 people pack together downtown exercising their right to free assembly, and likely undoing all those months of progress. Yep, that's called privilege. And I'm not even trying to be snarky. From the perspective of the protesters, taking this opportunity to protest and possibly achieve change means hopefully lowering the general mortality risk for generations to come, not just in the immediate COVID future. If the first thing that comes to our mind is "ah shit, all that progress" or "I could get sick" and not "I have an opportunity to really make a difference," it's because that difference doesn't matter as much to us compared to the risk of getting sick, and the fact that that difference doesn't matter as much is a product of privilege.

axguscbklp 6y ago
But are the protests really founded on something significant? If they focused simply on police brutality regardless of race, that would be one thing, but the general narrative seems to be that there is a big problem of white-on-black violence in the form of cops. Now, there is such a problem, but this ignores the wider context that in this country, black-on-white violence is a much bigger problem than white-on-black violence. Much of the media focuses on black-on-white violence but relatively ignores white-on-black violence. People who buy into the narrative end up having a very misleading notion of whether it is whites or it is blacks in this country who are menaced more by violence coming from the other group. In reality, it is whites.
- eganist 6y ago
  > But are the protests really founded on something significant? They're founded on 494 years of slavery, segregation, and oppression of a population based on a perception of superiority by the ethnic group in power. This has been endemic, has not come close to being resolved, and as you've exemplified, has been consistently the target of a litany of efforts to erase the argument (e.g. with whataboutism, such as your claim) to maintain a vice grip on a narrative. Melding two different data sources together: * https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de... * https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219 https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219 We have the following outcome: Ethnicity | EOY-19 killed | July-19 pop est | humans per 10m ------------------------------------------------------------ White, non-hispanic | 370 | 198,256,671‬ | ~18.7 Black | 235 | 43,984,096 | ~53.5 Hispanic/Latinx | 158 | 60,067,832 | ~26.3 These numbers aren't perfect, but that's an almost 3x and almost 1.5x multiple for LEO-on-Black and LEO-on-Latinx crime as compared to LEO-on-White. --- There's been a war between upvotes and downvotes on this post; I'll let the downvotes stand as a commentary on hackernews's readership. I'm not backing off.
  - whiddershins 6y ago
    Yeah but that’s only one way to calculate it. Other ways might be to calculate based on number of encounters, or number of criminal acts, or to control for location, or control for income. Etc. I think it’s important to be really careful saying a given statistic, any statistic, says what we think it says.
    - eganist 6y ago
      Please bring one such alternative that effectively captures the impact on a per-capita basis. Otherwise, this is a false analogy, since the normalized measurement accomplishes precisely this.
      - 6y ago
realtalk_sp 6y ago
This is a baffling argument. Far more lives are threatened by coronavirus today than will be threatened by police brutality over the next several decades [1]. You're basically saying that immunocompromised and elderly persons are acceptable collateral damage. One thing that's been lost in the noise is that death by police brutality is a vanishingly small problem: less than 0.0003% of the population per year (and most of those are White people). And the ultimate irony is far more Black people are going to die as a result of these protests (since Black communities are disproportionately affected by the virus) than will be saved by whatever temporary curtailment of police brutality this yields. Those are the real facts. Not the alternative ones you and people like you would like us to focus on. It's like it suddenly became acceptable to wantonly suspend rationality because it suits certain interests. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_use_of_deadly_force_in_the_United_States#Frequency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_use_of_deadly_force_in_...
- matwood 6y ago
  I think it's incorrect to only count deaths as the fallout from police attitude towards minorities. An entire group of people is effectively controlled and held back my the police. As we have already seen, the impacts are generational and have gotten us to where we are today. COVID-19 is the thing will most likely be forgotten next year with some sort of vaccine or herd immunity arising. Even if the protests are successful, it will still be only another step on a long road of equality.
  - realtalk_sp 6y ago
    I'm so flabbergasted by this argument on behalf of killing innocent people I barely even know where to begin. In my mind, there is almost no cause that warrants the avoidable death of even a single person, let alone tens of thousands. Clearly you have a very different morality.
    - eganist 6y ago
      > In my mind, there is almost no cause that warrants the avoidable death of even a single person, let alone tens of thousands. Yes, because you're operating from a position of privilege (regardless of your background/race). They are potentially sacrificing their own lives in an effort to mitigate the risk of potentially centuries of lives tortured or lost in the future, and that's the point you're missing. This is a generational struggle, and they have an opportunity of a lifetime to make a lasting change. And on top of that, they're making every effort to do it safely. (p.s. I'll make a point of calling out every flag and downvoter on HN - that's my protest. I'll gladly lose 22 points and counting if it means standing up for their right to life)
whiddershins 6y ago
Even if police shooting were brought down to zero, I think it would take like 100 years to save as many lives as we’ve lost to Covid, right? And some people think that without intervention it would be more like 480,000 in the UD alone. So ...
- eganist 6y ago
  > From the perspective of the protesters, taking this opportunity to protest and possibly achieve change means hopefully lowering the general mortality risk for generations to come, not just in the immediate COVID future. I didn't mention police because this was never just about the police.
  - Stupulous 6y ago
    It's not clear to me how this protest attempts to solve racism, even if that is a goal of participants. Demands I've seen have exclusively been for changes to policing. The words Black Lives Matter refer to police violence. I definitely agree that it would be morally acceptable to suffer even a hundred thousand deaths in exchange for a permanent end to racism. And I could even be persuaded to believe that such actions should be taken now, as opposed to say a year from now. But that is not an outcome I expect, as I haven't even heard proposals for how that might be done. I'm all for the reform people are asking for. But it is not my belief that the net effect of this right now will be positive.

fullshark 6y ago

It's not just misery, it feels fundamentally unjust. Basically some rule violations are deemed more equal than others, so why should I care anymore? If we're not "all in this together" why should I suffer?

throwmehaweh 6y ago
exactly, they’ve lost all credibility and are at risk of having cried wolf now
cmdshiftf4 6y ago
>It's not just misery, it feels fundamentally unjust. Basically some rule violations are deemed more equal than others, so why should I care anymore? Politicans politicize all that they can in order to use it as ammo against their opposition. The mainstream media creates and editorializes narratives in the name of garnering and sustaining attention and therefore advertising dollars. If you're engaging with either, you have to approach it with skepticism, try to find balancing viewpoints, and make the best decisions for yourself, your family, etc. as a result. Unfortunately, in the current case, healthcare professionals have allowed themselves to become tools of the above parties and have massively discredited themselves and their institutions in doing so. We're now even at a point where someone could rightfully be completely confused as to whether something as small as buying/wearing masks is a fruitful endeavour or a waste of effort, which is a dire state for us to be in.
Nasrudith 6y ago
That has long been a principle of law, not all violations are equal because of extenuating circumstances. One sizes fits all ignoring circumstances is foolishness, not justice even if it leads to 'equality'. There is a difference between smashing a window of a car to rob it or for shits and giggles, and doing it to save a life.
- fullshark 6y ago
  Is this law? Do these governments even have the authority they claim they do to issue these selective lockdowns? It's a gray area at best, and I'm sure many judges would consider these lockdowns actively illegal as is what happened in Wisconsin.