Ask and answer stupid questions here! - Page 133

On August 20 2014 03:28 Coppermantis wrote:
Is there any evidence to support the idea that the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson was inspired by race, or are people just looking at it and saying "white man shoots black man--must be racism!"?

On August 20 2014 03:59 Coppermantis wrote:
I see, so it's a historical precedent thing. That's a decent argument, but it still strikes me as strange that everybody's emphasizing that a black guy was killed by a white cop. I feel like treating the issue like that runs the risk of making it about racism when it might have just been a case of an abusive cop. And, if the town has a high black population and a mostly white police force, then that just means that any police brutality is highly likely to be white-on-black. I dunno. There definitely are racist motivations to a lot of cases like this, but I think that people are jumping to conclusions.

On August 20 2014 12:01 [UoN]Sentinel wrote:
A part of it is also ratings. Take for instance, media failing to report at first that Zimmerman was half-Hispanic, which you could argue is an attempt to create some racial narrative that would get people riled up and therefore glued to the screen, even outside of the rest of the proceedings.

But I still feel like a lot of the racism in these issues is perpetuated by the people who want to see racism in them.

On August 20 2014 14:38 Thieving Magpie wrote:


Like most complex issues, its both.

The victims of racism are more likely to see racism in other aspects of their lives. The racists themselves never outright act racist but always have subconscious tendencies towards performing acts of racism. Neither side "intends" to be racist/narrate racism. But there's a reason most cops (no matter what race) are more likely to shoot poor black people than white people. Its not that they have a to do list of people to shoot and they have to be black--they just get more scared during stressfull events when the enemy isn't white. Victims of racism, on the other hand, have a hard time not seeing racism no matter how large or irrelevant the issue so that even friendly banter suddenly gets lumped with malicious racism instead of the category it really is--which is friendly racism.

Ferguson, Missouri police once wrongly arrested a man, beat him, then charged him with destruction of property. What property? His blood got on the uniforms of the four officers involved in his beating.

To make matters worse, they had the wrong man.

The booking officer had no other reason to hold Davis, who ended up in Ferguson only because he missed the exit for St. Charles and then pulled off the highway because the rain was so heavy he could not see to drive. The cop who had pulled up behind him must have run his license plate and assumed he was that other Henry Davis. Davis said the cop approached his vehicle, grabbed his cellphone from his hand, cuffed him and placed him in the back seat of the patrol car, without a word of explanation.

Hayes, O’Neil alleges in the suit, “ordered and directed police officers at the South County Precinct to stop, detain, and/or arrest African-Americans who were at the South County Mall or who were seen exiting off Highway 55 near the mall.”

In addition, “Hayes made numerous statements that directed officers to specifically target African-Americans for arrest, and without probable cause to do so.”

Sgt. O'Neil wrote anonymous letters to officers higher up in the chain of command, and an investigation into Lt Hayes was initiated. According to Rachel Maddow, nine officers confirmed the racist comments that were made by Hayes. Some of the alleged statements included, "Let's have a black day," and "Let's make the jail cells more colorful."

On August 20 2014 16:48 reapsen wrote:
The spellchecking is done by your browser. Check the settings there..

On August 20 2014 03:28 Coppermantis wrote:
Is there any evidence to support the idea that the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson was inspired by race, or are people just looking at it and saying "white man shoots black man--must be racism!"?

On August 20 2014 02:50 [UoN]Sentinel wrote:
Which aspect ratio allows me to see the most area in a game of SC2?

If it's 16:9, would going to window mode and making a very wide, narrow screen allow me to see even more?

On August 20 2014 18:25 xM(Z wrote:
why would you need to spell-check your own, native language?

On August 20 2014 22:51 Simberto wrote:


This might surprise you, but most people use spellchecking for their own, native languages when writing. It is simply incredibly useful to instantly notice these situations where you accidentally add a letter somewhere or are just not sure if a word should have a capital letter at the start (less problematic in English, big problem in German because it changes every few years). Few people write completely without mistakes, and not having to reread your text multiple times to make sure that it is correct, and instead just having to look at the words underlined in red is incredibly helpful and saves a lot of time.