To your last point, I kinda lost Kriegman when he deduced that whites are 70% more likely to be shot if they are armed. I don't really know where he pulled that from. Where he pulled his primary statistical conclusions for this article were not readily apparent. That being said, I already have come to a similar conclusion as him. This was the article that primarily did it for me: https://www.city-journal.org/reflections-on-race-riots-and-police?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Organic_Social
I agree. I think black people are being ginned up to hate cops and confrontations are inevitable. Who benefits from this? The people who maintain their political power by wearing scarves and kneeling in the halls of Congress. The people in the DE& I offices. The MSM. . . .
You are totally on point. Also, more than 1 thing can be true at a time. There are some problematic cops, I've worked with them and they scared the hell out of me, but they are a small percent. They need to be dealt with appropriately. Likewise, the last time I looked, cops were the #4 or 5 cause of death to black men and other black men were #1 or 2. So there's work to be done by or in that community. My black friends have no problem with me saying that, my more liberal white friends, 2 years ago- forget it.
And anyone who tries to disarm a cop is begging for a Darwin Award. Comply, then complain later if necessary.
I think unconscious bias is inevitable when a disproportional amount of crime--particularly violent crime--is committed by a very recognizable demographic. When cops know that black men are more likely to attempt to assault or kill them, how can they not be instinctively more wary about that threat?
But we've seen the results of what happens when cops decide to simply not put themselves in that position to begin with--when they actively AVOID policing black neighborhoods, as happened in Baltimore, and as has happened in other cities since 2020: an increase in the number black victims harmed by other black people.
You are correct. When I worked in an ultra wealthy area I got so sick of hearing "my taxes pay your salary" and I felt bad towards the community. I know of a few officers who have been badly hurt because the criminal was black and they hesitated to act for fear of repercussions. To your point below, my experience is black officers are sometimes harder on black criminals and feel ok to do 'real talk' within the community. I have a far left friend who insists they are just brainwashed into being self hating. I pointed out it's a lot of "white privilege" to assume you know why a black person you haven't met does something. It's just not something we can talk about.
I find it ironic that the Left *promotes* being self-hating if you're white, but assumes that all non-whites who don't agree with them are "self-hating." Seems more like "self-hating" means "doesn't agree with the Leftist agenda."
You're right, we are not allowed to talk about it openly. If the wrong person hears, Cancellation will ensue.
Instead of wanting to defund the police, black communities want a larger police presence. The people clambering to defund the police are limousine liberals, elitists who do not live in the black neighborhoods that are war zones.
At one time, I would have said that the best solution would be to have black cops policing black neighborhoods. But now that Leftists are calling black conservatives "White Supremacists," it's obvious that Leftist leaders are only interested in the extent to which the issue can be used to serve their own purposes.
While I agree that Trayvon Martin and George Floyd were not the best of people, neither one of them deserved to die for what they were killed for, especially in case of Trayvon who was killed by a vigilante who later proved to be a bad person too.
You might remember that Zimmerman was acquitted because the prosecutor insisted on charging him with murder, on political orders. If they would have tried him for manslaughter the verdict might have been different, but they had to tie the ideological line.
So a guy that got killed while trying to kill another shouldnтАЩt have been killed. Got it.
And st Floyd killed himself. That fentanyl and meth wasnтАЩt shoved down his throat by someone else. Guy never learned since he ODed on the same combo in the previous months - more than once.
If you had, you'd know that it was Trayvon who did the attacking, and that Zimmerman shot in self-defense. I'm not saying that Zimmerman is a good person. But the facts are not what you suggest.
Obviously, the problem isnтАЩt that they somehow тАЬdeservedтАЭ what happened to them because they werenтАЩt saints, but the media is painting a false narrative by omission. I remember my shock to read a NYT article stating that тАЬGeorge Floyd didnтАЩt die because of drugsтАЭ. I believe that, but I was like, wait a minute, the NYT never mentioned St. George was on drugs! With the MSM, you have to read in between the lines to get a glimmer of truth - exactly like the communist official propaganda.
Chauvin was convicted for cutting off Floyd's airflow. However there was no pettichiae and the hyloid bone was intact. Evidence of either are traditionally used to establish choking or strangulation- i.e. cutting off one's air flow.
Chauvin had to be convicted. He was the blood sacrifice. Had the jury found him not guilty, they as well as their community and others around the country would have been literally destroyed. And of course, BLM would have grifted enough more money to buy another 10 multi million dollar homes.
I agree, but that doesn't address the "rights entitled under the law" that you mention of all the young mostly black people who have been murdered because of BLM and the Ferguson effect. Victims rights seem to die when they do, while perpetrators are lionized and given every excuse for their actions.
I appreciate your efforts and sincerity. My problem is that expressed passions (marches) about apparent wrongs has produced not solutions but worse wrongs, e.g. the Ferguson Effect. I believe little thought generally given to the fact that policing and incarceration are the terminal steps in a communityтАЩs efforts to protect its innocents. To demand, at that point, that the ills of the individual criminals or the ills of the society be solved by police or courts is, in my mind, unproductive.
As a society we have tried beatings, solitary confinement, hard labor, work training, psychiatry, drugs, half-way houses, and much else, and recidivism is rife. That leads me to believe that the problem resides within the criminal, and that humane incarceration, mass or otherwise, remains the sole decent method to protect the innocent.
As to solutions applicable prior to arrest and imprisonment, looking to schooling that doesn't result in the illiterate and inumerate seems to me to be a good starting point.
None of what I say should be taken as tolerance for misconduct by any individual in the law enforcement community. In fact, I believe that stricter standards should apply to those given those powers.
Are you referring to the "honest conversation about race"" that we're invited to have but which is immediately shut down when certain inconvenient facts are raised?
And neither is twitter mobbing a company to get them to fire an employee deeded immoral by activists. In both cases, there is no discovery, no weighing of evidence, no protections of due process - it's an extrajudicial punishment.
But losing one's job, and being publicized as a bad person whom nobody should hire (destroyed career in one's industry), is more punitive than many criminal punishments by fines. Even a non-woke company which googles somebody's name and finds that they were fired for something controversial, will often not want to buy trouble because if an activist finds out where they work now, pressure to fire them again will be applied to the company - including calls to boycott any company employing a bad person like that.
This cannot be dismissed as not being a criminal proceeding; it has similar punitive consequences without protection of due process.
And students expelled under Title IX may as well resign themselves to never attending college, because as I understand it most colleges ask about prior ejections like that.
I used to post regularly about police misconduct on my Facebook page. It's an issue that affects people of all races and even people's pets (police regularly shoot dogs without justification). But my Leftist friends complained that I wasn't focusing exclusively on black victims of police. So I just stopped posting about it at all.
I think focusing entirely on race with regard to police brutality is a smoke screen. If we acknowledge that this happens to people of all races, then we have to acknowledge that the root problem has more to do with creeping Totalitarianism than with race. Likewise, the defund movement ensures that nothing will change. Want to know what would help? Limiting qualified immunity and ending the drug war.
Yes! Completely agree. Asset forfeiture is a travesty. My husband was a criminal justice major in college, until a guest speaker came in to talk about asset forfeiture. That made him decide not to be a cop.
What boggles my mind most is that civil asset forfeiture is blatantly unConstitutional. It seizes property on mere suspicion of wrongdoing, and even if they are not ultimately charged with a crime, the victim of it has to *prove* their innocence in order to get their own property back.
You make an interesting point. You know who has been totally silenced? Black women who have been abused by some of the men who later get shot by police. I'm sure their stories and feelings are complicated and nuanced, if they had any platform to tell them.
We even have an up and coming black politician in my town who had multiple allegations of sexual assault and intimidation. It was heartbreaking to see those women and girls get dog piled. Just wait, I say, the first women to report Cosby, Weinstein, etc got told to sit down and shut up too.
"neglected to post about someone" - reminds me of something I read in an HBR "management tip of the day" recently: "Sometimes your efforts to be inclusive and call out injustice will backfire, accidentally causing harm to others. Perhaps you use language that some find offensive or problematic, you neglect to name all of the groups that are suffering the injustice, or you make some other misstep you donтАЩt recognize until someone brings it to your intention. What should you do?" Yes. God forbid you "neglect to name ALL of the groups..." (except of course you can only name the officially-sanctioned oppressed/victimized groups...)
I am not on social media but the large company that I work for donated $1,000,000 to BLM at the height of their violent protests while they were occurring just blocks away from our corporate offices. We do not have a corporate forum on which to post as Zac had with his Hub, but I know that, even if we did, I would be reticent to address the grievous injustice to the shareholders and policy holders. I feel certain it would be quickly scrubbed; however, I am bothered by my own reluctance to speak up should such a forum exist. Those who pay their high-priced premiums are the ones who actually made that donation - and that is simply wrong.
My husband's company gave BLM a big donation too in 2020. I told him {as a joke, obvs} to ask the CFO to get their money back and give it to actual black victims of violent crime... or scholarships, whatever but just not WTF ever they are spending it on now. Jeez.
Hi Lisa, I just read a book that you might find it interesting. It is about who, if anyone, is looking out for shareholders, and how performative goodness of companies can make governments overlook their actual not-so-good activities - to employees and others. It's called Woke, Inc by Vivek Ramaswamy.
Thanks, Sharon, for reminding me of that book. I have been wanting to read it after listening to him in a few interviews and being very impressed by his thoughts.
To your last point, I kinda lost Kriegman when he deduced that whites are 70% more likely to be shot if they are armed. I don't really know where he pulled that from. Where he pulled his primary statistical conclusions for this article were not readily apparent. That being said, I already have come to a similar conclusion as him. This was the article that primarily did it for me: https://www.city-journal.org/reflections-on-race-riots-and-police?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Organic_Social
I agree. I think black people are being ginned up to hate cops and confrontations are inevitable. Who benefits from this? The people who maintain their political power by wearing scarves and kneeling in the halls of Congress. The people in the DE& I offices. The MSM. . . .
You are totally on point. Also, more than 1 thing can be true at a time. There are some problematic cops, I've worked with them and they scared the hell out of me, but they are a small percent. They need to be dealt with appropriately. Likewise, the last time I looked, cops were the #4 or 5 cause of death to black men and other black men were #1 or 2. So there's work to be done by or in that community. My black friends have no problem with me saying that, my more liberal white friends, 2 years ago- forget it.
And anyone who tries to disarm a cop is begging for a Darwin Award. Comply, then complain later if necessary.
I think unconscious bias is inevitable when a disproportional amount of crime--particularly violent crime--is committed by a very recognizable demographic. When cops know that black men are more likely to attempt to assault or kill them, how can they not be instinctively more wary about that threat?
But we've seen the results of what happens when cops decide to simply not put themselves in that position to begin with--when they actively AVOID policing black neighborhoods, as happened in Baltimore, and as has happened in other cities since 2020: an increase in the number black victims harmed by other black people.
You are correct. When I worked in an ultra wealthy area I got so sick of hearing "my taxes pay your salary" and I felt bad towards the community. I know of a few officers who have been badly hurt because the criminal was black and they hesitated to act for fear of repercussions. To your point below, my experience is black officers are sometimes harder on black criminals and feel ok to do 'real talk' within the community. I have a far left friend who insists they are just brainwashed into being self hating. I pointed out it's a lot of "white privilege" to assume you know why a black person you haven't met does something. It's just not something we can talk about.
I find it ironic that the Left *promotes* being self-hating if you're white, but assumes that all non-whites who don't agree with them are "self-hating." Seems more like "self-hating" means "doesn't agree with the Leftist agenda."
You're right, we are not allowed to talk about it openly. If the wrong person hears, Cancellation will ensue.
Instead of wanting to defund the police, black communities want a larger police presence. The people clambering to defund the police are limousine liberals, elitists who do not live in the black neighborhoods that are war zones.
At one time, I would have said that the best solution would be to have black cops policing black neighborhoods. But now that Leftists are calling black conservatives "White Supremacists," it's obvious that Leftist leaders are only interested in the extent to which the issue can be used to serve their own purposes.
Trayvon wasn't killed by police.
Trayvon was a thug so thuggish his moms in Miami shipped him up to pop in Orlando. He was no saint.
The gentle giant of Ferguson was a criminal thug not an aspiring college student.
St Floyd was a criminal drug addict who had invaded a pregnant womanтАЩs house and held a gun to her belly.
Seems all the saints in the leftist pantheon are criminals.
facts have no place in fantasy land
Who else would sociopaths have in their Pantheon?
I mean.... Ares and Zeus were almost certainly sociopaths and are literally in the Pantheon.
There ya go...
While I agree that Trayvon Martin and George Floyd were not the best of people, neither one of them deserved to die for what they were killed for, especially in case of Trayvon who was killed by a vigilante who later proved to be a bad person too.
You might remember that Zimmerman was acquitted because the prosecutor insisted on charging him with murder, on political orders. If they would have tried him for manslaughter the verdict might have been different, but they had to tie the ideological line.
So a guy that got killed while trying to kill another shouldnтАЩt have been killed. Got it.
And st Floyd killed himself. That fentanyl and meth wasnтАЩt shoved down his throat by someone else. Guy never learned since he ODed on the same combo in the previous months - more than once.
I'm guessing that you didn't actually pay attention to the trial.
I did. Very close one.
If you had, you'd know that it was Trayvon who did the attacking, and that Zimmerman shot in self-defense. I'm not saying that Zimmerman is a good person. But the facts are not what you suggest.
And these "facts" are based on Zimmerman's words. Martin was dead at the time of the trial, there were only two of them at the moment.
The bottom line is that there is a big difference between glorifying Floyd and Martin and simply acknowledging that they were not justly killed.
There was hard evidence that supported his claim. Evidence that the jury agreed with.
Bob...could be the divide when you state "character rather than the rights". once that person gives respect to faulty character, rights lost.
Obviously, the problem isnтАЩt that they somehow тАЬdeservedтАЭ what happened to them because they werenтАЩt saints, but the media is painting a false narrative by omission. I remember my shock to read a NYT article stating that тАЬGeorge Floyd didnтАЩt die because of drugsтАЭ. I believe that, but I was like, wait a minute, the NYT never mentioned St. George was on drugs! With the MSM, you have to read in between the lines to get a glimmer of truth - exactly like the communist official propaganda.
Chauvin was convicted for cutting off Floyd's airflow. However there was no pettichiae and the hyloid bone was intact. Evidence of either are traditionally used to establish choking or strangulation- i.e. cutting off one's air flow.
Chauvin had to be convicted. He was the blood sacrifice. Had the jury found him not guilty, they as well as their community and others around the country would have been literally destroyed. And of course, BLM would have grifted enough more money to buy another 10 multi million dollar homes.
I agree, but that doesn't address the "rights entitled under the law" that you mention of all the young mostly black people who have been murdered because of BLM and the Ferguson effect. Victims rights seem to die when they do, while perpetrators are lionized and given every excuse for their actions.
I appreciate your efforts and sincerity. My problem is that expressed passions (marches) about apparent wrongs has produced not solutions but worse wrongs, e.g. the Ferguson Effect. I believe little thought generally given to the fact that policing and incarceration are the terminal steps in a communityтАЩs efforts to protect its innocents. To demand, at that point, that the ills of the individual criminals or the ills of the society be solved by police or courts is, in my mind, unproductive.
As a society we have tried beatings, solitary confinement, hard labor, work training, psychiatry, drugs, half-way houses, and much else, and recidivism is rife. That leads me to believe that the problem resides within the criminal, and that humane incarceration, mass or otherwise, remains the sole decent method to protect the innocent.
As to solutions applicable prior to arrest and imprisonment, looking to schooling that doesn't result in the illiterate and inumerate seems to me to be a good starting point.
None of what I say should be taken as tolerance for misconduct by any individual in the law enforcement community. In fact, I believe that stricter standards should apply to those given those powers.
Are you referring to the "honest conversation about race"" that we're invited to have but which is immediately shut down when certain inconvenient facts are raised?
Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. What a radical idea.
It's certainly an idea that the Left has decided to reject.
ask any Title IX tribunal on a college campus
I see your point but Title IX is not criminal in nature.
And neither is twitter mobbing a company to get them to fire an employee deeded immoral by activists. In both cases, there is no discovery, no weighing of evidence, no protections of due process - it's an extrajudicial punishment.
But losing one's job, and being publicized as a bad person whom nobody should hire (destroyed career in one's industry), is more punitive than many criminal punishments by fines. Even a non-woke company which googles somebody's name and finds that they were fired for something controversial, will often not want to buy trouble because if an activist finds out where they work now, pressure to fire them again will be applied to the company - including calls to boycott any company employing a bad person like that.
This cannot be dismissed as not being a criminal proceeding; it has similar punitive consequences without protection of due process.
And students expelled under Title IX may as well resign themselves to never attending college, because as I understand it most colleges ask about prior ejections like that.
It is mob rule pure and simple.
I used to post regularly about police misconduct on my Facebook page. It's an issue that affects people of all races and even people's pets (police regularly shoot dogs without justification). But my Leftist friends complained that I wasn't focusing exclusively on black victims of police. So I just stopped posting about it at all.
I think focusing entirely on race with regard to police brutality is a smoke screen. If we acknowledge that this happens to people of all races, then we have to acknowledge that the root problem has more to do with creeping Totalitarianism than with race. Likewise, the defund movement ensures that nothing will change. Want to know what would help? Limiting qualified immunity and ending the drug war.
Also getting rid of asset forfeiture, which motivates law enforcement to "find" (i.e., plant) drugs.
Yes! Completely agree. Asset forfeiture is a travesty. My husband was a criminal justice major in college, until a guest speaker came in to talk about asset forfeiture. That made him decide not to be a cop.
What boggles my mind most is that civil asset forfeiture is blatantly unConstitutional. It seizes property on mere suspicion of wrongdoing, and even if they are not ultimately charged with a crime, the victim of it has to *prove* their innocence in order to get their own property back.
Some people never get it back, even if they are never charged. It's unconscionable.
Which is just what they wanted.
Threaten bodily harm to one of your leftist friends and what's the first thing they'll say?
Call a cop!!!! Oh wait, they'll screech it in a high and frightened voice.
You make an interesting point. You know who has been totally silenced? Black women who have been abused by some of the men who later get shot by police. I'm sure their stories and feelings are complicated and nuanced, if they had any platform to tell them.
We even have an up and coming black politician in my town who had multiple allegations of sexual assault and intimidation. It was heartbreaking to see those women and girls get dog piled. Just wait, I say, the first women to report Cosby, Weinstein, etc got told to sit down and shut up too.
"neglected to post about someone" - reminds me of something I read in an HBR "management tip of the day" recently: "Sometimes your efforts to be inclusive and call out injustice will backfire, accidentally causing harm to others. Perhaps you use language that some find offensive or problematic, you neglect to name all of the groups that are suffering the injustice, or you make some other misstep you donтАЩt recognize until someone brings it to your intention. What should you do?" Yes. God forbid you "neglect to name ALL of the groups..." (except of course you can only name the officially-sanctioned oppressed/victimized groups...)
Wait, what? People who have sex that CANNOT result in pregnancy are disproportionately impacted by abortion bans? They don't even hear themselves....
I am not on social media but the large company that I work for donated $1,000,000 to BLM at the height of their violent protests while they were occurring just blocks away from our corporate offices. We do not have a corporate forum on which to post as Zac had with his Hub, but I know that, even if we did, I would be reticent to address the grievous injustice to the shareholders and policy holders. I feel certain it would be quickly scrubbed; however, I am bothered by my own reluctance to speak up should such a forum exist. Those who pay their high-priced premiums are the ones who actually made that donation - and that is simply wrong.
My husband's company gave BLM a big donation too in 2020. I told him {as a joke, obvs} to ask the CFO to get their money back and give it to actual black victims of violent crime... or scholarships, whatever but just not WTF ever they are spending it on now. Jeez.
Hi Lisa, I just read a book that you might find it interesting. It is about who, if anyone, is looking out for shareholders, and how performative goodness of companies can make governments overlook their actual not-so-good activities - to employees and others. It's called Woke, Inc by Vivek Ramaswamy.
Excellent book very worth while reading
Shareholders? pffft...what is important are the stakeholders
I know because Joe Biden said so
So did Bill Gates! Excellent point!
It is a marvelous book. I hope they succeed with their new unWoke venture.
Thanks, Sharon, for reminding me of that book. I have been wanting to read it after listening to him in a few interviews and being very impressed by his thoughts.