Earlier quoted context omitted.
Applying those labels to people who are objectively and overtly acting that way is not the problem. The problem is that way too often people are assuming it's there. It's a presumption of intent, "racism is one possible explanation for your viewpoint, therefore I somehow /just know/ that you are a racist person". Example: every recent white-cop-shot-a-black-person incident in the U.S. Not only is there widespread ass…
>Not only is there widespread assumption of racism being the motivation (despite little or no evidence of that) It's hard to say what all the issues of individual motivation are in every case, but there is evidence that racism plays a factor. [0] It may not be because of overt racism, the officers involved don't have to attend klan rallies for other racially biased policies like redlining to have a broad effect on po…
I hear your point, and I'm all for mercy, patience, trying to understand and help people in crisis, etc. But at the same time, choices have consequences, and you can't escape that. This isn't victim blaming, it's just a law of nature. It is a tragedy if someone gets into such a state of confusion/rage/whatever that they, say, try to stab someone to death, but it's also not wrong for someone to step in and protect the intended victim. And if the act of saving the innocent harms the attacker, that's awful, but the fact remains that the attacker would not have come to harm if not for their earlier choices.
> [0] https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793
I haven't had time to look at this study in depth, but a cursory glance suggests they are almost completely ignoring what is probably the most important factor, and that is the rate of violent crime (the second most influential data point would probably be socioeconomic level).
They show a correlation between race and death at the hands of police, which is indisputable. A causal relationship is TBD, though they brush up against it by stating, "This pattern is similar to the distribution of violent crime".