goddammit livewire that post was relevant
I'd like to say that the title of this thread is a huge insult to the human race.
Eh, not really, you could write a reasonable debate on either side. The more insulting thing is how people are acting in this thread.
Ultimately I think this shows a larger problem in society. This thread honestly to someone who honestly doesn't lean either way shows that both sides have no interest in hearing the other's opinion, especially supporters. This is a problem because the more ignorant you are to the opposition, the more
uneducated you are about that subject, and the more that you appear to be in frothing rage. You could be completely right in your opinion and truly be pointing out a true case of misjustice in our police system, but that doesn't matter if you are willing to ignore all counterpoints and label everyone who doesn't agree with you as a racist.
Ultimately, while the case could be clear cut (it's not, although similar cases such as Garner and the 12 year old in Cleveland are), what is definitely not clear cut is the larger social implications of such a thing. It's easy to go look at what happens in the news and have it fuel are anger against the misjustice against black people - especially when cases against other races are usually ignored or never reach national levels - but perhaps not looking at the whole picture does indeed give us a skewed picture of what's going on here. As I stated in my relevant post that was deleted above (grr), sometimes things that appear to be racism can't really be that. What racism has Detroit faced in the last 40 years that directly oppressed them, outside of dumb facebook comments? Not much, since the population is 90% black and has been run by black people for over 40 years until the current mayor was elected in early 2014. You can't really claim that because white people fled in the 60s that people who weren't even born then or were just babies then are actively oppressing them. And sure, this isn't Ferguson, but I see Ferguson following the same path itself.
It shouldn't be taken that black people are incapable of taking control of a city efficiently, it's that usually when a complete racial takeover like this happens, the city is already weak and the people who are left behind are those already living in poverty, so if corruption occurs in power, it's not very easy to counteract it.
People still blame racism though and have been for years, but they keep ignoring the actual problem to continue to feed into their narrative. Perhaps people don't want to fund the city not because it's predominantly black but because the city has shown itself incapable of managing itself for decades. Or because the city has mostly declined and shown to be a terrible investment.
Perhaps what I was trying to say is that the world isn't so black and white. Sometimes there are many factors going on and ignoring all but the most tantalizing of them means that your problems will perpetuate until you accept the existence of other possibilities. It's easier to simplify things but when things can't be that simplified you can draw some conclusions that truly don't exist.
Perhaps the most offensive thing I found in this thread was the extent that some people were willing to hide evidence to support their opinion, as shown in the quotes for
this post. What's particularly irritating here is that it doesn't really answer anything since the occurrence could have still happened due to racism, and the existence of this evidence doesn't do much to actually defeat your opinion, so why hide it under the rug? It makes it sound like you aren't willing to be honest, and that's something that's plagued this discussion since
day one.
I still find the motive of "Racism" a very weak limb to stand on in of itself, but whatever. I could be wrong.
So please, people, be open minded and at least listen to the opposition long enough to understand where they are coming from. I don't automatically subscribe to what opponents are saying if I listen to them. It's a way of understanding where other people are coming from, and from someone who has been very neutral on this subject (thoughts of suicide kind of make things thousands of miles away kind of irrelevant), it's very clear that this is not happening here or most other places where this subject is being discussed.