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#352 Aug 17 2016 at 7:57 PM Rating: Decent
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Friar Bijou wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Isn't the more important thing to look at why there's such a massive poverty difference between black and white in this country and maybe fix that instead?
We've all answered that and you handwaved it away. Because in your world there is no racism. Because if there was you would have to admit you are part of the problem. Which you are to much of a coward to do. Which leads to you claiming there's no racism...ad nauseum


And again with the all or nothing approach. I have never said there is "no racism". I have said, repeatedly, that racism alone simply can't come remotely close to explaining the statistical differences we're seeing. I've said this many times now. But you keep responding with absurd straw man responses like this one.

I've "hand waved" it away because the only response I get is "racism. Racism! RACISM!". You've go the logic backwards. I'm not denying the existence of "any" racism. You, on the other hand, are refusing to accept the possibility of a cause for this that *isn't* racism. That's the problem.

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ALSO: See the ratedowns? I thought I'd mention that's not me. I told you some time ago that I'd stop doing that and I've held to it.


Yeah. I get that people respond emotionally to a topic like this. That's not going to make me stop trying to make them sit down, set their emotions and fears aside, and actually engage their brains in some kind of logical thought process though. May be a waste of my time, but it's my time to waste, right?

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Just in case, you know, you thought that was me.


Nah. You're one of the people who'll at least engage in discussion. So there's that. Most people just see a post saying anything other than what they have been force fed as the truth, get angry about it, and hit the rate down button as a means of punishing speech they don't like. It's like Pavlov's dogs all over again.

If you're angry, you're not thinking.


Oh. I'll also point out that in two replies, you still haven't provided a source or argument for your claim that racism by police is a major, if not primary, cause for the disparate police stats vis-a-vis black and white. Can you do that? It's possible, that maybe in the course of attempting to do so, you might just discover some thoughts on this that may just change your perception of the issue. If your disagreement is because it's *me* posting this stuff, and you have a preexisting negative view of my positions and ideas, maybe reading a whole host of other people who you don't know and haven't been arguing with on a forum for years, might show you that this isn't some crazy fringe racist notion, but is well established and well documented, and is pretty universally accepted as the actual root cause of the problem among those who actually study this subject.

Just not in the angry public forum poster circles though. There it's a repetition of the same angry rhetoric we see on our TV screens all the time.

Edited, Aug 17th 2016 7:02pm by gbaji
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#353 Aug 17 2016 at 8:06 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
If you're angry, you're not thinking.


If you're not angry, you're not paying attention.
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#354 Aug 17 2016 at 8:33 PM Rating: Decent
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someproteinguy wrote:
Just because I was having trouble waking up and this was easier than thinking about proteins...

Provisional model of causes


Well, right off the bat, your first link more or less supports what I'm saying:

Several portions of the article talk about how poor people are more likely to fall into various categories of minor crimes which will result in police interaction, and that blacks are more likely to be poor than whites. The entire section on racial segregation may as well have been lifted from my own posts:

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3. Racial Segregation

There are two sets of reasons why racial segregation renders African-Americans vulnerable to repeated police interactions. The first relates to policing in black communities. Historically, the police have perceived poor, racially segregated black communities as “war zones” that require ongoing police presence. The most aggressive forms of this presence are tantamount to a kind of military occupation. Moreover, segregation facilitates the extent to which the state can employ policing as a vehicle of social control. That is to say, segregation effectuates what we might call governance through policing, a
state-sanctioned management strategy that requires the police to force engagements with African-Americans as a form of social regulation.

Additionally, because racially segregated black communities lack substantive employment and educational opportunities, some of their members may engage in both low-level and more serious forms of crime. In other words, racial segregation structures not only the production of poverty; it structures the production of crime. The existence of this crime increases African-American contact with the police by fueling tough-on-crime pol-icy initiatives.

Finally, because segregated poor communities have little political pow-er, law enforcement can aggressively police such neighborhoods with impunity. The bottom line is that the more economically and politically powerless a community, the greater that community’s vulnerability to law enforcement contact and thus the possibility of excessive force by the police.

The second way segregation facilitates African-American contact with the police is by normalizing the idea that particular racial groups belong in particular geographic are-as. In some parts of the United States, to know where a person lives is virtually to know that person’s race. For instance, an AfricanAmerican in Pacific Palisades at 9 p.m. is presumptively “out of place” and therefore presumptively suspicious because of the racial geography of Los Angeles County; there are relatively few black people who live in Pacific Palisades. Scholars sometimes refer to this problem as policing “racial incongruity,” and as Bennett Capers observes, “[a]lthough some courts have held that racial in-congruity cannot be a factor in establishing suspicion . . . other courts have held that consideration of racial incongruity may be a factor . . . .” The bottom line is that the existence of racial segregation helps to create a racial logic about race and place, or who be-longs where, that extends to policing.

Importantly, this “who belongs where” logic applies not only to communities where racial segregation is complete. The reasoning applies to “transitional” communities as well—that is to say, those that are undergoing gentrification. Invoking gentrification in the context of a discussion about police violence is particularly important because, as Fanna Gamal notes, “while the constellation of housing and development policies that facilitate gentrification is a growing area of concern for scholars and activists, the intersection of gentrification and the political and social nature of policing remain undertheorized.” The specific gentrification problem I want to emphasize here is that white movement into black urban areas (in, for example, New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC) can exacerbate police contact with African-Americans in at least two ways.



And it goes from there. Basically, it spends a lot of time talking about how the environment that blacks live in versus whites has a huge impact on how the police interact with those living there. Again, at the risk of repeating myself, this is all ultimately tied to the underlying poverty stats.

I've quickly looked through a few of the other links, but I haven't found any that actually attempt to claim that racism by police is a major cause of the disparate stats we're talking about. Can you actually maybe look through them yourself and try to find this?

I'll also point out that you're searching specifically for articles talking about racism and policing. But if you search for things like causes for disparate shootings of blacks, you'll get a whole different set of results. Because your starting point already assumes you want to look for racism related articles. What a surprise that most of them talk about racism and how it may affect policing. What's interesting though, is that even among this narrow set, none of them (that I've found) directly claim that racism is the cause of the problem. Most of them just talk about racism as a factor, or in one of them, just did a study of polling data in which people polled *believed* that racism was a factor (shocker that when there's so many people claiming this, that people then poll higher in the trend direction of what people are claiming on TV... NOT!).



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That's only going back to 2000, and just with a "racism police causes" search in google scholar (and only went through the first 5-6 pages).


Yeah. Again, that might not be the best search if you're trying to figure out if racism actually is the cause of disparate ratios of police shootings of blacks versus whites. It's like someone trying to prove that illegal immigrants commit tons of violent crimes, and uses a search of "violent crimes committed by illegal immigrants" to support his claim.

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A lot more articles examining different aspects of racism and police action, rather than "proving" that it exists.


Yeah. Because of the search criteria you used.

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Probably should have gone back further to grab more fundamental articles as there seemed to be a lot done in the 90's in the aftermath of the whole Rodney King thing. Also tracing through some of the citation trees would probably be a good thing to do, but I've got to actually research protein stuff too today, so can't spend too much time on it. Big disclaimer that I'm not involved in the field, so I'm probably missing the more fundamental cited papers, as would be typical when someone blindly tries to research outside of their own field.


Again, you're starting out by looking for articles about racism among police. Maybe start by looking for articles discussing the reason for disparate police shootings of blacks and then go from there? You know, start at the actual thing we're looking at, absent any assumption about what may be the cause.
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#355 Aug 18 2016 at 12:41 AM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
Oh. I'll also point out that in two replies, you still haven't provided a source or argument for your claim that racism by police is a major, if not primary, cause for the disparate police stats vis-a-vis black and white. Can you do that?
As with you, it's a matter of observation and a functioning brain. I cant offer "proof" any more than you can "prove" that it's not a primary or major cause.
gbaji wrote:
It's possible, that maybe in the course of attempting to do so, you might just discover some thoughts on this that may just change your perception of the issue.
Being as I've worked at a homeless shelter for almost a decade now and that my perception is based on being immersed daily with all the issues that go with that - crime, and racial and poverty issues - I'm pretty comfortable with my ability to base my discussions here on real world experience.

One caveat, I suppose, is that the race issue here is primarily about Native American as opposed to black people. The dynamic is the same, though.
gbaji wrote:
If your disagreement is because it's *me* posting this stuff, and you have a preexisting negative view of my positions and ideas,
Any preexisting negative view of your positions and ideas by me or any other poster here are all on you. You've written plenty enough for a reasonably intelligent poster to have a pretty good read on your personality, positions and ideas. If you come off like an insufferable, racist, elitist dork you created that impression.
gbaji wrote:
There it's a repetition of the same angry rhetoric we see on our TV screens all the time.
I get my news and information from just about everywhere except US TV news. I don't watch it. Hell, I barely watch any TV at all.
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#356 Aug 18 2016 at 8:24 AM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
You know, start at the actual thing we're looking at, absent any assumption about what may be the cause.
Start with the confirmation bias that you agree with.
Friar Bijou wrote:
Being as I've worked at a homeless shelter for almost a decade now and that my perception is based on being immersed daily with all the issues that go with that - crime, and racial and poverty issues - I'm pretty comfortable with my ability to base my discussions here on real world experience.
But he saw an episode of Cops.

Edited, Aug 18th 2016 10:26am by lolgaxe
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#357 Aug 18 2016 at 9:07 AM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
And it goes from there. Basically, it spends a lot of time talking about how the environment that blacks live in versus whites has a huge impact on how the police interact with those living there. Again, at the risk of repeating myself, this is all ultimately tied to the underlying poverty stats.
Do you realize that racial segregation, under-development of black neighborhoods, etc can have its roots in racism? If racism contributes to the poverty then blaming poverty for the problem is the basically the same as blaming racism.

http://sf.oxfordjournals.org/content/80/3/937.short
http://socpro.oxfordjournals.org/content/56/1/49

Unfortunately most of the articles on this subject seem to be behind paywalls. Most of the rest are books point back to racial segregation in the first half of the 20th century, and their continuing effects into today. Would you like me to link those? They're a bit more in-depth, but you can't read the whole thing either unfortunately.

gbaji wrote:
I've quickly looked through a few of the other links, but I haven't found any that actually attempt to claim that racism by police is a major cause of the disparate stats we're talking about. Can you actually maybe look through them yourself and try to find this?
Or you could just read the next point in the article you're talking about. The one titled "Criminality Stereotype"? The paper had 6 points of emphasis, and racial segregation is one of sub-points in the first one. And before you point it out, no they're not all about racism. Smiley: rolleyes

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Yeah. Because of the search criteria you used.
Have any you'd recommend?

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Maybe start by looking for articles discussing the reason for disparate police shootings of blacks and then go from there? You know, start at the actual thing we're looking at, absent any assumption about what may be the cause.
Okay I'll do it your way. Let's give this a try, I'm searching for the bolded thingy, year range: 2000 to present...

The world is not Black and White: Racial bias in the decision to shoot in a multiethnic context
Race as an Institutional Factor in the Arrest, and the use of Excessive and Deadly Force against African American Males

'But I Thought He Had a Gun'-Race and Police Use of Deadly Force

Or in lieu of continuing to play this game you could just link some of the papers you're talking about, instead of making me hunt for them, or guess which ones they are out of a list of hundreds of articles. Because obviously my google scholar skills are lacking.

Edited, Aug 18th 2016 8:56am by someproteinguy
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#358 Aug 18 2016 at 9:44 AM Rating: Excellent
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someproteinguy wrote:
Would you like me to link those? They're a bit more in-depth, but you can't read the whole thing either unfortunately.

There's zero danger of Gbaji reading a book. Trust me on this.
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#359 Aug 18 2016 at 11:49 AM Rating: Good
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Is there a Cole's notes on it? He'll likely skim that.
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#360 Aug 18 2016 at 3:22 PM Rating: Good
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SPG wrote:
Do you realize that racial segregation, under-development of black neighborhoods, etc can have its roots in racism? If racism contributes to the poverty then blaming poverty for the problem is the basically the same as blaming racism.
Of course he realizes this. That's why he conjures tangents to avoid talking about institutionalized favoritism affecting the state of Black America. When you stay on topic, he avoids you altogether.
#361 Aug 19 2016 at 8:02 AM Rating: Good
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Uglysasquatch wrote:
Is there a Cole's notes on it? He'll likely skim that.
Maybe an Amazon review.
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#362 Aug 19 2016 at 5:55 PM Rating: Decent
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Friar Bijou wrote:
As with you, it's a matter of observation and a functioning brain. I cant offer "proof" any more than you can "prove" that it's not a primary or major cause.


Fair enough. We all have opinions. But I've at least provided several articles discussing the issue which draw the same conclusion I have come to, and provide similar arguments for said conclusion. I guess I see a difference between "I think something is this way" and "I think something is this way, and here's my rational for thinking that". I'm kinda waiting for the second part of that statement on the "it's because of racism" side of this issue.

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Being as I've worked at a homeless shelter for almost a decade now and that my perception is based on being immersed daily with all the issues that go with that - crime, and racial and poverty issues - I'm pretty comfortable with my ability to base my discussions here on real world experience.


Which is strange because I would think that you'd be well positioned to have seen directly the link between poverty and crime. Were the people in the homeless shelter there because of racism by police? Were those who had long criminal records all really innocent, but some racist cops came along and made them into criminals? Did those with drug problems have their problems forced on them by racist cops? I guess I just don't see why there's such a strong desire in this context to hand wave away such things, and zero in on the rare occasional instances of police violence, and even then ignore the surrounding circumstances and just paint all police shootings of a person of color as "wrong" no matter what. So an armed man tries to flee the cop, refuses to stop, refuses to drop the weapon, then turns on the cop, with the weapon in his hand, and the cop is still wrong for shooting him?

That's a silly high bar being set for the cop, right?

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One caveat, I suppose, is that the race issue here is primarily about Native American as opposed to black people. The dynamic is the same, though.


Again though, what's the source of the problem? More importantly, what will actually solve the problem? I've said this several times. If we could wave a magic wand and end all racism (by cops, or heck, by everyone), that would not solve the problem. Those who are poor are still poor. Those who are living in high poverty high crime areas are still living in those areas. Their children are more likely to live in those areas as well. And their children as well. When the current stats show a very disproportionate percentage of blacks (like 4x IIRC) living in those conditions, then those same stats will be perpetuated generation after generation.

Should we be trying to find solutions to the problem? Or just use the fact that a problem exists to fuel anger and resentment. Because it looks to me like we're doing the latter. And You'll have to forgive me if I find that to be counter productive.

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I get my news and information from just about everywhere except US TV news. I don't watch it. Hell, I barely watch any TV at all.


Wasn't just talking about you though. It's a broader perception of the issue. And the narrative gets spread via many methods. Even if you aren't parroting something you saw on TV, it's a good bet that whatever sources you are using are at least to some degree influenced by the same rhetoric I'm talking about.
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#363 Aug 19 2016 at 6:05 PM Rating: Decent
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lolgaxe wrote:
gbaji wrote:
You know, start at the actual thing we're looking at, absent any assumption about what may be the cause.
Start with the confirmation bias that you agree with.


Not sure if that's aimed at me, or elsewhere. I don't think there's any confirmation bias to use a search like "causes of disproportionate police shootings of blacks" when looking for the causes of disproportionate shootings, by police, of blacks. I think there's a ton of confirmation bias when you instead search for "racism by police towards blacks". If that's what you meant to say, then we're on the same page. If not, then you've got your head on backwards or something.
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#364 Aug 19 2016 at 6:44 PM Rating: Decent
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someproteinguy wrote:
gbaji wrote:
And it goes from there. Basically, it spends a lot of time talking about how the environment that blacks live in versus whites has a huge impact on how the police interact with those living there. Again, at the risk of repeating myself, this is all ultimately tied to the underlying poverty stats.
Do you realize that racial segregation, under-development of black neighborhoods, etc can have its roots in racism? If racism contributes to the poverty then blaming poverty for the problem is the basically the same as blaming racism.


I have never said that racism was not a primary cause of the current existing condition for blacks in the US. In fact, I've argued strongly that this is the case. What I disagree with is that the cause of the disproportionate rate at which police detain, search, arrest, and shoot blacks is the result of racism by the police officers. Those are two completely different things.

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Unfortunately most of the articles on this subject seem to be behind paywalls. Most of the rest are books point back to racial segregation in the first half of the 20th century, and their continuing effects into today. Would you like me to link those? They're a bit more in-depth, but you can't read the whole thing either unfortunately.


I completely agree with that. The problem is that that's in the past. The current condition is based on that starting condition. My argument in this area is that the implementation of the modern welfare state by president Johnson in the mid to late 60s has perpetuated those conditions. Blacks should have been free to improve statistically after the civil right act was passed, segregation was ended, etc. But by creating the welfare state right at the time when they were still disproportionately poor and had not yet had time to "catch up", effectively trapped many of them in that state of poverty.

And yeah, I also suspect that racism had a fair amount to do with that as well. The Democrats realized that their earlier methods of keeping blacks as second class citizens was no longer politically viable, and so switched to another means to accomplish the same thing. It's a bit more subtle, but after 50 years, I think we can all see how effective it was.

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Or you could just read the next point in the article you're talking about. The one titled "Criminality Stereotype"?


Uh huh. It's an interesting section, but it's essentially measuring a well known neurological function of the human brain, which is pattern matching. Here's the thing though, are the police quicker to make those associations because they have an underlying racist view of black people, or is it because their brains have formed that association because it's reinforced more in their day to day lives? What's lost in all of this is that from a cops point of view, he's more likely (relative to racial ratio of all stops) to get shot at by a black suspect than a white. He's more likely to have to deal with a violent subject if that subject is black versus white. It's not "wrong" at all for the cops to make these associations.

What's missing in that study is the follow up to it, which I linked to earlier. A group of researchers noted this faster association pattern and devised a test to see how this affects the actual officers actions. What they found was that while police may mentally match patterns of black faces to violent images (weapons) faster, they were actually slower to react when they did in an actual simulated encounter.

What this suggests is that the police are aware of that association and are more likely to discount it and take more time to verify it when it's a black subject versus a white one. I already discussed this at length.

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Okay I'll do it your way. Let's give this a try, I'm searching for the bolded thingy, year range: 2000 to present...

The world is not Black and White: Racial bias in the decision to shoot in a multiethnic context[link=http://digitalcommons.auctr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1064&context=enda]


Don't feel like reading through all of them, but this first one just confirms what I wrote above:

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Two groups of researchers have investigated the effect of race on decisions to shoot with police officers (Correll et al., 2007; Peruche & Plant, 2006; Plant & Peruche, 2005). Correll et al. (2007) found that police officers and community members both showed bias in the speed of their responses (responding more quickly to stereotypic targets). Consistent with prior work, the extent of racial bias in response times did not differ between White and non-White officers. But in spite of this bias in reaction time, police officers were no more likely to shoot an unarmed Black target than they were to shoot an unarmed White. In other words, despite the influence of race on the time taken to make correct decisions, police officers were able to overcome the impact of race and choose whether or not to “open fire” as a function of the weapon held, not the race of the person holding it. Using a different paradigm, Plant and Peruche (2005) found that although police officers initially exhibited racial bias in the decision to shoot, bias decreased with practice. Thus, college students, community members, and police officers all evidenced an implicit racial bias in the time taken to make a decision to shoot; however, police officers were able to overcome this bias when instigating a behavioral response.


The two paragraphs above this one talk about the first point (increased association between black and violence), and even showed that untrained random college students were more likely to make a "shoot" decision based on that bias. But when the same tests were done with police officers, that decision making changed. Another way to look at this is that those who's profession actually involves life or death decisions of this nature (rather than just a harmless test in a lab), did what you would expect and made the correct choices.

My argument is about the degree to which racism and/or racial bias influences police actions and the resulting negative impact on blacks versus say whites. And so far, all the evidence I've seen (even that which you've provided) pretty consistently provides a "no" answer. The actual actions of police do not reflect bias. So when you point to the disparate stats, it's arguably not because of racial bias by police.

Which means we should be looking at other factors. And while the papers you decided to link all examine the racial bias effect (you sure you're still not doing your own parsing here?), it's in the context of "yeah, we know that factors like poverty and growing up in high crime neighborhoods are a huge factor, but we're going to ignore that and examine police bias instead". Which is great for an academic paper. But if we're actually looking at the root cause, and searching for things to fix, we should be looking at poverty instead?

Dunno. It just seems like what I'm proposing should not be that far fetched. Is it?

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Or in lieu of continuing to play this game you could just link some of the papers you're talking about, instead of making me hunt for them, or guess which ones they are out of a list of hundreds of articles. Because obviously my google scholar skills are lacking.


Pretty sure I've already linked to a few in the course of this thread. I don't want to pull an Alma and insist on you searching for them, but on the other hand, it's a Friday afternoon, it's been a really long and busy week at work, and I woke up with a sore throat and headache, so I'm honestly feeling more like going home and taking some cold medicine and settling down. So I'm just not up for it at the moment.

Maybe Monday.

Edited, Aug 19th 2016 5:44pm by gbaji
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#365 Aug 19 2016 at 7:30 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
If we could wave a magic wand and end all racism (by cops, or heck, by everyone), that would not solve the problem.
Completely? No. Go a long way toward solving it? Yes. Unless you believe that racism has no bearing.
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#366 Aug 20 2016 at 5:26 AM Rating: Good
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Friar Bijou wrote:
gbaji wrote:
If we could wave a magic wand and end all racism (by cops, or heck, by everyone), that would not solve the problem.
Completely? No. Go a long way toward solving it? Yes. Unless you believe that racism has no bearing.
This.
#367 Aug 22 2016 at 7:34 AM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
If not, then you've got your head on backwards or something.
If you can't figure out how google searches are colored by confirmation bias then let's just cut this short and go with "or something" since you're working way too hard preserving yours.
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#368 Aug 22 2016 at 9:31 AM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
someproteinguy wrote:
gbaji wrote:
And it goes from there. Basically, it spends a lot of time talking about how the environment that blacks live in versus whites has a huge impact on how the police interact with those living there. Again, at the risk of repeating myself, this is all ultimately tied to the underlying poverty stats.
Do you realize that racial segregation, under-development of black neighborhoods, etc can have its roots in racism? If racism contributes to the poverty then blaming poverty for the problem is the basically the same as blaming racism.


I have never said that racism was not a primary cause of the current existing condition for blacks in the US. In fact, I've argued strongly that this is the case. What I disagree with is that the cause of the disproportionate rate at which police detain, search, arrest, and shoot blacks is the result of racism by the police officers. Those are two completely different things.
Which is great, but in this case I think they're one in the same to the people who are the victims. So if you're perhaps wondering about why people might be protesting in the streets, angry about police & racism, it's very much relevant.

gbaji wrote:
It's a bit more subtle, but after 50 years, I think we can all see how effective it was.
Ironically I was just reading this Saturday...

gbaji wrote:
you sure you're still not doing your own parsing here?
From what I can tell I'm just grabbing the first few links on the page, ignoring the ones that aren't about guns/shooting/etc or are behind paywalls and can't really be read. Those three were all on the first 2 pages. Of course I can't comment to the degree the search program tailors search results based on my previous searches, hence the request for a direct link, given the fuzziness of what may be being returned.

gbaji wrote:
But if we're actually looking at the root cause, and searching for things to fix, we should be looking at poverty instead?
You mean racism? Because we really aren't going to solve one without solving the other.

gbaji wrote:
Pretty sure I've already linked to a few in the course of this thread. I don't want to pull an Alma and insist on you searching for them, but on the other hand, it's a Friday afternoon, it's been a really long and busy week at work, and I woke up with a sore throat and headache, so I'm honestly feeling more like going home and taking some cold medicine and settling down. So I'm just not up for it at the moment.

Maybe Monday.
No worries. In the end I don't think we're actually as far apart on this as the rhetoric would make it out to be. Some portion of this seems to be just talking past each other, and using different words to address the same issues. I don't mean to discount the other problems either, mostly just trying to tease out an understanding of your position.

Get well and stuff. Smiley: thumbsup

Edited, Aug 22nd 2016 9:16am by someproteinguy
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#369 Aug 22 2016 at 10:21 AM Rating: Good
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someproteinguy wrote:
mostly just trying to tease out an understanding of your position.
Truly a mystery worthy of the greatest minds.
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#370 Aug 22 2016 at 10:47 AM Rating: Excellent
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lolgaxe wrote:
someproteinguy wrote:
mostly just trying to tease out an understanding of your position.
Truly a mystery worthy of the greatest minds.
Well the hope was to spend the morning playing Fallout Shelter on my phone, but then we arrive at work and realize there's still 45 minutes until the next objective is reached so yeah... Smiley: frown

Edited, Aug 22nd 2016 9:48am by someproteinguy
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#371 Aug 22 2016 at 11:59 AM Rating: Good
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someproteinguy wrote:
Well the hope was to spend the morning playing Fallout Shelter on my phone, but then we arrive at work and realize there's still 45 minutes until the next objective is reached so yeah... Smiley: frown
I don't like those egg timer games. I always end up loudly arguing with the little pixels to go faster, and you only need to be sat down and talked to by a Chaplin once before that becomes an issue. I've got a Marvel game that kills like two hours. It's one of those "checklist of things to do then try again tomorrow" games. Can't say I'm much of a fan of that type of game either.
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#372 Aug 22 2016 at 12:26 PM Rating: Excellent
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lolgaxe wrote:
someproteinguy wrote:
Well the hope was to spend the morning playing Fallout Shelter on my phone, but then we arrive at work and realize there's still 45 minutes until the next objective is reached so yeah... Smiley: frown
I don't like those egg timer games. I always end up loudly arguing with the little pixels to go faster, and you only need to be sat down and talked to by a Chaplin once before that becomes an issue. I've got a Marvel game that kills like two hours. It's one of those "checklist of things to do then try again tomorrow" games. Can't say I'm much of a fan of that type of game either.
For what it's worth they did a pretty good job with the app, it's mostly me having to start work and hour earlier and not wanting to change my routine Smiley: lol. Playing it doesn't feel like blackmail, and it doesn't have any of those hidden necessary freemium purchases. Imagine it probably has something to do with it basically being a mini advertisement for the PC game series, and Bethesda not being your typical basement-run app software company.

Timers are still timers though; the annoyance knows no end. Smiley: glare

Edit: Or I guess normally it wouldn't, but the quest is complete now. Yay for lunch time. Smiley: thumbsup

Edited, Aug 22nd 2016 11:34am by someproteinguy
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#373 Aug 22 2016 at 4:01 PM Rating: Good
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SPG wrote:
Which is great, but in this case I think they're one in the same to the people who are the victims. So if you're perhaps wondering about why people might be protesting in the streets, angry about police & racism, it's very much relevant.
This. Whether or not the police officer is acting out of racism is irrelevant when the result is the same.
#374 Aug 23 2016 at 6:11 PM Rating: Decent
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Friar Bijou wrote:
gbaji wrote:
If we could wave a magic wand and end all racism (by cops, or heck, by everyone), that would not solve the problem.
Completely? No. Go a long way toward solving it? Yes. Unless you believe that racism has no bearing.


You're countering a relative statement with an absolute ("long way" versus "no bearing"). I have never said that racism does not exist "at all", or that it has "no bearing". You're presenting me with a false dilemma, where I must either declare that racism has no effect at all, or accept your position that it's significant enough that eliminating it would go "a long way" towards solving the problem. I'm going to reject that particular fallacy, ok?

What I have stated, repeatedly, is that I do not agree that racism by police is more than a very minor contributor to the problem we're discussing, and that focusing almost exclusively on it instead of on other factors that I believe are much greater contributors is counter productive. Is that really so wrong?
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#375 Aug 23 2016 at 6:18 PM Rating: Decent
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lolgaxe wrote:
gbaji wrote:
If not, then you've got your head on backwards or something.
If you can't figure out how google searches are colored by confirmation bias then...


Um. I'm the one who was pointing out the confirmation bias in a google search, so I'm not sure why you're aiming that at me.

When your search includes the word "racism" (or any variation) you are automatically biasing the results to show instances where racism is relevant to the article, or are part of the conclusions of the article. I would hope we would all understand this.
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#376 Aug 23 2016 at 7:12 PM Rating: Decent
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someproteinguy wrote:
Which is great, but in this case I think they're one in the same to the people who are the victims. So if you're perhaps wondering about why people might be protesting in the streets, angry about police & racism, it's very much relevant.


Sure. And that's close to the point I'm trying to make. IMO, the anger currently leveled at the police is misplaced anger derived from the environmental conditions they live in. It should be leveled at the processes that maintain that poverty instead. And yes, I totally get that the police are always going to be seen as a convenient symbol of that environment. It's much easier to point the finger at the cop who arrested your cousin for dealing drugs than it is to point it at a wide assortment of more ephemeral factors that resulted in your cousin dealing drugs on that street corner in the first place. I do get this.

But there's a point between where "the people" point their anger, and where we as "a people" direct our efforts. And it seems as though what's happening is that certain groups have latched onto that anger as a means of self promotion, and use that to feed more anger at the police, and then use that to push for changes to police procedures and other more or less surface level stuff as a means of appeasing the very crowd they just got riled up in the first place. Which, I suppose, may make them look like heroes in the minds of the participants of the angry mob in the short term, but for those of us looking at the issue more objectively, it should be apparent that this isn't actually going to change anything in the long run.

Which is why I see the whole thing as social opportunism at its worst. And the people who suffer are the people whose neighborhoods, already suffering from poverty and crime, become the new war zones in this struggle. A struggle for what really amounts to nothing at all. There's no victory condition in the direction this is headed. Just more violence, death, and tears.

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Ironically I was just reading this Saturday...


Sadly, that's just one in a long list of examples of this sort of thing. Quite often "helping" isn't actually helpful to the person you help. I think I mentioned upthread somewhere the extension of the classic "feed a man a fish" concept that by feeding a man a fish each day, you tend to reduce the odds that he'll ever learn how to fish for himself. So it may seem charitable at first, but once that charity become institutionalized (or viewed in the context of entitlement), it becomes harmful to the recipient. And that's before even considering the degree of control one gains over the recipient, who is now dependent on you providing for him.

Our current welfare state was founded right at the moment in our history where blacks had just earned civil rights and most of the legal blocks to black prosperity in the US were removed, but they were still disproportionately poor because they had not yet had time to take advantage of that new freedom. We can speculate whether it was done deliberately to trap blacks in poverty, or was implemented by well meaning social thinkers who honestly believed they were "helping", but the end result kinda can't be ignored. Over the last 50 years we should have seen a significant narrowing of the social and economic gaps between black and white. But we haven't.

Some insist on arguing that it's "racism" that causes this, but it's hard to logically accept that racism has increased since the 1960s, much less increased to such a degree that it could make up for the elimination of all of the overt laws and rules and social restrictions that were in place in our society back then. The idea that we removed those things and somehow magically filled it up with a form of racism that we can't see or quantify, that is in no way overt and broad, but it's somehow able to perform the same social and economic role that segregation, Jim Crow, and a host of other mechanisms used to? Sorry, I just don't buy that. Not when there's a much more direct and logical and frankly measurable explanation at hand.

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From what I can tell I'm just grabbing the first few links on the page, ignoring the ones that aren't about guns/shooting/etc or are behind paywalls and can't really be read. Those three were all on the first 2 pages. Of course I can't comment to the degree the search program tailors search results based on my previous searches, hence the request for a direct link, given the fuzziness of what may be being returned.


Fair enough. Again though, even reading through some of the links you provided, it's clear (to me at least), that the authors tend to be measuring police actions within the context of a broader socio-economic condition. I'm not seeing anything that attempts to claim that racism by police is the "cause" of those disparate stats. Um... But you do kinda have to get into the whole difference between "racism" and "racial bias". They're not one and the same. A cop may be more suspicious of a couple of black men standing on the corner than a couple of white men doing the same thing. But if that increased suspicion is the result of past statistical probability vis-a-vis likelihood of each pair of men being involved in criminal behavior, is his bias because of "racism", or the result of existing socio-economic conditions?

And that statistical effect gets even more muddied when we're dealing with neighborhoods that are themselves strongly racially segregated. Which I've touched on previously in this topic.

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gbaji wrote:
But if we're actually looking at the root cause, and searching for things to fix, we should be looking at poverty instead?
You mean racism? Because we really aren't going to solve one without solving the other.


Perhaps. But my argument is that if we can figure out how to fix the disparate poverty rates, then 99% of racism and racial bias disappear as well. The example above kinda illustrates this. If poverty rates were the same for black and white, the it's likely that crime rates would be similar as well. Which means that people would not associate "black" with "crime/violence/poverty/etc". Which would dramatically reduce racial bias, and certainly put a massive dent in racism as well (it's a lot easier for someone to believe that their race is innately superior to another when there are such differences in crime and poverty stats between the two).

On the flip side, I believe that no amount of "fighting racism" will be effective if the underlying socio-economic stats don't change. We've kinda gone as far as we can go in this area. You can only "treat people the same regardless of race" to the point where you run into hard differences that aren't your own unfounded biases. It's not my unfounded bias that makes me avoid hanging out in the predominately black neighborhoods in my area late at night. But that's pretty much where we're at now. That's the "problem" that needs to be solved. And it's not racism on my part that is the problem here, it's the socio-economic fact that predominately black neighborhoods are also predominately high crime neighborhoods that most people who can avoid will avoid.

Hence, my argument that we should focus on that poverty difference. Fix that, and a whole lot of other things are fixed along the way.

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No worries. In the end I don't think we're actually as far apart on this as the rhetoric would make it out to be. Some portion of this seems to be just talking past each other, and using different words to address the same issues. I don't mean to discount the other problems either, mostly just trying to tease out an understanding of your position.


I'm trying to explain it, but it's difficult sometimes. As I said earlier, it's really easy to point to the last link in the chain and point the finger at it. It's a lot harder to point out that that link is the result of the one before it, which was the result of the one before it, etc, and to argue that we should maybe look further up that chain for root causes, and certainly maybe try to find the one that gives us the most bang for the buck.

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Get well and stuff. Smiley: thumbsup


Oddly, while I felt awful Friday, I just took some cold stuff when I got home, and right before going to bed, and woke up Saturday feeling more or less fine. So yay!

Edited, Aug 23rd 2016 6:16pm by gbaji
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