What Up Toad
Active Member
One of the problems is you can’t just have an academic discussion without racism being injected. If you ask a BLM backer if the math really shows endemic racism in police or just as in society there will always be idiots-you’re racist. If you agree that no one deserves to die over a traffic stop or warrant service, but point out if the vast majority of these people would be alive with a little polite compliance, not doing something illegal or otherwise causes them to intersect with police, not fighting, not trying to flee, et al, you are a racist. Pointing out that judging the actions of people in the past usually has no relation to the present, you’re a racist.
To say nothing has changed is just wrong. I can remember the days Frank’s Restaurant in Schulenburg, Tx having white and colored water fountains and restrooms, all white SWC, segregated high schools and state championships. It wasn’t that long ago (for me).
Until there is a little room for polite discussion from all sides, change will continue to move slowly.
There are plenty of people who support policing reform who will engage with you in an academic discussion if you're willing to be open to changing your views.
1. Does the math really show endemic racism in police or is it just a few bad apples?
Here's an article from John McWhorter, a black professor who tends to lean libertarian, where he purports that policing needs to be reformed, but that black people are not killed at a disproportionate rate compared to white people. He gives a number of reasons why black people are more likely to encounter police and why the narrative has continued, but he doesn't believe that police kill because of bigotry. He believes many of the issues come about because of poverty, and more black people are poor, proportionately.
https://quillette.com/2020/06/11/racist-police-violence-reconsidered/
2. The fast majority of these people wouldn't have encountered the police if they weren't doing something illegal.
Tim Scott, a black Republican senator, gave a speech a few years ago about the number of times he's been pulled over for driving too nice of a car. There are plenty of stories from black millionaires who said they were pulled over for "not looking like they belong there." There was a Louis Vuitton designer who was stopped and frisked because they didn't think he looked like the kind of person who should be carrying a LV shopping bag. Obviously these are all anecdotal examples, but the statistics also show that black people are profiled at a much higher rate.
https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/13/politics/tim-scott-police-racial-profiling/index.html
https://www.nber.org/papers/w26774
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0858-1
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-st...fornia-cops-more-likely-to-stop-black-drivers
And most black people will gladly say that things are better than before, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't continue to improve.