People are Individuals - recent shootings

Raisin

Sun, Jul 10 2016, 6:32 am

shoshanim999 wrote:

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I don't get your point? When Drake said he is afraid, he was obviously referring to the fact that he's black and is therefore afraid of the cops. My point was that if Drake has anything to be afraid of, it's not the cops, but the neighborhood folks.

Blacks aren't doing it to themselves? Who's fault is it that their graduation rate is under 50%? Whose fault is it that 65% of babies are born to single mothers most of whom are teenagers? Stick to the facts please.

Some blame the high rate of single parent families among blacks on the fact that slave owners deliberately broke up family units and often impregnated female slaves themselves, thus starting a cycle of single parent families. (a girl from a single parent family is more likely to become a single mother, a boy from such a family more likely to be an absent dad)

Plus I'm sure there are other factors at play here, such as poverty, lack of education etc.

↑ ora_43 ↓

Sun, Jul 10 2016, 8:27 am

wondergirl wrote:

Are you aware of the fact that many Frum, Jewish people live in the projects? Because I grew up in the projects among poor Jewish people yet there was no violent crime, drugs, gangs, etc. How is that possible? They are poor as well and live in the projects so they should be involved in all sorts of criminal activities just like anyone else living in the projects.

I'm going to regret taking the time to respond to this, I just know it, but I can't help myself...

OK. First of all, frum Jews. When Jews start heading down the road toward violent crime and thuggish behavior - and there are Jews who do - "frum" tends to be one of the first things to go. There aren't many gangsters who insist on not so much as holding a girl's hand until they marry her, funnily enough. Or who are willing to ingest heroin but won't drink coffee with milk after eating a hamburger.

So yeah, you aren't going to see a lot of guys in peyot and tzitzit hanging around street corners with guns and drugs. But that's not because Jews are better; it's just because the Jews who are half-conscious, strung out in the local park aren't advertising their Jewishness.

There are plenty of poor Jews where I live and oh, I could tell you stories (although that said, the vast majority of poor inner city residents are perfectly normal non-violent people, too).

Secondly, anti-Semitism and anti-black racism have been expressed differently and therefore have had different affects. For example, there were relatively few efforts during the course of American history to restrict Jews' ability to get an education or join the workforce or buy housing.

↑ ora_43 ↓

Sun, Jul 10 2016, 8:38 am

shoshanim999 wrote:

The question is whether all this outrage in the black community is warrented when statistically the issue of cops killing blacks during an arrest amounts to 1 or 2 per 100,000? Is this really the biggest problem in their community? It certainly is generating the most outrage.

First of all, it's not just in the black community. I'm outraged at the thought that black men (and women, and hispanic men, and mentally ill people) are dying totally unnecessary deaths just because police officers are bigots, poorly trained, trigger-happy, or some combination of the above. The other white Americans I know are outraged, too.

Secondly, what makes you think you know what "the black community" is putting most of its time and energy into? This week, the news headlines are about "black lives matter" protests instead of about grassroots efforts within black communities to tackle problems like teen pregnancy - therefore you assume the latter just plain doesn't exist?

I won't bother with "third" because marina has already explained why cops murdering civilians is cause for more outrage than civilians murdering civilians. OK, I will bother to add: there's also a whole lot more point to protesting police violence than protesting gang violence. Hint: gang members are not getting their paychecks from city hall.

↑ shoshanim999 ↓

Sun, Jul 10 2016, 9:01 am

ora_43 wrote:

Ummm... YES!!!!

Yes, police being more likely to kill black or hispanic men simply because they are black or hispanic is DEFINITELY an issue that warrants national attention, even if it's "just" a few dozen people a year.

Would you say that the American government shouldn't bother to give terrorism its attention, because only a few dozen people a year die from that?

I don't get your comparison....Obviously the American government should give it's full attention to terrorism because undoubtedly there are groups that would like to entirely wipe us off the map and are prevented from doing so because the government does it's best to monitor and fight these crazies. Are blacks facing the same situation? Are blacks at risk that cops will go into black neighborhoods and try to wipe out the neighborhood?
I guess we can disagree about the other point. I don't feel that 1 or 2 out of 100,000 arrests resulting in a death, often in a high crime area where cops are working on edge and have to have the mentality that many of the people they are arresting might be dangerous, is outrageous. It's a tragedy when any innocent person is killed but I bet the people marching believe that it's much worse than 1 or 2 out of 100,000.

↑ shoshanim999 ↓

Sun, Jul 10 2016, 9:08 am

Raisin wrote:

This is a horrible explanation for 2 reasons.

Firstly, based on what your saying, blacks have a permanent excuse for the absurd 65% single motherhood rate. In 100 years from now they can still be talking and blaming it on slavery 250 years ago. At what point is it time to take responsibility and change things??? And secondly, Its just NOT TRUE! The black single motherhood rate in the 1960's was 20%. So in the last 55 years when there has certainly been advances in civil rights, the single motherhood rate has climbed from 20% to an outrageous 65%. I'm sure many will look for excuses and explanations why it's not their fault but the numbers speak for themselves.

youngishbear ↓

Sun, Jul 10 2016, 9:20 am

shoshanim999 wrote:

I would be curious whether the percentage change matches the commensurate increase in white single-parent homes over the same period. Most of that is likely due to social and economic reasons like the rising divorce rate, tied to the reduced stigma of divorce and improved career options for women.

This is just to point out that when you narrow your focus to a single number (or a series of numbers out of context) you risk missing the human element of the story.

Yes, even 1 in a million is a tragedy. I can't believe a member of the Jewish nation, known to be rachmanin bnei rachmanim, would argue otherwise.

Last edited by youngishbear on Sun, Jul 10 2016, 9:52 am; edited 1 time in total

↑ fmt4 ↓

Sun, Jul 10 2016, 9:27 am

youngishbear wrote:

I would be curious whether the percentage change matches the commensurate increase in white single-parent homes over the same period. Most of that is likely due to social and economic reasons like the rising divorce rate, tied to the reduced stigma of divorce and improved career options for women.

This is just to point out that when you narrow your focus to a single number (or a serious of numbers out of context) you risk missing the human element of the story.

Yes, even 1 in a million is a tragedy. I can't believe a member of the Jewish nation, known to be rachmanin bnei rachmanim, would argue otherwise.

Shoshanim keeps repeating that " the numbers speak for themselves." She won't listen when people explain to her that this is about so much more than numbers. But that's what happens when you view an entire group as less than human. It's really sad to see that some Jews only have rachmanus on other Jews, while the deaths of others mean nothing to them. Shame on you.

↑ WhatFor ↓

Sun, Jul 10 2016, 10:03 am

Shoshanim-

I encourage you to learn more about what it's like to be Black in the US. Castile was pulled over at least 52 times in the years before being murdered, never once cited for anything more than a minor offense, and half of his citations were ultimately dismissed.
In 2001, Minnesota conducted its own study that showed racial bias played a role in traffic stops and policies, and in suburban areas (such as where Castile was pulled over and ultimately murdered) blacks were stopped around 310 times more than expected.

http://www.wtsp.com/news/minn-.....68253

Blacks are tired of being systemically targeted, tired of living subordinate lives. But the problem is comprehensive. It doesn't begin at adulthood.

Earlier this past year, the NYT posted a curious article. In a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood in Brooklyn, a public school had become too full. There was another public school a block or two away which had many empty spots, and so the Board of Ed decided to rezone the district to send some of the children from the gentrified neighborhood to the other school.
Oh, the humanity. Oh, the outrage.
Children of rich, privileged families were not to be sent to the schools for the children from the projects. To be fair, I don't think that the "privileged" parents were necessarily racist. They saw that the school for the kids in the projects was hardly a school. Their own neighborhood's public school taught children Mandarin starting in first grade. They had state-of-the-art technologies and the best teachers. The neighboring school for kids in the projects was failing. Didn't have enough supplies, inadequate teachers, (I think I recall something about not having classes for all grades etc.) But somehow, these kids from the projects, who are barely afforded an education, who don't get any special education interventions if they need them, are supposed to magically be as successful as their peers a block over whose parents send them to public schools which have cutting-edge technologies and teaching methods, and all the counseling a kid needs. If anyone actually believed this in practice, there would not have been all this outrage at sending their own kids there.

Second, I love when people quote this statistic about more black people getting arrested as some indication that black people are committing more crimes. More black people are arrested because more police are arresting black people. Not because they're committing more crimes. I had a good friend who was valedictorian of his high school. (In public school that simply means the kid with the highest grade.) He was a straight-shooting high-achiever who is now working for a top-four firm. His skin color is also brown. During NYC's "stop and frisk" he was stopped and frisked. I won't get into my own shady background but I assure you, I am not the same straight shooter, and I was in NYC during the time that "stop and frisk" was implemented. How many times was I stopped and frisked? Answer: 0.
In High School, he and his friends (all black or ethnic) were all arrested for playing dominoes in a park. Someone had bought a bag of chips and left some change on the table and they had continued playing their game. Some cop arrested them all for "gambling". Has this ever happened to you or your children?
These were all the top students in the school and so some school official (Dean, teacher, I forget) accompanied them all to court where the judge threw away all of their tickets and had some words for the officer. Do you share this life experience? Do you worry that your day-to-day functions, complying with the law in total perfection, is going to wind up in your arrest? Are you worried that if your sons look at a police officer wrong, the jittery police officer is going to be scared and shoot them? Are you worried that during a routine traffic stop, when your DH is reaching for his license and registration, he is going to wind up dead?

Imagine this was your life experience. I'm not saying this in a judgmental way to you. Please, suspend your thoughts of your own experience, think about these scenarios, and imagine that this was all, in fact, in reality your daily life experience. How much would you put up with, before you started protesting?

Last edited by WhatFor on Sun, Jul 10 2016, 10:18 am; edited 1 time in total

↑ WhatFor ↓

Sun, Jul 10 2016, 10:08 am

As an aside, I've had Israeli relatives visit separately over the past few years, and the #1 complaint they both had about the US was about police intrusion into civilian lives. They each only stayed about a few weeks. One of them looks more ethnic than the other, and was constantly pulled over while driving and was so annoyed, saying he doesn't understand how anyone lives here. The other one didn't drive but still got stopped and spoken to by the police once. He reached for his ID and couldn't understand (in repeating his story to us) why the police officer immediately got panicked, put his hand on his revolver and said "don't do that!" We told him he's lucky he's not black because he might have gotten shot. We have a police state issue in our country, and a racial bias issue in our country, and the combination of both is tragic.
My Israeli relatives are literally calling us up now, worried about us because of police shootings. What is going on in our country is not "normal".

↑ ora_43 ↓

Sun, Jul 10 2016, 10:10 am

shoshanim999 wrote:

You're missing most of the point.

The issue with terrorism is that it causes terror. ISIS has zero chance of wiping America off the map. Zero. But terrorists have the ability to severely disrupt normal life by creating the relatively slim possibility of violent death. Hence the FBI putting so much effort into preventing attacks that would have killed at most a few dozen people - a mere 1 out of every 10,000,000 Americans.

Similarly, it only takes a few extrajudicial police killings of minorities to cause serious fear and mistrust.

Also, it's America's own police force!!! It should be much easier for the government to control its own police than to control foreign terrorist groups, don't you think? Making it a much more reasonable thing for protesters to demand.

Quote:

I guess we can disagree about the other point. I don't feel that 1 or 2 out of 100,000 arrests resulting in a death, often in a high crime area where cops are working on edge and have to have the mentality that many of the people they are arresting might be dangerous, is outrageous.

Your numbers are off. For one thing, it's ridiculous to look at it as "deaths per arrest" - the number of arrests is in the hands of police; it's not an independent factor.

More importantly, it isn't "1 or 2" - that's 1 or 2 deaths that *you* have decided are significant, while ignoring several others that you decided aren't significant based purely on your subjective opinion that any failure to comply with police justifies being fatally shot.

↑ PinkFridge ↓

Sun, Jul 10 2016, 10:16 am

ora_43 wrote:

Sorry for the breach of netiquette, no time to read pp.2-6. Or to fully quote the quote I love from Rav Hirsch on Av Harachim on the word vayinkom. Essentially, we leave the vengeance up to Hashem and focus on living our lives with integrity. It's an approach that's got us through the Crusades, the Inquisition, Tach v'tat, Hitler, and more, yemach shemam v'zichrom.

I wish there was true leadership, or more visible true leadership in the black community. As I said, that idiot in Dallas shifted the focus and ruined everything. But I feel the pain and anger and frustration. I do not in any way understand or condone anything but peaceful protest.