I Can't Breathe

IDK, I’m a little more skeptical of this post. It seems more posturing than actually effecting change. CFOs have other means of doing that, in better ways than a simple blog post. This is no different than the celebrity cause du jour tweet except that it’s coming from a business leader rather than some actor/actress/pop star. Let’s see this CFO use their connections and influence to make things better in real ways.

From reports across the country, it's definitely unclear who is responsible for most of the rioting. Some people are clearly outsiders, provocateurs. In other places, it's clear that the cops are the ones escalating and provoking. There's a fair bit of evidence that protest organizers worked hard to stop rioting.

Moreover, I think focusing too much on the property destruction is missing the point. As MLK says, "Riot is the language of the unheard." White people have had a couple hundred years to "use the system of governance" to fix this. We haven't.

I get why you'd want to call for patience, for peaceful pursuit through the law and courts. But you should read "A Call for Unity", an open letter 8 pastors wrote to MLK in 1963:

https://web.archive.org/web/20181229055408/https://moodle.ti...

his response to this is the famous Letter From Birmingham Jail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_from_Birmingham_Jail

Like you, the white pastors wanted patience, wanted people to trust the system to eventually provide justice. MLK eloquently explained why that was wrong. And little in the nearly 60 years since makes the case any more persuasive.

I never said violent revolution isn't a possibly effective means of enacting political change. History in fact demonstrates that quite vividly.

But violent revolution is also not, in the aggregate, a net benefit in the immediate term. Not even for black people. Believing otherwise represents a failure to anticipate 2nd/3rd order consequences and beyond. In the best case, you might experience a lot of suffering today to benefit people in the far future. I don't think we'll see that best case play out with the current rioting. We've been here before, many times (e.g. Rodney King). It doesn't work.

Take a look at Hong Kong. They got rid of Carrie Lam and just a few days ago lost their special trading status with the United States. Stay tuned for more consequences.

The flaw in MLK's logic and the reason that black people still encounter systemic mistreatment 60 years later is that it fails to account for economic conditions (where do stereotypes come from? vivid, sticky ideas that trigger fear, like violent crime; where does violent crime come from? economic disenfranchisment) and the glacial pace of cultural change (relatedly, the 'hearts and minds problem'; sometimes you just need to wait for enough bigots to be better educated, achieve empathy by actually knowing black people personally, or die out).

You mean the same corporations that got bailed out by the us tax payer, had billions of dollars of fines, and should have executives in prison for misconduct. Yeah they are the ones we should look up to /s

"Despite the progress the United States has made, Black Americans are too often denied basic privileges that others take for granted. I am not talking about the privileges of wealth, education or job opportunities. I'm talking about fundamental human and civil rights and the dignity and respect that comes with them. I'm talking about something as mundane as going for a jog."

What progress?

This song was written in 1966. It could have been written this morning:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFNkacckLBU

We have made technological progress, which has brought it's own benefits, but that may be more in the form of keeping us busy / distracted; pointing our genetically evolved anger and biases towards the Internet rather than the real world.

But progress within humanity itself?

There can't be progress if there are no consequences, or if the consequences are escaped too frequently, or if the blame is laid upon the symptoms and not the cause: Rioting and looting is anti-social and illegal, yes, but property destruction isn't the same ball park as murder. Focus on the cause, and the symptoms disappear.

But then it's impossible to provide any absolute answer. There's overwhelming beauty in humanity. The good ones are forgiving, and the bad ones will take advantage, and this takes us into game theory. The only way the game changes is if the rules are changed to have more / worse consequences for the bad actors; better systems to ensure the enforcement of these consequences.

Bad elements of humanity will persist despite all this; we'll be colonising Mars in parallel with children being brought up to hate anything unfamiliar, female circumcision will still be law in some countries, and there will still governments that censor and censure even minor dissent, flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, holocaust deniers.

I don't know if the US is making progress in race relations. That song from 1966 says a resounding no. I don't know if the political will exists within those with the political power to change things. US politics (only because that's the current example) is like my parents' fashion sense: stuck in their favourite era and showing no signs of even the consideration of modernising.

I don't know the answer, and it's maddening and depressing. But it's ignorable, for me, and therein lies the cause of the lack of political will: the symptoms aren't bad enough warrant the cost of seeing the doctor. School shootings once a month aren't bad enough to change gun laws; one dead black man doesn't have anywhere near the political capital of a dozen dead children.

For there to be change, the symptoms have to be more extreme, and they have to persist. History says so.

Technologically, this is 2020. Sociologically this might as well be 1966.