Michael Brown

[Pandemonium]

Of course. The Feds led by Atty General Holder want to make a big deal about going after Wilson but it's not going to go anywhere. It's a bald faced ploy to pander to and appease voters that will fizzle out once the current outcry dies off. The most likely outcome is the family of Brown will succeed in a civil case against the city/state and get a big payout. "Justice" is appeasement in this case.

Besides the highly debatable specifics...this comes off rather strident, presumptuous, and cavalier.

Think of my opinion more as cynical based on historical fact.

[SR]

Of course. The Feds led by Atty General Holder want to make a big deal about going after Wilson but it's not going to go anywhere. It's a bald faced ploy to pander to and appease voters that will fizzle out once the current outcry dies off. The most likely outcome is the family of Brown will succeed in a civil case against the city/state and get a big payout. "Justice" is appeasement in this case.

Besides the highly debatable specifics...this comes off rather strident, presumptuous, and cavalier.

Think of my opinion more as cynical based on historical fact.

I am glad you replied; my interpretation was but one of many possible. And funny you mention history....as a result of this, I downloaded a bio on Thurgood Marshall today that is outlining it from Dred Scott to Plessey and everything else, including of course, Marshall's Brown case and so much more. Horrifying no matter how many times I re-visit this part of our culture/society.

[Hype]

https://www.academia.edu/9482167/How_ma ... e_Tolerate

[creep]

three pages here today....just can't do it.

[Hokahey]

I continue to applaud the peaceful protestors, but find the violent ones reprehensible. They're detsroying their town, which will eventually come to resemble East St. Louis if they're not careful. I've driven through the depths of ESTL many times, usually headed to some shady club or strip joint with a large group. It's all boarded up up houses, burnt buildings, and extreme poverty. Business owners are already swearing off rebuilding in Fergsuon, and people will undoubtedly hesitate to locate themselves or their businesses there in the future.

And regarding the peaceful protestors, there needs to be an end game in mind. Otherwise you become Occupy Wall Street - a bunch of well intentioned people with very loose demands and expectations that are either pipe dreams or too random for real consideration. Eventually, they're just people standing around being angry. Their numbers will dwindle, and people will stop paying attention.

Wilson wasn't indicted. That part of the game is now over. Are they demanding a federal indictment? If so, take your potests to the feds and be clear on that.

In the end, there will be positive change from all of this. I'd be shocked if all cops in the area don'r wind up with lapel cameras. But that's more of an appeasement measure. A stab at a solution to quiet people down. Get a list of demands, that can be met within at least some reason, and present them. Otherwise, the overall protests will be a footnote and generally forgotten in due time. Except by the people left to live within the aftermath of a destroyed small town in the suburbs of St. Louis.

[SR]

http://gawker.com/my-vassar-college-fac ... socialflow

[Hype]

http://gawker.com/my-vassar-college-fac ... socialflow

That's one of the good gawker articles that shows up periodically. Really, really powerful. The only analogue to that kind of experience I can think of is the way that low-wage workers are treated, generally regardless of race (and after all, part of racism is, as Franz Fanon illustrates, classism to begin with).

I'm really glad that I've had the (mis-)fortune of working for really terrible places, not just as a teenager trying to have disposable income, but as an adult with a lot of education, for reasons of temporary convenience. The way that poor people are treated, almost uniformly, as unintelligent potential criminals both as employees and as citizens more generally is really disturbing. I'm currently renting a really seedy apartment, and the way I've been treated by the landlord/property manager is absolutely soul-crushing (but, from their perspective, it's a survival mechanism). I keep reminding them that I'm not likely to flake (they know I have a mortgage on a house in Canada and a steady source of income), and I have to keep reminding myself that they feel like they have to operate this way. I can't imagine having to live every day being treated like this though. Gross.

[SR]

I had a pm with es a few days ago. I won't betray any of it except that I've never identified more with Mary dalton in my life

http://www.shmoop.com/native-son/mary-dalton.html

[creep]

our favorite deep thinker etty has weighed in on this.

I do believe that there is an elephant in the room. Let's put it this way: there has yet to be, say, an Hasidic Jew accidentally shot dead in a confrontation with the police in a Jewish Neighborhood. I am guessing because their culture do not glorify nor do are they themselves involved in violent crimes.

I use Jews as an example because they are one of them use discriminating minority & they were once, for many years, slaves tfemselves.

I have always like him. RT @msnbc: Charles Barkley supports of #Ferguson grand jury decision: http://on.msnbc.com/11OM9RY

[farrellgirl99]

our favorite deep thinker etty has weighed in on this.

I do believe that there is an elephant in the room. Let's put it this way: there has yet to be, say, an Hasidic Jew accidentally shot dead in a confrontation with the police in a Jewish Neighborhood. I am guessing because their culture do not glorify nor do are they themselves involved in violent crimes.

I use Jews as an example because they are one of them use discriminating minority & they were once, for many years, slaves tfemselves.

I have always like him. RT @msnbc: Charles Barkley supports of #Ferguson grand jury decision: http://on.msnbc.com/11OM9RY

Jews are not involved in violent crimes? Okay, Etty, if you say so. Neither are whites, asians, hispanics, eskimos, etc. Just blacks it seems.

[Hype]

our favorite deep thinker etty has weighed in on this.

I do believe that there is an elephant in the room. Let's put it this way: there has yet to be, say, an Hasidic Jew accidentally shot dead in a confrontation with the police in a Jewish Neighborhood. I am guessing because their culture do not glorify nor do are they themselves involved in violent crimes.

I use Jews as an example because they are one of them use discriminating minority & they were once, for many years, slaves tfemselves.

I have always like him. RT @msnbc: Charles Barkley supports of #Ferguson grand jury decision: http://on.msnbc.com/11OM9RY

Jews are not involved in violent crimes? Okay, Etty, if you say so. Neither are whites, asians, hispanics, eskimos, etc. Just blacks it seems.

Her comments on this are beyond ignorant. They are dangerous and stupid. It is thoughts like hers that cause the kind of scapegoating that resulted in the Holocaust. You'd think a Jewish convert would be able to see that. I guess not.

Everything she said is wrong on multiple levels. I'm way angrier about this than I should be...

[Romeo]

She is such a fucking nitwit

[farrellgirl99]

I looked for her saying this but couldn't find it. Creep, was this a standalone post? Maybe she got some sense and deleted it.

She keeps posting articles about Ferguson though

Oh fuck, she just posted this:



Meanwhile no indictment from grand jury against officer who killed Eric Garner

[creep]

I looked for her saying this but couldn't find it. Creep, was this a standalone post? Maybe she got some sense and deleted it.

it was a comment on a story she posted discrediting one of michael brown's friends.

[janesbiggestfan]

Hi.
I'd like to add my 2 cents on the issue and offer a European perspective on the issue.

Here in Europe there is a general belief, that it is US governments actions from the 60's and 70's that had contributed to the current state of the African Americans as much as slavery. According to many historical studies, prior to the social welfare reforms, black communities were in fact very conservative, with traditional households. This is not to disregard the impact of slavery and all its later consequences, Jim Crow, sperarate but equal etc. But it just wasn't the case of black girls knocked up with several children all by different absent fathers.

According to the narrative popular in Europe, after the 2 world war, the US government purposefuly destroyed inner city jobs that Blacks subsisted on, and introduced these social programs, more or less aimed at supplanting the Male head of the family in supporting the women. So: black men out of jobs (and quickly into the prison industrial complex existant and developing to this day), black women on government dole. They had in fact made it more evil as the government help for Black women with children was in a perverse way predicated on there not being a male in the household. I don't know if you agree, but in Europe it is more or less accepted that without a stable family that forces its children to learn, achieve and work hard, individuals are in for a shit ride of a life.

This is the European view. Probably a little poisoned by the hatred and disdain for the US government, which is seen as an evil empire, just barely less disgusting than the USSR (and rightfully so, if you consider that the US is overthrowing governments it doesn't like across the planet basically every year, or every other year since at least 100 years straight - be it by military intervention or the more "international bankers are concerned about the situation in (enter country) so they are withdrawing resources and making the country crumble" sort of way).

I'm curious to hear if you as Americans, who have a more feet on the ground perspective agree with this interpretation...

PS: For what it's worth, Europe is and will likely remain absolutely racist and xenophobic (For all the obvious reasons: mostly homogenic societies where everyone who isn't of the domestic nationality will always be looked at as an outsider... Hungarian people will never consider Arabs or Negroes as Hungarian, same for Polish or Lithuanian people... Even French have such a hard time accepting blacks from their oceanic islands as French people), so that may influence this way of thinking as much as the paranoid idea of the evil plotting US govt. Many people in Europe simply don't believe it when Americans claim that they are one nation regardless of race. We, in our paranoia, see it as a publicity stunt.

[SR]

Where are you in Europe?

This thread name needs to be changed as identical issues are under scrutiny from NY to Phoenix now.

[kv]

This thread name needs to be changed as identical issues are under scrutiny from NY to Phoenix now.

i·den·ti·cal
ˌīˈden(t)ək(ə)l/
adjective
adjective: identical

1.
similar in every detail; exactly alike.

[SR]

This thread name needs to be changed as identical issues are under scrutiny from NY to Phoenix now.

i·den·ti·cal
ˌīˈden(t)ək(ə)l/
adjective
adjective: identical

1.
similar in every detail; exactly alike.

Grow up....identical in that they are all unarmed young black men, but really?? You didn't understand my meaning. Infant.

[MYXYLPLYX]

This thread name needs to be changed as identical issues are under scrutiny from NY to Phoenix now.

i·den·ti·cal
ˌīˈden(t)ək(ə)l/
adjective
adjective: identical

1.
similar in every detail; exactly alike.

identical issues

ad·jec·tive
ˈajəktiv/
nounGRAMMAR
a word or phrase naming an attribute, added to or grammatically related to a noun to modify or describe it.

I believe the discussion is police excessive/deadly force used disproportionately against people of color...

[SR]

I hate to admit it, but I almost edited that word for this very reason....

[Hype]

kv's quibble isn't necessarily as infantile as it looks. Yes, SR's meaning was clear, but in fact there is a genuine matter of ambiguity, of focus/scope, and of target/aim, here. There are many interrelated questions and problems that are easy to conflate (because they are conflated) when talking about "the issue of deadly force used by police [against people of colour]". There are many ways to think about these questions and problems that generate a different relationship between that singular issue and parent, sibling, or cousin issues, if there are any.

One might think, for example, that the recent hyper-militarization of the police is a broader issue that plays a role in all of this, or that it is unclear where to place the exact lapses in oversight, training, enforcement of law, etc (e.g., is it at the level of local government? State? Federal? All of them? How?)

It is possible to read kv's concern as something more like: it's not obvious that the two major cases being discussed right now are symptoms of exactly the same sets of causes (hence: not identical in that sense), even if, yes, they are indicative of at least one major problem. These are different claims. Was Trayvon Martin's case a matter of police violence against black people? (Not really, because the guy that murdered him wasn't technically a law-enforcement officer). But was it indicative of an ongoing problem to which all these other cases can be related? Almost certainly. But the philosopher wants to make sure that the activist and the polemicist and the commentator keep clear about these things, and I think there's some value to doing so.

[SR]

Two major cases?

Anyway, glad we're on to something important here. Thanks guys.

[Hype]

Two major cases?

The Michael Brown thread: Michael Brown, and now Eric Garner.

Obviously there are other major cases -- that's why I brought Trayvon Martin up. But the question of 'identity' between cases was raised with respect to the first two.

[SR]

No, I'm quite positive I was referring to many more cases than the two.

[Hype]

No, I'm quite positive I was referring to many more cases than the two.

I didn't mean you specifically were only talking about the two cases (that is why I said "major cases"). Your implied meaning in "NY to Phoenix" doesn't suggest that the two major news stories aren't the major cases being discussed in the thread more generally.

But just to be clear, I agree with you in general terms, but it doesn't follow that the more cases there are the more likely it is that they are all instances of the same broader issue, though it doesn't rule that out either.

I think it is helpful to keep police brutality/sanctioned murder of racial minorities as a distinct issue from racism and tolerated brutality against racial minorities more generally. One reason for thinking this is that the society already accepts that there are contexts in which there are justified police homicides. The fact that so many of these are racial is important, but the reason why some police homicides are wrong isn't just that the people that are killed have a certain skin colour, but whether the reason why any particular case is wrong is that it can be attributed to the fact that the victim had a certain skin colour. And while the general problem is almost certainly true one might wonder how a society can reconcile the following propositions:

1. It is acceptable, morally, legally, socially, that sometimes police can use lethal force.

2. There are an exceedingly large number of cases in which it is difficult to discern whether the justification for (1) was adequate, and the victim is a racial minority.

There are many potential ways of teasing out the relationship between (1) and (2). And undoubtedly that is because there are many cultural factors at play: racial bias is well known and most of us, including black people, have it, against darker skinned people (see: Harvard bias studies). Many cities in the United States are, by comparison to the rest of the world, EXTREMELY racially segregated (I am still blown away by Baltimore and Chicago -- I have never seen anything like that before, and I still have a hard time believing this is the way things are). Social and economic inequalities correlate with race for reasons that we basically understand (legacy of slavery, continuation of, and toleration of, biases against both skin-colour and poverty). And so on.

So the question of how exactly racism plays a role across cases isn't clear. Do we want to know specific motive, if there is any, on the part of the actor, or in the reactions, or in the failures to prevent, or what?