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I think when you get down to it isn't quite as much about race as the news would have us believe. It is more about the plight of the poor vs. authority trying

by pmorici 12y ago

I think when you get down to it isn't quite as much about race as the news would have us believe. It is more about the plight of the poor vs. authority trying to keep them in their place but by highlighting incidences with racial components like this they can polarize the various groups that would otherwise have common interests. The Tea Party and the Occupy Wall St. movement is another example of two groups that basically want the same thing (hold big banks accountable no more corporate bailouts etc...) but they are often portrayed as polar opposites and played against each other in the news and politics.

dragonwriter 12y ago
> The Tea Party and the Occupy Wall St. movement is another example of two groups that basically want the same thing (hold big banks accountable no more corporate bailouts etc...) Except not. While the TPP and OWS were, in some senses, responses to the same circumstances, TPP seeks generally right-libertarian approaches to addressing those circumstances, and OWS seeks generally left-wing solutions. There's some overlap, but also deep and fundamental opposition. TPP is anti-tax/anti-regulation, OWS is generally for restoring regulations that were removed that they see as having enabled the situations that both TPP and OWS respond to. This isn't really surprising -- major, widely-felt economic pain is shared, but different ideologies offer different approaches to addressing that pain.
vidarh 12y ago
I've made the point elsewhere that a lot of activists in the US are shooting themselves badly in the foot by playing up the race aspect over and over in these cases. They are missing that while there certainly is racism in the US, these problems correlate much stronger with poverty than race: The vast majority of differences in violence along racial lines disappear when you start adjusting for social equality. By tying it to race, these activists are pushing away large groups of people - both poor people of other ethnic backgrounds, and other people who don't find the race issue comfortable for various reasons (including not so savoury reasons). And by focusing on the police, rather than the underlying social inequalities, they are likewise pushing away groups that see the police as fundamentally protecting them against a lot of the people that are demonstrating. At the same time, address the poverty issue, and 1) it has a much more significant impact, 2) it leaves the remaining race issues in much starker relief (it is far easier for racist cops to justify their behaviour when the victim is black and live in a poor area where it is easy for people in the community to accept that a black kid in that area can be scary) It is heart wrenching to see how off the mark these things end up going.

by pmorici 12y ago

dragonwriter 12y ago

> The Tea Party and the Occupy Wall St. movement is another example of two groups that basically want the same thing (hold big banks accountable no more corporate bailouts etc...) Except not. While the TPP and OWS were, in some senses, responses to the same circumstances, TPP seeks generally right-libertarian approaches to addressing those circumstances, and OWS seeks generally left-wing solutions. There's some overlap, but also deep and fundamental opposition. TPP is anti-tax/anti-regulation, OWS is generally for restoring regulations that were removed that they see as having enabled the situations that both TPP and OWS respond to. This isn't really surprising -- major, widely-felt economic pain is shared, but different ideologies offer different approaches to addressing that pain.

vidarh 12y ago

I've made the point elsewhere that a lot of activists in the US are shooting themselves badly in the foot by playing up the race aspect over and over in these cases. They are missing that while there certainly is racism in the US, these problems correlate much stronger with poverty than race: The vast majority of differences in violence along racial lines disappear when you start adjusting for social equality. By tying it to race, these activists are pushing away large groups of people - both poor people of other ethnic backgrounds, and other people who don't find the race issue comfortable for various reasons (including not so savoury reasons). And by focusing on the police, rather than the underlying social inequalities, they are likewise pushing away groups that see the police as fundamentally protecting them against a lot of the people that are demonstrating. At the same time, address the poverty issue, and 1) it has a much more significant impact, 2) it leaves the remaining race issues in much starker relief (it is far easier for racist cops to justify their behaviour when the victim is black and live in a poor area where it is easy for people in the community to accept that a black kid in that area can be scary) It is heart wrenching to see how off the mark these things end up going.