It's quickly become a Toxoplasma of Rage issue, hasn't it? If you
aren't for the protests, you're a racist who doesn't understand what it
means to be black in America. If you are for the protests then you
aren't a real American and don't respect our military. Now everyone is
trying to capture the "unity" stronghold. Everyone agrees that unity is a
good thing, but they disagree on exactly what they should be unified
about. Team? Friends? Blackness? Support of blackness? America? Right
to protest? There doesn't seem to be much space for people to have qualified support or mixed
feelings.
I was irritated at the behavior of W&M guy Mike Tomlin.
Let
me be the first to say that at the moment I don't think unity is a
thing to be pursued, as everyone seems to have co-opted it into code for
"agree with us or you are evil."
7 comments:
Why would you be for the protests? Black-on-black homicide is the real problem, followed by Black-on-White crime. Cop-on-Black crime is mostly a manufactured diversion.
I wonder if this has any bearing on the popularity of the protest among NFL players.
"If not me, somebody I know"
I still like unity as a message. Mutual loyalty and justice are linked. You don't solve one of those problems as the means of solving the other, you solve them together.
What I see in this is that each side gets half of the equation:
Pro-Protest: "There's injustice, and you want me to show mutual loyalty through these patriotic rituals? Fix the injustice, and then there'll be loyalty."
Anti-Protest: "You want people (including police) to assume you're lawfully minded, but you defy basic norms of respect for the nation? If you want people to trust you, show that you value our mutual loyalty to one another as law-abiding Americans."
In theory either of those approaches could work, but the middle position really is the strongest one here. You get to a better answer faster if you work on the injustice and the demonstrations of mutual respect and loyalty. Whichever one an individual is least inclined to is the one that he or she should focus on first.
I'll believe that #BlackLivesMatter when they stop shooting one another and aborting black babies.
Tony Lawless:
Cop-on-Black crime is mostly a manufactured diversion.
One way of approaching the issue is to consider not only cops killing blacks, but blacks killing cops.Are black or white offenders more likely to kill police?
There were 511 officers killed in felonious incidents and 540 offenders from 2004 to 2013, according to FBI reports. Among the total offenders, 52 percent were white, and 43 percent were black.
The FBI provided The Fact Checker a detailed database of victim officers and offenders in felonious incidents, accidental deaths and assaults with injury, from the early 1980s.
From 1980 to 2013, there were 2,269 officers killed in felonious incidents, and 2,896 offenders. The racial breakdown of offenders over the 33-year period was on par with the 10-year period: 52 percent were white, and 41 percent were black.
Blacks constitute 41-43% of cop-killers.
We now consider cops killing blacks. Number of fatal shootings by police is nearly identical to last year.
And police have continued to shoot and kill a disproportionately large number of black males, who account for nearly a quarter of the deaths, yet are only 6 percent of the nation’s population.
I have read elsewhere,without remembering the link, that blacks constitute 22% of those whom cops kill. Let's say the figure is in the 22-25% range.
Blacks constitute 22-25 of those whom cops kill, but also constitute 41-43% of those who kill cops. I fail to see the injustice to blacks in those figures. It appears to be more of a "as you sow, you shall also reap" situation.
I wasn't paying enough attention to realize that the protests had a racial angle. I took it for a garden-variety leftist reaction against icky conservative patriotism. My husband had to explain it to me. I'm even less interested now.
Post a Comment