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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Cheechus
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
You can't see the picture by staring at a single phosphor dot. That's all.
Exactly. And this is exactly what I've been saying, every time I protest about the way that the single phosphor dot of the death of Trayvon Martin or of Michael Brown or of Eric Garner is treated. It keeps feeling to me like every phosphor dot is treated as containing the finished picture, as if every data point is treated as containing average data.
But that's the opposite to what the take-home message needs to be.
Each incident is, in and of itself, a unique incident. Each of the outcomes may or may not have been justified on its own basis. So far, so fair.
My - and a lot of other people's - point is that this is the wrong way to look at the data. Yes, in Gwai's car-stopping example, you correctly say that one-third of stops were legitimate. Without the outrage of realising that fully two-thirds of stops on black drivers, and around a half on Hispanics, were entirely unjustifiable and a breach of the law, their rights and their dignities.
That is the picture. And frankly, I'm surprised they don't riot and burn shit down every day over it.
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Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Okay then. But I think part of the question is: would the feedback loop actually stop if the original stimulus was removed? Or does it just keep running on the memory/expectation?
It will take generations to go away. But I think it would start getting better much sooner than that. And continuing to harrass and stop young black men (and sometimes middle-aged balding black-men) makes it exponentially worse.
[ 17. December 2014, 15:01: Message edited by: mdijon ]
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Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
I'll try a one liner. Probabilistic arguments based on group behaviour cannot be used to determine guilt or innocence in any specific case.
Then an outworking.
Let us assume there is a high probability that the police are institutionally racist.
It follows from that that there is also a high probability that any individual police officer is infected by racism in his thinking and practice.
It does not follow that Darren Wilson is a racist as a result of those probabilities.
Even if he is, it does not follow that his actions in shooting Michael Brown were affected by some racist infection in his thinking and actions.
And even if his thinking and actions were so affected, it does not follow that his shooting of Michael Brown was illegal according to the laws of self defence that actually apply in Missouri.
Of course you can miss out all those steps and simply infer his guilt, or sufficient grounds for indictment, and that may be enough for you. But that's not just, is it? Certainly not if you are sitting on any kind of jury with power over his future.
Similar arguments can be applied to the actions of the prosecutors.
Again, all I am reading orfeo to say is that you cannot try any person by means of such inferences, whatever the stats on group behaviour might say.
[ 17. December 2014, 15:08: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Again, all I am reading orfeo to say is that you cannot try any person by means of such inferences, whatever the stats on group behaviour might say.
This is a perfectly reasonable thing to say.
To then go on and say that racism is not a problem, or not the primary problem, in police-civilian interactions, is contrary to the evidence of the aggregated statistics.
Because the guilt or innocence in any specific case cannot be used to determine group behaviour.
[ 17. December 2014, 15:14: Message edited by: Doc Tor ]
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Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
You can't see the picture by staring at a single phosphor dot. That's all.
Exactly. And this is exactly what I've been saying, every time I protest about the way that the single phosphor dot of the death of Trayvon Martin or of Michael Brown or of Eric Garner is treated. It keeps feeling to me like every phosphor dot is treated as containing the finished picture, as if every data point is treated as containing average data.
But that's the opposite to what the take-home message needs to be.
Each incident is, in and of itself, a unique incident. Each of the outcomes may or may not have been justified on its own basis. So far, so fair.
My - and a lot of other people's - point is that this is the wrong way to look at the data. Yes, in Gwai's car-stopping example, you correctly say that one-third of stops were legitimate. Without the outrage of realising that fully two-thirds of stops on black drivers, and around a half on Hispanics, were entirely unjustifiable and a breach of the law, their rights and their dignities.
That is the picture. And frankly, I'm surprised they don't riot and burn shit down every day over it.
And I'm surprised that "they":
1.riot and burn shit down over the death of a thief who seems to have reached for a police officer's gun;
2.protest loudly over the death of a teenager who appears to have unwisely banged the head of a man into the ground;
3.protest quietly and peaceably over the death of a man who was no physical threat as the result of a hold that should never have been used; and
4.don't seem to say much at all over the death of a wholly innocent child at the hands of a police officer who shot within 2 seconds of arriving at the scene.
That list just seems spectacularly arse-backwards to me. The very cases that are generating the outrage over police racism are the ones most prone to other explanations. In fact, the outrage doesn't seem to be generated by police racism, it's generated by the failure to treat a case as one of police racism.
To talk in the language we were using, the outrage comes when an outlying data point that doesn't actually lend much evidentiary weight to the ongoing presence of racist attitudes (because it can be readily explained by other means) isn't treated as a stereotypical, average data point that proves yet again how racist everything is. The outrage comes from a failure to meet a set of standard expectations about how white killers of black people should be treated.
[ 17. December 2014, 15:23: Message edited by: orfeo ]
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
And I'm surprised that "they":
1.riot and burn shit down over the death of a thief who seems to have reached for a police officer's gun;
For someone who has devoted so much time and energy to discussing this, you sure don't seem to have paid a lot of attention to what actually happened in Ferguson. It was a peaceful protest until the cops came in armed to the teeth and over-reacting. They didn't riot over Michael Brown's death -- they rioted over the cops' reaction to the protest.
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
It's not a cheap shot at Gwai at all. It's a hope based on the experience that Gwai is one of the more intelligent, insightful and nuanced posters on the Ship.
Yes, and intelligent, insightful and nuanced posters must ALL agree with you! Of course! Why did I not see that immediately?!?!?
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
And that's where I'm leaving it. I have spent hours trying to set out my thinking (one particular post just about took me an hour in its own right), and I am exhausted.
I would like to be thoroughly non-Hellish and thank a number of you for engaging in the kind of challenging yet meaningful battle of ideas that the original subject of this thread squashes every time he presents a caricature of other people's ideas.
I've only kept going until 3:30 am because you lot have repeatedly, even while saying things that I still think are problematic or dangerously incomplete, shown that you have the intention of seriously engaging with issues and treating them as meaningful issues.
You bastards.
Night.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
It's not a cheap shot at Gwai at all. It's a hope based on the experience that Gwai is one of the more intelligent, insightful and nuanced posters on the Ship.
Yes, and intelligent, insightful and nuanced posters must ALL agree with you! Of course! Why did I not see that immediately?!?!?
Because you didn't understand that when it comes to maths and probability, there is such a thing as a right answer?
Or do you think it's wrong of me to expect all intelligent people to agree that 2+2 = 4?
Like I said, night.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
(Wow, massive x-post. Originally addressed to orfeo re his comment on feedback loops. )
You do not end a problem by merely removing the cause. You must also mend the wound. The problem thus far has been the opposite. A plaster has been applied (anti-discrimination laws) to stem the bleeding, but the cause of the wound has been poorly addressed.
Positive feedback loops counter negative ones, not merely the ending of input into the negative.
BTW, I respect and admire Gwai as well, but a point is as correct whether by someone such as she or by one of us more plodding, blunt and dull.
[ 17. December 2014, 15:45: Message edited by: lilBuddha ]
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Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Gwai
Shipmate
# 11076
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by Gwai:
I take it back, I do have that magic wand: Right now we can pretty well figure they are all affected by racism!
And Michael Brown died because he was black. QED.
Please, please tell me you can understand why that doesn't follow. In exactly the same way that you can understand that saying that employment in the USA is affected by racism is not a basis for saying in any given case that "I didn't get the job because I'm black".
Note that I have been arguing that you underestimate the importance of racism in America, but I am not saying at all that every black man who dies (even dies wrongly at the hands of police) in America dies simply because he's black. I suspect Michael Brown would not have died if he were white, but his case is somewhat complicated, and even if he wouldn't have, he didn't die just because he was black. I've been trying to go back to my time in philosophy classes and write very precisely, so I only say that it was definitely affected by racism, not that it was solely caused by racism. Michael Brown clearly made some mistakes, legally, and tactically, for one thing. But the police made mistakes, and I don't think the either Michael or the police officer whose name I forget would have made their mistakes without the long history of racism in America.
And yes I accept that it's about impossible to be sure that any one person was thinking anything. But just as we could all be pretty sure Croesus was being intentional when he used the word "uppity" we can be pretty sure that black men don't trust the police because of statistics like those I posted, and that the police (and probably every other American) don't see black Americans clearly. I can't tell you why I do what I do, and whether any particularly action is racist*, but that doesn't change anything. If we knew you'd had a few drinks and your reactions were 25% (number made up) slower, and you then had an accident, it would be probably be a DUI, or whatever you all call that even though the police officer didn't try to decide whether you personally have good enough reactions to avoid that accident when not drunk. They would see that you were drunk, and see that you had had an accident, and you would be in trouble. That's not the only valid way to see racism in America, it's not. But it's not complete shit either, and it very reasonably makes people and communities distrust the police, and sometimes make bad decisions. Then the media sees their bad decisions and we say it was all their fault, and not racism at all.
P.S. I'm gibbering. Not posting on this thread anymore for at least a few hours, but I will reply.
*I passed a loud drunk black man yesterday. I was wary of him. Would I have been as wary of a loud drunk white man? I think so, but I would wouldn't I. etc
[ 17. December 2014, 15:45: Message edited by: Gwai ]
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If they think they ha’ slain our Goodly Fere
They are fools eternally.
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JoannaP
Shipmate
# 4493
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Again, all I am reading orfeo to say is that you cannot try any person by means of such inferences, whatever the stats on group behaviour might say.
This is a perfectly reasonable thing to say.
To then go on and say that racism is not a problem, or not the primary problem, in police-civilian interactions, is contrary to the evidence of the aggregated statistics.
Because the guilt or innocence in any specific case cannot be used to determine group behaviour.
![[brick wall]](graemlins/brick_wall.gif)
My understanding (which could be totally wrong of course) is that Orfeo is not saying that racism is not a problem; he is saying that it has not been 100% absolutely proven that it is the primary problem. It could be the primary problem but we do not know for sure.
I suspect that wealthy black men get stopped proportionately more often by US police than poor white men do, which would suggest that the disparity is caused by skin-colour rather than poverty, but nobody has produced the stats to prove that yet.
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
orfeo,
To address you why this riot and not that one post.
First, see Gwai's post. Then do a Google search and you will find that there are indeed protests addressing the killing of Tamir Rice and Eric Garner. Because of Ferguson, they have been merged with those protests, but they are present no less.
Lastly; orfeo let me introduce you to humans. We are a little erratic at time. Why does one spark ignite the tinder when another didn't? Hard to predict. That the fire would happen is fairly predictable, the when and where, less so.
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Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
JoannaP,
I would suggest the sample group is far too small.
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Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by JoannaP:
My understanding (which could be totally wrong of course) is that Orfeo is not saying that racism is not a problem; he is saying that it has not been 100% absolutely proven that it is the primary problem. It could be the primary problem but we do not know for sure.
Like we don't really know if misogyny is the primary problem that women face in the world. Or if homophobia is the primary problem that LGBT people face. Or if ageism is really the worst of the problems that the elderly face.
These are all technically correct statements but unhelpful, inflammatory in the wrong context, and don't take us anywhere.
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Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by JoannaP:
I suspect that wealthy black men get stopped proportionately more often by US police than poor white men do, which would suggest that the disparity is caused by skin-colour rather than poverty, but nobody has produced the stats to prove that yet.
No, no stats. But black and brown people driving luxury vehicles relate instances of being pulled over for no apparent reason a hell of a lot more often than white people driving the same cars do.
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by JoannaP:
I suspect that wealthy black men get stopped proportionately more often by US police than poor white men do, which would suggest that the disparity is caused by skin-colour rather than poverty, but nobody has produced the stats to prove that yet.
It's brilliant that want to see the best in everyone, but when one of Britain's highest profile black men gets gets stopped repeatedly (and apologies for the Daily Mail link), it behooves us to listen.
Black sportsmen with fast cars suffer these indignities too. But you know, statistics.
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Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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saysay
Ship's Praying Mantis
# 6645
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
And I'm surprised that "they":
And I would suggest that you are trying to use logic in order to understand people's emotions (and the kind of deep emotions that some people can't stop themselves from expressing). Here are some possible explanations for why we do the things we do.
quote:
1.riot and burn shit down over the death of a thief who seems to have reached for a police officer's gun;
The court made a decision. Let's leave aside the question of whether or not it was the right decision. Some people protest. Cops in riot gear and the national guard are called. According to one protestor I know, the most terrifying thing he has encountered in his life was the sound of that many police officers tapping their nightsticks in unison, in a rhythm.
The protests were never about one person, they were about the relationship between the police and the community. They were about people complaining about their treatment for years and having their complaints dismissed. They were about the fact that most of white America's reaction to the death was to point out that the suspect was a thief, as if that justifies the death penalty. They were about the fact that there were lots of editorials and talking heads everywhere telling people that they should do what police officers tell them to do. When you live in our communities, you learn young that even following every police command immediately does not guarantee that you will get out of an encounter without bruises or worse. You learn early on that not committing a crime does not mean that you will not be arrested, because you are at the complete and total mercy of every police officer you encounter.
Are most of them good people who will follow the law? Yes. Are some of them sociopaths with a state-issued gun and a license to kill with seeming impunity on the job? Yes.
Which kind is the officer who is stopping you today because you didn't know your tail-light was burned out?
The people I know who live in the suburbs have no idea just how often poor (and mostly black) people encounter the police. It might not be an encounter that's written up, maybe it's just an officer yelling from his car not to jaywalk or whatever. But it adds up.
So, yes, some peaceful protests got out of control. None of the protests I've been at have been about a thief getting shot. Even the ones where people say they want to show solidarity with Ferguson are about that death.
They're about what happens on a regular basis in our community, and the change we'd like to see (a civilian review board with teeth and an end to the officer's bill of rights so it's easier to get a violent cop of the force even if he isn't prosecuted, for example).
quote:
2.protest loudly over the death of a teenager who appears to have unwisely banged the head of a man into the ground;
Ever been followed at night by someone acting all suspicious?
Although, again, this isn't about one person and what they did or didn't do and should or shouldn't have done. It's about the fact that apparently now not only do we have to worry about the real cops, but also wanna-be vigilante cops.
quote:
3.protest quietly and peaceably over the death of a man who was no physical threat as the result of a hold that should never have been used; and
I'm pretty sure one of the reasons those protests were more peaceful was that there were fewer talking heads trying to justify the killing or saying he got what he deserved for acting that way (although I've certainly heard my share). Also, the people organizing the protests have gotten better and more organized and clearer about who they will and will not work with as time has gone on.
quote:
4.don't seem to say much at all over the death of a wholly innocent child at the hands of a police officer who shot within 2 seconds of arriving at the scene.
Well, yes, because that's just business as usual. I mean, you can't really expect to live if you don't do what a police officer says before he even tells you to do it, can you?
Again, all of the protests I've been to have been about all the deaths. Mostly the local ones are about locals killed by police (hmm, how did he manage to shoot himself in the back when he was handcuffed in the back of a police cruiser?), but in solidarity with the protests elsewhere.
But I'm guessing you're mostly hearing about the ones that generate the most controversy precisely because it's easier for the talking heads to justify what happened or argue about racism than it is to take a hard look at the problems in our CJ system and what might be done to start fixing them. Because in America, pointing out the racial disparity makes people more likely to support harsh penalties.
quote:
That list just seems spectacularly arse-backwards to me. The very cases that are generating the outrage over police racism are the ones most prone to other explanations. In fact, the outrage doesn't seem to be generated by police racism, it's generated by the failure to treat a case as one of police racism.
I actually think it's generated by the media. It's more fun to argue about racism and accuse people of racism and feign outrage over being called a racist than actually work on solutions. (Also because middle class white people - who are the ones producing and consuming these media - have experiences of race that they can talk about; they frequently lack experience of police officers or the CJ system - particularly bad experiences. And it's all about the rich white people and their feelings).
quote:
To talk in the language we were using, the outrage comes when an outlying data point that doesn't actually lend much evidentiary weight to the ongoing presence of racist attitudes (because it can be readily explained by other means) isn't treated as a stereotypical, average data point that proves yet again how racist everything is. The outrage comes from a failure to meet a set of standard expectations about how white killers of black people should be treated.
Maybe that's where your outrage comes from.
Mine, not so much.
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
The court made a decision. Let's leave aside the question of whether or not it was the right decision.
No, let's not. Because where I'm coming from is that court decisions are designed to be about individual guilt or innocence and are of vital importance to the person actually being put on trial, and that people who react to a court decision based on whether it fits with their agenda, rather than whether it was the right decision on the facts, are heading in a very dangerous direction.
I object at a fundamental level to the proposition of "show trials" of white policemen just because it will satisfy a desire to redress the imbalance between white power and black disadvantage. I fundamentally object to an individual white policeman being made the scapegoat for the failings of the system.
If the protests are not about an individual person and an individual case, then how about the protests stop coinciding with individual cases and with decisions in individual cases? How about having more protests that don't draw their location or their timing from an individual case?
I'd actually think that was fantastic idea myself. Have a march in the State capital that is planned ahead of time and which goes ahead regardless of whether anyone's been killed that week. That would do wonders in terms of demonstrating that it's about the ongoing relationship between police and communities, not about the particular death. It wouldn't be so reactive.
It's not about me trying to understand emotional responses through logic. It's about me flatly saying that emotional responses are not a safe basis for decision making, and they sure as hell aren't a safe basis for putting people on criminal trial.
The whole point of laws - the whole point of what I do every day in writing laws - is to set down rules ahead of time and NOT just react to the individual case as and when it happens. We don't convict people based on whether we think what they did was good or bad, or smart or dumb, we convict people based on whether we think what they did breached a rule that was in place when they acted.
People can heap all the moral condemnation they like on Wilson for killing Brown, but a criminal trial is not, in the last couple of centuries at least, about deciding whether we think the defendant is a nice man, and I don't care how emotional it is or how often people do this (including in situations that have no racial factors), it is still wrong to condemn a court decision just because it didn't come to the result you emotionally wanted.
Barnabas has basically said all this for me before, but now I'm saying it.
[ 18. December 2014, 01:42: Message edited by: orfeo ]
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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saysay
Ship's Praying Mantis
# 6645
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by saysay:
The court made a decision. Let's leave aside the question of whether or not it was the right decision.
No, let's not. Because where I'm coming from is that court decisions are designed to be about individual guilt or innocence and are of vital importance to the person actually being put on trial, and that people who react to a court decision based on whether it fits with their agenda, rather than whether it was the right decision on the facts, are heading in a very dangerous direction.
I agree with that. But the problem is that the nature of the system is that the people on the ground don't know the facts in order to know if the decision is the right decision. And everyone who knows the system knows that a prosecutor can present whatever information they want to a grand jury and the defense has no rebuttal, hence leading to the old adage about prosecutors being able to indict ham sandwiches.
A pattern of behavior where the prosecutor always fails to indict police officers no matter what happened raises red flags. It raises even more flags when they have a habit of indicting those who criticize them or the police, especially when they have a habit of setting high bails for protestors who haven't broken any laws.
quote:
I object at a fundamental level to the proposition of "show trials" of white policemen just because it will satisfy a desire to redress the imbalance between white power and black disadvantage.
Who thinks show trials will satisfy a desire to redress the imbalances between white power and black disadvantage?
If you believe in the criminal justice system, then why not allow some of these cases to go to trial, so the people can hear all of the facts, not just those that the prosecution chooses to present to the grand jury (and leak to the public?)
quote:
I fundamentally object to an individual white policeman being made the scapegoat for the failings of the system.
As do I. But I'm not sure who is doing that.
quote:
If the protests are not about an individual person and an individual case, then how about the protests stop coinciding with individual cases and with decisions in individual cases? How about having more protests that don't draw their location or their timing from an individual case?
There's a protest in my city every Wednesday and there has been since two officers beat an unarmed man to death and his family decided to dedicate their lives to trying to get some measure of justice. They don't even want the officers tried, they just want them off the damn force so they can't do that to anyone else.
The media is telling you what it wants to tell you. It doesn't necessarily have any relationship to reality.
quote:
I'd actually think that was fantastic idea myself. Have a march in the State capital that is planned ahead of time and which goes ahead regardless of whether anyone's been killed that week. That would do wonders in terms of demonstrating that it's about the ongoing relationship between police and communities, not about the particular death. It wouldn't be so reactive.
Do you have any idea how many marches there were in how many cities last weekend, or how many people were arrested? What were they a reaction to? (it's a big country, so I'm sure you can find some death or court decision to tie them to if you try - but I've actually been there; no matter what the talking heads on TV say, they are about the ongoing relationship between police and the communities.)
Why now? Why was it Trayvon Martin, or Ferguson, or Garner, or the guy killed in wal-mart, or the kid with the toy gun, or whatever - why was that the thing that made so many people decide they needed to show solidarity with minority communities (whether you're defining that in terms of race or class)?
That I don't know.
quote:
It's not about me trying to understand emotional responses through logic. It's about me flatly saying that emotional responses are not a safe basis for decision making, and they sure as hell aren't a safe basis for putting people on criminal trial.
I agree that emotions are not necessarily a safe decision for legal decision making, but that has nothing to do with the law in the US. Hurting a white person's feelings (even by looking at them funny) is very much a basis for putting people on criminal trial here and has been for years. Putting someone in jail because they made you afraid is a step above lynching the black guy because he looked at the white woman wrong, but not enough progress has been made.
quote:
The whole point of laws - the whole point of what I do every day in writing laws - is to set down rules ahead of time and NOT just react to the individual case as and when it happens. We don't convict people based on whether we think what they did was good or bad, or smart or dumb, we convict people based on whether we think what they did breached a rule that was in place when they acted.
That has nothing to do with the criminal justice system in the US. People are constantly getting harassed, arrested, and sometimes convicted of violating rules that weren't in place when they acted. Or rules that weren't in writing. Or rules that weren't rules.
Whatever ideals about the law you may have may be noble and fine, but those ideals have nothing at all to do with how the system works in practice, when you're dealing with lumpy bumpy emotional people who are easily manipulated and believe the system works because it hasn't screwed them over yet.
And this week the Supreme Court decided that a stop based on an officer's misunderstanding of the law can lead to valid
searches.. (Which may in fact help explain the 'why now' aspect of the protests).
quote:
People can heap all the moral condemnation they like on Wilson for killing Brown, but a criminal trial is not, in the last couple of centuries at least, about deciding whether we think the defendant is a nice man, and I don't care how emotional it is or how often people do this (including in situations that have no racial factors), it is still wrong to condemn a court decision just because it didn't come to the result you emotionally wanted.
Who is condemning a court decision because it didn't come to the result they emotionally wanted? Do you understand that mostly what people want is a criminal trial, or at least a way to remove officers from the force without putting them on a criminal trial?
Seriously, do you have any idea what you're talking about and what is actually happening at these protests? Or do you, like seemingly all police and lawyers (including both prosecutors and defense attorney's - since the whole system depends on y'all being in bed with each other) simply feel some reflexive need to defend the law and everyone who works in the field?
Also: Tori Amos sucks.
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"It's been a long day without you, my friend
I'll tell you all about it when I see you again"
"'Oh sweet baby purple Jesus' - that's a direct quote from a 9 year old - shoutout to purple Jesus."
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
That might just be the most intelligent post I've ever seen from you in Hell, and then you have to go and ruin it with heresy.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
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Palimpsest
Shipmate
# 16772
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Posted
There's a story I heard about then Mayor Willie Brown. His prior job was Speaker of the California Assembly. He used to drive his Jaguar from San Francisco to Sacramento to go to work. For a long time, almost every time he did, he was pulled over by one California State Highway Patrol trooper who ran a license check and detained him. This went on for months.
There came a point where the California State Patrol wanted a bill passed for additional funding. They submitted it to the Speaker. The bill sat for a long time. The proponents spoke to the Speaker and asked why the bill wasn't being passed. He explained that he didn't have time because of being detained on the way to work.
He wasn't detained again.
This is an example of "Driving an expensive car while Black". It's not just the poor and homeless who get stopped. As for your "why don't they behave perfectly argument". If you fear you're going to be shot for no good reason, and you know people who have been killed, you might choose not to put your faith in the majesty and perfection of law. Each case is not a pixel, it's a fuzzy hologram, and if you assembly enough of them you get clearer large hologram.
You claim that individual cases shouldn't be a focus for protest. If the Prosecutor is simply going to dismiss the case if there isn't a protest, regardless of the merits, then protest is the appropriate action. If your friends and relatives have been repeatedly harassed and abused by the police and that Law that you are so fond of simply ignores the injustice, then you are not likely to think that justice will be done without protest and or violence. To proclaim that people should just obey the arbitrary behavior of the police and hope it all works out or that they'll be given a chance in court to show their innocence is naïve verging on willful blindness.
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Palimpsest:
You claim that individual cases shouldn't be a focus for protest. If the Prosecutor is simply going to dismiss the case if there isn't a protest, regardless of the merits, then protest is the appropriate action. If your friends and relatives have been repeatedly harassed and abused by the police and that Law that you are so fond of simply ignores the injustice, then you are not likely to think that justice will be done without protest and or violence. To proclaim that people should just obey the arbitrary behavior of the police and hope it all works out or that they'll be given a chance in court to show their innocence is naïve verging on willful blindness.
And meanwhile, what happens to every other individual case from your community that doesn't get protested, hmm?
That's what I'm saying. Not that there shouldn't be any kind of protest, but that reacting to each individual case is only going to put pressure on a prosecutor (if indeed it does - it got a trial for Zimmerman but I'm not aware of any other case where it got a change in the short-term outcome) in that individual case.
And the system goes on its merry way for every other case, treating that protest as being about THAT case and no other case, until the next time there's a case that people decide to protest over.
I'm not saying being cranky about injustice is wrong, I'm saying THAT METHOD of being cranky about injustice is deeply ineffective.
It's a trivial example, but you've reminded me of what happened in a department I worked for. There was a mistake in an important document template that hundreds of people used. Some people didn't notice and created documents with the mistake. Some people did notice, grumbled and fixed it on the document they were working on.
I went through a whole bunch of phone calls to find out who in IT would be able to fix the template, persuaded them there was an error (their response was "we had an entire division testing this and noone told us"), and that one fix solved the problem for hundreds of people including those I didn't even know.
So figure out what you're trying to solve: the individual case or the system. The document or the template. Act accordingly.
[ 18. December 2014, 22:00: Message edited by: orfeo ]
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
Your analogy only reinforces the idea that people who quietly accept the problem don't really help solve it. Someone has to make that call.
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
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moron
Shipmate
# 206
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Posted
posting with my marginally smart predluding copy but to whoever posted about Erin and paper cuts; who was she talking about? TIA.
More later. (just a bone to those discerning few who exalt me.)
And avoiding Styx: TPTB can close even delete the purg rush thread as i'll make the point here - thx
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moron
Shipmate
# 206
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Posted
oops just saw they did i kind of hate this phone once again smart folk are ahead of me thx
Posts: 4236 | From: Bentonville | Registered: May 2001
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
Your analogy only reinforces the idea that people who quietly accept the problem don't really help solve it. Someone has to make that call.
Agreed. So who's making it? Who's making the directed push for systemic change that's relevant to the next encounter?
In New York, I know that there have at least been moves to work on police training and procedures so that they don't apply anything like a choke hold. That's template-change, not document-change. That's something that's relevant to the next encounter, regardless of whether the police who killed Garner are put on trial or not.
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
Well I would argue that the people who want a template change are the ones currently dancing in the streets, hoping enough of that will shame people who can actually do something into getting off their damn thumbs. Protest is really the only tool we have to accomplish that.
Moron-- why the Sam Hill are you asking H/A's to perform housekeeping chores here? This thread is convoluted enough.
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
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Dave W.
Shipmate
# 8765
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
In New York, I know that there have at least been moves to work on police training and procedures so that they don't apply anything like a choke hold. That's template-change, not document-change.
Oh is it, now?
Choke holds have been banned in NYC for more than 20 years.
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moron
Shipmate
# 206
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Posted
please pardon all my claptrap
If [shipmate name removed] early posting here was not sincere i concede defeat and appreciate the schoolings
[ 19. December 2014, 05:54: Message edited by: Kelly Alves ]
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RooK
1 of 6
# 1852
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Who's making the directed push for systemic change that's relevant to the next encounter?
How, exactly, does one go about addressing the blatant racism inherent in the system - indeed woven into the very hem of society - WITHOUT having significant portions of relevant society expressing their outrage at specific examples of said blatant racism?
Because, I have to tell you, having somebody add to the police manual "keep all racist thoughts for off-duty time" seems pretty fucking stupid.
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
In New York, I know that there have at least been moves to work on police training and procedures so that they don't apply anything like a choke hold. That's template-change, not document-change.
Oh is it, now?
Choke holds have been banned in NYC for more than 20 years.
Yeah, I know. I've known that for weeks.
But if you can't understand the difference between having a ban on the books and making sure that police are TRAINED properly so that they wouldn't do anything close to a choke hold, I can't help you with your particular kind of stupid.
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
Protest is really the only tool we have to accomplish that.
Seriously?
Most protests are easy. Most protests are telling other people they have to do something. Most protests make no attempt to wrestle with the difficult questions of what, precisely to do.
In fact, most protests are exactly the same in effect as RooK's sarcastic note to "keep all racist thoughts for off-duty time". A protest is a bunch of people shouting at the authorities "stop being racist!".
To which the authorities will think "we weren't consciously trying to be!", and that's that.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
To which the public says, "Not a good enough answer,there is a problem that needs addressing" and keeps protesting.
It's tedious, it feels like nothing is accomplished while it's happening, but that's how Jim Crow went down, that's how DOMA went down, that's how women got the vote...
Basically you're saying it's a waste of time to even call the IT guy.
[ 19. December 2014, 05:09: Message edited by: Kelly Alves ]
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
Good grief, orfeo's point is perfectly easy to understand. He's saying that if you want a Rosa Parks figure to force change in systemic police racism, the cases in question are not particularly good examples.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
I understand the point just fine, Grandpa, I am saying it is valid for people to continue applying public pressure to "check the template" as long as the template is still wonky. There are a plethora of "specific cases" that indicate this is the case.
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Good grief, orfeo's point is perfectly easy to understand. He's saying that if you want a Rosa Parks figure to force change in systemic police racism, the cases in question are not particularly good examples.
I can't put that easy to understand (but IMO wrong) point together with;
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
In fact, most protests are exactly the same in effect as RooK's sarcastic note to "keep all racist thoughts for off-duty time". A protest is a bunch of people shouting at the authorities "stop being racist!".
To which the authorities will think "we weren't consciously trying to be!", and that's that.
On the face of it that advice would translate into telling Rosa Parks not to bother.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by moron:
please pardon all my claptrap
If [shipmate name removed] early posting here was not sincere i concede defeat and appreciate the schoolings
Please be careful about using Shipmates' real life names on the Ship-- even if they themselves have revealed them before. It is up to the individual if they want to out themselves.
Kelly Alves
Admin.
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
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Palimpsest
Shipmate
# 16772
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
[QUOTE]
That's what I'm saying. Not that there shouldn't be any kind of protest, but that reacting to each individual case is only going to put pressure on a prosecutor (if indeed it does - it got a trial for Zimmerman but I'm not aware of any other case where it got a change in the short-term outcome) in that individual case.
And the system goes on its merry way for every other case, treating that protest as being about THAT case and no other case, until the next time there's a case that people decide to protest over.
I'm not saying being cranky about injustice is wrong, I'm saying THAT METHOD of being cranky about injustice is deeply ineffective.
It's a trivial example, but you've reminded me of what happened in a department I worked for. There was a mistake in an important document template that hundreds of people used. Some people didn't notice and created documents with the mistake. Some people did notice, grumbled and fixed it on the document they were working on.
I went through a whole bunch of phone calls to find out who in IT would be able to fix the template, persuaded them there was an error (their response was "we had an entire division testing this and noone told us"), and that one fix solved the problem for hundreds of people including those I didn't even know.
So figure out what you're trying to solve: the individual case or the system. The document or the template. Act accordingly.
You think protest is ineffective. Weren't you the one citing the part of the survey I referenced to say White Officer are more reluctant than Black officers to shoot Black suspects. Why do you think that is? Is this a massive effort to change the system or is it having learned that doing so brings protest? I think the latter.
The answer is not either/or, it's both.
While you were waiting for I.T. to fix your templates, did you fix documents by hand that you had to send out or did you decide you could only spend time with IT?
There are projects like The Sentencing Project or the effort to pass the Fair Sentencing Act There are protests in many cities are that are not specific to protesting one case.
As for your crankiness about people demanding a show trial, there's a routine habit of using prosecutorial discretion to dismiss cases against police. In Seattle and elsewhere, there's a tendency to allow the Police unions to negotiate away civilian review or effective internal review of police misconduct.
It's amusing to watch you claim that the Blacks being arrested on spurious charges should put their faith in the justice system and at the same time saying that public protest against continual prosecutorial misuse of discretion results in horrible show trials. Why don't you just tell the police to put their faith in the court system and make their case in court? Why is a possibly spurious trial for them an outrage that makes you cranky, while an spurious trial for citizen on the street is just fine with you, and not worth worrying about while you ponder long term improvements?
Posts: 2990 | From: Seattle WA. US | Registered: Nov 2011
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
So figure out what you're trying to solve: the individual case or the system. The document or the template. Act accordingly.
Or fix the software, the hardware, the entire computer, their makers.
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Good grief, orfeo's point is perfectly easy to understand. He's saying that if you want a Rosa Parks figure to force change in systemic police racism, the cases in question are not particularly good examples.
I can't put that easy to understand (but IMO wrong) point together with;
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
In fact, most protests are exactly the same in effect as RooK's sarcastic note to "keep all racist thoughts for off-duty time". A protest is a bunch of people shouting at the authorities "stop being racist!".
To which the authorities will think "we weren't consciously trying to be!", and that's that.
On the face of it that advice would translate into telling Rosa Parks not to bother.
Rosa Parks and cafe sit-ins are EXACTLY WHY I said "most" protests and not all. Rosa Parks did not simply walk down the street shouting "let me sit where I want". Rosa Parks did something very specific about her dissatisfaction with not being allowed to sit where she wanted.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Palimpsest:
It's amusing to watch you claim that the Blacks being arrested on spurious charges should put their faith in the justice system
Well, yes, it's also amusing when I watch you performing the Dance of the Sugar Plum in a Roman gladatorial costume. And equally fictional.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
Basically you're saying it's a waste of time to even call the IT guy.
No, I'm saying they're calling the IT guy and saying "fix my document", and that doing this from to time is a hell of a lot less effective than calling him and saying "we need to fix the template".
Or to mangle another well known analogy, they are giving the legal system a fish every now and then instead of teaching the legal system how to fish.
[ 19. December 2014, 06:50: Message edited by: orfeo ]
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
I think it a better start to teach them to fish without using dynamite.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
You miss the fact that protest requires a critical mass of emotions and motivation from enough people to achieve anything. People don't get emotional and motivated by discussing the system. They get emotional and motivated by individual examples of injustice and suffering.
To some extent I think it is fine to present the authorities with protest based on those examples. I think it's fine for the public to say to authorities and government "This is wrong. Here is your mandate, you shall fix it."
On the IT guy analogy I think if you describe the problem as you see it the IT guy is well qualified to determine the solution.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Rosa Parks did something very specific about her dissatisfaction with not being allowed to sit where she wanted.
What did she do that addressed the template or that highlighted the systematic problems? As I see it she responded to an individual instance which was a symptom of a much larger issue in a way that caught the imaginations of a much wider group.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
Rosa Parks was part of the Montgomery Improvement Association,which had been organizing various protests about Jim Crow laws for a very long time. In short, she was part of a larger group devoted to squawking about injustice on a regular basis. The only reason we know about her case at all is because the MIA made a lot of noise about it.
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
Posts: 35076 | From: Pura Californiana | Registered: Mar 2002
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
Basically you're saying it's a waste of time to even call the IT guy.
No, I'm saying they're calling the IT guy and saying "fix my document", and that doing this from to time is a hell of a lot less effective than calling him and saying "we need to fix the template".
The IT guy will fix the template, not when the end-users become a pain the in arse with their phone calls, but when his line manager is told by some executive to find someone to fix the template because the exec is receiving all these pain-in-the-arse phone calls.
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Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
Indeed, it seems often the requirement by organizations to overcome their inertia is the other way around in favour of the specific rather than the general.
"Your IT support really sucks" often doesn't achieve organizational change.
"This printer at this workstation doesn't work and when I called the IT guy he said so what" might trigger some questioning. Several similar incidents might trigger attention by the head of IT.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
People don't get emotional and motivated by discussing the system.
Clearly I'm just weird that way.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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