People are Individuals - recent shootings

↑ Fox ↓

Mon, Jul 11 2016, 11:07 am

marina wrote:

If a publicly-funded university bars a student from protesting a speaker, then that student's free speech has been violated. If a publicly-funded university allows speakers on one-view point only, then it is very likely that the university risks violating the First Amendment. The actor has to the be the university, not anyone else.

I presume you're referring to the events last month at DePaul University, a trainwreck that is still smoking. Details and video are easily Googleable.

DePaul University in Chicago has evolved not simply to an institution designed to promote service to the poor and underprivileged (the basic tenet of St. Vincent de Paul), but to a place where Marxism is often treated as gospel and violence is routinely tolerated.

* Pro-Israel organizations routinely have their booths and materials vandalized at student activity fairs.

* Students representing pro-Israel concerns have been assaulted on a number of occasions.

* The environment for Jewish students is so toxic that most Chicagoans looking for a local college don't even bother. There has also been a disturbing pattern of rejection of graduate students who are identifiable as Orthodox Jews.

* Last month's speaker was assaulted on the stage by students claiming to represent BLM and finally the speech was cancelled.

* Private security (required by DePaul and hired by the student association sponsoring the speech) as well as off-duty Chicago police were in attendance but were ordered by the college administration not to intervene.

* Students claiming to represent BLM shouted down the black female representative of the sponsoring organization with incredibly vile epithets, eventually driving her from the stage.

* The speaker has now been permanently banned from the campus because of his "hate speech." The president of the university has resigned after bungling the whole affair.

Now, this speaker is not a threat to anyone's safety. He's not yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. Trust me, the only one flaming is the speaker himself. Yes, he's extremely provocative. However, he offers a Q & A session at the end of each speech and he will graciously back-pedal when proven wrong. He's just really, really good at debate, and has an army of interns to prepare him.

Personally, I prefer the events where Christina Hoff Sommers (#BasedMom) accompanies him to provide the occasional spanking when he gets out of line, but you can't watch kids every second.

BasMelech120 wrote:

I'm sorry, but the inner cities in the US right now is actually just another shameful chapter of the democrats efforts to keep this group dependent on them, in order to garner more votes and to widen the scopes of government responsibility.

This.

I'm extremely conservative. I'm probably technically more libertarian, but the joke on the right is that libertarians care about only four things: 1. weed; 2. hacking; 3. Bitcoin; and 4. weed.

I'm so conservative that I regularly scare Sequoia and would probably frighten some of the rest of you, too.

I'm so conservative that one of my problems in life is the fact that Ben Shapiro tweets so darned much.

Yet I believe that racism is a significant problem.

I believe that white privilege exists.

I believe that black Americans are justifiably angry.

Most of all, I believe that 60 years of progressive policy has kept a percentage of African-Americans in a state of indentured servitude.

I believe that progressives have thrown African-Americans under the bus whenever their interests conflicted with another progressive interest, such as teachers' unions, school choice, or the role of churches in civil life.

I believe that progressives have resolved those conflicts of interest by throwing money at the African-American community -- money that is quickly gobbled up by consultants, contractors, and anyone else with the savvy to stick his snout in the trough. No interest whatsoever in what works; just take some money and shut up.

I believe we need more Marcus Garvey and Harry Truman and less whining about microaggressions.

And I believe that if DePaul University and its denizens really wanted to serve the underprivileged of all races, they'd do better to spend their time arranging small business loans than harassing men in pearls.

sushilover ↓

Mon, Jul 11 2016, 11:12 am

I feel like I'm coming a little late to the party, but I wanted to add my own two cents here.

Race issues is something I think is very important. Racism is terrible. I hate it and I will speak out against it no matter who is the one acting racist.

That being said, facts do not show that there is an epidemic of institutional racism in America.

Let's look at the numbers:

http://imgur.com/gallery/XsKhT

this has all the data including the sources, but for those of you like me who don't bother clicking on links, I'll recap the data

people killed by cops (when hispanic and unknown are taken out of the equation) :
66% white
34% black

ok, but there are more white people than black people (13% of the population) in America, so that proves that blacks are statically more likely to be killed, right?

Let's look at the murder rates (again taking out hispanics and unknown)
51% of murders are committed by white people
49% of murders are committed by black people

Once you see those two numbers together, you can clearly see that cops are racist toward whites!

but maybe cops are racist and stop black people more often

cop encounters by race
whites make up 64% of the population and make up 75% of all cop encounters
blacks make up 13% of the population and make up 10% of all cop encounters

the list goes on. Statistics prove that racism is not institutional. Blacks are not in greater danger of dying by cops. EVERYONE needs to be careful and comply because cops are in high pressure situations and have to make split second decisions. We can work to lower the rates of people killed by cops by having more training for officers in deescalating a situation, and by educating our children about how to react to police EVEN when the cop is clearly in the wrong. You will get your day in court, do not ever resist arrest.

Anecdotal evidence and headlines are not facts. And the facts show that cops as a whole are not racist.

edited to add,
last week Obama said "A the U.S. Department of Justice has opened a civil rights investigation in Baton Rouge, and I have full confidence in their professionalism and their ability to conduct a thoughtful, thorough, and fair inquiry.

"But regardless of the outcome of such investigations, what's clear is that these fatal shootings are not isolated incidents. They are symptomatic of the broader challenges within our criminal justice system, the racial disparities that appear across the system year after year, and the resulting lack of trust that exists between law enforcement and too many of the communities they serve."

I would like to say: I too have full confidence that there will be a fair inquiry. But unlike Obama, I believe that the numbers show that even if the cops are found to be unjustified in the shootings last week, I don't see any evidence for a racial disparity at all.

Last edited by sushilover on Mon, Jul 11 2016, 11:25 am; edited 1 time in total

cnc

Mon, Jul 11 2016, 11:18 am

sushilover wrote:

Having taken college statistics, your take on the numbers is very simplistic and lots of other factors need to be taken into effect...

↑ marina ↓

Mon, Jul 11 2016, 12:29 pm

BasMelech120 wrote:

Yes. I can say that over 75% of the black population that I've worked with were unable to point to institutional racism or systemic racism. This was not in a fiery argument, just in conversations about this topic and its effect on black youth(especially over the last few years with the rise of BLM). In fact, many were embarrassed by the frequent headlines of BLM and what it was portraying about them.

Let's put it this way. If a group of men and women came out and declared themselves 'Jewish Lives Matter' - or even just 'White Lives Matter' and was in the news every couple of days for another violent protest or called for the killing of police officers, would you be proud to call yourself part of or affiliated with that group? If you are a respectable person, I think not. Just the same, in this case, there are thousands and thousands of black people speaking out against BLM and what it represents. Like I said before, they are not all just robots thinking and acting like you would want them to act (victims, dependent on the govt., dependent on 'white people' to make things right). But as I've mentioned before, this reality may be too hard for you to accept.
*Once again, I'd love to hear about your personal experience working with this population.

1. I am unaware of BLM calling - as an organization, not crazy individuals - for the killings of police officers. Can you provide some citations?

2. If you are implying that 75% of Black pple are unable to point to institutional or system racism (which btw predates BLM for many decades), I call your bluff on that. Perhaps some your conversations were limited or you interpreted some responses incorrectly or some people were simply uninterested in sharing their viewpoints with you. Or perhaps you conflated the BLM question with the systemic racism question, as you appear to do in this thread.

In other words, systemic racism is not connected with BLM other than that the latter is trying to raise awareness of the former. Many Black pple can disagree with BLM and still agree on the existence of institutional racism.

So I guess I'm confused now about why you are conflating the two. Do you think that acknowledging institutional racism means agreement with all tenets of the BLM movement? And agreement with BLM means we agree to kill police officers?

Those are the jumps I see you making in the above post.

Last edited by marina on Mon, Jul 11 2016, 12:54 pm; edited 1 time in total

↑ marina ↓

Mon, Jul 11 2016, 12:51 pm

Quote:

*Once again, I'd love to hear about your personal experience working with this population.

You've mentioned this a few times, and I've resisted because my experiences are not necessarily relevant to my points, which exist independently of my personal experiences.

But okey doke.

I worked for quite a few years in low socio-economic areas as a school psychologist and then Director of Special Education. In my current position I work closely with school administrators closely. And part of the reason I call your bluff on the absence of institutional racism is that I personally witnessed it so many times. Just off the top of my head, without reviewing all my experiences, I have seen:

* white teachers acting towards black students in harmful ways- not simply neglecting their education, but also behaving in ways which caused actual harm to black students - in a way that would have gotten them fired the first day on the job in a white district. And sued.

* School guidance counselors ignoring severe s-exual abuse of a black 5th grader in violation of all ethical and legal codes, s-xual abuse that will surely become generational in nature, in a way I have never seen in white neighborhoods, where guidance counselors call CPS at the drop of a hat.

* Social services ignoring real physical danger to black urban children while CPS comes out for white kids playing in their own backyards.

* a white special education director in a minority district explain to me that there are no IEP kids, no ED kids, no OHI kids, no SLD kids. Just B-A-D kids. This would have gotten her terminated on the first day on her job in a white district and the district would have risked considerable financial liability for even hiring her.

* White administrators admit- in writing- to punishing students more severely because of their race.

* I have personally analyzed expulsion and suspension spreadsheets where black kids get expelled for the same offenses that white kids get suspended for in the same district. Routinely, not just once.

* School districts in poor AA neighborhoods fail to give parents the information they are supposed to and fail to comply with the law in a way that white parents in white districts never tolerate. The discrepancy between what special ed kids receive in a poor urban district and what they receive in a suburban white district is beyond all comprehension.

I am reporting this post so the thread can be hidden from general view.

↑ marina ↓

Mon, Jul 11 2016, 12:58 pm

sushilover wrote:

Have you reviewed the link I posted on page 10? http://journals.plos.org/ploso.....41854

I'm interested in your thoughts on this statistical data.

↑ marina ↓

Mon, Jul 11 2016, 1:05 pm

Fox wrote:

I have not read about DePaul, just answered in general.

I can agree with you that responses to difficult societal problems should be based on data about what works. I don't know that the disagreements about what works is based on some sort of malicious intent to keep AA in poverty.

For example, I often hear my white middle or upper class friends decrying kindergarten and preschool and reading initiatives in school. At least once a week someone on my FB explains to us all that children should play and not be forced to sit and learn letters and sounds and numbers until they're 7 or some other such age. This is usually accompanied by a picture of children wading in a stream or studying bugs under a microscope, because this is, of course what children would be doing if they weren't in kindergarten or preschool.

These parents are not malicious at all. They are simply unaware of how harmful no preschool and no kindergarten would be for many urban AA kids who do so much better in school, as shown by many studies, with early and direct instruction.

↑ sushilover ↓

Mon, Jul 11 2016, 1:53 pm

marina wrote:

Have you reviewed the link I posted on page 10? http://journals.plos.org/ploso.....41854

I'm interested in your thoughts on this statistical data.

I skimmed over the data and I would counter with this, more recent, (and in my opinion, more comprehensive) paper:
http://www.nber.org/papers/w22399
(written by a black Harvard professor , who according to the NYT, started the research because of his anger over the deaths of Michael Brown and Freddy Gray) and it states:

On non-lethal uses
of force, there are racial differences – sometimes quite large – in police use of force, even after
controlling for a large set of controls designed to account for important contextual and behavioral
factors at the time of the police-civilian interaction. As the intensity of use of force increases from
putting hands on a civilian to striking them with a baton, the overall probability of such an incident
occurring decreases but the racial difference remains roughly constant. On the most extreme uses
of force, however – officer-involved shootings with a Taser or lethal weapon – there are no racial
differences in either the raw data or when accounting for controls.

So if BLM was marching to end the racial disparity in non lethal force, I will march right along with them. But they are marching to end the so called killing of young black men. That is not happening. Cops are not killing black men at a higher rate than whites.

↑ marina ↓

Mon, Jul 11 2016, 2:02 pm

sushilover wrote:

Oy. First the data sets appear to be taken from very different sources. And also, the conclusions of the study you cite are just as bad. Basically your authors conclude that police are very very racist, but killing someone is just not worth it for them.

↑ marina ↓

Mon, Jul 11 2016, 2:39 pm

sushilover wrote:

At least I got you to admit that cops are not out there just shooting up black men. I'll take that as a good sign LOL

And you say the conclusions are "just as bad" . No. Being handcuffed, or forced against a wall, while unpleasant and demeaning, is not just as bad as being shot at.

I don't think cops are out there just shooting at black men. I thought cops were there to protect us and do the best they can, but because some have almost unconscious racial biases that arise mostly in quick-response situations, they make mistakes which cost black lives. I saw this in the cop who was clearly sobbing as he held the gun after shooting Phillando.

From reading your study, I could conclude that many many cops are simply racist and don't kill black pple as much bc it's not worth the consequences. Ugh that's much worse.

↑ Fox ↓

Mon, Jul 11 2016, 4:00 pm

marina wrote:

For example, I often hear my white middle or upper class friends decrying kindergarten and preschool and reading initiatives in school. At least once a week someone on my FB explains to us all that children should play and not be forced to sit and learn letters and sounds and numbers until they're 7 or some other such age. This is usually accompanied by a picture of children wading in a stream or studying bugs under a microscope, because this is, of course what children would be doing if they weren't in kindergarten or preschool.

These parents are not malicious at all. They are simply unaware of how harmful no preschool and no kindergarten would be for many urban AA kids who do so much better in school, as shown by many studies, with early and direct instruction.

Agree with you completely. However, I would label this as "provincialism" rather than "racism."

I'm the same way, and I think most of us are to some degree. I used to be completely flummoxed by relatives who lived in horrible little shacks in the Catskills each summer. They would answer my questions by saying things like, "The kids love being able to play outside."

Huh? So go to a park like normal people.

Well, after I spent more time in Brooklyn, I realized that A Tree Grows in Brooklyn wasn't really a metaphor. For many people in Brooklyn, it's literal!

So now, when I get appeals to "send little Shloimie to camp," I understand that there is a real need. I may personally find it odd that entire kehillas pay top dollar to make their homes in a place they have to leave every summer, but I don't judge them as individuals.

I think you bring up a valuable point that not everyone is the same. Some kids need pre-school and kindergarten more than others. Equality is a nice idea, but equity is easier to sell and achieve.