Jumping the racial fence
In response to the brutal and inexplicable police shooting of Justine Damond, Shaun King wrote Police brutality jumped a racial fence with Minneapolis cop shooting of Justine Damond.
Maybe, just maybe, with the shooting death of Justine Damond, millions of white people, for the very first time, will now see a victim of police brutality, and see themselves.
To which my first response is "What in the Hell are you talking about? Police shootings aren't just a black thing."
One might be incline to think that people surprised by white people getting gunned down by cops haven't been paying attention.
Also, it's not like you can't find videos of unarmed white people being shot down by cops.
Just do a google video search for police shoot unarmed white and you'll get 87,000 hits.
Then I started thinking that Shuan King is not a moron. So how is it that he is unaware that half of all people getting gunned down by cops are white? Why does he seem not know that unarmed white people getting murdered all the time?
One thing we are talking about here is a liberal echo chamber.
Blacks are shot by police at 2.5 times the rate as whites, and that is extremely important.
That justifies a protest movement and outrage.
At the same time, you can't simply ignore 75% of all the instances of some event and pretend they don't exist, unless your conclusions are predetermined and you only want the data that backs up those conclusions.
That conclusion appears to be, based on the BLM slogan, that white people in general are the problem, rather than just the guys in uniform that are doing the actual shooting. After all, if the question is whether black lives matter, then the implication is that white people don't think black lives matter.
In a weird way, it's one step removed from "guns don't kill people; people kill people". You may not have pulled the trigger, but you hold some responsibility for the killing based on your skin color.
Naturally you have to ignore 50% of police shootings in order to blame white people in general. Otherwise you have a logical contradiction.
Which is why the clearly inarguable statement that "all lives matter" transforms into a racist statement by virtue of making the lives of 50% of police shooting victims, who are guilty of being white, not matter.
The next step you must take in making this about white people in general is that the shooting must be racially motivated.
As far as I'm concerned the 2.5 rate is prima facie evidence of a racial bias. However, what gets almost entirely ignored is that there are scientific studies saying that the shootings aren't racially biased (here and here).
What is most likely true is that a small minority of the shootings are racially biased, but most are cases of trigger-happy and poorly trained cops. Which appears to be more than obvious when you compare our cops to cops in other nations.
the US is not just some outlier in terms of police violence when compared with countries of similar economic and political standing.
America is the outlier – and this is what a crisis looks like.
On the flip side, these numbers show an extremely disturbing point that goes a long ways toward explaining Shaun King's ignorance of white victims of police shootings.
White people do in fact hold some responsibility for all these police shootings. But not because of any racism, or even because white privileged. The greatest crime of the white community in this regard is apathy, and this apathy is what has allowed the nation's police to murder without consequences.
White America’s apathetic response to the killing of a young white man is not just evident on Twitter. It also appears to be the prevalent attitude in the mostly white town of Seneca and in surrounding Oconee County, which is almost 90 percent white. The community there has not organized protests or demonstrations. They haven’t held rallies or vigils — or at least any that have been well-attended enough to attract even local news coverage.
...Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that white Americans have, for the most part, collectively shrugged at police violence. Polls have repeatedly shown that white people are much more likely to have confidence in the police, suggesting that they’re either more willing to believe that officers are justified in their actions or that the system can be trusted to sort it out if they’re not. As Ebony’s Jamilah Lemieux notes, speaking up about Hammond now would create a conflict for many of those people
When you think about it, the black community's outrage over police shootings is healthy and normal, even if their anger is partly misdirected.
What is NOT healthy and normal is the white community's lack of a response. There is something deeply wrong with white America that it will not only tolerate these outrages, but justify and defend them, even when those outrages are directed at white America. This speaks of a sickness of spirit and a lack of human connection.
The crime of the white community isn't racism, because racism requires an environment not saturated in indifference. No, the crime of the white community is far, far worse - indifference to human life in general. You can see it in police shootings and you can see it in our never-ending wars.
Comments
What kind of police training program teaches one to shoot
upon hearing an unidentified sound? Scary Aussies in their PJ's can be a frightening sight but ,c'mon, why are American police so afraid they feel they have to shoot first? I thought this was the land of the brave.
The real SparkyGump has passed. It was an honor being your human.
I have a theory
My father, a WW2 vet, refused to let his son touch a gun. He'd had his fill of violence. In a similar vein the post WW2 entertainment - movies and television - were heavily created by veterans, and highly realistic. But their sons, roughly starting in the sixties, were not veterans, and thanks to the growth of television under a lot of time pressure. They resorted to quick fixes without realism - the bad guy shows how bad he is by shooting someone, and the good guy (usually a police officer or some sort of authority figure) saves the day by shooting the bad guy. This created a cultural standard - that guns are a magic wand that saves the day whenever a good guy uses it. And every one, be he a white police officer or an angry black teenager or any American, thinks he's the good guy.
Today people become police officers thinking that they can always save the day by shooting a bad guy, and everyone - especially the lines of people chosen to serve on juries for their lack of thoughtfulness - automatically believe that police violence is justified.
BTW, a statistical disagreement, Whites are more than 50% of the population, while blacks are only about 12%. So whites are shot less than their proportion of the population, while blacks are shot about twice as often as their percentage of available targets. In defense of your thesis however, poverty (poor people commit more visible crime than middle class people) may well account for the disproportion.
On to Biden since 1973
All it takes to exonerate a police shooting is they
were concerned for their safety, under the circumstances. Cops say their job of keeping the peace is by its' nature dangerous. MSM perpetuates the meme that if you wanna die doing good works, be a cop.
Who do you call for help? Cops.
I have spent a lifetime around crooked sheriffs, deputies, Texas department of pubic safety officers, constables, and have personally known possibly 4 or five honest and good hearted ones.
I may be the only person on this blog that has taken a pistol away from an FBI agent and pointed it at him before he shot a black guy. (A bar fight.)Or turned down the offer of 100 pills from the trunk of a Texas Department of Public Safety officer.
Lack of training my fucking ass.
They all want in on the fucking deal. Arrest for 5 lbs of pot? What goes to the jury is 1/2 lb. of pot.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
@on the cusp Well, training is part of
Well, training is part of it. You can't spend 15 years shipping cops to Israel to learn "counter-terrorism" techniques from an army that spends its time shooting up Gaza and not have a perceptible effect.
I'm not trying to say your point is wrong, just that it's not absolute. There's definitely been a shift away from de-escalation and toward escalation, and a lot of extra encouragement to see the non-cop population as a threat, or as a bunch of barbaric animals, or as "the enemy."
In other words, all the worst characteristics of the police as individuals and as an institution have been placed in a growth medium since 9/11.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
There is much injustice in the American justice system.
When taking on the police state, the bigger and more inclusive the opposition the better. Blacks, including Shawn, do an disservice to the cause by thinking and acting like it is a racial issue only.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
I can understand Shaun King
When you combine an echo chamber with a near complete lack of outrage from whites, it's not that hard to see it as racism.
I can see how most blacks could more easily understand racism, as opposed to the awful truth (which I just added to the essay).
If you aren't outraged you are probably mentally ill.
outraged
Or utterly ignorant, the way the PTB and their MSM handmaidens want us.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Those aren't mutually exclusive
Apathy and indifference to human life would cause someone to not bother paying attention.
@gjohnsit Under it all is an
Under it all is an understanding, IMO, especially by poor white people. We know deep down inside that "we're next" if we talk too loud or, God help us, actually try to do anything about police violence. Racism does play into it. Working class white people are terrified to stop being the enforcers/buffer zone between the oligarchy and the even more marginalized.
We internalize this fear so deeply that it shows as apathy.
America doesn't have a jusice system
We only have a legal system.
I'm great at multi-tasking. I can waste time, be unproductive, and procrastinate all at the same time.
@Socialprogressive Not sure we even have
Not sure we even have that. Apparently rich people don't have to bother with it very often.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
The black guy that my brother, my Dad were
fighting to save when I got that pistol out of his back pocket remember it. Dad is dead. So is the FBI agent.
Agent committed suicide. (Through channels it was the gun I took from him. He shot himself under the chin.) Dad of old age. But everyone at the bar that night remembers it. I told the drunk agent and his DPS buddy that I would shoot for their balls. I actually said that. I was maybe 22 or so.
My WWII dad taught me that men are less protective of their head or heart than balls. That agent was also going to shoot my dad, a white guy, WWII combat soldier, who yelled at me to do what I did.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Stagger Lee
Your real "mundane" name isn't Delia DeLion by any chance, is it?
[video:https://youtu.be/NbwDgbw1yuQ]
".... As Stagger Lee lit a cigarette, she shot him in the balls
In the smoke of her revolver had him dragged to City Hall....."
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
@thanatokephaloides omigod, my brother and
omigod, my brother and I just talked about the bar fight. Dad had knocked out the Texas cop, rendered him helpless, was on top of him,my brother had hit the FBI guy every time he wiggled.
White family fighting white cops trying to harm a black man.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
@on the cusp Wow. Well done. Sorry you
Wow. Well done. Sorry you had to do it, though. What a shit situation.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Powerful
diary gjohn.
Hellofajob!
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
Shaun King does excellent work for the most part
He is making a point about attacks on blacks and other minority groups from the police
I am white and I don't worry about cops in my neighborhood taking me away or a neighbor. Since blacks are only 10% of the population, 10% of the population, and 1093 deaths so far this year by arithmetic would be 110 but the actual number is 266 - which fits with 2.5 times more likely
We know cop behavior is a problem and often a tool of the oligarchs, but do you worry about getting picked up or worse every time you go out of the house? Do youu in a town like Ferguson where police support the budget?
--
So Shaun's general point is that this is a dividing line for white people. OWS was a dividing line for many people in the country even though it was an issue that was ignored and influences many people, almost all the people
The main reason for writing this is the article where Shaun king responds to attacks. Like the ones who threaten to murder him. And remember when Shaun was fired from NY Post and it was an editor's error?? He is back there again.
The article
Why I Must Defend the Dishonest Attacks on My Character & Work
Agree about Shaun
Bravely fighting a battle against the howls of Fox and racist a-wipes that litter every city and town in the country. Driving while black is not a figment, it is entirely real, as recounted to me any number of times over the decades. I’ve witnessed black men being pistol whipped while down on the sidewalk in the Boston night. Even Miles Davis was arrested while on break from a performance outside a NYC club.
I never bought into the “White Privilege’ argument from the time it was introduced by the terrorist Weather Underground in the late ‘60’s. It is most often racist – sometimes laughably. One of the cult items for white WU cult members was not to have more than 30 seconds to take a dump! Talk about divorced from reality. And it is always divisive and not a uniting argument. Shit kickers in mobile homes in crystal meth territory ain’t buying it. No white person is likely to enroll in a fight against what they have, but many will enlist to make that accessible to all.
"Fear is the mind-killer" - Frank Herbert, Dune
It's roughly an equal opportunity
of being killed by the police.
The racial bias is due to the that blacks are twice as likely to be stopped by the police than whites and therefore they're twice as likely to get killed. This was from a statistic around 2015.
Another myth that supports police behavior (and which gives rise to their Blue Lives Matter retort) is that their jobs are dangerous and they have to act as required to save their lives. Their academies pretty much brainwash them into this attitude with "safety" rules so they can come home at the end of the day to see their families.
That is not supported by any statistics. Police jobs have never been anywhere close to the top 10 more dangerous jobs. In fact, the probability of their dying by homicides is so low it's only about 1/4th that of trash collectors/recycling workers of dying on the job, or 1/15th that of loggers and fishermen.
It seems intentional to me that police academies are designed to train police to disregard the lives of citizens to maintain this grotesque oligarchy.
and one fifth
, of that of airline pilots.
"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X
This is an argument that shouldn't even be happening
but that we have all been well manipulated into having.
I know what's wrong with saying "all lives matter;" what's wrong with it is that it ignores the fact that Black people are killed by cops more than twice as often as white people are. It also ignores a history in which Black lives, for the most part, haven't mattered for over 200 years. It tries to paper over an ugly and murderous aspect of what used to be our culture, back when we had one (the culture I grew up in, with both its evils and its virtues, has been getting destroyed from within for decades. Despite the magnitude of its evils, this isn't actually a good thing. One should always be careful to look at what's waiting in the wings to replace the status quo.)
Using that history and those outrages as a way of preventing people from seeing that the current system has all of us in its sights is the establishment's greatest achievement, and its ugliest.
What blows my mind is that even those who believe that white people aren't being shot by cops should at least understand this:
In Germany they first came for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.
Even if they weren't shooting white people now, they eventually would be. That's how tyranny works.
But if you want to deflect ire from the establishment, which is one of King's jobs as a journalist, of course you would contain the actual story, which would go something like this: The police state prefers to kill Black people and brown people (Muslims, Arabs, Latin American immigrants), but it's more than willing to kill any or all of us, and try to replace it with Maybe now white people will stop being sociopathic shitheads.
It's called getting out in front of a story.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal As for this: What is NOT
As for this: What is NOT healthy and normal is the white community's lack of a response. There is something deeply wrong with white America that it will not only tolerate these outrages, but justify and defend them, even when those outrages are directed at white America. This speaks of a sickness of spirit and a lack of human connection.
It's a combination of unthinking authoritarianism and despair. Not every individual in this country partakes of both, but few partake of neither.
The crime of the white community isn't racism, because racism requires an environment not saturated in indifference. No, the crime of the white community is far, far worse - indifference to human life in general. You can see it in police shootings and you can see it in our never-ending wars.
It's easy to understand the despair that leads to the apathetic shrugging at horrors. It's less easy to understand or forgive the knee-jerk authoritarianism (well, if you weren't doing something wrong, the cop wouldn't have shot you)
As for the difference between white and Black people on this issue, I'd say part of it lies in the perception of unfairness (those other people over there aren't getting shot as often as we are) and more of it lies in the fact that Black people have a much more recent, and more vital, revolutionary tradition than we do. They also still, to some extent, have communities, which non-religious white people mostly don't.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
That's the point I keep making to people
They're not going to stop at just harassing/arresting/murdering Group X; the Police State focus will continue to expand against non-conformists and "undesirables" of every stripe. Anyone who wants to scoff at the injustice carried out against school teachers driving while black or kids armed with Skittles needs to understand that us pinkos and queers and aetheists and determinedly childless women are next.
@FutureNow Totally right--but it's
Totally right--but it's not just white people who need to understand that. Black people have a narrative, as gjohnsit I think is pointing out, that only Black people ever need to worry about being killed or abused by a cop. Even if white skin were a guarantee against being shot at or otherwise abused by a cop (which it isn't), history tells us that police states don't stop with abusing racial minorities--they just start with abusing them. Sooner or later they'll get around to everyone that even faintly irritates them--it's what police states do. Black people should know that history just as well as white people do.
But what a lot of people want is an excuse not to think about the horrific predatory system and the psychopaths running it, and instead to focus on other members of the "little guy" population to scream at. Cops provide lots of reasons to do that--good reasons. But if anybody thinks the cop on the street and his actions are simply evidence of bad individual character and not also of a systemic rot, which is, I think, well managed from above and done on purpose, they're playing the establishment's game and their justice movements, if they are genuine and sincere, will come to nothing. If they aren't genuine and sincere, they will do whatever the establishment needs them to do.
You probably already know all this! I just don't see why everybody doesn't know it. It seems pretty simple to me.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Divide and Conquer
, in a nutshell.
"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X
By the way--
excellent article, gjohnsit.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
If it takes an egregious shooting of a white woman
to bring the issue of killer cops to the fore, I will take it, if for the wrong reasons.
Just as drug abuse moved from "crime" to "disease" when white people began dropping like flies from opiate overdose.
Base causes of support for police brutality.
I don't think millions white people will see the Justine Damond as an example of police brutality, nor by extension any empathy toward black victims of police brutality. It goes to the quote by
Nick Wing: white society has been indoctrinated to obey and respect authority. The end result is that many white people believe the police are justified in killing both black and white victims--nothing racial about it. At best these cases are rendered invisible by "most cops are good people". Somewhat admitting the cop did bad, but no reason to indict or reform police tactics. Many white people will attribute this incident to pure bad luck, and move on. But shake the system up--not what they were taught.
As for the apparent blindness to the just the large number of white people killed by cops. That comes out of seeing American dysfunctionality as basically and only racial, with now offshoots of gender and sexuality. I remember not too long ago somebody on TOP posted a diary accusing the Soviet Union of racism because he saw a Soviet era propaganda film and it showed no black people. The film was basically walking through the various republics showing the diversity and unity of the Soviet Union. Aside from showing historical ignorance, I thought it was noteworthy because the diarist viewed other nations through the lens of American's unique racial conflicts.
So in a way we see why economic populism is decried by many on the left. It is why class as a fundamental ordering force is decried by many on the left. This is why the white privilege argument puts Chelsea Clinton on an equal footing with the daughter of a truck driver.
Apathy? Sure that also. But more so obedience and fealty to the ruling authorities and justifications for their power--and the police are at the apex of that system.
Edit: title--forgot it.
This article goes with this essay
During the Obama administration, the program that transfers military equipment to the police went up 28%.
Congress voted to stop the transfer of weapons to the police, yet most of the Black caucus voted against the legislation.
This was written by Glen Ford who has been castigated by "progressives" because he was critical of Obama's policies.
These policies are only bad when they are done during a republican president.
Death by the cops: a Black and White issues
Fantastic Article!
Dammit! So busy I missed this one. I made a comment a day or two ago wondering why there were no videos of cops shooting white people. Google cops shooting white people never occurred to me. Duh!
Can't Stop The Signal lasered in on what I believe is the chief problem pointed out by gjohnsit: white apathy. Why on earth are these videos not being aggregated by somebody?
BLM's message has not been faithfully covered by either the M$M or elite bloggers like Shaun King. As I mentioned in my comment, L.A.'s BLM raised a stink when cops shot a white homeless man in Venice and their information tables at events had literature about cops shooting Native American's at an even higher percentage than blacks.
This is a perfect example of the necessity for progressive unity across all racial and ethnic divides.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn