> On dogwhistles. I'm tired of hearing this term thrown about.
Did you get the impression from my comments that I couldn't be bothered to build the bridge across the gap of our misunderstanding? Telling people that there are rhetorical issues with how they will be perceived is valuable. It is, in fact, exactly what you frame your post as doing.
> Besides which, appeal to authority
As an aside, you should read up on "appeal to authority". Appeal to authority isn't really a logical fallacy. Appeal to false authority is. Which is to say appealing to someone who has no real reason to claim authority on a subject. Like Denzel Washington.
Broadening this, we now notice a pattern of you pointing out rhetorical devices that I use in a negative light, when you and those I'm responding to use the same devices. I ask why? It's certainly not constructive.
> The fact is politics is not just about facts or the collection/interpretation thereof
I agree! You should tell that to GP!
> Now where American politics may legitimately have a problem is that the first time a felony occurs
Again on the rhetoric bit, be careful with phrases like this. It implies that other problems are less legitimate. You're trying to build bridges here, remember. Belittling the legitimate concerns of the other doesn't do that.
This isn't to say that you're wrong to bring up this concern. It is a legitimate issue. But your phrasing here frames other issues as illegitimate. Is that your intent?
> However, that stands as a political necessity, since in a purported land of the free, there is the assumption that no one else carries the blame for the choices you've made but you and your lonesome.
Indeed, this is the great American mistake that recent activism hopes to highlight. It is the recognition of de facto discrimination, that despite supposed equality under the law, different groups are treated differently by the humans who apply the justice system.
> Well, seems to be a self-correcting problem does it not?
I'm not sure what your point is here. That we've recognized a problem doesn't mean that it isn't hurting people. Recognizing that a problem exists often a necessary, but also always insufficient, step in fixing it. These mistakes of the prior generations are actively harming people right now. Saying that the problem will eventually self correct because people notice it is both naive and probably not true even in the long run without a concerted effort, and does nothing to address the people harmed right now.
> the black community are not the only ones who noticed the gem of zoning laws contributing to continued segregation
I'm not sure why this matters. Could you elaborate on why you included this comment.
> Don't know about anyone else, but when I was growing up and still in the primary grades (when marijuana based crackdowns was generally considered worthwhile)
Note that I'm not talking about history in my statistics. I'm talking about data from the last 5 years. Today, right now black people are 3x more likely than white people to be arrested for marijuana use.
> A police officer's primary evaluation loop involves working out what isn't right given their environment.
This is where stop and frisk data is useful. In NYC stop and frisk didn't result in a decrease in violent or property crime. What it did result in was young black men being stopped and searched for no (literally, they were stopped without probable cause which is why the policy was stopped by the courts) reason. So a white person and a black person engaging in exactly the same behavior, the black person was multiple times more likely to be stopped.
> I'm willing to wager that cops would love to just let "endemic" crime slide, but that's not really an option given their need to act with integrity.
This is actually the exact opposite of what the data shows. Police are given wide leeway to use their judgement and escalate. And when given these leeway, they "require less suspicion to search black and Hispanic drivers than white drivers"[0]. This pattern ties in with the one from the Fryer paper: police have a higher baseline suspicion of minority individuals and as a result require less evidence to consider them a threat (and therefore to escalate physically) or to be engaging in criminal behavior (resulting in a search or in NYC a stop and frisk).
> Those who didn't are, to the limited resources of the justice system, not worth going after
Right, this is what I mean when I say systemic discrimination. It's easier to get a conviction against a poor black person than a rich white person. Therefore police have systematic incentives to engage with black people. They're at least as likely to find contraband, the person is more likely to be poor and therefore more likely to be convicted. It's not clear why you're bringing this up. Like yes, these are problems that need to be addressed. They're problems that are actively raised by activists at this very moment. It's not news to me, and it's certainly not good.
We shouldn't excuse systems that encourage discrimination because it's more economical. We should dismantle those systems.
> I'd advise you to read up on the concept of legislative sunset dates, and how their mandated inclusion forces choices in terms of prioritization of laws worth keeping on the books.
I'm familiar. These don't help the people being harmed right now by these existing systems of oppression. Saying "well we should change how we write future laws" doesn't address the injustice in existing laws.
> That cycle you describe sounds pretty pan-racial to me.
Most of it is (the police discrimination part isn't, but the economic factors are). What you seem to have missed is the history. The reason that we're here now is due to explicit racial discrimination in prior generations. So the pan-racial factors will continue to perpetuate the harms of racism unless we take explicit steps to stop them.
> I still see people from some of the shittiest circumstances become absolutely great people in their own right
Sure, there's some level of agency. But now's a good time to remember that Black men (and as a result black families) enjoy much less economic mobility than white men[1]. In this case it doesn't matter what the causes are. The effect is that, controlling for other factors, it's harder for a black person to escape bad circumstances than it is for a white person. So even in a statement like this, you're glossing over racial inequality.
> That's what kills me right now. BLM has the gall to think it's just black people who suffer.
They really don't. See my comments about Christian Roupe and Daniel Shaver. But importantly, even if they were, there are unique ways in which black people suffer. Denying that there is naive. And those specific ways of suffering need to be addressed before we can have true racial equality. Yes there are economic issues that cause everyone to suffer. And yes, those issues should be addressed. But addressing only those issues will still leave black people disadvantaged.
This is implicitly an "All Lives Matter" argument. Black people are drawing attention to issues that disproportionately affect them, and instead of saying "oh yes, you're right", your response is to say "but look at all these other people who are suffering". So what? That other people are suffering doesn't change the unique modes of suffering due to race.
> your suffering isn't intentional on anyone's part, but arises due to synergism's you aren't even aware of yet,
Yes, this is what "systematic" means. This isn't news to anyone.
> There were extensive attempts made to have their voices heard before the only reasonable choice of action fell to armed conflict.
I'm not sure what your point is. Do you think people haven't been peacefully protesting these things for decades? That people haven't been trying to pass legislation to fix these issues for years? They have. We just haven't been paying attention (or worse punishing them), until now. Colin Kaepernick? Progressive politicians have been working to reverse broken windows policing since its inception.
> Wanton unrestrained violence, and trying to topple the culture that made your act of protest possible will get no one anywhere.
Destruction of property as a form of protest marked the beginning of the American revolution. The property was destroyed because other attempts to enact change had failed. Destroying property got people to pay attention. Many people were not fans of the political unrest. Sure sounds familiar.
There was one difference though: the American revolution was led, by and large, by people in the upper class. Washington was the richest man in America. Many of the revolutionaries held political office or bureaucratic posts in the British system. They were all wealthy white property owners, members of the eventual voting class. Their challenge wasn't to get the ruling class to recognize their issues, they were the ruling class. It was to get the lower class to fight in a war that for many didn't improve their situation.
But most people aren't taught that in school either, because US history builds a cult of personality around the founding fathers. One that tearing down these statues caused me to do more research on. I learned a lot. And I keep learning a lot. Here's an example from today[2]. Would I have learned that Wilson was an avowed white supremacist without the sequence of events involving toppling of statues? Perhaps. Would I have learned it today? No. I expect many other people are the same way.
[0]: https://openpolicing.stanford.edu/findings/
[1]: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/21/17139300/e...
[2]: https://twitter.com/abfrancois/status/1277294683572580352