Protests following the killing of George Floyd

Watching some of the violence towards "protesters" people just standing there and the cops wailing on them with nightsticks: is there any legal action the people that are getting hurt can take?
I feel so mad watching those videos that part of me wants to go out and see what happens if I'm just standing there near those bullies, but I also want to know if I'd have recompense if they did hit me. There's no way they're getting a free crack at me.
 
The Boy said:
Look up "shooting bias" this is a similar situation.

You don't need someone in a trial to testify that Chauvin had posted racist posts on FB or was a secret member of the KKK. That would make this an indiviual act of racism, this is not necessarily about individual acts (though it may well be) this is about institutional racism. The argument is Chauvin and many other police like him expected more problems and possibly violence from Floyd because of the colour of his skin and their preconceptions of what that meant.

What I mean is this. Police are more likely to shoot at a black person than a white person, this isn't necessarily because they hate black people. But they expect them to be more violent, they expect them to be more likely to have committed a crime - these are preconception and are just as racist as attacking a business because it is owned by black people.

What people arguing in this thread, that we don't know if this brutality was racially driven fail to get is that this institutional racism is endemic everywhere in the western world. Its the reason people are more likely in to hire a white person over a black person, more likely to want to rent their property to a white person rather than a black person, feel more comfortable with their daughter dating a white man than a black man etc etc. Their preconceptions make them fear.

A white person walking down the street late at night, are they more nervous of group of young black men hanging out on the corner or a group of young white men? The tendency to fear and expect bad outcomes from black people is everywhere and it is 100% racist and lots and lots people if they are honest with themselves will recognise this at one point or another in themselves.

The bigger questions are why? American history is obviously one thing, as there cannot be a white person on earth who doesn't understand that black America has been appallingly treated throughout the history of the US. But the media and popular culture has a lot to do with it as well, from everything from the Wire to New Jack City (2 random examples and certainly not saying that either are racist) paint a picture of black urban America as violent and gang ridden. Nerds, sensible people and goodies etc etc in movies and in books are rarely black and if the hero is black even then they often come packaged in a violent form, like Black Panther or Shaft (2 more random examples and not held up as racist films)

We are bombarded everyday by negative black stereotypes in US culture and sadly that is the dominant global culture now, this just builds those racist preconceptions in all sorts of people even those who would not for a second think they are racist.

On top of that segregation is rife in the US and has been for hundreds of years this in turn builds up an us and them culture which once again breeds institutional racism.

To argue that Chauvin's actions were not racist misses the point entirely, the black lives matter movement gets this, institutionally black lives are currently cheaper in the States than white lives.

This post has gone on much longer than I meant, but there are literally hundreds of books and papers written about this, I offer no answers or suggestions on how to fix this as I honestly don't know beyond individuals recognising it in themselves and working to overcome it.
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Top post. Thanks.
 
utdalltheway said:
Watching some of the violence towards "protesters" people just standing there and the cops wailing on them with nightsticks: is there any legal action the people that are getting hurt can take?
I feel so mad watching those videos that part of me wants to go out and see what happens if I'm just standing there near those bullies, but I also want to know if I'd have recompense if they did hit me. There's no way they're getting a free crack at me.
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The bit that I really dont get is that in many of the videos, it appears to be a single police officer coming out of the line to make a completely needless arrest. Its the fact that the rest of the officers just stand there that I dont get. None of them seem to have the guts to stand up to the "bad apples". I genuinely think that a lot of the other officers dont agree with what is being done in those situations, its just sad that they lack the courage to stand up to their colleagues.

Of course there are other instances where they are all just dicks.
 
africanspur said:
I'm going to try to be as civil as possible here because this is a very emotive issue for me and many other black people. I also know that many Asians (East and South) see themselves as somehow removed from racism, see it as a black and white issue, even though some of the most obvious racism I and other black people have received has been from Asians or in Asian countries. I have also seen your posting on here and despite what you say in the last paragraph, I don't think you are willing to change your mind. You have come in here, repeated this one study over and over again, at one point admitted you don't actually know that much about the Floyd Killing and proceeded to carry on holding the same opinion. Regardless, I will give you the benefit of the doubt and attempt to get my thoughts down in a polite manner.

I'm pretty sure others have raised this with you already. But I struggle to understand how you don't understand that a system that criminalises black people, that portrays them as a fundamental threat, is not inherently racist? The fact that black people do the same does not mean the system is not racist. It means that we are also raised in this global system, with an unspoken hierarchy where white is at the top and black at the bottom. I was doing some humanitarian work in Uganda a few years ago and one of the workers there asked me whether I thought the South Sudanese refugees were attractive or not (fecking dumb question of course). She asked me how they can be attractive when they're so dark. Or another Ugandan woman who wished she could be like Michael Jackson so she could be white. These people are not born like this.

Yes I do think basically everyone is a racist in some way or another. I include myself in that. We all hold prejudices that we've picked up in our daily lives and from our environments. The key is to try and acknowledge those and actually try to change those thoughts, rather than pat ourselves on the back for how little racism we hold.

Your murder rapist analogy is so off-piste I don't even know where to begin tbh. But for the rest of the point, I would say many people, on here at least, are trying to acknowledge it. They're trying to challenge it. Friends and colleagues have been asking me what they can do to help, whether they ever do these things themselves and how to help challenge those misconceptions.

'Those who see it this way are the greatest racists'. Really? So someone who sees this as racism is a worse racist than the white guy who walked into a black church to kill people for instance? That's really your argument? Ffs.

You seem to have done 2 things here.

1) Bunker down on there being no proof of this being racism from Chauvin
2) State that we're all more likely to shoot black people if given the chance

And are managing to completely miss the point. The reality is, it isn't about Floyd. Nor is it about Chauvin. Chauvin may well not be a racist (though he is a murderer). The point is, people don't care anymore. This is a tipping point, reached because of decades of institutionalised racism barely hidden under the surface, following centuries of institutionalised racism completely out in the open. These protests are not about Chauvin or Floyd. They're about the way the police, the criminal justice system, the media, the government and normal people, treat black people every single day. The issue of police brutality more likely being meted out to blacks is just the tip of a huge iceberg of millions of much smaller and less dramatic events that don't make it to national media or cause international protests but are fecking tiring regardless.

The protests have very clear aims. And they are very legitimate. They are an attempt to change the reality for black people in America. To shine a spotlight on what happens to blacks every day there. To change the culture of policing and justice where blacks are more likely to be stopped, more likely to be searched, more likely to be brutalised, more likely to be imprisoned for the same crime as a white, more likely to spend longer in jail than a white, more likely to be struck off a jury than a white. To shine a light on the fact that black people are inherently seen as poor and dangerous, especially if we end up god forbid doing well enough to end up in a 'white neighbourhood'. That we're less likely to get a job than a white person with the exact same qualification based on our names. More likely to have the police called on them for silly crimes. More likely to be mistaken for criminals. More likely to have poor water quality and poor access to healthcare. Then there's the things that are difficult to quantify but we've all experienced. People following us in a shop. Thinking we can't afford things. Crossing the street. Clutching their purse or bag closer to them when they see us.

You seem like a very very very literal person. No evidence of racism from Chauvin, only brutality. These protests are specifically to protest the racist killing of Floyd. No and no. It isn't about individual racism from one police officer and it isn't about the individual killing of one black man.
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Great post.
 
Carolina Red said:
Hell nah.

Edit: Just saw your post @Raoul

Dude woulda went off that bridge if he went at my child like that.
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Agree mate, I'm guessing that was the father recording? Mental he didn't do anything.
 
RedTiger said:
She posted a tweet saying it's WhiteOutWednesday and she'll post a picture of her arse... Patrick replied asking who she was...
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She really is a degenerate.
 
Pogue Mahone said:


a) What a bunch of cowardly cnuts.
b) What are they shooting him with? Are those paintball guns with pellets full of tear gas? WTF?!
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This has been posted before, but yeah it's mental, it's like they don't understand English. Not the only example too.
 
Imagine if all these things were happening in a non-Western country? There would be non-stop media talk about human rights, sanctions against the country and long speeches about the superiority of Western democracy.

The hypocrisy of this system is so fecking infuriating.
 
Hopkins would be marching arm-in-arm with BLM supporters if it paid her rent. She's a mercenary, and doesn't even have the dubious prestige of a contrarian.
 


I saw this pop up on my Youtube recommendations and honestly thought this was in relation to George Floyd, but this is from 2014. Just another example of how little has changed.
 
utdalltheway said:
MSP schools took the lead on this a few days ago, as they should. But, yeah a lot more should.
That could hit the cops where it hurts the most, in their overtime and loaded pensions pocket.
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I didn’t know MSP already did that. It’ll really be something if they can pull it off in Chicago.
 
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