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On September 27 2017 11:27 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2017 11:20 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 11:12 Wegandi wrote:On September 27 2017 11:03 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 10:38 Danglars wrote:On September 27 2017 09:39 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 09:33 Danglars wrote:On September 27 2017 09:16 Gorsameth wrote:On September 27 2017 09:13 Danglars wrote:On September 27 2017 08:33 Falling wrote:
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Huh. That actually makes a lot of sense. I was discussing this in real life and we were all wondering why it was such a big deal as kneeling really didn't seem the most disrespectful thing in the world... like maybe it related to a QB surrendering first before getting tackled? But in most contexts, kneeling is actually quite respectful. Seems like a fair way to protest in my opinion. He paired it with explicitly divisive statements on the flag. “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder. Then he had his police=pigs socks and Che Guevara shirt. I don't care what this new round of players thinks, because Trump has certainly thrown his hat into the ring. It started with an overtly political stance and it was all about what the flag symbolized. Why should a man respect a country that does not respect him as a person in the same manner as any other because of the color of his skin? You presume agreement with a number of things on that question. How about confirming that he left very little room for interpretation on what the protest was about. Then maybe you can move on to honest questions with a basis in shared reality. Kaep said he was not standing for the anthem because he was protesting police brutality. He has since confirmed that multiple times. Over and over. The flag and anthem are part and parcel of one another. His reason has not changed. You decided to add more to it or obfuscate his reason with your own to find outrage. I directly quoted him. Like he literally said that and people heard he said that and responded to him saying that. Either address with actual quotes and dates what changed, or you're just ignoring and washing over it. Because you're saying his reason has not changed without putting that in context of what I just quoted. His whole reason to protest was to bring awareness to police brutality. That is his reason. That has not changed. That you continue to be incensed over this makes me question if you actually understand the reason behind the protest. Take the flag out of the picture, it's clouding your reasoning skills. The flag stands for justice for all and freedom and he's protesting that blacks in America are not receiving it. So why support it? Again, he is protesting police brutality by kneeling during the anthem. The flag and anthem are the vehicle to his protest, not what he is actually protesting. Same with how the bridge in Selma is the vehicle and not the object of the protest. What does the flag/anthem have to do with the police? As for the flag itself, everyone has their own notion of what it stands for. Attempting to create a consensus on something so divisive that you stake the movement to, is fucking idiotic. You've obfuscated the agenda item before you even begin, then you wonder/complain why people are viewing the acts in different ways than you are? Are people really this obtuse? Protest outside of police buildings, refuse to play in one game, etc. There are many vehicles to protest. Deciding to use such a divisive and personal device such as the flag and anthem to use as the vehicle is just dumb, and instead of seeing that, there is a ton of doubling down. Continue this lose/lose proposition though if it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside even if nothing ever changes though. (Shouldn't you be trying to change peoples opinions who have different views than you do, and thus, the strategy employed should focus on them, not on you, or anyone else who all ready shares the view you're trying to make a majority opinion? Don't worry, I have the same problems with my own movements doing this, and hell I do it from time to time, but I try not to.) That's the thing. It was never as big a deal as it is now. The focus started on police brutality and it has remained that way. When it got really moving and a lot of actors started voicing their two cents, that's when the message got fuzzy. Then you get Fox and friends claiming it was about the anthem/flag and people stopped seeing the real reason the protest began. Notice how we stopped talking about police brutality and these last dozen pages have been about the flag and if someone is patriotic or not? That's what happened. Everyone got sidetracked and it's harder than ever to get the topic back on the reason for the protest. Leave the flag/anthem out of it. It's a vehicle. It's not representative of the protest no more than a bus, a rainbow, or a bridge. People are looking for ways to change the topic of discussion as to not face the real issue at hand, which is police brutality and racial inequality. Remove the flag from any further argument, and we can discuss this with sense and reason. Otherwise, we'll never get anywhere. You don't understand. You've failed to place yourselves in the shoes of people not like you, who may not see the world in the same way you do, and instead of doing so - you just say they're racist and there's nothing you can do, but you can reach many of these people (I know, my folks are these people), by not being a stupid dolt and using a symbol, that you even say doesn't matter. Why use the damn symbol then? It's counterproductive. That's reality. You can fight reality, or you can acknowledge it. That's up to you. All I see is a bunch of people doubling down and alienating a lot of people that aren't strictly on either side. Again, it's that pesky - the flag/anthem means a bunch of different shit to a bunch of different people.
I've placed myself in their shoes and I can see what they are saying. I'm a veteran as well, so I have my reservations about certain things. But protesting the flag/anthem to bring awareness to something isn't one of them. I'm a black male in America first and foremost. I have a lot of poor friends and people who support Trump in my daily life that I engage with. Some are veterans as well and don't like the protesting. I see what they are saying but it doesn't mean I have to acquiesce to their wanting to not talk about it. When they don't want to talk about it, that's when you continue to talk about it. If you give in to waiting for the time to be right for them to talk about it, you're essentially defeated.
I didn't tell Kaep to use the flag/anthem to protest. I get why he did it, but I didn't tell him to. If people in the US didn't get such a hard on for blind patriotism and national pride, then I think we'd be a lot better off.
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On September 27 2017 11:03 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2017 10:38 Danglars wrote:On September 27 2017 09:39 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 09:33 Danglars wrote:On September 27 2017 09:16 Gorsameth wrote:On September 27 2017 09:13 Danglars wrote:On September 27 2017 08:33 Falling wrote:Huh. That actually makes a lot of sense. I was discussing this in real life and we were all wondering why it was such a big deal as kneeling really didn't seem the most disrespectful thing in the world... like maybe it related to a QB surrendering first before getting tackled? But in most contexts, kneeling is actually quite respectful. Seems like a fair way to protest in my opinion. He paired it with explicitly divisive statements on the flag. “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder. Then he had his police=pigs socks and Che Guevara shirt. I don't care what this new round of players thinks, because Trump has certainly thrown his hat into the ring. It started with an overtly political stance and it was all about what the flag symbolized. Why should a man respect a country that does not respect him as a person in the same manner as any other because of the color of his skin? You presume agreement with a number of things on that question. How about confirming that he left very little room for interpretation on what the protest was about. Then maybe you can move on to honest questions with a basis in shared reality. Kaep said he was not standing for the anthem because he was protesting police brutality. He has since confirmed that multiple times. Over and over. The flag and anthem are part and parcel of one another. His reason has not changed. You decided to add more to it or obfuscate his reason with your own to find outrage. I directly quoted him. Like he literally said that and people heard he said that and responded to him saying that. Either address with actual quotes and dates what changed, or you're just ignoring and washing over it. Because you're saying his reason has not changed without putting that in context of what I just quoted. His whole reason to protest was to bring awareness to police brutality. That is his reason. That has not changed. That you continue to be incensed over this makes me question if you actually understand the reason behind the protest. Take the flag out of the picture, it's clouding your reasoning skills. The flag stands for justice for all and freedom and he's protesting that blacks in America are not receiving it. So why support it? Again, he is protesting police brutality by kneeling during the anthem. The flag and anthem are the vehicle to his protest, not what he is actually protesting. Same with how the bridge in Selma is the vehicle and not the object of the protest.
If we take what he said out of the picture, he makes a lot more sense. So how about we actually acknowledge what he said, or tell me what changed after he said that, and proceed. I'm not really into debating your perceptions ungrounded in quotes and timelines. He explicitly mentioned the flag and what the country stood for. I see no reason for you to put words in his mouth and not bring him in his own words to the table.
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On September 27 2017 11:31 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2017 11:21 Wegandi wrote:On September 27 2017 11:14 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 10:52 Wegandi wrote:On September 27 2017 04:37 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 04:21 Mohdoo wrote:On September 27 2017 03:48 xDaunt wrote:On September 27 2017 03:40 Mohdoo wrote:On September 27 2017 03:38 xDaunt wrote:On September 27 2017 03:33 Wulfey_LA wrote:
[quote]
Yeah, it is the message behind the actions that matter. But the official republican spin is that this is about the <flag/actions/disrespect>, not about protesting the disparate impact of <Officer Use of Force incidents>. Trump/Republicans/Newt/Hannity/FOX are sticking to <flag/actions/disrespect> spin because that is a much easier ground upon which to spin up some white grievance. Talking about <Officer Use of Force incidents> and how they come down heavier and bloodier on people of darker complexion is a hard issue that Republicans would rather pretend doesn't exist. I am surprised that you are accepting the premises of the Lib side here. I don't think that there are meaningful grounds to distinguish between the message and the action. The bottom line is that Kaepernick is intentionally condemning and showing disrespect for the country. That's not going to rub people the right way. In your eyes, is there to say what he is saying in a respectful way? There are a couple layers to peel here. First, using the national anthem to protest the country in any way is a bad idea for the reasons that Donald Trump showed this weekend (like I discussed yesterday). It's too easy to have your cause turned (fairly or not) into a referendum on your patriotism (regardless of the justness of your cause). Second, and like all of the conservative posters have been saying til they have been blue in the face, framing the issue in terms of the country being racist is only going to piss people off and turn them against you. The better way to approach the issue is to frame it as a race neutral issue along the lines of "Police brutality is a problem in this country" or "Inner city families are broken and need help." Amazing things will happen when you stop calling whitey racist. So you are saying that blacks framing these issues as black issues rather than "everyone issues", they lose support from whites? This is in reply to xD, using your post. Whites weren't going to do anything about it. Hispanics were only worried about deportation. Blacks had to be the voice to bring some of these issues up. Only when they did, did we see more PoC, including whites, speaking out on police brutality and racial inequality. Taking race out of it doesn't drive home the fact of what is really going on. It's hiding the true issue at hand behind a fog. By bringing race into this, more people are inclined to speak up in support for the cause. The civil rights movement was about blacks and that got a lot of people on board to get laws enacted that serves everyone equally (or it should). Why is now different? Take the black man's plight in America and use it to forward change for all. The LGBT community is doing it (sometimes wrongly) and they are getting their rights increased slowly but surely. People bring in race because it's an effective means to get things heard and things done. Because you are uncomfortable with it, is not my nor anyone else's problems. It is your own. Whites aren't going to do anything about it because police brutality against whites (the majority of cases) aren't reported and if they are tend to go away quite fast (talk to the average white person - they're totally ignorant about stuff like Kelly Thomas, James Boyd, etc.). There's no national outrage when a policeman kills unarmed white people. Most of the white people killed are poor, have a mental illness, or "were sassy" with the states Gendarmes. Funny enough, if you look at the majority of cases involving blacks the same characteristics show up. I brought it up before, but this is much more a socioeconomic concern than a race concern. Blacks make up 13% of the population and are 30% of officer involved shootings. That is a problem, definitely, but it's being blown far out of proportion (as if, as one poster earlier alluded to - white people never experience the same civil rights violations from police as blacks...). The hyperbole is out of control, fueled by a media who uses these events for publicity and viewership. In addition, other areas of civil rights violations aren't out of the statistical norms (e.g. asset forfeiture, abuse, 4th amendment violations, etc.), but some are such as drug incarceration statistics. I point out the above to say that if whites got the same considerations that blacks get (nationally) when killed being unarmed more whites would give a fuck about police brutality and excessive use of force (I really hate the "I feared for my safety, qualified immunity" bullshit). Which many will take as whites being racist, but it's more of "if it isn't effecting me, I don't really care" and that's just sadly, a HUMAN quality (there were no large scale black movement to come to the Kelly Thomas case for instance - which is one of the most egregious unarmed deaths by Police). Please debate me on this one. Again, this "systemic" racism is most heavily prevalent in majority black controlled cities. Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, etc. with black Chief of Polices, etc. Of course, there are places like NYC that are abysmal with openly racist policies like stop and frisk (but they are supposed to be enlightened progressive northerners....imagine the outrage if stop and frisk was MO in Mobile, Shreveport, Jacksonville, etc.). The point being that yes, there is a major moral and political crisis of the lack of 1) police accountability 2) excessive and abusive practices 3) "thin blue line" as default 4) persecution complex as America is at a time when crime rates are historically low 5) Politicians who continuously create more and more laws forcing their enforcement arm to do things that are extremely negatively perceived by the average person (but, yet, oddly, keep voting for the same politicians - I'm going to name this paradox after myself, I think.). Instead of framing the issue as solely a black one, you should frame the issue as an American one, because as Americans, we're all impacted by these abuses. You're also going to be a lot more successful if you actually care about changing shit, framing the issue this way. I more or less agree with what you've said, but you have to put this in a historical context. Look at the civil rights movement and how that started and how eventually, whites got on board. That is what should be happening now, but we have so much noise and ignorance clouding what needs to be discussed, people aren't mobilizing as they did back then. It seems like they are, with all of the protests and the like taking place, but nothing is happening. There are no laws being introduced to help mitigate the racial inequality that protesters are protesting. Instead, they are being told to not rock the boat, don't bring up uncomfortable topics during times people want to turn their brains off, and if they really want to create change, elect people who will get laws put in place. I'm not saying this is an overnight fix and that it will take time, but people aren't wanting to engage in conversation and see why people are upset, calling names, and tired of being told to wait until the right time. Socioeconomically speaking, we could debate back and forth until the cows come home on that one. There's so much evidence that the systemic and institutionalized racism/classicism keeps PoC disadvantaged, but we won't get that changed without a complete dying off of baby boomers. We can go back and forth on so many topics that I think we'd be arguing just to argue because we agree on a lot of these points. White people aren't as outraged about whites not getting the attention blacks are getting nationally because at the end of the day, they are still white. Like Chris Rock said, "There's not a single white person who would change lives with him. And he's rich." I just want to tackle that quote and the last paragraph for now: that's complete bullshit. You ask any random white person living in the trailer park, or in Appalachia, or in some of the poorest parts of Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana, and they'd trade places with Chris Rock in a heartbeat (I chose these places, because they're the stereotypical "racist" locations). In fact, outside of anecdotal evidence (which I have, since I'm from the South and lived here for over a majority of my life, and I am sure, others have anecdotal evidence to the contrary), how the fuck do you measure that quote? Do you simply believe it because you have an a priori assumption that all whites are racist? I mean, I'd trade places with Chris Rock in a heartbeat. Then you're going to tell me, no, it's not literal, and then I'll tell you again, what outside of your assumption (founded again, on this idea that all/majority whites are racist, which when brought up people on this forum keep saying no one is saying, but yet you keep reading shit like that quote which is EXACTLY what you're saying) are you basing this off of. Where is your statistical evidence? For people who proudly proclaim science all the time, you back up the most ridiculous non-scientific sociology/humanities bullshit. You're tackling the quote and not the paragraph, correct? I want to be clear. You don't take the money. You take all of his baggage and everything that goes with it. You become black. You may be rich, but you're still black. As evidenced by the post above and countless other times, you being rich does not change the fact that in the eyes of many, you're still a Nigger. Just a nigger with money. You'll get all of the benefits of being rich, with all of the bullshit that comes with having dark skin. Which means worry of being pulled over with no cause, potentially being held without cause, being shot, being called nigger, etc, etc, etc. EVERYDAY until you die. Again, I'm not saying all white people are racist. That's not the meaning behind the quote. In fact, I was reminded of the quote by a white sports caster in Dallas. Funny how he can see what Chris Rock was saying and you seemingly cannot. If you want that, then by all means, join the party. I don't need to provide statistical evidence by living it anecdotally. This isn't an emotional response to anything, it's just stating facts.
No, really, I need that explained to me? Maybe I don't share your a priori assumption, because as I addressed I view this mostly as a socioeconomic concern, a concern alleviated mostly by guess what...money. Something that Chris Rock has a lot of, and if you're going to tell me Chris Rock has a harder/worse life than poor white folks, my continuing this conversation is fruitless.
Blacks again, are not the only ones being pulled over for no cause. In fact, some of the worst abuses of this comes from TN against majority whites, where there are a ton of people being pulled over for b.s./frivolous non-sense only to be robbed via asset forfeiture. Why do you think no white people experience this? What has warped your view of reality so much? Again, I need to point out that white people are the majority of people being killed by the police. Is it true that being black means you have a greater likelihood, yes, but that's a far cry difference than what you're peddling.
Yeah, sure, that's what that quote is about, because obviously white people value their "white privilege" more than being rich, and money is used as the counter-balance because it's perceived as being a high valued thing in our society. So if one of the most highly valued status in our country - money - is worth less than being white, to white people, what the fuck else is the quote trying to say? If you're trying to make a point that blacks have higher incidences in some police statistics, just fucking say that with the damn statistics so there is no ambiguity. It's really not that hard. If on the other hand, your point is something else, then you're going to use a quote like that. So, please don't tell me it's about higher incidences of blacks in some police reporting statistics.
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On September 27 2017 11:38 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2017 11:03 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 10:38 Danglars wrote:On September 27 2017 09:39 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 09:33 Danglars wrote:On September 27 2017 09:16 Gorsameth wrote:On September 27 2017 09:13 Danglars wrote:On September 27 2017 08:33 Falling wrote:Huh. That actually makes a lot of sense. I was discussing this in real life and we were all wondering why it was such a big deal as kneeling really didn't seem the most disrespectful thing in the world... like maybe it related to a QB surrendering first before getting tackled? But in most contexts, kneeling is actually quite respectful. Seems like a fair way to protest in my opinion. He paired it with explicitly divisive statements on the flag. “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder. Then he had his police=pigs socks and Che Guevara shirt. I don't care what this new round of players thinks, because Trump has certainly thrown his hat into the ring. It started with an overtly political stance and it was all about what the flag symbolized. Why should a man respect a country that does not respect him as a person in the same manner as any other because of the color of his skin? You presume agreement with a number of things on that question. How about confirming that he left very little room for interpretation on what the protest was about. Then maybe you can move on to honest questions with a basis in shared reality. Kaep said he was not standing for the anthem because he was protesting police brutality. He has since confirmed that multiple times. Over and over. The flag and anthem are part and parcel of one another. His reason has not changed. You decided to add more to it or obfuscate his reason with your own to find outrage. I directly quoted him. Like he literally said that and people heard he said that and responded to him saying that. Either address with actual quotes and dates what changed, or you're just ignoring and washing over it. Because you're saying his reason has not changed without putting that in context of what I just quoted. His whole reason to protest was to bring awareness to police brutality. That is his reason. That has not changed. That you continue to be incensed over this makes me question if you actually understand the reason behind the protest. Take the flag out of the picture, it's clouding your reasoning skills. The flag stands for justice for all and freedom and he's protesting that blacks in America are not receiving it. So why support it? Again, he is protesting police brutality by kneeling during the anthem. The flag and anthem are the vehicle to his protest, not what he is actually protesting. Same with how the bridge in Selma is the vehicle and not the object of the protest. If we take what he said out of the picture, he makes a lot more sense. So how about we actually acknowledge what he said, or tell me what changed after he said that, and proceed. I'm not really into debating your perceptions ungrounded in quotes and timelines. He explicitly mentioned the flag and what the country stood for. I see no reason for you to put words in his mouth and not bring him in his own words to the table.
How hard is it to see he's saying that he's saying the same thing we've been saying for 100+ years in a million ways? He's saying that flag represents a promise that remains unfulfilled. In reverence to what it symbolizes and in protest of those under it not upholding the promise, he's kneeling.
Keep in mind the same people complaining about this "disrespect of the flag" ignored that it happened on practically every broadcast and every 4th of July, with ACTUAL VIOLATIONS OF FLAG CODE.
It's also why we know the "law and justice" line is bunk. There are actual flag laws being broken regularly and they don't give a rats ass, but an uppity "ungrateful" black does it and everyone loses their mind.
Now some people understand it very superficially and legitimately see a disrespecting of the flag, but they are actually wrong, and ignorant. That's not an insult, it's a statement of fact. We only have to entertain the person claiming 2+2=5 for so long before we can appropriately just note their wrongness and move on.
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On September 27 2017 11:33 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2017 11:29 Wegandi wrote:On September 27 2017 11:22 GreenHorizons wrote:On September 27 2017 10:52 Wegandi wrote:On September 27 2017 04:37 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 04:21 Mohdoo wrote:On September 27 2017 03:48 xDaunt wrote:On September 27 2017 03:40 Mohdoo wrote:On September 27 2017 03:38 xDaunt wrote:On September 27 2017 03:33 Wulfey_LA wrote:
[quote]
Yeah, it is the message behind the actions that matter. But the official republican spin is that this is about the <flag/actions/disrespect>, not about protesting the disparate impact of <Officer Use of Force incidents>. Trump/Republicans/Newt/Hannity/FOX are sticking to <flag/actions/disrespect> spin because that is a much easier ground upon which to spin up some white grievance. Talking about <Officer Use of Force incidents> and how they come down heavier and bloodier on people of darker complexion is a hard issue that Republicans would rather pretend doesn't exist. I am surprised that you are accepting the premises of the Lib side here. I don't think that there are meaningful grounds to distinguish between the message and the action. The bottom line is that Kaepernick is intentionally condemning and showing disrespect for the country. That's not going to rub people the right way. In your eyes, is there to say what he is saying in a respectful way? There are a couple layers to peel here. First, using the national anthem to protest the country in any way is a bad idea for the reasons that Donald Trump showed this weekend (like I discussed yesterday). It's too easy to have your cause turned (fairly or not) into a referendum on your patriotism (regardless of the justness of your cause). Second, and like all of the conservative posters have been saying til they have been blue in the face, framing the issue in terms of the country being racist is only going to piss people off and turn them against you. The better way to approach the issue is to frame it as a race neutral issue along the lines of "Police brutality is a problem in this country" or "Inner city families are broken and need help." Amazing things will happen when you stop calling whitey racist. So you are saying that blacks framing these issues as black issues rather than "everyone issues", they lose support from whites? This is in reply to xD, using your post. Whites weren't going to do anything about it. Hispanics were only worried about deportation. Blacks had to be the voice to bring some of these issues up. Only when they did, did we see more PoC, including whites, speaking out on police brutality and racial inequality. Taking race out of it doesn't drive home the fact of what is really going on. It's hiding the true issue at hand behind a fog. By bringing race into this, more people are inclined to speak up in support for the cause. The civil rights movement was about blacks and that got a lot of people on board to get laws enacted that serves everyone equally (or it should). Why is now different? Take the black man's plight in America and use it to forward change for all. The LGBT community is doing it (sometimes wrongly) and they are getting their rights increased slowly but surely. People bring in race because it's an effective means to get things heard and things done. Because you are uncomfortable with it, is not my nor anyone else's problems. It is your own. Whites aren't going to do anything about it because police brutality against whites (the majority of cases) aren't reported and if they are tend to go away quite fast (talk to the average white person - they're totally ignorant about stuff like Kelly Thomas, James Boyd, etc.). There's no national outrage when a policeman kills unarmed white people. Most of the white people killed are poor, have a mental illness, or "were sassy" with the states Gendarmes. Funny enough, if you look at the majority of cases involving blacks the same characteristics show up. I brought it up before, but this is much more a socioeconomic concern than a race concern. Blacks make up 13% of the population and are 30% of officer involved shootings. That is a problem, definitely, but it's being blown far out of proportion (as if, as one poster earlier alluded to - white people never experience the same civil rights violations from police as blacks...). The hyperbole is out of control, fueled by a media who uses these events for publicity and viewership. In addition, other areas of civil rights violations aren't out of the statistical norms (e.g. asset forfeiture, abuse, 4th amendment violations, etc.), but some are such as drug incarceration statistics. I point out the above to say that if whites got the same considerations that blacks get (nationally) when killed being unarmed more whites would give a fuck about police brutality and excessive use of force (I really hate the "I feared for my safety, qualified immunity" bullshit). Which many will take as whites being racist, but it's more of "if it isn't effecting me, I don't really care" and that's just sadly, a HUMAN quality (there were no large scale black movement to come to the Kelly Thomas case for instance - which is one of the most egregious unarmed deaths by Police). Please debate me on this one. Again, this "systemic" racism is most heavily prevalent in majority black controlled cities. Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, etc. with black Chief of Polices, etc. Of course, there are places like NYC that are abysmal with openly racist policies like stop and frisk (but they are supposed to be enlightened progressive northerners....imagine the outrage if stop and frisk was MO in Mobile, Shreveport, Jacksonville, etc.). The point being that yes, there is a major moral and political crisis of the lack of 1) police accountability 2) excessive and abusive practices 3) "thin blue line" as default 4) persecution complex as America is at a time when crime rates are historically low 5) Politicians who continuously create more and more laws forcing their enforcement arm to do things that are extremely negatively perceived by the average person (but, yet, oddly, keep voting for the same politicians - I'm going to name this paradox after myself, I think.). Instead of framing the issue as solely a black one, you should frame the issue as an American one, because as Americans, we're all impacted by these abuses. You're also going to be a lot more successful if you actually care about changing shit, framing the issue this way. Why do you think black people are acutely aware of these problems and doing whatever they can to address them and white people are waiting to be convinced they're worth taking action immediately on? Are you always so thinly veiled. Everyone knows your view, you don't have to be so coy. I get it - whitey is racist, there's no other explanation. Notice, by the way, that none of what I say is actually addressed. It's just repeating the mantra. No matter how many times people repeat that's my argument it doesn't make it my argument. For people arguing others need to pay more attention to their arguments and not the ones they've manifested you guys seem to be doing a pretty shitty job. What did you want me to address? Notice you didn't actually answer the question, just continued the "everything is blame racist whitey's" mantra that's not my argument.
Ok, let me answer it then. Black people are more acutely aware of these problems because they have a higher percentage of people in lower socioeconomic rungs, which is correlated to higher incidences of police abuse and civil rights violations. Even in majority black cities, with black mayors, and black Chiefs of Police, the same holds. You ask why?
1) Crime rates are higher in lower socioeconomic areas
2) There is less recourse for poor people to redress their grievances
2 ties into use of force and qualified immunity. Rich people can afford really good lawyers and often have political connections. They're likely to throw a cop under the bus because you don't mean as much as the rich guy. The poor guy doesn't have this advantage, and thus, the cop is much more highly valued. In a system without competition, the poor guy is screwed. It just so happens that blacks have one of the highest percentages living in poverty. Now, we can address the reasons why, but I suspect, like this issue, you're going to frame it from racism mostly.
Also, I'm awaiting your reply of - No, it's mostly racism, which will be odd when addressing cities like Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, etc.
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On September 27 2017 11:48 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2017 11:33 GreenHorizons wrote:On September 27 2017 11:29 Wegandi wrote:On September 27 2017 11:22 GreenHorizons wrote:On September 27 2017 10:52 Wegandi wrote:On September 27 2017 04:37 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 04:21 Mohdoo wrote:On September 27 2017 03:48 xDaunt wrote:On September 27 2017 03:40 Mohdoo wrote:On September 27 2017 03:38 xDaunt wrote:
[quote]
I don't think that there are meaningful grounds to distinguish between the message and the action. The bottom line is that Kaepernick is intentionally condemning and showing disrespect for the country. That's not going to rub people the right way. In your eyes, is there to say what he is saying in a respectful way? There are a couple layers to peel here. First, using the national anthem to protest the country in any way is a bad idea for the reasons that Donald Trump showed this weekend (like I discussed yesterday). It's too easy to have your cause turned (fairly or not) into a referendum on your patriotism (regardless of the justness of your cause). Second, and like all of the conservative posters have been saying til they have been blue in the face, framing the issue in terms of the country being racist is only going to piss people off and turn them against you. The better way to approach the issue is to frame it as a race neutral issue along the lines of "Police brutality is a problem in this country" or "Inner city families are broken and need help." Amazing things will happen when you stop calling whitey racist. So you are saying that blacks framing these issues as black issues rather than "everyone issues", they lose support from whites? This is in reply to xD, using your post. Whites weren't going to do anything about it. Hispanics were only worried about deportation. Blacks had to be the voice to bring some of these issues up. Only when they did, did we see more PoC, including whites, speaking out on police brutality and racial inequality. Taking race out of it doesn't drive home the fact of what is really going on. It's hiding the true issue at hand behind a fog. By bringing race into this, more people are inclined to speak up in support for the cause. The civil rights movement was about blacks and that got a lot of people on board to get laws enacted that serves everyone equally (or it should). Why is now different? Take the black man's plight in America and use it to forward change for all. The LGBT community is doing it (sometimes wrongly) and they are getting their rights increased slowly but surely. People bring in race because it's an effective means to get things heard and things done. Because you are uncomfortable with it, is not my nor anyone else's problems. It is your own. Whites aren't going to do anything about it because police brutality against whites (the majority of cases) aren't reported and if they are tend to go away quite fast (talk to the average white person - they're totally ignorant about stuff like Kelly Thomas, James Boyd, etc.). There's no national outrage when a policeman kills unarmed white people. Most of the white people killed are poor, have a mental illness, or "were sassy" with the states Gendarmes. Funny enough, if you look at the majority of cases involving blacks the same characteristics show up. I brought it up before, but this is much more a socioeconomic concern than a race concern. Blacks make up 13% of the population and are 30% of officer involved shootings. That is a problem, definitely, but it's being blown far out of proportion (as if, as one poster earlier alluded to - white people never experience the same civil rights violations from police as blacks...). The hyperbole is out of control, fueled by a media who uses these events for publicity and viewership. In addition, other areas of civil rights violations aren't out of the statistical norms (e.g. asset forfeiture, abuse, 4th amendment violations, etc.), but some are such as drug incarceration statistics. I point out the above to say that if whites got the same considerations that blacks get (nationally) when killed being unarmed more whites would give a fuck about police brutality and excessive use of force (I really hate the "I feared for my safety, qualified immunity" bullshit). Which many will take as whites being racist, but it's more of "if it isn't effecting me, I don't really care" and that's just sadly, a HUMAN quality (there were no large scale black movement to come to the Kelly Thomas case for instance - which is one of the most egregious unarmed deaths by Police). Please debate me on this one. Again, this "systemic" racism is most heavily prevalent in majority black controlled cities. Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, etc. with black Chief of Polices, etc. Of course, there are places like NYC that are abysmal with openly racist policies like stop and frisk (but they are supposed to be enlightened progressive northerners....imagine the outrage if stop and frisk was MO in Mobile, Shreveport, Jacksonville, etc.). The point being that yes, there is a major moral and political crisis of the lack of 1) police accountability 2) excessive and abusive practices 3) "thin blue line" as default 4) persecution complex as America is at a time when crime rates are historically low 5) Politicians who continuously create more and more laws forcing their enforcement arm to do things that are extremely negatively perceived by the average person (but, yet, oddly, keep voting for the same politicians - I'm going to name this paradox after myself, I think.). Instead of framing the issue as solely a black one, you should frame the issue as an American one, because as Americans, we're all impacted by these abuses. You're also going to be a lot more successful if you actually care about changing shit, framing the issue this way. Why do you think black people are acutely aware of these problems and doing whatever they can to address them and white people are waiting to be convinced they're worth taking action immediately on? Are you always so thinly veiled. Everyone knows your view, you don't have to be so coy. I get it - whitey is racist, there's no other explanation. Notice, by the way, that none of what I say is actually addressed. It's just repeating the mantra. No matter how many times people repeat that's my argument it doesn't make it my argument. For people arguing others need to pay more attention to their arguments and not the ones they've manifested you guys seem to be doing a pretty shitty job. What did you want me to address? Notice you didn't actually answer the question, just continued the "everything is blame racist whitey's" mantra that's not my argument. Ok, let me answer it then. Black people are more acutely aware of these problems because they have a higher percentage of people in lower socioeconomic rungs, which is correlated to higher incidences of police abuse and civil rights violations. Even in majority black cities, with black mayors, and black Chiefs of Police, the same holds. You ask why? 1) Crime rates are higher in lower socioeconomic areas 2) There is less recourse for poor people to redress their grievances 2 ties into use of force and qualified immunity. Rich people can afford really good lawyers and often have political connections. They're likely to throw a cop under the bus because you don't mean as much as the rich guy. The poor guy doesn't have this advantage, and thus, the cop is much more highly valued. In a system without competition, the poor guy is screwed. It just so happens that blacks have one of the highest percentages living in poverty. Now, we can address the reasons why, but I suspect, like this issue, you're going to frame it from racism mostly. Also, I'm awaiting your reply of - No, it's mostly racism, which will be odd when addressing cities like Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, etc.
You seem to be under some completely false notion that black people can't perpetrate racism and/or perpetuate white supremacy policies against other black people (or themselves)?
Do I have to explain why that's obviously wrong?
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On September 27 2017 11:45 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2017 11:38 Danglars wrote:On September 27 2017 11:03 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 10:38 Danglars wrote:On September 27 2017 09:39 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 09:33 Danglars wrote:On September 27 2017 09:16 Gorsameth wrote:On September 27 2017 09:13 Danglars wrote:On September 27 2017 08:33 Falling wrote:Huh. That actually makes a lot of sense. I was discussing this in real life and we were all wondering why it was such a big deal as kneeling really didn't seem the most disrespectful thing in the world... like maybe it related to a QB surrendering first before getting tackled? But in most contexts, kneeling is actually quite respectful. Seems like a fair way to protest in my opinion. He paired it with explicitly divisive statements on the flag. “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder. Then he had his police=pigs socks and Che Guevara shirt. I don't care what this new round of players thinks, because Trump has certainly thrown his hat into the ring. It started with an overtly political stance and it was all about what the flag symbolized. Why should a man respect a country that does not respect him as a person in the same manner as any other because of the color of his skin? You presume agreement with a number of things on that question. How about confirming that he left very little room for interpretation on what the protest was about. Then maybe you can move on to honest questions with a basis in shared reality. Kaep said he was not standing for the anthem because he was protesting police brutality. He has since confirmed that multiple times. Over and over. The flag and anthem are part and parcel of one another. His reason has not changed. You decided to add more to it or obfuscate his reason with your own to find outrage. I directly quoted him. Like he literally said that and people heard he said that and responded to him saying that. Either address with actual quotes and dates what changed, or you're just ignoring and washing over it. Because you're saying his reason has not changed without putting that in context of what I just quoted. His whole reason to protest was to bring awareness to police brutality. That is his reason. That has not changed. That you continue to be incensed over this makes me question if you actually understand the reason behind the protest. Take the flag out of the picture, it's clouding your reasoning skills. The flag stands for justice for all and freedom and he's protesting that blacks in America are not receiving it. So why support it? Again, he is protesting police brutality by kneeling during the anthem. The flag and anthem are the vehicle to his protest, not what he is actually protesting. Same with how the bridge in Selma is the vehicle and not the object of the protest. If we take what he said out of the picture, he makes a lot more sense. So how about we actually acknowledge what he said, or tell me what changed after he said that, and proceed. I'm not really into debating your perceptions ungrounded in quotes and timelines. He explicitly mentioned the flag and what the country stood for. I see no reason for you to put words in his mouth and not bring him in his own words to the table. How hard is it to see he's saying that he's saying the same thing we've been saying for 100+ years in a million ways? He's saying that flag represents a promise that remains unfulfilled. In reverence to what it symbolizes and in protest of those under it not upholding the promise, he's kneeling. Keep in mind the same people complaining about this "disrespect of the flag" ignored that it happened on practically every broadcast and every 4th of July, with ACTUAL VIOLATIONS OF FLAG CODE. It's also why we know the "law and justice" line is bunk. There are actual flag laws being broken regularly and they don't give a rats ass, but an uppity "ungrateful" black does it and everyone loses their mind. Now some people understand it very superficially and legitimately see a disrespecting of the flag, but they are actually wrong, and ignorant. That's not an insult, it's a statement of fact. We only have to entertain the person claiming 2+2=5 for so long before we can appropriately just note their wrongness and move on.
ZerOCoolSC2 said police brutality in the abstract, which wasn't present from the start. He went large. People heard it and responded to it. Flag country. What they stood for. Hmm I wonder where all this backlash from patriotic Americans came from? People who don't think military displays and ads are overtly political (for better or for worse).
Definitely food for thought in this forum. Because several posters found it convenient to act like this knee bit is the whole story, they glazed over (some continue to glaze over) his statement that he originally made to describe his actions.
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On September 27 2017 11:52 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2017 11:45 GreenHorizons wrote:On September 27 2017 11:38 Danglars wrote:On September 27 2017 11:03 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 10:38 Danglars wrote:On September 27 2017 09:39 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 09:33 Danglars wrote:On September 27 2017 09:16 Gorsameth wrote:On September 27 2017 09:13 Danglars wrote:On September 27 2017 08:33 Falling wrote:
[quote]
Huh. That actually makes a lot of sense. I was discussing this in real life and we were all wondering why it was such a big deal as kneeling really didn't seem the most disrespectful thing in the world... like maybe it related to a QB surrendering first before getting tackled? But in most contexts, kneeling is actually quite respectful. Seems like a fair way to protest in my opinion. He paired it with explicitly divisive statements on the flag. “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder. Then he had his police=pigs socks and Che Guevara shirt. I don't care what this new round of players thinks, because Trump has certainly thrown his hat into the ring. It started with an overtly political stance and it was all about what the flag symbolized. Why should a man respect a country that does not respect him as a person in the same manner as any other because of the color of his skin? You presume agreement with a number of things on that question. How about confirming that he left very little room for interpretation on what the protest was about. Then maybe you can move on to honest questions with a basis in shared reality. Kaep said he was not standing for the anthem because he was protesting police brutality. He has since confirmed that multiple times. Over and over. The flag and anthem are part and parcel of one another. His reason has not changed. You decided to add more to it or obfuscate his reason with your own to find outrage. I directly quoted him. Like he literally said that and people heard he said that and responded to him saying that. Either address with actual quotes and dates what changed, or you're just ignoring and washing over it. Because you're saying his reason has not changed without putting that in context of what I just quoted. His whole reason to protest was to bring awareness to police brutality. That is his reason. That has not changed. That you continue to be incensed over this makes me question if you actually understand the reason behind the protest. Take the flag out of the picture, it's clouding your reasoning skills. The flag stands for justice for all and freedom and he's protesting that blacks in America are not receiving it. So why support it? Again, he is protesting police brutality by kneeling during the anthem. The flag and anthem are the vehicle to his protest, not what he is actually protesting. Same with how the bridge in Selma is the vehicle and not the object of the protest. If we take what he said out of the picture, he makes a lot more sense. So how about we actually acknowledge what he said, or tell me what changed after he said that, and proceed. I'm not really into debating your perceptions ungrounded in quotes and timelines. He explicitly mentioned the flag and what the country stood for. I see no reason for you to put words in his mouth and not bring him in his own words to the table. How hard is it to see he's saying that he's saying the same thing we've been saying for 100+ years in a million ways? He's saying that flag represents a promise that remains unfulfilled. In reverence to what it symbolizes and in protest of those under it not upholding the promise, he's kneeling. Keep in mind the same people complaining about this "disrespect of the flag" ignored that it happened on practically every broadcast and every 4th of July, with ACTUAL VIOLATIONS OF FLAG CODE. It's also why we know the "law and justice" line is bunk. There are actual flag laws being broken regularly and they don't give a rats ass, but an uppity "ungrateful" black does it and everyone loses their mind. Now some people understand it very superficially and legitimately see a disrespecting of the flag, but they are actually wrong, and ignorant. That's not an insult, it's a statement of fact. We only have to entertain the person claiming 2+2=5 for so long before we can appropriately just note their wrongness and move on. ZerOCoolSC2 said police brutality in the abstract, which wasn't present from the start. He went large. People heard it and responded to it. Flag country. What they stood for. Hmm I wonder where all this backlash from patriotic Americans came from? People who don't think military displays and ads are overtly political (for better or for worse). Definitely food for thought in this forum. Because several posters found it convenient to act like this knee bit is the whole story, they glazed over (some continue to glaze over) his statement that he originally made to describe his actions.
Thinking something doesn't make it a legitimate perspective. People think the earth is flat, and they are wrong.
Some people insist this is about disrespecting a flag and military displays and flag worship aren't overtly political, they are wrong. It's not complicated.
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On September 27 2017 11:36 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2017 11:27 Wegandi wrote:On September 27 2017 11:20 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 11:12 Wegandi wrote:On September 27 2017 11:03 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 10:38 Danglars wrote:On September 27 2017 09:39 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 09:33 Danglars wrote:On September 27 2017 09:16 Gorsameth wrote:On September 27 2017 09:13 Danglars wrote:
[quote]
He paired it with explicitly divisive statements on the flag.
[quote]
Then he had his police=pigs socks and Che Guevara shirt. I don't care what this new round of players thinks, because Trump has certainly thrown his hat into the ring. It started with an overtly political stance and it was all about what the flag symbolized. Why should a man respect a country that does not respect him as a person in the same manner as any other because of the color of his skin? You presume agreement with a number of things on that question. How about confirming that he left very little room for interpretation on what the protest was about. Then maybe you can move on to honest questions with a basis in shared reality. Kaep said he was not standing for the anthem because he was protesting police brutality. He has since confirmed that multiple times. Over and over. The flag and anthem are part and parcel of one another. His reason has not changed. You decided to add more to it or obfuscate his reason with your own to find outrage. I directly quoted him. Like he literally said that and people heard he said that and responded to him saying that. Either address with actual quotes and dates what changed, or you're just ignoring and washing over it. Because you're saying his reason has not changed without putting that in context of what I just quoted. His whole reason to protest was to bring awareness to police brutality. That is his reason. That has not changed. That you continue to be incensed over this makes me question if you actually understand the reason behind the protest. Take the flag out of the picture, it's clouding your reasoning skills. The flag stands for justice for all and freedom and he's protesting that blacks in America are not receiving it. So why support it? Again, he is protesting police brutality by kneeling during the anthem. The flag and anthem are the vehicle to his protest, not what he is actually protesting. Same with how the bridge in Selma is the vehicle and not the object of the protest. What does the flag/anthem have to do with the police? As for the flag itself, everyone has their own notion of what it stands for. Attempting to create a consensus on something so divisive that you stake the movement to, is fucking idiotic. You've obfuscated the agenda item before you even begin, then you wonder/complain why people are viewing the acts in different ways than you are? Are people really this obtuse? Protest outside of police buildings, refuse to play in one game, etc. There are many vehicles to protest. Deciding to use such a divisive and personal device such as the flag and anthem to use as the vehicle is just dumb, and instead of seeing that, there is a ton of doubling down. Continue this lose/lose proposition though if it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside even if nothing ever changes though. (Shouldn't you be trying to change peoples opinions who have different views than you do, and thus, the strategy employed should focus on them, not on you, or anyone else who all ready shares the view you're trying to make a majority opinion? Don't worry, I have the same problems with my own movements doing this, and hell I do it from time to time, but I try not to.) That's the thing. It was never as big a deal as it is now. The focus started on police brutality and it has remained that way. When it got really moving and a lot of actors started voicing their two cents, that's when the message got fuzzy. Then you get Fox and friends claiming it was about the anthem/flag and people stopped seeing the real reason the protest began. Notice how we stopped talking about police brutality and these last dozen pages have been about the flag and if someone is patriotic or not? That's what happened. Everyone got sidetracked and it's harder than ever to get the topic back on the reason for the protest. Leave the flag/anthem out of it. It's a vehicle. It's not representative of the protest no more than a bus, a rainbow, or a bridge. People are looking for ways to change the topic of discussion as to not face the real issue at hand, which is police brutality and racial inequality. Remove the flag from any further argument, and we can discuss this with sense and reason. Otherwise, we'll never get anywhere. You don't understand. You've failed to place yourselves in the shoes of people not like you, who may not see the world in the same way you do, and instead of doing so - you just say they're racist and there's nothing you can do, but you can reach many of these people (I know, my folks are these people), by not being a stupid dolt and using a symbol, that you even say doesn't matter. Why use the damn symbol then? It's counterproductive. That's reality. You can fight reality, or you can acknowledge it. That's up to you. All I see is a bunch of people doubling down and alienating a lot of people that aren't strictly on either side. Again, it's that pesky - the flag/anthem means a bunch of different shit to a bunch of different people. I've placed myself in their shoes and I can see what they are saying. I'm a veteran as well, so I have my reservations about certain things. But protesting the flag/anthem to bring awareness to something isn't one of them. I'm a black male in America first and foremost. I have a lot of poor friends and people who support Trump in my daily life that I engage with. Some are veterans as well and don't like the protesting. I see what they are saying but it doesn't mean I have to acquiesce to their wanting to not talk about it. When they don't want to talk about it, that's when you continue to talk about it. If you give in to waiting for the time to be right for them to talk about it, you're essentially defeated. I didn't tell Kaep to use the flag/anthem to protest. I get why he did it, but I didn't tell him to. If people in the US didn't get such a hard on for blind patriotism and national pride, then I think we'd be a lot better off.
I'm not saying don't talk about it, I'm saying be smart, and that goes for what you choose if any of your symbology (don't choose something dumb like the flag/anthem that has a million different interpretations/meaning) and how you frame the conversation to people outside your ideological companions. It's like you just will not ever use examples of police abuses against white people to try and get white people to reform the system. If you only ever use black people and make the argument that this happens to mostly/all black people, it's just human nature, to say, well that's not my problem because it doesn't affect me (and that crosses racial boundaries - it's just human nature). If you can get them to see, yes, it could happen to you, and it is wrong, they're likelier to effect the change you want. If all you want to do is pound white privilege, supremacy, and whatever else is coming out of sociology academia, continue doing the same thing you're doing. We'll be talking about the same shit a decade now with that strategy because it's a failure before it even starts. Police reform needs more Sun Tzu and less 5 year-old I feel good about myself! Yay!
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On September 27 2017 11:50 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2017 11:48 Wegandi wrote:On September 27 2017 11:33 GreenHorizons wrote:On September 27 2017 11:29 Wegandi wrote:On September 27 2017 11:22 GreenHorizons wrote:On September 27 2017 10:52 Wegandi wrote:On September 27 2017 04:37 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 04:21 Mohdoo wrote:On September 27 2017 03:48 xDaunt wrote:On September 27 2017 03:40 Mohdoo wrote:
[quote]
In your eyes, is there to say what he is saying in a respectful way? There are a couple layers to peel here. First, using the national anthem to protest the country in any way is a bad idea for the reasons that Donald Trump showed this weekend (like I discussed yesterday). It's too easy to have your cause turned (fairly or not) into a referendum on your patriotism (regardless of the justness of your cause). Second, and like all of the conservative posters have been saying til they have been blue in the face, framing the issue in terms of the country being racist is only going to piss people off and turn them against you. The better way to approach the issue is to frame it as a race neutral issue along the lines of "Police brutality is a problem in this country" or "Inner city families are broken and need help." Amazing things will happen when you stop calling whitey racist. So you are saying that blacks framing these issues as black issues rather than "everyone issues", they lose support from whites? This is in reply to xD, using your post. Whites weren't going to do anything about it. Hispanics were only worried about deportation. Blacks had to be the voice to bring some of these issues up. Only when they did, did we see more PoC, including whites, speaking out on police brutality and racial inequality. Taking race out of it doesn't drive home the fact of what is really going on. It's hiding the true issue at hand behind a fog. By bringing race into this, more people are inclined to speak up in support for the cause. The civil rights movement was about blacks and that got a lot of people on board to get laws enacted that serves everyone equally (or it should). Why is now different? Take the black man's plight in America and use it to forward change for all. The LGBT community is doing it (sometimes wrongly) and they are getting their rights increased slowly but surely. People bring in race because it's an effective means to get things heard and things done. Because you are uncomfortable with it, is not my nor anyone else's problems. It is your own. Whites aren't going to do anything about it because police brutality against whites (the majority of cases) aren't reported and if they are tend to go away quite fast (talk to the average white person - they're totally ignorant about stuff like Kelly Thomas, James Boyd, etc.). There's no national outrage when a policeman kills unarmed white people. Most of the white people killed are poor, have a mental illness, or "were sassy" with the states Gendarmes. Funny enough, if you look at the majority of cases involving blacks the same characteristics show up. I brought it up before, but this is much more a socioeconomic concern than a race concern. Blacks make up 13% of the population and are 30% of officer involved shootings. That is a problem, definitely, but it's being blown far out of proportion (as if, as one poster earlier alluded to - white people never experience the same civil rights violations from police as blacks...). The hyperbole is out of control, fueled by a media who uses these events for publicity and viewership. In addition, other areas of civil rights violations aren't out of the statistical norms (e.g. asset forfeiture, abuse, 4th amendment violations, etc.), but some are such as drug incarceration statistics. I point out the above to say that if whites got the same considerations that blacks get (nationally) when killed being unarmed more whites would give a fuck about police brutality and excessive use of force (I really hate the "I feared for my safety, qualified immunity" bullshit). Which many will take as whites being racist, but it's more of "if it isn't effecting me, I don't really care" and that's just sadly, a HUMAN quality (there were no large scale black movement to come to the Kelly Thomas case for instance - which is one of the most egregious unarmed deaths by Police). Please debate me on this one. Again, this "systemic" racism is most heavily prevalent in majority black controlled cities. Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, etc. with black Chief of Polices, etc. Of course, there are places like NYC that are abysmal with openly racist policies like stop and frisk (but they are supposed to be enlightened progressive northerners....imagine the outrage if stop and frisk was MO in Mobile, Shreveport, Jacksonville, etc.). The point being that yes, there is a major moral and political crisis of the lack of 1) police accountability 2) excessive and abusive practices 3) "thin blue line" as default 4) persecution complex as America is at a time when crime rates are historically low 5) Politicians who continuously create more and more laws forcing their enforcement arm to do things that are extremely negatively perceived by the average person (but, yet, oddly, keep voting for the same politicians - I'm going to name this paradox after myself, I think.). Instead of framing the issue as solely a black one, you should frame the issue as an American one, because as Americans, we're all impacted by these abuses. You're also going to be a lot more successful if you actually care about changing shit, framing the issue this way. Why do you think black people are acutely aware of these problems and doing whatever they can to address them and white people are waiting to be convinced they're worth taking action immediately on? Are you always so thinly veiled. Everyone knows your view, you don't have to be so coy. I get it - whitey is racist, there's no other explanation. Notice, by the way, that none of what I say is actually addressed. It's just repeating the mantra. No matter how many times people repeat that's my argument it doesn't make it my argument. For people arguing others need to pay more attention to their arguments and not the ones they've manifested you guys seem to be doing a pretty shitty job. What did you want me to address? Notice you didn't actually answer the question, just continued the "everything is blame racist whitey's" mantra that's not my argument. Ok, let me answer it then. Black people are more acutely aware of these problems because they have a higher percentage of people in lower socioeconomic rungs, which is correlated to higher incidences of police abuse and civil rights violations. Even in majority black cities, with black mayors, and black Chiefs of Police, the same holds. You ask why? 1) Crime rates are higher in lower socioeconomic areas 2) There is less recourse for poor people to redress their grievances 2 ties into use of force and qualified immunity. Rich people can afford really good lawyers and often have political connections. They're likely to throw a cop under the bus because you don't mean as much as the rich guy. The poor guy doesn't have this advantage, and thus, the cop is much more highly valued. In a system without competition, the poor guy is screwed. It just so happens that blacks have one of the highest percentages living in poverty. Now, we can address the reasons why, but I suspect, like this issue, you're going to frame it from racism mostly. Also, I'm awaiting your reply of - No, it's mostly racism, which will be odd when addressing cities like Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, etc. You seem to be under some completely false notion that black people can't perpetrate racism and/or perpetuate white supremacy policies against other black people (or themselves)? Do I have to explain why that's obviously wrong?
Is there anything that isn't wholly/mostly white supremacy to you?
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On September 27 2017 11:57 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2017 11:50 GreenHorizons wrote:On September 27 2017 11:48 Wegandi wrote:On September 27 2017 11:33 GreenHorizons wrote:On September 27 2017 11:29 Wegandi wrote:On September 27 2017 11:22 GreenHorizons wrote:On September 27 2017 10:52 Wegandi wrote:On September 27 2017 04:37 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 04:21 Mohdoo wrote:On September 27 2017 03:48 xDaunt wrote:
[quote]
There are a couple layers to peel here. First, using the national anthem to protest the country in any way is a bad idea for the reasons that Donald Trump showed this weekend (like I discussed yesterday). It's too easy to have your cause turned (fairly or not) into a referendum on your patriotism (regardless of the justness of your cause). Second, and like all of the conservative posters have been saying til they have been blue in the face, framing the issue in terms of the country being racist is only going to piss people off and turn them against you. The better way to approach the issue is to frame it as a race neutral issue along the lines of "Police brutality is a problem in this country" or "Inner city families are broken and need help." Amazing things will happen when you stop calling whitey racist. So you are saying that blacks framing these issues as black issues rather than "everyone issues", they lose support from whites? This is in reply to xD, using your post. Whites weren't going to do anything about it. Hispanics were only worried about deportation. Blacks had to be the voice to bring some of these issues up. Only when they did, did we see more PoC, including whites, speaking out on police brutality and racial inequality. Taking race out of it doesn't drive home the fact of what is really going on. It's hiding the true issue at hand behind a fog. By bringing race into this, more people are inclined to speak up in support for the cause. The civil rights movement was about blacks and that got a lot of people on board to get laws enacted that serves everyone equally (or it should). Why is now different? Take the black man's plight in America and use it to forward change for all. The LGBT community is doing it (sometimes wrongly) and they are getting their rights increased slowly but surely. People bring in race because it's an effective means to get things heard and things done. Because you are uncomfortable with it, is not my nor anyone else's problems. It is your own. Whites aren't going to do anything about it because police brutality against whites (the majority of cases) aren't reported and if they are tend to go away quite fast (talk to the average white person - they're totally ignorant about stuff like Kelly Thomas, James Boyd, etc.). There's no national outrage when a policeman kills unarmed white people. Most of the white people killed are poor, have a mental illness, or "were sassy" with the states Gendarmes. Funny enough, if you look at the majority of cases involving blacks the same characteristics show up. I brought it up before, but this is much more a socioeconomic concern than a race concern. Blacks make up 13% of the population and are 30% of officer involved shootings. That is a problem, definitely, but it's being blown far out of proportion (as if, as one poster earlier alluded to - white people never experience the same civil rights violations from police as blacks...). The hyperbole is out of control, fueled by a media who uses these events for publicity and viewership. In addition, other areas of civil rights violations aren't out of the statistical norms (e.g. asset forfeiture, abuse, 4th amendment violations, etc.), but some are such as drug incarceration statistics. I point out the above to say that if whites got the same considerations that blacks get (nationally) when killed being unarmed more whites would give a fuck about police brutality and excessive use of force (I really hate the "I feared for my safety, qualified immunity" bullshit). Which many will take as whites being racist, but it's more of "if it isn't effecting me, I don't really care" and that's just sadly, a HUMAN quality (there were no large scale black movement to come to the Kelly Thomas case for instance - which is one of the most egregious unarmed deaths by Police). Please debate me on this one. Again, this "systemic" racism is most heavily prevalent in majority black controlled cities. Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, etc. with black Chief of Polices, etc. Of course, there are places like NYC that are abysmal with openly racist policies like stop and frisk (but they are supposed to be enlightened progressive northerners....imagine the outrage if stop and frisk was MO in Mobile, Shreveport, Jacksonville, etc.). The point being that yes, there is a major moral and political crisis of the lack of 1) police accountability 2) excessive and abusive practices 3) "thin blue line" as default 4) persecution complex as America is at a time when crime rates are historically low 5) Politicians who continuously create more and more laws forcing their enforcement arm to do things that are extremely negatively perceived by the average person (but, yet, oddly, keep voting for the same politicians - I'm going to name this paradox after myself, I think.). Instead of framing the issue as solely a black one, you should frame the issue as an American one, because as Americans, we're all impacted by these abuses. You're also going to be a lot more successful if you actually care about changing shit, framing the issue this way. Why do you think black people are acutely aware of these problems and doing whatever they can to address them and white people are waiting to be convinced they're worth taking action immediately on? Are you always so thinly veiled. Everyone knows your view, you don't have to be so coy. I get it - whitey is racist, there's no other explanation. Notice, by the way, that none of what I say is actually addressed. It's just repeating the mantra. No matter how many times people repeat that's my argument it doesn't make it my argument. For people arguing others need to pay more attention to their arguments and not the ones they've manifested you guys seem to be doing a pretty shitty job. What did you want me to address? Notice you didn't actually answer the question, just continued the "everything is blame racist whitey's" mantra that's not my argument. Ok, let me answer it then. Black people are more acutely aware of these problems because they have a higher percentage of people in lower socioeconomic rungs, which is correlated to higher incidences of police abuse and civil rights violations. Even in majority black cities, with black mayors, and black Chiefs of Police, the same holds. You ask why? 1) Crime rates are higher in lower socioeconomic areas 2) There is less recourse for poor people to redress their grievances 2 ties into use of force and qualified immunity. Rich people can afford really good lawyers and often have political connections. They're likely to throw a cop under the bus because you don't mean as much as the rich guy. The poor guy doesn't have this advantage, and thus, the cop is much more highly valued. In a system without competition, the poor guy is screwed. It just so happens that blacks have one of the highest percentages living in poverty. Now, we can address the reasons why, but I suspect, like this issue, you're going to frame it from racism mostly. Also, I'm awaiting your reply of - No, it's mostly racism, which will be odd when addressing cities like Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, etc. You seem to be under some completely false notion that black people can't perpetrate racism and/or perpetuate white supremacy policies against other black people (or themselves)? Do I have to explain why that's obviously wrong? Is there anything that isn't wholly/mostly white supremacy to you?
Yes. Care to answer my question?
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On September 27 2017 11:55 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2017 11:52 Danglars wrote:On September 27 2017 11:45 GreenHorizons wrote:On September 27 2017 11:38 Danglars wrote:On September 27 2017 11:03 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 10:38 Danglars wrote:On September 27 2017 09:39 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 09:33 Danglars wrote:On September 27 2017 09:16 Gorsameth wrote:On September 27 2017 09:13 Danglars wrote:
[quote]
He paired it with explicitly divisive statements on the flag.
[quote]
Then he had his police=pigs socks and Che Guevara shirt. I don't care what this new round of players thinks, because Trump has certainly thrown his hat into the ring. It started with an overtly political stance and it was all about what the flag symbolized. Why should a man respect a country that does not respect him as a person in the same manner as any other because of the color of his skin? You presume agreement with a number of things on that question. How about confirming that he left very little room for interpretation on what the protest was about. Then maybe you can move on to honest questions with a basis in shared reality. Kaep said he was not standing for the anthem because he was protesting police brutality. He has since confirmed that multiple times. Over and over. The flag and anthem are part and parcel of one another. His reason has not changed. You decided to add more to it or obfuscate his reason with your own to find outrage. I directly quoted him. Like he literally said that and people heard he said that and responded to him saying that. Either address with actual quotes and dates what changed, or you're just ignoring and washing over it. Because you're saying his reason has not changed without putting that in context of what I just quoted. His whole reason to protest was to bring awareness to police brutality. That is his reason. That has not changed. That you continue to be incensed over this makes me question if you actually understand the reason behind the protest. Take the flag out of the picture, it's clouding your reasoning skills. The flag stands for justice for all and freedom and he's protesting that blacks in America are not receiving it. So why support it? Again, he is protesting police brutality by kneeling during the anthem. The flag and anthem are the vehicle to his protest, not what he is actually protesting. Same with how the bridge in Selma is the vehicle and not the object of the protest. If we take what he said out of the picture, he makes a lot more sense. So how about we actually acknowledge what he said, or tell me what changed after he said that, and proceed. I'm not really into debating your perceptions ungrounded in quotes and timelines. He explicitly mentioned the flag and what the country stood for. I see no reason for you to put words in his mouth and not bring him in his own words to the table. How hard is it to see he's saying that he's saying the same thing we've been saying for 100+ years in a million ways? He's saying that flag represents a promise that remains unfulfilled. In reverence to what it symbolizes and in protest of those under it not upholding the promise, he's kneeling. Keep in mind the same people complaining about this "disrespect of the flag" ignored that it happened on practically every broadcast and every 4th of July, with ACTUAL VIOLATIONS OF FLAG CODE. It's also why we know the "law and justice" line is bunk. There are actual flag laws being broken regularly and they don't give a rats ass, but an uppity "ungrateful" black does it and everyone loses their mind. Now some people understand it very superficially and legitimately see a disrespecting of the flag, but they are actually wrong, and ignorant. That's not an insult, it's a statement of fact. We only have to entertain the person claiming 2+2=5 for so long before we can appropriately just note their wrongness and move on. ZerOCoolSC2 said police brutality in the abstract, which wasn't present from the start. He went large. People heard it and responded to it. Flag country. What they stood for. Hmm I wonder where all this backlash from patriotic Americans came from? People who don't think military displays and ads are overtly political (for better or for worse). Definitely food for thought in this forum. Because several posters found it convenient to act like this knee bit is the whole story, they glazed over (some continue to glaze over) his statement that he originally made to describe his actions. Thinking something doesn't make it a legitimate perspective. People think the earth is flat, and they are wrong. Some people insist this is about disrespecting a flag and military displays and flag worship aren't overtly political, they are wrong. It's not complicated.
Yeah. When I'm confronted with your white-blaming and racializing of every issue, I'm reminded that my side also goes into some iffy territory on occasion. So I try to be patient and listen to what amounts to racial flag-earthers in this forum and random encounters in real life. They can't understand people that don't see the flag as a unifying symbol, others can't understand the resistance to "bodies in the street" #blacklivesmatter rhetoric. That's political life today, for better or for worse.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On September 27 2017 06:16 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
There's a lot to take apart here. And my wrists are starting to hurt. So I'll keep it short and to the point.
You've taken what I've said and made it about you being perceived as something you are clearly not, nor have been charged with. BLM is a race thing because it started with a racial issue (black people being killed and no charges being brought forth or convictions). It is a race thing. It cannot not be a race thing. To take the race out of it is a disservice to the cause of bringing change about. You are lessening, once again, black lives.
So it's basically about black people being unfairly killed by police - not about white, Asian, Hispanic, etc., which is also a concern? The whole idea of black lives matter frames this as a problem of race rather than a problem of police overreach. Hell, the 50s struggles was framed as one of equality rather than one of black people (in hindsight, of course) which is maybe why it actually got somewhere.
On September 27 2017 06:16 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
I don't lightly call someone a racist unless you express racist/white supremacist tendencies. It's that simple.
You don't participate in the discussion that often either. Plenty of people here and within the political sphere cry racist, fascist, white supremacist, sexist, etc., at anything that moves, a "label and dismiss" strategy. I don't know what to say about you specifically because I just haven't seen enough to make an opinion of it. But the trend is clear.
On September 27 2017 06:16 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
You're not the victim her and you cannot make yourself the victim because the words hurt your feelings.
Lol. Playing the victim and hurt feelings have nothing to do with it. I don't take idiots mouthing off seriously, and I see victim rent-seeking as a pretty pathetic craft not worth engaging in. But I can see that they are a problem in perspective. You are basically the boy who cried wolf and you're surprised no one takes "Trump is especially evil racist!!!!!" seriously.
On September 27 2017 06:16 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
I know you're not, but you're fighting the wrong fight. The term is indeed being used correctly, you just don't like it. Tough shit. People are racist. They get called racist. To be complicit when racist activity is taking place, makes you a sympathizer and agent of keeping the inequality being protested in place because it's convenient for you for it to not change. You're not racist, you just don't think it pertains to you, which makes you complicit.
Nope, the usage is opportunist. An attempt to try to latch onto old connotations to try to dismiss political opposition. There's a reason that "X is a R A C I S T" is becoming increasingly ridicule-worthy.
On September 27 2017 06:16 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
We can't talk policy because the right's policies aren't good for the country as a whole. Look at healthcare. That is as basic and easy an example and the right has no answer for it. Come up with policy that benefits all and we'll all agree, no matter the side.
I don't disagree. I don't like the right's policies very much at all. But on the meta-argument level, they just so happen to be spot on. Were the arguments of policy to be debated on their merits, the story would look different. But a broad swathe of short-sighted fools found out you could just cry "racist sexist bigot whatever else" and voila - no arguments, still results. Until people caught on, of course, and then we got to where we are now.
On September 27 2017 06:16 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
I don't want you to be in discomfort. If you are, then you have some soul searching to do as to why it makes you uncomfortable.
To make it clear: the most clear emotions I generally get out of this stupidity is annoyance and disappointment. Annoyance for how shit the "racist fascist sexist" line of thought makes the political arena, disappointment for how otherwise worthy ideas are allowed to be murdered because arguments which are worthy on their own merits are co-opted by idiots with a label fetish and a discomfort fetish. They might as well go and start disrupting political events with lewd displays for shock value; it has the same effect overall and the same appeal to a discomfort fetish.
On September 27 2017 06:16 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
I get uncomfortable when black "leaders" speak and their tone is overtly racist or prejudiced. It doesn't help their cause and makes them look petty and too willing to start a race riot. I'm for sensible discussion. What I'm not for is allowing you to stick your hand in the sand and pretending that there aren't real issues in this country because it isn't something you want to talk about right now. NOW is the time to talk about it and get it in the open, come together, and figure out a way to stay united in the face of division.
Yeah, you're right, it's time to come together and talk about it. So do it in a way that actually gets results rather than dicking around with shock value and discomfort fetish and boy-who-cried-wolf assertions about everyone you don't like. Oh, but apparently that doesn't get results somehow?
On September 27 2017 06:16 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
My spiel ended with what it did because it's the truth. You're so agitated about this being discussed and you don't have a logical or rational solution to offer up besides "sit down, be humble, and don't rock the boat."
You're probably criticizing the wrong person. I already am pretty much on board with at least the most sensible parts of what is being proposed. Sure, as someone without much of a stake in the fight, the most I'm really willing to do is cast a vote for what makes sense. But that multiplied by enough people should be enough to get results, assuming that you actually pursue those votes rather than dicking around with calling everyone a racist and trying to create shock value.
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On September 27 2017 12:02 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2017 11:57 Wegandi wrote:On September 27 2017 11:50 GreenHorizons wrote:On September 27 2017 11:48 Wegandi wrote:On September 27 2017 11:33 GreenHorizons wrote:On September 27 2017 11:29 Wegandi wrote:On September 27 2017 11:22 GreenHorizons wrote:On September 27 2017 10:52 Wegandi wrote:On September 27 2017 04:37 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 04:21 Mohdoo wrote:
[quote]
So you are saying that blacks framing these issues as black issues rather than "everyone issues", they lose support from whites?
This is in reply to xD, using your post. Whites weren't going to do anything about it. Hispanics were only worried about deportation. Blacks had to be the voice to bring some of these issues up. Only when they did, did we see more PoC, including whites, speaking out on police brutality and racial inequality. Taking race out of it doesn't drive home the fact of what is really going on. It's hiding the true issue at hand behind a fog. By bringing race into this, more people are inclined to speak up in support for the cause. The civil rights movement was about blacks and that got a lot of people on board to get laws enacted that serves everyone equally (or it should). Why is now different? Take the black man's plight in America and use it to forward change for all. The LGBT community is doing it (sometimes wrongly) and they are getting their rights increased slowly but surely. People bring in race because it's an effective means to get things heard and things done. Because you are uncomfortable with it, is not my nor anyone else's problems. It is your own. Whites aren't going to do anything about it because police brutality against whites (the majority of cases) aren't reported and if they are tend to go away quite fast (talk to the average white person - they're totally ignorant about stuff like Kelly Thomas, James Boyd, etc.). There's no national outrage when a policeman kills unarmed white people. Most of the white people killed are poor, have a mental illness, or "were sassy" with the states Gendarmes. Funny enough, if you look at the majority of cases involving blacks the same characteristics show up. I brought it up before, but this is much more a socioeconomic concern than a race concern. Blacks make up 13% of the population and are 30% of officer involved shootings. That is a problem, definitely, but it's being blown far out of proportion (as if, as one poster earlier alluded to - white people never experience the same civil rights violations from police as blacks...). The hyperbole is out of control, fueled by a media who uses these events for publicity and viewership. In addition, other areas of civil rights violations aren't out of the statistical norms (e.g. asset forfeiture, abuse, 4th amendment violations, etc.), but some are such as drug incarceration statistics. I point out the above to say that if whites got the same considerations that blacks get (nationally) when killed being unarmed more whites would give a fuck about police brutality and excessive use of force (I really hate the "I feared for my safety, qualified immunity" bullshit). Which many will take as whites being racist, but it's more of "if it isn't effecting me, I don't really care" and that's just sadly, a HUMAN quality (there were no large scale black movement to come to the Kelly Thomas case for instance - which is one of the most egregious unarmed deaths by Police). Please debate me on this one. Again, this "systemic" racism is most heavily prevalent in majority black controlled cities. Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, etc. with black Chief of Polices, etc. Of course, there are places like NYC that are abysmal with openly racist policies like stop and frisk (but they are supposed to be enlightened progressive northerners....imagine the outrage if stop and frisk was MO in Mobile, Shreveport, Jacksonville, etc.). The point being that yes, there is a major moral and political crisis of the lack of 1) police accountability 2) excessive and abusive practices 3) "thin blue line" as default 4) persecution complex as America is at a time when crime rates are historically low 5) Politicians who continuously create more and more laws forcing their enforcement arm to do things that are extremely negatively perceived by the average person (but, yet, oddly, keep voting for the same politicians - I'm going to name this paradox after myself, I think.). Instead of framing the issue as solely a black one, you should frame the issue as an American one, because as Americans, we're all impacted by these abuses. You're also going to be a lot more successful if you actually care about changing shit, framing the issue this way. Why do you think black people are acutely aware of these problems and doing whatever they can to address them and white people are waiting to be convinced they're worth taking action immediately on? Are you always so thinly veiled. Everyone knows your view, you don't have to be so coy. I get it - whitey is racist, there's no other explanation. Notice, by the way, that none of what I say is actually addressed. It's just repeating the mantra. No matter how many times people repeat that's my argument it doesn't make it my argument. For people arguing others need to pay more attention to their arguments and not the ones they've manifested you guys seem to be doing a pretty shitty job. What did you want me to address? Notice you didn't actually answer the question, just continued the "everything is blame racist whitey's" mantra that's not my argument. Ok, let me answer it then. Black people are more acutely aware of these problems because they have a higher percentage of people in lower socioeconomic rungs, which is correlated to higher incidences of police abuse and civil rights violations. Even in majority black cities, with black mayors, and black Chiefs of Police, the same holds. You ask why? 1) Crime rates are higher in lower socioeconomic areas 2) There is less recourse for poor people to redress their grievances 2 ties into use of force and qualified immunity. Rich people can afford really good lawyers and often have political connections. They're likely to throw a cop under the bus because you don't mean as much as the rich guy. The poor guy doesn't have this advantage, and thus, the cop is much more highly valued. In a system without competition, the poor guy is screwed. It just so happens that blacks have one of the highest percentages living in poverty. Now, we can address the reasons why, but I suspect, like this issue, you're going to frame it from racism mostly. Also, I'm awaiting your reply of - No, it's mostly racism, which will be odd when addressing cities like Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, etc. You seem to be under some completely false notion that black people can't perpetrate racism and/or perpetuate white supremacy policies against other black people (or themselves)? Do I have to explain why that's obviously wrong? Is there anything that isn't wholly/mostly white supremacy to you? Yes. Care to answer my question?
What was it again. I saw a sentence that should have ended with a period, but instead had a question mark. In fact, two of them, though I figured the last one was rhetorical. How about you expand on that Yes. I'm curious (really I am. I'm not being facetious).
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On September 27 2017 12:02 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2017 11:55 GreenHorizons wrote:On September 27 2017 11:52 Danglars wrote:On September 27 2017 11:45 GreenHorizons wrote:On September 27 2017 11:38 Danglars wrote:On September 27 2017 11:03 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 10:38 Danglars wrote:On September 27 2017 09:39 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 09:33 Danglars wrote:On September 27 2017 09:16 Gorsameth wrote:
[quote]
Why should a man respect a country that does not respect him as a person in the same manner as any other because of the color of his skin? You presume agreement with a number of things on that question. How about confirming that he left very little room for interpretation on what the protest was about. Then maybe you can move on to honest questions with a basis in shared reality. Kaep said he was not standing for the anthem because he was protesting police brutality. He has since confirmed that multiple times. Over and over. The flag and anthem are part and parcel of one another. His reason has not changed. You decided to add more to it or obfuscate his reason with your own to find outrage. I directly quoted him. Like he literally said that and people heard he said that and responded to him saying that. Either address with actual quotes and dates what changed, or you're just ignoring and washing over it. Because you're saying his reason has not changed without putting that in context of what I just quoted. His whole reason to protest was to bring awareness to police brutality. That is his reason. That has not changed. That you continue to be incensed over this makes me question if you actually understand the reason behind the protest. Take the flag out of the picture, it's clouding your reasoning skills. The flag stands for justice for all and freedom and he's protesting that blacks in America are not receiving it. So why support it? Again, he is protesting police brutality by kneeling during the anthem. The flag and anthem are the vehicle to his protest, not what he is actually protesting. Same with how the bridge in Selma is the vehicle and not the object of the protest. If we take what he said out of the picture, he makes a lot more sense. So how about we actually acknowledge what he said, or tell me what changed after he said that, and proceed. I'm not really into debating your perceptions ungrounded in quotes and timelines. He explicitly mentioned the flag and what the country stood for. I see no reason for you to put words in his mouth and not bring him in his own words to the table. How hard is it to see he's saying that he's saying the same thing we've been saying for 100+ years in a million ways? He's saying that flag represents a promise that remains unfulfilled. In reverence to what it symbolizes and in protest of those under it not upholding the promise, he's kneeling. Keep in mind the same people complaining about this "disrespect of the flag" ignored that it happened on practically every broadcast and every 4th of July, with ACTUAL VIOLATIONS OF FLAG CODE. It's also why we know the "law and justice" line is bunk. There are actual flag laws being broken regularly and they don't give a rats ass, but an uppity "ungrateful" black does it and everyone loses their mind. Now some people understand it very superficially and legitimately see a disrespecting of the flag, but they are actually wrong, and ignorant. That's not an insult, it's a statement of fact. We only have to entertain the person claiming 2+2=5 for so long before we can appropriately just note their wrongness and move on. ZerOCoolSC2 said police brutality in the abstract, which wasn't present from the start. He went large. People heard it and responded to it. Flag country. What they stood for. Hmm I wonder where all this backlash from patriotic Americans came from? People who don't think military displays and ads are overtly political (for better or for worse). Definitely food for thought in this forum. Because several posters found it convenient to act like this knee bit is the whole story, they glazed over (some continue to glaze over) his statement that he originally made to describe his actions. Thinking something doesn't make it a legitimate perspective. People think the earth is flat, and they are wrong. Some people insist this is about disrespecting a flag and military displays and flag worship aren't overtly political, they are wrong. It's not complicated. Yeah. When I'm confronted with your white-blaming and racializing of every issue, I'm reminded that my side also goes into some iffy territory on occasion. So I try to be patient and listen to what amounts to racial flag-earthers in this forum and random encounters in real life. They can't understand people that don't see the flag as a unifying symbol, others can't understand the resistance to "bodies in the street" #blacklivesmatter rhetoric. That's political life today, for better or for worse.
You know I blame Black people for perpetuating white supremacy policies too? Democrats, Independents, MYSELF. This whole white martyrdom act has gotten really old and has no basis in my argument.
I understand people think it's a unifying symbol. I'm saying it's always had this "that thing doesn't mean what they say it means" aspect. Not only that, but so long as it's been a part of sports it's been named as such.
They think it's unifying because they don't appreciate that there's always been people with a legitimate objection to that claim, precisely because they were intentionally excluded.
I sense in your tone you realized something recently, I hope that's something we can build on.
On September 27 2017 12:03 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2017 12:02 GreenHorizons wrote:On September 27 2017 11:57 Wegandi wrote:On September 27 2017 11:50 GreenHorizons wrote:On September 27 2017 11:48 Wegandi wrote:On September 27 2017 11:33 GreenHorizons wrote:On September 27 2017 11:29 Wegandi wrote:On September 27 2017 11:22 GreenHorizons wrote:On September 27 2017 10:52 Wegandi wrote:On September 27 2017 04:37 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
[quote]
This is in reply to xD, using your post.
Whites weren't going to do anything about it. Hispanics were only worried about deportation. Blacks had to be the voice to bring some of these issues up. Only when they did, did we see more PoC, including whites, speaking out on police brutality and racial inequality. Taking race out of it doesn't drive home the fact of what is really going on. It's hiding the true issue at hand behind a fog. By bringing race into this, more people are inclined to speak up in support for the cause. The civil rights movement was about blacks and that got a lot of people on board to get laws enacted that serves everyone equally (or it should). Why is now different? Take the black man's plight in America and use it to forward change for all. The LGBT community is doing it (sometimes wrongly) and they are getting their rights increased slowly but surely.
People bring in race because it's an effective means to get things heard and things done. Because you are uncomfortable with it, is not my nor anyone else's problems. It is your own. Whites aren't going to do anything about it because police brutality against whites (the majority of cases) aren't reported and if they are tend to go away quite fast (talk to the average white person - they're totally ignorant about stuff like Kelly Thomas, James Boyd, etc.). There's no national outrage when a policeman kills unarmed white people. Most of the white people killed are poor, have a mental illness, or "were sassy" with the states Gendarmes. Funny enough, if you look at the majority of cases involving blacks the same characteristics show up. I brought it up before, but this is much more a socioeconomic concern than a race concern. Blacks make up 13% of the population and are 30% of officer involved shootings. That is a problem, definitely, but it's being blown far out of proportion (as if, as one poster earlier alluded to - white people never experience the same civil rights violations from police as blacks...). The hyperbole is out of control, fueled by a media who uses these events for publicity and viewership. In addition, other areas of civil rights violations aren't out of the statistical norms (e.g. asset forfeiture, abuse, 4th amendment violations, etc.), but some are such as drug incarceration statistics. I point out the above to say that if whites got the same considerations that blacks get (nationally) when killed being unarmed more whites would give a fuck about police brutality and excessive use of force (I really hate the "I feared for my safety, qualified immunity" bullshit). Which many will take as whites being racist, but it's more of "if it isn't effecting me, I don't really care" and that's just sadly, a HUMAN quality (there were no large scale black movement to come to the Kelly Thomas case for instance - which is one of the most egregious unarmed deaths by Police). Please debate me on this one. Again, this "systemic" racism is most heavily prevalent in majority black controlled cities. Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, etc. with black Chief of Polices, etc. Of course, there are places like NYC that are abysmal with openly racist policies like stop and frisk (but they are supposed to be enlightened progressive northerners....imagine the outrage if stop and frisk was MO in Mobile, Shreveport, Jacksonville, etc.). The point being that yes, there is a major moral and political crisis of the lack of 1) police accountability 2) excessive and abusive practices 3) "thin blue line" as default 4) persecution complex as America is at a time when crime rates are historically low 5) Politicians who continuously create more and more laws forcing their enforcement arm to do things that are extremely negatively perceived by the average person (but, yet, oddly, keep voting for the same politicians - I'm going to name this paradox after myself, I think.). Instead of framing the issue as solely a black one, you should frame the issue as an American one, because as Americans, we're all impacted by these abuses. You're also going to be a lot more successful if you actually care about changing shit, framing the issue this way. Why do you think black people are acutely aware of these problems and doing whatever they can to address them and white people are waiting to be convinced they're worth taking action immediately on? Are you always so thinly veiled. Everyone knows your view, you don't have to be so coy. I get it - whitey is racist, there's no other explanation. Notice, by the way, that none of what I say is actually addressed. It's just repeating the mantra. No matter how many times people repeat that's my argument it doesn't make it my argument. For people arguing others need to pay more attention to their arguments and not the ones they've manifested you guys seem to be doing a pretty shitty job. What did you want me to address? Notice you didn't actually answer the question, just continued the "everything is blame racist whitey's" mantra that's not my argument. Ok, let me answer it then. Black people are more acutely aware of these problems because they have a higher percentage of people in lower socioeconomic rungs, which is correlated to higher incidences of police abuse and civil rights violations. Even in majority black cities, with black mayors, and black Chiefs of Police, the same holds. You ask why? 1) Crime rates are higher in lower socioeconomic areas 2) There is less recourse for poor people to redress their grievances 2 ties into use of force and qualified immunity. Rich people can afford really good lawyers and often have political connections. They're likely to throw a cop under the bus because you don't mean as much as the rich guy. The poor guy doesn't have this advantage, and thus, the cop is much more highly valued. In a system without competition, the poor guy is screwed. It just so happens that blacks have one of the highest percentages living in poverty. Now, we can address the reasons why, but I suspect, like this issue, you're going to frame it from racism mostly. Also, I'm awaiting your reply of - No, it's mostly racism, which will be odd when addressing cities like Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, etc. You seem to be under some completely false notion that black people can't perpetrate racism and/or perpetuate white supremacy policies against other black people (or themselves)? Do I have to explain why that's obviously wrong? Is there anything that isn't wholly/mostly white supremacy to you? Yes. Care to answer my question? What was it again. I saw a sentence that should have ended with a period, but instead had a question mark. In fact, two of them, though I figured the last one was rhetorical. How about you expand on that Yes. I'm curious (really I am. I'm not being facetious).
I tend to type like I talk and it's not grammatically correct.
Do you think black people can't perpetrate racism and/or perpetuate white supremacy policies against other black people or themselves?
You honestly could have missed the several times I said this because this has been a fast paced conversation, but there would be very little (if anything) I would call "wholly white supremacy", I've never been shy to admit there's an economic/class component to many of the relevant issues. Along with a host of other aspects depending on the particular issue, so that's where the "Yes" comes from.
To be thorough, "mostly" would certainly capture more than "wholly", but that would probably be stuff like the KKK or other white nationalist militias.
That said, it's often an indispensable and widespread component o fa lot of issues, so that might be where one would derive the conclusion that "everything is whitey's fault!" which again, isn't my position.
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On September 27 2017 11:56 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2017 11:36 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 11:27 Wegandi wrote:On September 27 2017 11:20 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 11:12 Wegandi wrote:On September 27 2017 11:03 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 10:38 Danglars wrote:On September 27 2017 09:39 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 09:33 Danglars wrote:On September 27 2017 09:16 Gorsameth wrote:
[quote]
Why should a man respect a country that does not respect him as a person in the same manner as any other because of the color of his skin? You presume agreement with a number of things on that question. How about confirming that he left very little room for interpretation on what the protest was about. Then maybe you can move on to honest questions with a basis in shared reality. Kaep said he was not standing for the anthem because he was protesting police brutality. He has since confirmed that multiple times. Over and over. The flag and anthem are part and parcel of one another. His reason has not changed. You decided to add more to it or obfuscate his reason with your own to find outrage. I directly quoted him. Like he literally said that and people heard he said that and responded to him saying that. Either address with actual quotes and dates what changed, or you're just ignoring and washing over it. Because you're saying his reason has not changed without putting that in context of what I just quoted. His whole reason to protest was to bring awareness to police brutality. That is his reason. That has not changed. That you continue to be incensed over this makes me question if you actually understand the reason behind the protest. Take the flag out of the picture, it's clouding your reasoning skills. The flag stands for justice for all and freedom and he's protesting that blacks in America are not receiving it. So why support it? Again, he is protesting police brutality by kneeling during the anthem. The flag and anthem are the vehicle to his protest, not what he is actually protesting. Same with how the bridge in Selma is the vehicle and not the object of the protest. What does the flag/anthem have to do with the police? As for the flag itself, everyone has their own notion of what it stands for. Attempting to create a consensus on something so divisive that you stake the movement to, is fucking idiotic. You've obfuscated the agenda item before you even begin, then you wonder/complain why people are viewing the acts in different ways than you are? Are people really this obtuse? Protest outside of police buildings, refuse to play in one game, etc. There are many vehicles to protest. Deciding to use such a divisive and personal device such as the flag and anthem to use as the vehicle is just dumb, and instead of seeing that, there is a ton of doubling down. Continue this lose/lose proposition though if it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside even if nothing ever changes though. (Shouldn't you be trying to change peoples opinions who have different views than you do, and thus, the strategy employed should focus on them, not on you, or anyone else who all ready shares the view you're trying to make a majority opinion? Don't worry, I have the same problems with my own movements doing this, and hell I do it from time to time, but I try not to.) That's the thing. It was never as big a deal as it is now. The focus started on police brutality and it has remained that way. When it got really moving and a lot of actors started voicing their two cents, that's when the message got fuzzy. Then you get Fox and friends claiming it was about the anthem/flag and people stopped seeing the real reason the protest began. Notice how we stopped talking about police brutality and these last dozen pages have been about the flag and if someone is patriotic or not? That's what happened. Everyone got sidetracked and it's harder than ever to get the topic back on the reason for the protest. Leave the flag/anthem out of it. It's a vehicle. It's not representative of the protest no more than a bus, a rainbow, or a bridge. People are looking for ways to change the topic of discussion as to not face the real issue at hand, which is police brutality and racial inequality. Remove the flag from any further argument, and we can discuss this with sense and reason. Otherwise, we'll never get anywhere. You don't understand. You've failed to place yourselves in the shoes of people not like you, who may not see the world in the same way you do, and instead of doing so - you just say they're racist and there's nothing you can do, but you can reach many of these people (I know, my folks are these people), by not being a stupid dolt and using a symbol, that you even say doesn't matter. Why use the damn symbol then? It's counterproductive. That's reality. You can fight reality, or you can acknowledge it. That's up to you. All I see is a bunch of people doubling down and alienating a lot of people that aren't strictly on either side. Again, it's that pesky - the flag/anthem means a bunch of different shit to a bunch of different people. I've placed myself in their shoes and I can see what they are saying. I'm a veteran as well, so I have my reservations about certain things. But protesting the flag/anthem to bring awareness to something isn't one of them. I'm a black male in America first and foremost. I have a lot of poor friends and people who support Trump in my daily life that I engage with. Some are veterans as well and don't like the protesting. I see what they are saying but it doesn't mean I have to acquiesce to their wanting to not talk about it. When they don't want to talk about it, that's when you continue to talk about it. If you give in to waiting for the time to be right for them to talk about it, you're essentially defeated. I didn't tell Kaep to use the flag/anthem to protest. I get why he did it, but I didn't tell him to. If people in the US didn't get such a hard on for blind patriotism and national pride, then I think we'd be a lot better off. I'm not saying don't talk about it, I'm saying be smart, and that goes for what you choose if any of your symbology (don't choose something dumb like the flag/anthem that has a million different interpretations/meaning) and how you frame the conversation to people outside your ideological companions. It's like you just will not ever use examples of police abuses against white people to try and get white people to reform the system. If you only ever use black people and make the argument that this happens to mostly/all black people, it's just human nature, to say, well that's not my problem because it doesn't affect me (and that crosses racial boundaries - it's just human nature). If you can get them to see, yes, it could happen to you, and it is wrong, they're likelier to effect the change you want. If all you want to do is pound white privilege, supremacy, and whatever else is coming out of sociology academia, continue doing the same thing you're doing. We'll be talking about the same shit a decade now with that strategy because it's a failure before it even starts. Police reform needs more Sun Tzu and less 5 year-old I feel good about myself! Yay!
Here is the thing, there is an INDUSTRY built by victimhood though.
If you actually solve some of the problems (if there are any) in a efficient manner. Lots of people will end up losing their jobs/not be in demand (see Anita Sarkeesian and Jesse Jackson).
So if you think about it this way, it makes total sense.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
I just re-read the entire Coates piece and I pretty much stand by my original statement that it's a stupid piece of drivel that frames every problem it can as racism even when there's zero reason to see it that way. It's another testament, as if we needed one, that if you combine a long piece of writing with a lot of sources, no matter how shit your argument you will get a lot of people who think you have something meaningful to say, as long as it's sympathetic to your own cause. It's one of the most naked examples of that old "let's just face it, everyone who thinks differently is just a >>RACIST<<" syndrome that has infected our political discourse.It's neither surprising nor flattering why we have a few individuals who are beside themselves with praise for that piece.
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On September 27 2017 12:10 LegalLord wrote:
I just re-read the entire Coates piece and I pretty much stand by my original statement that it's a stupid piece of drivel that frames every problem it can as racism even when there's zero reason to see it that way. It's another testament, as if we needed one, that if you combine a long piece of writing with a lot of sources, no matter how shit your argument you will get a lot of people who think you have something meaningful to say, as long as it's sympathetic to your own cause. It's one of the most naked examples of that old "let's just face it, everyone who thinks differently is just a >>RACIST<<" syndrome that has infected our political discourse.It's neither surprising nor flattering why we have a few individuals who are beside themselves with praise for that piece.
Except that the statistical fact that the only genuine common demoninator among Trump voters, that they are predominantly white, stands.
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On September 27 2017 12:09 RealityIsKing wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2017 11:56 Wegandi wrote:On September 27 2017 11:36 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 11:27 Wegandi wrote:On September 27 2017 11:20 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 11:12 Wegandi wrote:On September 27 2017 11:03 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 10:38 Danglars wrote:On September 27 2017 09:39 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On September 27 2017 09:33 Danglars wrote:
[quote]
You presume agreement with a number of things on that question. How about confirming that he left very little room for interpretation on what the protest was about. Then maybe you can move on to honest questions with a basis in shared reality. Kaep said he was not standing for the anthem because he was protesting police brutality. He has since confirmed that multiple times. Over and over. The flag and anthem are part and parcel of one another. His reason has not changed. You decided to add more to it or obfuscate his reason with your own to find outrage. I directly quoted him. Like he literally said that and people heard he said that and responded to him saying that. Either address with actual quotes and dates what changed, or you're just ignoring and washing over it. Because you're saying his reason has not changed without putting that in context of what I just quoted. His whole reason to protest was to bring awareness to police brutality. That is his reason. That has not changed. That you continue to be incensed over this makes me question if you actually understand the reason behind the protest. Take the flag out of the picture, it's clouding your reasoning skills. The flag stands for justice for all and freedom and he's protesting that blacks in America are not receiving it. So why support it? Again, he is protesting police brutality by kneeling during the anthem. The flag and anthem are the vehicle to his protest, not what he is actually protesting. Same with how the bridge in Selma is the vehicle and not the object of the protest. What does the flag/anthem have to do with the police? As for the flag itself, everyone has their own notion of what it stands for. Attempting to create a consensus on something so divisive that you stake the movement to, is fucking idiotic. You've obfuscated the agenda item before you even begin, then you wonder/complain why people are viewing the acts in different ways than you are? Are people really this obtuse? Protest outside of police buildings, refuse to play in one game, etc. There are many vehicles to protest. Deciding to use such a divisive and personal device such as the flag and anthem to use as the vehicle is just dumb, and instead of seeing that, there is a ton of doubling down. Continue this lose/lose proposition though if it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside even if nothing ever changes though. (Shouldn't you be trying to change peoples opinions who have different views than you do, and thus, the strategy employed should focus on them, not on you, or anyone else who all ready shares the view you're trying to make a majority opinion? Don't worry, I have the same problems with my own movements doing this, and hell I do it from time to time, but I try not to.) That's the thing. It was never as big a deal as it is now. The focus started on police brutality and it has remained that way. When it got really moving and a lot of actors started voicing their two cents, that's when the message got fuzzy. Then you get Fox and friends claiming it was about the anthem/flag and people stopped seeing the real reason the protest began. Notice how we stopped talking about police brutality and these last dozen pages have been about the flag and if someone is patriotic or not? That's what happened. Everyone got sidetracked and it's harder than ever to get the topic back on the reason for the protest. Leave the flag/anthem out of it. It's a vehicle. It's not representative of the protest no more than a bus, a rainbow, or a bridge. People are looking for ways to change the topic of discussion as to not face the real issue at hand, which is police brutality and racial inequality. Remove the flag from any further argument, and we can discuss this with sense and reason. Otherwise, we'll never get anywhere. You don't understand. You've failed to place yourselves in the shoes of people not like you, who may not see the world in the same way you do, and instead of doing so - you just say they're racist and there's nothing you can do, but you can reach many of these people (I know, my folks are these people), by not being a stupid dolt and using a symbol, that you even say doesn't matter. Why use the damn symbol then? It's counterproductive. That's reality. You can fight reality, or you can acknowledge it. That's up to you. All I see is a bunch of people doubling down and alienating a lot of people that aren't strictly on either side. Again, it's that pesky - the flag/anthem means a bunch of different shit to a bunch of different people. I've placed myself in their shoes and I can see what they are saying. I'm a veteran as well, so I have my reservations about certain things. But protesting the flag/anthem to bring awareness to something isn't one of them. I'm a black male in America first and foremost. I have a lot of poor friends and people who support Trump in my daily life that I engage with. Some are veterans as well and don't like the protesting. I see what they are saying but it doesn't mean I have to acquiesce to their wanting to not talk about it. When they don't want to talk about it, that's when you continue to talk about it. If you give in to waiting for the time to be right for them to talk about it, you're essentially defeated. I didn't tell Kaep to use the flag/anthem to protest. I get why he did it, but I didn't tell him to. If people in the US didn't get such a hard on for blind patriotism and national pride, then I think we'd be a lot better off. I'm not saying don't talk about it, I'm saying be smart, and that goes for what you choose if any of your symbology (don't choose something dumb like the flag/anthem that has a million different interpretations/meaning) and how you frame the conversation to people outside your ideological companions. It's like you just will not ever use examples of police abuses against white people to try and get white people to reform the system. If you only ever use black people and make the argument that this happens to mostly/all black people, it's just human nature, to say, well that's not my problem because it doesn't affect me (and that crosses racial boundaries - it's just human nature). If you can get them to see, yes, it could happen to you, and it is wrong, they're likelier to effect the change you want. If all you want to do is pound white privilege, supremacy, and whatever else is coming out of sociology academia, continue doing the same thing you're doing. We'll be talking about the same shit a decade now with that strategy because it's a failure before it even starts. Police reform needs more Sun Tzu and less 5 year-old I feel good about myself! Yay! Here is the thing, there is an INDUSTRY built by victimhood though. If you actually solve some of the problems (if there are any) in a efficient manner. Lots of people will end up losing their jobs/not be in demand (see Anita Sarkeesian and Jesse Jackson). So if you think about it this way, it makes total sense.
I know you're big on bias, so you can admit that there is (conceding at the moment this exists on the left) comparable figures on the right?
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United States42008 Posts
On September 27 2017 11:28 GreenHorizons wrote:That sounds oddly familiar....
I'm sure he knows in his heart that he's not a racist. It's that damn media.
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EPT
