6 ms·

> Moreover, many would argue that disproportionate poverty levels among black people render them more likely to encounter police officers in the first place—vas

> Moreover, many would argue that disproportionate poverty levels among black people render them more likely to encounter police officers in the first place—vastly unfair, but different from the problem being simply cops’ standing racist bias Actually that's exactly the problem of systemic racism. Racism is at the level of the system and not the individual (though there are still individual racists out there for sure). Cops kill and injure way too many people (of all races) (without due cause), and encounters with Police escalate much too quickly. This is a problem, and that's why a big conversation on the role and responsibility and methods of policing is happening. Though Police too exists within a system, such as the possibility of any civilian to be armed and carrying at any time, and so all that context must be considered. Blacks are disproportionately a victim of this, so obviously they are more invested in this conversation, and leading the charge on pushing for changes. It turns out that one of the likely reason for their disproportionate encounters with Police is their disproportionate socio-economic situation, which was likely created as a result of the racist history of the country and the heritage and legacy (or lack thereof) it left their communities with. And that would make it a systemic racism issue.

ttt0 6y ago
The amount of policing in this or other community does not change the fact that black people do commit a lot of crimes and more policing is at least to some extend justified. I'm not talking about bullshit, almost petty in comparison crimes like drugs or theft, but serious crimes like murder. There is a dead body and you have to find who did it and police can't just ignore it or turn a blind eye if it turns out that the murderer was white.
- js2 6y ago
  Poor people commit a lot of crimes, and black people are disproportional poor due to centuries of racism. This is besides the point. We have a real policing problem in America which we can see by the rate that U.S. police injure and kill citizens as compared to other countries. It's not even close. There are many reasons for this, but we have to start by recognizing that there's a problem.
  - ttt0 6y ago
    Being poor does not justify murder. US population is at over 300 million people and police kills about a thousand people yearly. It might sound heartless, but those kinds of numbers is what I'd realistically expect from such a huge country with legal firearms. I don't recognize any problem, but people in power seem to and if I'm not mistaken the police was defunded and there is overall less police in some places, so you're already getting what you wanted. I think as a result there is a rise in homicide, but truth be told I didn't care enough to verify any of those claims.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      It doesn't justify it, but it explains it. Ways of thinking about individuals just don't scale to populations of millions. Those groups do things for reasons. Reducing the funding of police is not meant in a vacuum. The idea is to use that money to do other things that reduce crime. Police funding in the US is way past the point of diminishing returns in general, and that money is much better invested in other approaches to the same issue. Equally, armed police do things they shouldn't have to do, like wellness checks, or mental health calls.
    - dillondoyle 6y ago
      I might not be understanding what you are saying. You don't think there is a problem with US police violence || use of force? Even looking beyond shootings?! To the second part less police != rise in homicide and that you don't care to verify that yet you still hold those beliefs is a part of the problem e.g. the first part. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1745-9133.12414 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1745-9133.12... https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2019/02/13/marshall-project-more-cops-dont-mean-less-crime-experts-say/2818056002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2019/02/1...
      - ttt0 6y ago
        The use of word "problem" implies here that it's something that can be fixed. I don't believe it can be fixed, I think this amount of killings is something you should expect no matter what. Just prosecute whoever's guilty and move on. I don't care enough to verify if there was a rise in homicides, I just heard about it. But yes, anyone who's not an activist for your righteous cause is a part of a problem. I'm a terrible person, I know.
MikeUt 6y ago
> the likely reason for their disproportionate encounters with Police is their disproportionate socio-economic situation Seems odd to omit the more direct cause - disproportionate homicide and violent crime rates [1] - and skip to socio-economics as the reason for police encounters. Especially since the black homicide rate is ~10x higher even compared with the same income brackets [2]. [1] African-Americans accounted for 55.9% of all homicide offenders in 2019, with whites 41.1% - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_S... [2] https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/99v05n3/9909levi.pdf https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/9... - Table 6
- didibus 6y ago
  If you did a five whys analysis on this though, wouldn't you just end back at a likely cause being socio-economic?
tryonenow 6y ago
>Actually that's exactly the problem of systemic racism. Racism is at the level of the system and not the individual (though there are still individual racists out there for sure). This is a neat explanatory theory but it is only one potential explanation and the reason that the modern movements that are predicated upon it are so dangerous is that it is treated as though it is the only explanation. >It turns out that one of the likely reason for their disproportionate encounters with Police is their disproportionate socio-economic situation There is absolutely nothing outside of correlation to indicate that this is a "likely" reason. The influence of a totally broken culture is drastically understated in socially acceptable discourse. This disproportionate rate of police encounters is unique to blacks and not nearly as prevalent among virtually any other low income socioeconomic group. It's trivial to blame injustices of the past (which plenty of other groups have experienced to various degrees) but even discussing the necessary, drastic change in culture required to solve this problem is taboo. And, ironically, such a position is incompatible with the modern progressive framework, within which such a solution would be seen as whitewashing or gentrification. And rightly so, ghetto black culture is inseparable from glorification of crime and violence. So instead we blame the issue entirely on "systemic racism", the only proof of which is disparate outcome, and the solution will invariably lead the rest of society to suffer the effects of rampant criminality before leaders from black communities will, as has happened repeatedly in the past, later switch to complaining that black communities are underserved by police services, starting the cycle anew. Biden's now unpopular crime bill, along with disproportionate penalization of crack, had strong support from black leaders and black politicians, but today's ideologues class them with the same boogyman of so called systemic racism.
- didibus 6y ago
  > The influence of a totally broken culture is drastically understated in socially acceptable discourse What do you think the "socio" in "socio-economic" refers too? Obviously culture plays into it, the racist treatment of blacks over history didn't just affect financial capital and heritage, it had direct effects on social aspects, restricted access to education, broken family dynamics, cycle of abuse, religious indoctrination, ancestral cultural erasure, and probably contributed directly to a glorification of crime as a means to upward movement, since nothing else seemed to work or be offered to them. All these in turn affects economic outcomes as well, but also economic outcomes have affected those social aspects. Your culture is a result of your environment, and if you take someone and force them into an environment of abuse and discrimination like was the case of afro-americans, whose culture is it really? In my mind, afro-american culture is American culture, this is all our culture. Our culture has put a race at an absolute disadvantage for generations, resulting in a lack of economic and social prosperity for that race today. You can't then go and say, that's their fault, their culture, not mine, when your culture had a direct impact on theirs. So now it's time to say, let's grow our culture to one of healing, inclusion, and reconciliation together. And here's where it matters, the next time someone is caught with possession or selling of drugs, will you choose to incarcerate them for years? Or will you decide to reinvest in their education, rehabilitation and support them for whatever led them there. The next time a budget is voted on, will you vote to build more prisons, or to invest the money in services and safety in communities of color. Will you choose to more heavily invest in education, employment, housing, and health services in the country, or in police funds? And here's where it matters even more, the next time you encounter a black person, will you treat them with an underlying bias that they are probably more violent and crime driven just because of your association of their skin color you've made with your belief in their culture leading to crime? Will you have your guards up, and will you likely favor another race over them due to this?
temp8964 6y ago
Racism used to mean something related to human conscious , motivation, psychological leaning. Now any measured discrepancies in race is "systematic racism". If a big asteroid dropped from the sky and killed thousands of people, it could turned out to be a racist asteroid.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Systems, unlike asteroids, are made out of people. An asteroid can't be racist, but the response to it might be.
- danShumway 6y ago
  This is uncharitable. Sometimes systems disproportionately favor certain outcomes, and systemic racism describes a subset of those systems. If you were playing a boardgame, and the rules said I get to role 2 dice for every 1 dice you roll, at that point the game wouldn't be fair. If we were playing chess and I got to start with 2 queens, then you would be within your rights to complain that the game wasn't fair. And if you complained about the rules of the game, and said that game wasn't fair, and I hand-waved that by saying that you were misusing fairness to push back against "any outcome where you lost", it would be reasonable to take issue with that. Systemic racism isn't just any outcome where Black people get hurt, it describes a reinforcing mechanic in society where Black people are repeatedly hurt and where their disadvantages perpetuate themselves. Crime drives people into poverty, which imposes social and economic disadvantages which keep them from rising out of poverty, which drives them into crime -- increased attention on those neighborhoods leads to preconceptions and biases among officers, it leads to fewer opportunities for the people in those neighborhoods, and the cycle continues. It's reinforced by the system itself, and by people inside the system who mean well but contribute to it, and by people outside of the system that use it to support their own racist agendas. It's a lose more mechanic that reinforces unequal outcomes for Black communities, and its a mechanic that was very obviously set in motion by redlining, voter and wage suppression, by explicitly racist housing policies, and by slavery itself. It is not an accident that poor neighborhoods tend to be predominantly Black, that happened deliberately. "Racist" is a perfectly fine word to describe the outcomes of that system, it's nothing like an asteroid.
clairity 6y ago
> "Blacks are disproportionately a victim of this, so obviously they are more invested in this conversation..." while i actually agree with most of what you said, the focus on (disproportionate, but few) deaths by police is misdirectional. like much media reporting, it's premised on an emotional trigger meant to short-circuit rational thinking, which is decidedly a diservice to public discourse. arguments against racism can, and should, stand entirely on the merits of racism (systemic or otherwise) simply being unjust and irrational, not on outrage-bait like this. that's to say that the murders of black folks by police should direct our attention towards racism, not the numbers of murders by police, because we'll end up trying to solve "murders by police" rather than racism, and then pat ourselves on the back for a job well done, when it was anything but.
golemiprague 6y ago
Blacks are more involved in crime also in the UK and many other European countries where there was no slavery of blacks, so I am not sure that is the reason. They are just immigrants like any other group of immigrants. Maybe there is some special racism against them but racism is not always a cause for criminality as we have seen in other communities in Europe in the past which suffered from racism, like Jews for example.
gher-shyu3i 6y ago
This seems to go against your claim of systematic racism[1]. More whites than any other race have been shot and killed by the police in the last 3 years. [1] 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...

ttt0 6y ago

The amount of policing in this or other community does not change the fact that black people do commit a lot of crimes and more policing is at least to some extend justified. I'm not talking about bullshit, almost petty in comparison crimes like drugs or theft, but serious crimes like murder. There is a dead body and you have to find who did it and police can't just ignore it or turn a blind eye if it turns out that the murderer was white.

js2 6y ago
Poor people commit a lot of crimes, and black people are disproportional poor due to centuries of racism. This is besides the point. We have a real policing problem in America which we can see by the rate that U.S. police injure and kill citizens as compared to other countries. It's not even close. There are many reasons for this, but we have to start by recognizing that there's a problem.
- ttt0 6y ago
  Being poor does not justify murder. US population is at over 300 million people and police kills about a thousand people yearly. It might sound heartless, but those kinds of numbers is what I'd realistically expect from such a huge country with legal firearms. I don't recognize any problem, but people in power seem to and if I'm not mistaken the police was defunded and there is overall less police in some places, so you're already getting what you wanted. I think as a result there is a rise in homicide, but truth be told I didn't care enough to verify any of those claims.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    It doesn't justify it, but it explains it. Ways of thinking about individuals just don't scale to populations of millions. Those groups do things for reasons. Reducing the funding of police is not meant in a vacuum. The idea is to use that money to do other things that reduce crime. Police funding in the US is way past the point of diminishing returns in general, and that money is much better invested in other approaches to the same issue. Equally, armed police do things they shouldn't have to do, like wellness checks, or mental health calls.
  - dillondoyle 6y ago
    I might not be understanding what you are saying. You don't think there is a problem with US police violence || use of force? Even looking beyond shootings?! To the second part less police != rise in homicide and that you don't care to verify that yet you still hold those beliefs is a part of the problem e.g. the first part. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1745-9133.12414 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1745-9133.12... https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2019/02/13/marshall-project-more-cops-dont-mean-less-crime-experts-say/2818056002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2019/02/1...
    - ttt0 6y ago
      The use of word "problem" implies here that it's something that can be fixed. I don't believe it can be fixed, I think this amount of killings is something you should expect no matter what. Just prosecute whoever's guilty and move on. I don't care enough to verify if there was a rise in homicides, I just heard about it. But yes, anyone who's not an activist for your righteous cause is a part of a problem. I'm a terrible person, I know.

MikeUt 6y ago

> the likely reason for their disproportionate encounters with Police is their disproportionate socio-economic situation Seems odd to omit the more direct cause - disproportionate homicide and violent crime rates [1] - and skip to socio-economics as the reason for police encounters. Especially since the black homicide rate is ~10x higher even compared with the same income brackets [2]. [1] African-Americans accounted for 55.9% of all homicide offenders in 2019, with whites 41.1% - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_S... [2] https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/99v05n3/9909levi.pdf https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/9... - Table 6

didibus 6y ago
If you did a five whys analysis on this though, wouldn't you just end back at a likely cause being socio-economic?

tryonenow 6y ago

>Actually that's exactly the problem of systemic racism. Racism is at the level of the system and not the individual (though there are still individual racists out there for sure). This is a neat explanatory theory but it is only one potential explanation and the reason that the modern movements that are predicated upon it are so dangerous is that it is treated as though it is the only explanation. >It turns out that one of the likely reason for their disproportionate encounters with Police is their disproportionate socio-economic situation There is absolutely nothing outside of correlation to indicate that this is a "likely" reason. The influence of a totally broken culture is drastically understated in socially acceptable discourse. This disproportionate rate of police encounters is unique to blacks and not nearly as prevalent among virtually any other low income socioeconomic group. It's trivial to blame injustices of the past (which plenty of other groups have experienced to various degrees) but even discussing the necessary, drastic change in culture required to solve this problem is taboo. And, ironically, such a position is incompatible with the modern progressive framework, within which such a solution would be seen as whitewashing or gentrification. And rightly so, ghetto black culture is inseparable from glorification of crime and violence. So instead we blame the issue entirely on "systemic racism", the only proof of which is disparate outcome, and the solution will invariably lead the rest of society to suffer the effects of rampant criminality before leaders from black communities will, as has happened repeatedly in the past, later switch to complaining that black communities are underserved by police services, starting the cycle anew. Biden's now unpopular crime bill, along with disproportionate penalization of crack, had strong support from black leaders and black politicians, but today's ideologues class them with the same boogyman of so called systemic racism.

didibus 6y ago
> The influence of a totally broken culture is drastically understated in socially acceptable discourse What do you think the "socio" in "socio-economic" refers too? Obviously culture plays into it, the racist treatment of blacks over history didn't just affect financial capital and heritage, it had direct effects on social aspects, restricted access to education, broken family dynamics, cycle of abuse, religious indoctrination, ancestral cultural erasure, and probably contributed directly to a glorification of crime as a means to upward movement, since nothing else seemed to work or be offered to them. All these in turn affects economic outcomes as well, but also economic outcomes have affected those social aspects. Your culture is a result of your environment, and if you take someone and force them into an environment of abuse and discrimination like was the case of afro-americans, whose culture is it really? In my mind, afro-american culture is American culture, this is all our culture. Our culture has put a race at an absolute disadvantage for generations, resulting in a lack of economic and social prosperity for that race today. You can't then go and say, that's their fault, their culture, not mine, when your culture had a direct impact on theirs. So now it's time to say, let's grow our culture to one of healing, inclusion, and reconciliation together. And here's where it matters, the next time someone is caught with possession or selling of drugs, will you choose to incarcerate them for years? Or will you decide to reinvest in their education, rehabilitation and support them for whatever led them there. The next time a budget is voted on, will you vote to build more prisons, or to invest the money in services and safety in communities of color. Will you choose to more heavily invest in education, employment, housing, and health services in the country, or in police funds? And here's where it matters even more, the next time you encounter a black person, will you treat them with an underlying bias that they are probably more violent and crime driven just because of your association of their skin color you've made with your belief in their culture leading to crime? Will you have your guards up, and will you likely favor another race over them due to this?

temp8964 6y ago

Racism used to mean something related to human conscious , motivation, psychological leaning. Now any measured discrepancies in race is "systematic racism". If a big asteroid dropped from the sky and killed thousands of people, it could turned out to be a racist asteroid.

sudosysgen 6y ago
Systems, unlike asteroids, are made out of people. An asteroid can't be racist, but the response to it might be.
danShumway 6y ago
This is uncharitable. Sometimes systems disproportionately favor certain outcomes, and systemic racism describes a subset of those systems. If you were playing a boardgame, and the rules said I get to role 2 dice for every 1 dice you roll, at that point the game wouldn't be fair. If we were playing chess and I got to start with 2 queens, then you would be within your rights to complain that the game wasn't fair. And if you complained about the rules of the game, and said that game wasn't fair, and I hand-waved that by saying that you were misusing fairness to push back against "any outcome where you lost", it would be reasonable to take issue with that. Systemic racism isn't just any outcome where Black people get hurt, it describes a reinforcing mechanic in society where Black people are repeatedly hurt and where their disadvantages perpetuate themselves. Crime drives people into poverty, which imposes social and economic disadvantages which keep them from rising out of poverty, which drives them into crime -- increased attention on those neighborhoods leads to preconceptions and biases among officers, it leads to fewer opportunities for the people in those neighborhoods, and the cycle continues. It's reinforced by the system itself, and by people inside the system who mean well but contribute to it, and by people outside of the system that use it to support their own racist agendas. It's a lose more mechanic that reinforces unequal outcomes for Black communities, and its a mechanic that was very obviously set in motion by redlining, voter and wage suppression, by explicitly racist housing policies, and by slavery itself. It is not an accident that poor neighborhoods tend to be predominantly Black, that happened deliberately. "Racist" is a perfectly fine word to describe the outcomes of that system, it's nothing like an asteroid.

clairity 6y ago

> "Blacks are disproportionately a victim of this, so obviously they are more invested in this conversation..." while i actually agree with most of what you said, the focus on (disproportionate, but few) deaths by police is misdirectional. like much media reporting, it's premised on an emotional trigger meant to short-circuit rational thinking, which is decidedly a diservice to public discourse. arguments against racism can, and should, stand entirely on the merits of racism (systemic or otherwise) simply being unjust and irrational, not on outrage-bait like this. that's to say that the murders of black folks by police should direct our attention towards racism, not the numbers of murders by police, because we'll end up trying to solve "murders by police" rather than racism, and then pat ourselves on the back for a job well done, when it was anything but.

golemiprague 6y ago

Blacks are more involved in crime also in the UK and many other European countries where there was no slavery of blacks, so I am not sure that is the reason. They are just immigrants like any other group of immigrants. Maybe there is some special racism against them but racism is not always a cause for criminality as we have seen in other communities in Europe in the past which suffered from racism, like Jews for example.

gher-shyu3i 6y ago

This seems to go against your claim of systematic racism[1]. More whites than any other race have been shot and killed by the police in the last 3 years. [1] 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...