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> You said "This kind of violence affects everyone" and this is disingenuous when we look at the ratio of black vs white being murdered by police. If you want

> You said "This kind of violence affects everyone" and this is disingenuous when we look at the ratio of black vs white being murdered by police. If you want to argue that this kind of violence affects certain races more, that's fine. But why downplay the fact that it affects all races? The percentages are higher for Black Americans, but White Americans still make up the majority of people shot by police[1]. If people actually cared about creating a broad coalition to address this, they would want to highlight both facts, not hide the latter fact. You actually see the a similar attitude when racists attack social programs. If members of a minority group are more likely to benefit from a program, they treat it as a program for minorities, even if the majority of beneficiaries are non-minorities. It's also interesting to see how people divide the demographic information. If you look at the breakdown by sex, you'll find that the divide between men and women when when it comes to these shootings is much, much greater than the divide between races. Yet the latter is talked about a lot all over the media, and while I don't think I've ever seen the latter treated as an issue. My guess is that we'd also see another large divide if we divided the numbers by wealth (and this article is a good example of that). [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/polic...

Clubber 4y ago
>The percentages are higher for Black Americans, but White Americans still make up the majority of people shot by police[1]. Yes I never understood this tactic. If you really want citizen support (which is required), you need to show that all citizens are subject to this type of injustice. If leaders just say one group is affected and don't show that all citizens are affected, you won't get change as fast, if at all. It's almost as if there is an ulterior motive to actually solving the problem, or perhaps the leadership just won't look past their own environment. Either way, the shiz is way out of hand and everyone should be afraid of it. I remember reading an article where police were serving a warrant and they straight up shot the guy next to his pregnant girlfriend through the window while they were sleeping. They justified it by saying the room was boobytrapped. The guy was staying at his parents house when this occurred. It was very suspect, but I never saw national media attention it deserved, and I find it highly unlikely a kid living with his parents would place a active, lethal booby trap in his bedroom inside his parent's house. It was an actual murder squad. Pretty crazy. I wish I could find the article (it was local.)
- throwaway040922 4y ago
  Indeed. If I'm advocating for a project that will bring $10 million in to Town A that has a population of 5,000, and $50 million in to Town B with a population of 50,000, I'm going to be telling both Town A and Town B how the project will benefit them. I'm not going to be telling Town B that this project is only for Town A, and it's not an issue that affects Town B. If someone was saying that, you would expect that they'd be advocating against the project. It's hard to believe that anyone who's actively downplaying the way an issue affects the majority of the population is actually interested in solving the issue.
  - bavell 4y ago
    I'm relieved that I'm not the only one who has come to this conclusion! It's so annoying and sad listening to all the people out there with good intentions who are failing so hard they actually drive people in the opposite direction. They would further their cause more by removing themselves from the discussion entirely.
- nootropicat 4y ago
  >Yes I never understood this tactic. If you really want citizen support (which is required), you need to show that all citizens are subject to this type of injustice. If leaders just say one group is affected and don't show that all citizens are affected, you won't get change as fast, if at all. It all makes sense if you start from a cynical assumption that the real point of most political activism is exclusively to acquire political capital, then spend it on acquiring power, rather than fixing the issue. In fact fixing the issue would be counterproductive, as that stops power accumulation and requires finding some new issue. Of course, you have to plausibly pretend to actually care about fixing the issue. What's the solution? Demand unworkable and absurd fixes, like 'defund the police'. The social engineering in it was remarkable - its planned ineffectiveness relied on extremist demanding complete abolition of the police to make it unworkable and scare people away, while at the same gaslighting opponents of the absurd extreme it's _really_ only about small redirection of funds to health services and similar. What would a real solution look like? It would try to solve the root of the issue rather than symptoms. One major current cause is that new meth is significantly neurotoxic due to unknown impurities from currently dominating synthesis methods. Good article about the issue: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/the-new-meth/620174/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/the-new... The most effective solution would be to legalize meth and ensure only pure, pharmaceutical grade is being sold. Pure meth isn't especially neurotoxic - and in small doses it's actually neuroprotective due to hormesis. Amount of people with damaged brains would plummet, fewer people would be homeless, fewer people would be violent. Which is exactly the reason it's never going to happen - nobody would gain politically. Same logic for fentanyl and heroin deaths - cheap, pure (consistent purity = much lower risk of accidental overdoses) heroin would reduce fentanyl deaths to near zero, virtually eliminate health damage (pure heroin is relatively safe and can be used for decades) and reduce crimes committed by addicts to near zero (by virtue of being cheap).
pessimizer 4y ago
> If people actually cared about creating a broad coalition to address this, they would want to highlight both facts, not hide the latter fact. People fighting for black lives aren't hiding bad things that happen to white people. The reason Duncan Lemp doesn't have posters up about him isn't because black activists against police violence haven't fought for him, it's because both black and white activists against police violence haven't fought for him. And as white people still make up the majority of people shot by police[1], far more white people than black failed Duncan Lemp. I find it to be a fantasy that somehow, if people fighting for black lives would emphasize the suffering of white people, it would suddenly turn the white people who are hostile or ambivalent about this stuff into supporters. Again: you can't get white activist gun owners to defend a licensed gun owner who was surprised and shot in his own home by police executing a no-knock warrant that wasn't for him. The NRA supported gun control to criminalize the Black Panthers. The Black Panthers were an absolutely straightforward open carry movement, with one important difference. edit: I meant to exclude Reason-style libertarians from this. They're scrupulously consistent.
- jimbob21 4y ago
  > Again: you can't get white activist gun owners to defend a licensed gun owner who was surprised and shot in his own home by police executing a no-knock warrant that wasn't for him. That's patently false at the very least. Everyone I've talked to said it was a horrible act and those officers deserve legal charges.
  - long_time_gone 4y ago
    > Everyone I've talked to said it was a horrible act and those officers deserve legal charges. That's great for the people you talked to, the comment was about the NRA or any other gun rights group actually defending him. Did you friends protest for him? Did they write their congressperson? Did they raise legal funds at the gun range? If they didn't, then they aren't activists. What about Philando Castile? The NRA didn't have anything to say about that incident until a year later. EDIT: made less combative.
    - 4y ago

Clubber 4y ago

>The percentages are higher for Black Americans, but White Americans still make up the majority of people shot by police[1]. Yes I never understood this tactic. If you really want citizen support (which is required), you need to show that all citizens are subject to this type of injustice. If leaders just say one group is affected and don't show that all citizens are affected, you won't get change as fast, if at all. It's almost as if there is an ulterior motive to actually solving the problem, or perhaps the leadership just won't look past their own environment. Either way, the shiz is way out of hand and everyone should be afraid of it. I remember reading an article where police were serving a warrant and they straight up shot the guy next to his pregnant girlfriend through the window while they were sleeping. They justified it by saying the room was boobytrapped. The guy was staying at his parents house when this occurred. It was very suspect, but I never saw national media attention it deserved, and I find it highly unlikely a kid living with his parents would place a active, lethal booby trap in his bedroom inside his parent's house. It was an actual murder squad. Pretty crazy. I wish I could find the article (it was local.)

throwaway040922 4y ago
Indeed. If I'm advocating for a project that will bring $10 million in to Town A that has a population of 5,000, and $50 million in to Town B with a population of 50,000, I'm going to be telling both Town A and Town B how the project will benefit them. I'm not going to be telling Town B that this project is only for Town A, and it's not an issue that affects Town B. If someone was saying that, you would expect that they'd be advocating against the project. It's hard to believe that anyone who's actively downplaying the way an issue affects the majority of the population is actually interested in solving the issue.
- bavell 4y ago
  I'm relieved that I'm not the only one who has come to this conclusion! It's so annoying and sad listening to all the people out there with good intentions who are failing so hard they actually drive people in the opposite direction. They would further their cause more by removing themselves from the discussion entirely.
nootropicat 4y ago
>Yes I never understood this tactic. If you really want citizen support (which is required), you need to show that all citizens are subject to this type of injustice. If leaders just say one group is affected and don't show that all citizens are affected, you won't get change as fast, if at all. It all makes sense if you start from a cynical assumption that the real point of most political activism is exclusively to acquire political capital, then spend it on acquiring power, rather than fixing the issue. In fact fixing the issue would be counterproductive, as that stops power accumulation and requires finding some new issue. Of course, you have to plausibly pretend to actually care about fixing the issue. What's the solution? Demand unworkable and absurd fixes, like 'defund the police'. The social engineering in it was remarkable - its planned ineffectiveness relied on extremist demanding complete abolition of the police to make it unworkable and scare people away, while at the same gaslighting opponents of the absurd extreme it's _really_ only about small redirection of funds to health services and similar. What would a real solution look like? It would try to solve the root of the issue rather than symptoms. One major current cause is that new meth is significantly neurotoxic due to unknown impurities from currently dominating synthesis methods. Good article about the issue: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/the-new-meth/620174/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/the-new... The most effective solution would be to legalize meth and ensure only pure, pharmaceutical grade is being sold. Pure meth isn't especially neurotoxic - and in small doses it's actually neuroprotective due to hormesis. Amount of people with damaged brains would plummet, fewer people would be homeless, fewer people would be violent. Which is exactly the reason it's never going to happen - nobody would gain politically. Same logic for fentanyl and heroin deaths - cheap, pure (consistent purity = much lower risk of accidental overdoses) heroin would reduce fentanyl deaths to near zero, virtually eliminate health damage (pure heroin is relatively safe and can be used for decades) and reduce crimes committed by addicts to near zero (by virtue of being cheap).

pessimizer 4y ago

> If people actually cared about creating a broad coalition to address this, they would want to highlight both facts, not hide the latter fact. People fighting for black lives aren't hiding bad things that happen to white people. The reason Duncan Lemp doesn't have posters up about him isn't because black activists against police violence haven't fought for him, it's because both black and white activists against police violence haven't fought for him. And as white people still make up the majority of people shot by police[1], far more white people than black failed Duncan Lemp. I find it to be a fantasy that somehow, if people fighting for black lives would emphasize the suffering of white people, it would suddenly turn the white people who are hostile or ambivalent about this stuff into supporters. Again: you can't get white activist gun owners to defend a licensed gun owner who was surprised and shot in his own home by police executing a no-knock warrant that wasn't for him. The NRA supported gun control to criminalize the Black Panthers. The Black Panthers were an absolutely straightforward open carry movement, with one important difference. edit: I meant to exclude Reason-style libertarians from this. They're scrupulously consistent.

jimbob21 4y ago
> Again: you can't get white activist gun owners to defend a licensed gun owner who was surprised and shot in his own home by police executing a no-knock warrant that wasn't for him. That's patently false at the very least. Everyone I've talked to said it was a horrible act and those officers deserve legal charges.
- long_time_gone 4y ago
  > Everyone I've talked to said it was a horrible act and those officers deserve legal charges. That's great for the people you talked to, the comment was about the NRA or any other gun rights group actually defending him. Did you friends protest for him? Did they write their congressperson? Did they raise legal funds at the gun range? If they didn't, then they aren't activists. What about Philando Castile? The NRA didn't have anything to say about that incident until a year later. EDIT: made less combative.
  - 4y ago