> “I blame myself,” she kept saying. “I never let him out on Halloween. A bunch of Black boys together. I shouldn’t have let him out. But he begged me.” Notice that while average white parents might worry about criminals before letting their kids out on the street, the black parents worry (with good reason) about the police. (Just to spell it out: this is why so many BLM activists feel comfortable saying "abolish the…
> because from their point of view the police are the people most likely to assault or kill them or their children on the street
This is a delusion - they are at least 2 orders of magnitude more likely to be assaulted or killed by another (non-police) black person.
This is yet another scenario where a relatively minor source of risk gets vastly disproportionate coverage and almost everyone falls for it.
ETA: it’s funny that this straightforward statement of objective fact is being so poorly received.
> Notice that while average white parents Perhaps that distinction is more pronounced in some locations than others. I don’t see this distinction in the big city where I live and each of my neighbors are black. We have regular police patrols where I live and almost no police interventions. We also have several police officers that live in the neighborhood. My city has greater than 900,000 people, is about 60% white,…
> I don’t see this distinction in the big city where I live and each of my neighbors are black. Not sure if anyone can feel anyone else's pain. If millions of people are complaining about a problem, why try to say the problem does not exist? My experiences are nothing compared to the terrible stories I've heard from PoC, but I'll give you an example. I'm Muslim. In 2004, I ended up on the restricted fly list, effecti…
I have never been to NYC so I am certainly not saying anything about the problem in NYC.
Not really. You wouldn’t be criticized if you got it wrong, but it’s the kinda thing that would make an English style guide. You do it the other way and watch absolutely no one care.
> You do it the other way and watch absolutely no one care.
I have never seen a style guide make a distinction between skin colors, and I disagree that nobody would care if they capitalised 'white' but not 'black'.
Bringing up "black-on-black crime" is a common disingenuous tactic to distract from conversations about police brutality. Most violence is committed by people you're around, and in an intensely segregated country, that will usually be people that are the same race as you. It's a complete digression from the actual conversation here, which is about agents of the state, entrusted to act as enforcers of the state's mono…
The commentor's name is literally 'jeffdavis'. I'm not sure what else one could suspect about their motivations.
Are you suggesting that the user chose their username in honor of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States? I suppose it's possible, but it's patently absurd to assume that is the only (or even most likely) reason for their name or explanation of their intentions.
It is completely irrelevant. It's like responding to "It's raining today" with "It was sunny last week". At best, it's a non-sequitur, at worst it's an active attempt to distract from the conversation at hand. And it ignores the facts that A) black-on-black crime does not happen at a substantially higher rate than white-on-white crime, B) the explanation for why most crime is intra-racial in a segregated country is p…
> It is completely irrelevant It's irrelevant to the real issue, but not to the upthread claim that blacks view police as the greatest threat. In the latter context, it is not irrelevant to point out that such a view does not seem to be in line with the evidence.
> “I blame myself,” she kept saying. “I never let him out on Halloween. A bunch of Black boys together. I shouldn’t have let him out. But he begged me.” Notice that while average white parents might worry about criminals before letting their kids out on the street, the black parents worry (with good reason) about the police. (Just to spell it out: this is why so many BLM activists feel comfortable saying "abolish the…
I looked at the numbers in another comment[1], and it seems that for every one black person killed by police (justifiably or not), over 20 black people are murdered by other blacks. So either there's something wrong with my analysis, or the fear of police is somewhat misplaced. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23579467
This comment is frustrating for all the reasons pointed out, as well as another:
Cops do their crimes with impunity. If a non-cop harms you or kills someone, it is at least possible for them to be caught, then brought to justice.
Depending on circumstance, one can combat or run away from a non-cop threat without being hunted down and kidnapped. Hell, even a non-cop street gang would have to recognize you and have the energy to come after you, vs. the cops that have the full force of government behind them.
> Notice that while average white parents Perhaps that distinction is more pronounced in some locations than others. I don’t see this distinction in the big city where I live and each of my neighbors are black. We have regular police patrols where I live and almost no police interventions. We also have several police officers that live in the neighborhood. My city has greater than 900,000 people, is about 60% white,…
> I don’t see this distinction in the big city where I live and each of my neighbors are black. Not sure if anyone can feel anyone else's pain. If millions of people are complaining about a problem, why try to say the problem does not exist? My experiences are nothing compared to the terrible stories I've heard from PoC, but I'll give you an example. I'm Muslim. In 2004, I ended up on the restricted fly list, effecti…
> It is so easy to dismiss people, but seriously -- if millions are complaining -- just accept there is probably something there.
Millions of people complaining about "Muslim terrorism" led to you being inappropriately placed on a no-fly list. Millions of people complaining about "the Jew" led to significant and severe atrocities (plural...).
Millions voted for Trump. Millions voted for Clinton. Millions voted for Bernie. And millions will vote for the next Stalin, Hitler, or Mao.
I don't disagree that there is a problem with policing but I can't conceive of a more evil world where millions of people are just listened to without question.
I agree there are stereotypes much, much older than this, of course - and 90s pop culture does not explain away the longer term discrimination. Still, if the question is about how white Americans perceive black Americans as a group, especially those white Americans who do not know many black Americans personally, I think you have to consider portrayals in pop culture as a factor. At least, that is my perception, as a…
> I think you have to consider portrayals in pop culture as a factor. Sure, but pop culture in large part expresses and transmits preexisting stereotypes (and even when it doesn’t, it is perceived through the lens of those stereotypes.) I'm not saying it's not involved, just that it's not the source.
I agree. I guess the part I'm trying to explore is, when given a stereotype, whether the group that is the target of that stereotype seeks to try and change the stereotype, or exploit the stereotype for personal gain. It seems that a lot of white Americans, and (likely) a smaller number of black Americans, made a lot of money in the 90s (and probably today) exploiting the stereotype of urban black communities having a lot of violence. That is not to say that the violence was not already there, whether police violence, or gang violence, or violence of some other form - simply that this portrayal of black Americans became pretty common in the 90s. Contrast this with earlier shows like the Jeffersons, Sanford and Sons, Cosby Show, Benson, etc. Maybe it was a necessary step to go through in exposing real issues, but the way it was presented (I think) established a new stereotype that many young, black American men are armed. I think this stereotype is likely a factor in the way some police officers behave - fearfully, and full of adrenaline - which too often leads to unwarranted and unacceptable violence.
I don't know what style guide ProPublica uses, but very recently AP decided to capitalize Black when used as a cultural term when it conveys "essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black". They go on to say that they expect to make a decision soon about whether to do that with "white" as well. https://blog.ap.org/announcements/the-decision-to-capitalize... https://a…
And boy, those must be some fraught discussions. I think of myself as white but not White, because the notion White Culture connotes white supremacy. Black people outside of Africa share a common element of diaspora, at the very least defined in terms of their shared difficulties, while I as a white person in the west define myself more closely with smaller ethnic and national groups than with whiteness as a whole. S…
> while I as a white person in the west define myself more closely with smaller ethnic and national groups than with whiteness as a whole.
Sure, but how do others define you? Consider that tech companies and activists are trying to redefine the meaning of racism to allow others to discriminate against you based on the color of your skin.