This was so well done @kyleporterCBS, thank you!! Excellent piece.
As for @leon and @All4okst, don’t let the door hit you on your way out.
When I was in college and in student government I lobbied to get the SGA to formally send a letter to the O’Colly about the distaste in which they smeared our own starting running back by running a story about a court case filed against him prior to his time at OSU. That information was illegally obtained by the reporter. The letter got virtually no support. No one was willing to speak up for one of our own. Today, many of those same people are willing to stand up because a criminal was wrongly and senselessly killed by a police officer way off the rails in Minneapolis. I simply don’t understand. I don’t understand any of this. I have many close friends in law enforcement, black, white, Hispanic, and Asian. All of them would swear to you today that systemic police racism does not exist and in fact, the majority of their time is spent protecting communities of color. So no, I don’t understand any of this or most of you who sympathize with this protest. Wake up people, you’re being played.
i don’t trust anything on Lie$tream Media, but what’s your point or issue, BLM? Be direct, maybe people are misinterpreting?
Yet, far too many black people are getting iced or injured by Five-Oh. Likewise i have many friends and acquaintances who work in law enforcement in TPD and OHP, but none of them would go where this a$$ clown Chauvin went. Did you know Chauvin and Floyd worked together as club security for over a year? There’s more to this story that we know but anyone w/ decent vision could see he murdered Floyd, just like NYPD murdered Eric Garner for selling black market cigs.
Who knows how long this kind of stuff has been going on before cell phone cameras became ubiquitous…
White privilege? Maybe someone on this forum can articulate that for me. Let me tell you what my white privilege was:
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working odd jobs since age 9. I was told if I wanted it bad enough I would earn it.
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no money to pay for school. I joined the military and served honorably so I could afford school with no student loan debts. (A deployment to Iraq as well)
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I had two other siblings and a total household income of less than 40K a year.
I’m not saying the black population doesn’t have a harder path. Most are single family homes and poor. What I get irritated with is when the claim everything is always someone else’s fault. Just because you have a harder path doesn’t mean anything is impossible. I’m sure there is some racial discrimination that exists among employers. This is probably no as existent as most people claim it is.
In respects to Chuba Hubbard I really don’t need a 21 year old athlete with a full ride scholarship and no true life experience yet telling me I don’t understand or what I should think. Maybe I don’t truly understand everything but when are these excuses going to stop?
I can’t think of one white coworker or any other person of a different race say that what happened in Minneapolis was okay. I’ll tell you first hand it wasn’t and the officers involved all need to be prosecuted. I have a black guy that works for me. He’s one of the most respectful and hardworking people I’ve ever met. Not once have I ever heard him complain or make excuses for anything. I treat him just as I would of anyone else regardless of race, religious, or political affiliation. That is because I have total respect for him.
I’m not a Republican or a Democrat. I’m an Independent because I don’t believe either political party has the answer because they don’t. I support the notion that blacks shouldn’t be discriminated against or profiled. However, that doesn’t mean I have to condone the behavior of looting or rioting (regardless of race). I would say the exact same thing of some of the white trash I’ve seen in Oklahoma.
I’ll tell you what I do understand. I understand the difference between right and wrong. Racism is wrong. So is destroying innocent people’s businesses. Tell me what’s right about both? If you want to protest that is fine. I’m sure a majority of people don’t mind. What people don’t want is anarchy and lawlessness.
Thanks for your service. Now go away.
No problem. Peace!!!
Joe, you explained privilege yourself in the second paragraph when you acknowledged that the black community has it harder. Privilege doesn’t mean you didn’t work hard for what you earned, it means there are challenges they have that you don’t.
It’s acknowledging that if George Floyd were white, he probably wouldn’t have been killed by that cop. It’s recognizing that one of the big reasons a lot of communities of color are poor and don’t own homes is because banks redlined communities so that black GI’s couldn’t buy homes in white neighborhoods. It’s recognizing that the Nixon administration admittedly started the war on drugs to target the black community. It’s recognizing that you probably don’t get followed around by store security when you’re shopping, or have the cops called on you when you ask a lady to leash her dog in Central Park.
What it’s not is making excuses. I think any reasonable person would say that George Floyd should have faced consequences for passing a fake $20, but that the consequences shouldn’t have been death. I used to work at a buy/sell place and a white girl tried to use a stolen ID to sell about $300 in stolen merchandise, way worse than what Floyd did, and she got a slap on the wrist and didn’t even spend the night in jail. That’s privilege.
I mean, your very unnecessary shot at Chuba shows pretty clearly that you didn’t get his point at all. He talked about how people like you will cheer for him on Saturdays, but then when he or one of his teammates talks publicly about their own lives, you cast it aside by saying they’re young and don’t know what they’re talking about. You say he has no real life experience, but the indisputable truth is that even as a 21 year old college student, he knows more about life as a black man than you or I will ever know, so quite frankly his thoughts on those matters are pretty important, even if you don’t like them. Also, you clearly don’t know anything about his background growing up in poverty in a single parent home and moving to a different country as an 18 year old. Just because his life experience is different than yours doesn’t make it less valuable.
So why is that my fault? Why am I supposed to be grouped in with other White people? If blacks don’t want to be grouped in with other black people then maybe some of these groups should stop associating all white people with white privilege?
You started talking about the Nixon administration. We are well past that point. Did I get to decided what happened 50-55 years ago when I’m in my mid thirties? I’ve been arrested one time. I learned my lesson. Guess what? I haven’t been arrested ever again.
My point is I don’t care what a lady did in Central Park. That wasn’t me!!! You can’t just strictly look at the equation from one side and provide an answer or a solution. This is why these issues need to be debated and explained in a civil matter. That is not what’s happening right now.
Maybe don’t take it personal when someone points out the system is unjust.
Who said anything about this being your fault specifically? Further, who exactly is being uncivil in this thread?
Nobody said you were the one that decided to redline neighborhoods and nobody said you called the cops in Central Park. What I said was those were examples of how things disproportionately affect the black community and simultaneously how white people have privilege. That is what you asked after all, right for an explanation of privilege? Or did you not ask that question in good faith?
White privilege or simply having not had your physical skin color be a hardship for you is not your fault. It’s simply an inherent fortune bestowed on you through genetics.
What we can do, is stand beside people of color and really listen them. We can learn to be real friends (if we aren’t) with people who look different. We can stop assuming guilt based on appearance. We can lobby for change through protesting, writing our representatives at a local, state, & national level. Supporting a person of color for political candidate…or if you must, run yourself and support policies that help people of color.
That’s what people are protesting for, to be seen and heard. To be treated equally by all of us, but especially by law enforcement. They want to be at the table, I say let’s build a bigger table.
Statistics show that there are far less, even as a percentage of the population, black people killed by police than white people or whatever. While racist people exist, the system isn’t rigged against minorities, no matter how much the media harps on it. It is a lie. Many of the people passionately protesting likely believe that lie and are not protesting falsely but its still a lie.
When you start attacking innocent people on the street, breaking out car windows and dragging people out of their cars, lighting peoples horse trailers on fire (Tulsa), yeah, I have a problem with that. Throwing rocks, frozen water bottles, and bricks at my friends in uniform, yeah, I have a problem with that. I believe we should all have just as big of a problem (imo a bigger) with this as we do with the what happened in Minneapolis.
@TayJ I hope you have 15 minutes to read this article today. This is a report from 2018 presented to the UN on the disparity in the US between white people and POC in percentages of the population that finds themselves in a traffic stop, percentage of traffic stops that result in searches, incarceration rates, prison time served for similarly situated defendants, parole results, and many more. I don’t know what you meant by “the system isn’t rigged against minorities”, but it seemed important to point this out about the legal system as a whole.
@TayJ and @joe15, you might take a few minutes to watch this video on systematic racism. It explains it pretty well. And its a cartoon, so that might help too.
Very interesting study. They likely have the strongest point about drug arrests, so on the drug front, I will adjust my stance. However, there are plenty of studies that say just the opposite on other fronts. I hope that you will do me the same courtesy and take a quick look. https://www.dailywire.com/news/7-statistics-show-systemic-racism-doesnt-exist-aaron-bandler
Thank you for your sensitive approach with the cartoon. I worked in lending for the majority of my early career and though I cannot speak for areas outside of Oklahoma, redlining is taken very seriously and every bank is examined on it thoroughly. They are trying to find infractions even when there are none. If it still exists in Chicago and other areas, I cannot say. But here, that will get your bank seized by the Fed in a heartbeat. This video also tells me that school choice and/or school vouchers could greatly reduce systemic racism as defined in this video.
That being said, I’m obviously not doing any good here but it is nice to have a community much smaller than Twitter or Facebook with which to have this uncomfortable dialog.
So on some the points provided in the article…
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Completely fair, although I don’t think that was the sticking point in systemic injustice. Just a small fraction. I believe I have seen that figure before. I don’t know how (or if) this evaluates force vs. alleged crime committed. I would be interested to read more.
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“In simulated exercises” seems kind of strange. I really have no idea what to do with that.
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I think this is an irrelevant statistic for talking about systemic racism except when looked at through the lens of the video @LawPoke76 posted about access to quality education, loans, and employment compared to white folks. I know that you worked in lending and seem to think redlining no longer exists. That may be the case, but we’re behind the eight ball here if that is true as of today. That surely wasn’t the case even 30 years ago I would imagine.
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I did not realize that studies had shown black people speed more frequently than white people and did so at more dangerous speeds. Interesting note there. It does note that 3/4 black people are stopped for a legitimate reason, but does not provide that same context for white people. I would certainly be interested in seeing that figure as well.
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Again, let’s look at those figures through the lens of the video dropped by @LawPoke76
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See point 5.
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A percentage of black people supporting “broken windows” policing doesn’t negates the idea that this can contribute to systemic racism.
Anyways, I feel like there were some takeaways from this article for sure. I don’t know that internet message boards are the best or easiest ways to have these conversations, but I appreciate the civility and the open mind.