Black Lives Matter
Soul Zilla
153 Posts
No mention at all about a black man killing two white journalists on live tv? Reverse the the ethnicities and it's a huge story. Calls for a renewal of discrimination shrivel in the light of facts. An academic study on this phenomenon will quickly show the bias of the media and the strange relationship between the people protesting speculation and the revealed facts.
So much speculation comes in to play from first media reports, only later at trial, do we begin to see the truths. The only provocative narrative supported by the media is of black persecution. And every video in support of that shows the victim smart-mouthing and generally combative with a police officer.
Why is it so hard to understand that a police officer, any police officer, can place you in a metal cage overnight for no reason? Of course you have rights, but that doesn't matter. On the street you mess around and get locked up you go to jail for at least a night. And guess what when your court date comes around, you argue the facts and the judge will dismiss it. Case closed. But you still spent maybe multiple days in jail. Opportunity cost of not being at work and such—all because you want to smart off or talk off to an officer. So stupid
How is it that a member of the privileged class was never told to by their parents that you must respect and comply with police officers? It is something that was never said to or indoctrinated to me, yet I've instinctively known to respect authority. If bias exists then why do I get fearful and stressed when I get pulled over? And if you're on the other supposed class of people, why would you not be extra nice and complicit with police?
Why do the tapes begin with defensive and accusatory language? It's always " I know my rights, you can't do that, followed by an expletive, where is the decorum? Sure your speech is protected but there is a time and place and why would you seek to provoke? Provocation leads to escalation.
The race card is played so often now it's tiring. A long rebuttal can be made showing tons of police shootings involving white victims. It's a little difficult because they don't attract the same attention and therefore media coverage as black victims. But with the internet, with a little effort and persistence you can begin to stack them up.
The difference really is that the national media picks up the black cases because they're more sensational and consequentially are the ones that get picked up overseas. The local ones happen all the time in limited jurisdictions, and if they involves a white victim then they simply stay with the local paper.
I've written lengthily over some well known cases, just exposing the facts, because the greatest disinfectant is sunlight. But a point comes and sadly the grievances that the black lives matter constituency are people that are like-minded with conspiracy theorists. A close look and a thoughtful analysis reveals the inherent fragility of and beyond reason structure to their beliefs.
Nobody worth thinking falls for this. And sadly that's a small fraction of the population, yet it's a topic that seems to replace the old gulf war in the news reporting repertoire. What's doubly sad is that the black community could do itself right not by protesting and rioting but by an honest discussion about civility, law, the courts, and how to get your message heard. Not by videotaping a traffic stop and repeatedly telling the officer I know my rights and then being belligerent and provocative to elicit a response that's newsworthy.
So shameful and counterproductive
So much speculation comes in to play from first media reports, only later at trial, do we begin to see the truths. The only provocative narrative supported by the media is of black persecution. And every video in support of that shows the victim smart-mouthing and generally combative with a police officer.
Why is it so hard to understand that a police officer, any police officer, can place you in a metal cage overnight for no reason? Of course you have rights, but that doesn't matter. On the street you mess around and get locked up you go to jail for at least a night. And guess what when your court date comes around, you argue the facts and the judge will dismiss it. Case closed. But you still spent maybe multiple days in jail. Opportunity cost of not being at work and such—all because you want to smart off or talk off to an officer. So stupid
How is it that a member of the privileged class was never told to by their parents that you must respect and comply with police officers? It is something that was never said to or indoctrinated to me, yet I've instinctively known to respect authority. If bias exists then why do I get fearful and stressed when I get pulled over? And if you're on the other supposed class of people, why would you not be extra nice and complicit with police?
Why do the tapes begin with defensive and accusatory language? It's always " I know my rights, you can't do that, followed by an expletive, where is the decorum? Sure your speech is protected but there is a time and place and why would you seek to provoke? Provocation leads to escalation.
The race card is played so often now it's tiring. A long rebuttal can be made showing tons of police shootings involving white victims. It's a little difficult because they don't attract the same attention and therefore media coverage as black victims. But with the internet, with a little effort and persistence you can begin to stack them up.
The difference really is that the national media picks up the black cases because they're more sensational and consequentially are the ones that get picked up overseas. The local ones happen all the time in limited jurisdictions, and if they involves a white victim then they simply stay with the local paper.
I've written lengthily over some well known cases, just exposing the facts, because the greatest disinfectant is sunlight. But a point comes and sadly the grievances that the black lives matter constituency are people that are like-minded with conspiracy theorists. A close look and a thoughtful analysis reveals the inherent fragility of and beyond reason structure to their beliefs.
Nobody worth thinking falls for this. And sadly that's a small fraction of the population, yet it's a topic that seems to replace the old gulf war in the news reporting repertoire. What's doubly sad is that the black community could do itself right not by protesting and rioting but by an honest discussion about civility, law, the courts, and how to get your message heard. Not by videotaping a traffic stop and repeatedly telling the officer I know my rights and then being belligerent and provocative to elicit a response that's newsworthy.
So shameful and counterproductive
Comments
Huh... apparently every major news outlet doing a piece on it no longer qualifies as a huge story. Go figure.
But, you know, his soul's iller than yours so there is that.
THIS ^
Its a huge story all over the world so I have no idea what SZ is talking about.
To answer Soul Zilla's commentary, I will make several points. First, I will say that senseless killing is an atrocity no matter the demographic membership of the perpetrator or victim(s). So, I do not condone nor defend in any way the killing of innocent people. Second, I will agree with his point that the Black community does need to behave with decorum when it comes to interactions with the police. Black folks have been educating their children for eons about this irrefutable fact, as not being respectful can lead to violence against them and death.
Now, that I have established my ideological baseline (i.e., killing innocent people is wrong and Black folks should behave politely with police), I will depart from Soul Zilla on the following point. The simple fact of the matter is that institutional racism is the reason why Blacks (and other disparaged folks) react negatively to police scrutiny. There has been a legacy of police mistreatment of minorities so, of course, there is distrust between minorities and the police. More importantly, there is documented research evidence in criminology of the following racial-ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system. Relative to Whites, statistically, Blacks tend to experience more use-of-force (including deadly) by the police (Bureau of Justice Statistics, "Police-Public Contact" Survey, 2008), and are given longer prison sentence for identical crimes (Doerner & Demuth, 2010 in Justice Quarterly). These statistics provide some explanation for why there are negative citizen-police relationships in the Black community.
Finally, as I remarked about 8 years ago, Blumer's (1958) realistic group threat theory would predict that (some) Whites would respond negatively to the election of a Black president. This occurs because there are some Whites who feel that the election of a Black president symbolizes encroachment by the lower-status group into a position more legitimately held by higher-status group members (i.e., Whites). The result, Blumer predicted, is higher incidences of racial discrimination. Not surprisingly, there has been an upswing in police shootings (and killings) of Black citizens during President Obama's presidency. Moreover, research suggests that police tend to be higher in right-wing authoritarianism (i.e., an ideology that supports obedience to authority, conventionalist thought, etc.) (Gatto, Dambrun, Kerbrat, & De Oliveira's 2010 article in European Journal of Social Psychology, and Kappeler, Sluder, & Alpert's 1998 book "Forces of deviance: Understanding the dark side of policing"), which is strongly correlated with social dominance orientation (SDO). People who are high in SDO tend to support the maintenance of the social hierarchy wherein some groups (i.e., Whites) have higher status than other groups (i.e., minorities). High SDO people also have more negative attitudes toward disparaged groups such as women, minorities, lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgendered individuals, and the disabled (see work by James Sidanius, Felecia Pratto, Shana Levin, and Lawrence Bobo on the topic) . So, the trends we are witnessing in regards to the above issues are strongly predicted by prior theory and research.
Peace,
Big Stacks from Kakalak
His admission that he always knew he enjoyed the taste of authority taint is interesting, though. That may be a new gender entirely.
"I take Soul Zilla off ignore to see what is happening with Black Lives Matter, and I get this?"
yup
We make laws to prevent discrimination. But what we cannot outlaw is the subtle racism. This is because of our genetic makeup and evolutionary history. Reverse the colors and you'd have the same thing. It's really about majority vs minority.
Here's a test for you racist accusers out there: just substitute black for white in American history. Would the outcome be different? If you think so then you are racist by the definition put forth by your own constituency. It's not about skin color it's about tribalism. Humans are humans and our psychology is the same because we are from the same small family of primate individuals that populated the plains of Africa 200,000 years ago. When we migrated and diverged some outside traits changed for reasons of climate and regional adaptations.
That's all. We have not had enough time evolutionary speaking to diverge intellectually or psychologically.
Culturally, YES. But because as a whole we are psychologically the same, had you reversed positions the same thing would have happened.
In prisons, the most controlled environments humans experience, what happens first? Do they divide themselves over ideological sides? Left vs right? Or philosophically, determinists vs compatabilists? Or religiously, Jews vs Christians vs Muslims? Or the spectrum of passive-aggressive syndrome, pessimist vs optimists?
No it's ALWAYS racial. It's in other words tribalism. Tribalism isn't contained by race. It presents itself in many forms and human hierarchies other than race but at its core its "us versus them".
And that's where the problems begin.
I'll expand and elaborate later. But my hope is that I'll expose all you haters (expressed through the comments and replies) as dormant racists and repressed hypocrites who may mean well, but probably are not even aware of their own hypocrisy or speculative hate.
There are so many of you. While I believe you are mostly benign I still think your vision is forever colored by false allusions of history and the speculative, and the appeal to emotions nature of your "arguments".
I come off, I guess, to most of you as a supporter of the police and authority. You think I'm racist and bigoted. I'm not. Those two terms are throwaways when one is confronted with intellectual arguments that may be novel to you and are in direct opposition to your line of thought.
Because they conflict on the front end to what you hold close to your heart, you dismiss them outright without examining them as they should be for a rationalist.
You're simply not rational. And you're the true racists. You perpetuate the culture of racism by not acknowledging and dealing with the true causes of conflict. You are reductionists and blind historians. Victims forever.
Not all though. Why are the most vocal the least informed? We could have moved closer to a uniform society but some people will never move their position once established. The most insane thing and irrational act I can think of.
I'm radically different ideologically than the culture I was raised in and I attribute all that simply to the scientific method- something I learned in sixth grade, conduct an experiment, have a hypothesis, gather evidence, analyze it, draw your conclusion from the evidence.
If it contradicts your hypothesis then your assumptions were wrong.
"I'm radically different ideologically than the culture I was raised in and I attribute all that simply to the scientific method"
"Why are the most vocal the least informed?"
... :zooted:
So Africa would be white and European slave traders would be Black?
Black folks genocide Native Americans and white slaves build the country?
All previous presidents are Black Men and Obama is President Barry?
That doesnt sound scientific and it simplifies too many random factors.
The racists are the true victims.
The prison example is interesting, but not particularly valid. Since anyone entering a prison brings with them the behavior learned from living as part of their particular society, culture, family, etc., it doesn't exactly constitute a controlled environment in this context.
All in all, there's nothing especially intellectual or scientific about this line of argument. You might consider an approach closer to what Big Stacks took above, i.e. he references actual science to make his point. Documented, supported evidence holds more weight in this type of discussion than opinions based on conjecture and hearsay.
Perhaps a look into evolutionary psychology would also help, as much of that field's body of work would not support your assertion that humans have shown the same thought process and behavior for their entire history.
The statement about not being authoritarian is curious, given that it follows several statements about the importance of respecting authority (regardless of whether said authority is in line with the rule of law), and is concurrent with the presentation of yourself as an authority to be respected (as evidenced by your patronizing, pre-emptive dismissal of those who might contradict you).
Given that you are by far the most vocal person in this thread, and are known for making lengthy posts on these kinds of topics, it's possible you may have the answer to your own question.
Hey Fred,
In fairness to Soul Zilla, I have to say that I am a professor at a Research I institution (where faculty engage in scholarly research) by trade, so I tend to approach issues in scientific terms. This tendency is further bolstered by factors such as (a) teaching masters and doctoral level statistics, and (b) advising doctoral students on their research. So, I don't expect the general public to pursue cause-and-effect (and/or correlational) analyses as I do. I just try to enlighten folks on issues upon which I am conversant by providing potential explanations for some of the phenomena we witness out in the world. I also acknowledge that we can never explain human behavior with 100% accuracy. Yet, for a lot of topics, there is research evidence that illuminates many of the trends we see in society.
Peace,
Big Stacks from Kakalak
We thank you.
Dan
However, when a person claims that their opinion is grounded in scientific method, but uses no actual science or evidence to support it, while attempting to place themselves above those to whom they chose to bring their argument, I do think it's fair to call them out... and for that matter, I do expect that someone making a claim about anything would do some critical thinking beyond "This is what I say it is, and anyone who claims otherwise is wrong".
Peace,
Big Stacks from Kakalak
You can get rope burns doing a lynching. Makes it hard to masturbate afterwards.
And yes, that's a nasty thing to write, but not nearly as nasty as Zilla's daily affirmations.
Let me dumb it down for you. It's people in power versus those that aren't. Was Europe more scientifically and militarily powerful at the time?
Whether those group of humans were black or white didn't matter. What matters is human nature and the desire, be it subconscious or not, for the powerful to subjugate and exploit the weak. It's been present in nearly all human civilizations for all of recorded history.
I'm talking about human nature not skin color. I'm saying that the melanin content of your skin doesn't absolve you of or dictate how you act. People in power exploit the weaker. That is human nature. Is that moral, of course not, is it honest, yes.
If you believe otherwise then you are racist because you're essentially saying that only white people are capable of evil and blacks are not. That if the roles were reversed and had the Europeans been black people this wouldn't have happened the way it did.
It's not racist to say skin color doesn't matter. It is racist to say that it does.
Is that clear?
By the way a well regarded and influential anthropologist wrote a highly acclaimed and awarded (I think it won a Pulitzer) book called "Guns, Germs, and Steel" that lays down the scientific reasons for the wide ranging disparities between ethnic groups of humans. His name is Jared Diamond. Hint, it has nothing to do with skin color. So if you're curious about the sources of my knowledge then this is a book you should read.
If you're not the type to read an exhausting tome then you can watch the series produced by either Nova or PBS.