When I read published quotes from police officer Jay Stalien’s Facebook page post, now deservedly in the process of going viral, my immediate reaction was that it was a hoax, a measured and well-researched explanation of the racial unrest surrounding police shootings and the Black Lives Matter movement written by a professional pundit and placed in the metaphorical mouth of a black police officer to give it added power and credibility. It was, in short, too good to be true.
It is true, however, as well as good. To be presented at this time is an act of courage and civic responsibility by Stalien, and his effort redeems the existence of Facebook and social media, not to mention the internet, as few posts have. In the past, someone like Stalien would have to submit a column to a newspaper editor, and agree to cuts and edits that reduced its effectiveness, if his important observations were to have any impact beyond his living room or workplace. Now he can publish himself. The First Amendment has seldom been better served.
The post is very long, but you should read it all, here. I will only point out some highlights.
He begins, in part…
The following may be a shock to some coming from an African American, but the mere fact that it may be shocking to some is prima facie evidence of the sad state of affairs that we are in as Humans.
I used to be so torn inside growing up. Here I am, a young African-American born and raised in Brooklyn, NY wanting to be a cop. I watched and lived through the crime that took place in the hood. My own black people killing others over nothing….I used to be woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of gun fire, only to look outside and see that it was 2 African Americans shooting at each other.
It never sat right with me. I wanted to help my community and stop watching the blood of African Americans spilled on the street at the hands of a fellow black man. I became a cop because black lives in my community, along with ALL lives, mattered to me, and wanted to help stop the bloodshed.
As time went by in my law enforcement career, I quickly began to realize something. I remember the countless times I stood 2 inches from a young black man, around my age, laying on his back, gasping for air as blood filled his lungs. I remember them bleeding profusely with the unforgettable smell of deoxygenated dark red blood in the air, as it leaked from the bullet holes in his body on to the hot sidewalk on a summer day. I remember the countless family members who attacked me, spit on me, cursed me out, as I put up crime scene tape to cordon off the crime scene, yelling and screaming out of pain and anger at the sight of their loved ones taking their last breath. I never took it personally, I knew they were hurting. I remember the countless times I had to order new uniforms, because the ones I had on, were bloody from the blood of another black victim…of black on black crime. I remember the countless times I got back in my patrol car, distraught after having watched another black male die in front me, having to start my preliminary report something like this:
Suspect- Black/ Male, Victim-Black /Male.
Then Officer Stalien, in the same powerful style, proceeds to answer typical complaints from the black community by presenting “FACTS” that too many African-Americans, elected officials, journalists and partisans refuse to believe, accept, or comprehend:
“Complaint: Police always targeting us, they always messing with the black man.
Fact: A city where the majority of citizens are black (Baltimore for example) …will ALWAYS have a higher rate of black people getting arrested, it will ALWAYS have a higher rate of blacks getting stopped, and will ALWAYS have a higher rate of blacks getting killed, and the reason why is because a city with those characteristics will ALWAYS have a higher rate of blacks committing crime…”
This is, or should be, obvious, but has been deliberately obscured by the media and others because it undermines “the narrative.”
“Complaint: More black people get arrested than white boys.
Fact: Black People commit a grossly disproportionate amount of crime.”
Because it is really damaging to “the narrative” (Should I clarify that? The narrative is…“Once upon a time, white-dominated law enforcement personnel decided to target African-Americans for the crime of being black…”), that fact is simply denied, as well as labelled as inherently racist to mention. This is why Stalien mentioning it is a national service.
Complaint: Blacks are the only ones getting killed by police, or they are killed more.
Fact: As of July 2016, the breakdown of the number of US Citizens killed by Police this year is, 238 White people killed, 123 Black people killed, 79 Hispanics, 69 other/or unknown race.
Fact: Black people kill more other blacks than Police do, and there are only protest and outrage when a cop kills a black man….
Then he really challenges the black community and conventional wisdom:
Complaint: Well we already doing a good job of killing ourselves, we don’t need the Police to do it. Besides they should know better.
The more I listened, the more I realized. The more I researched, the more I realized. I would ask questions, and would only get emotional responses & inferences based on no facts at all. The more killing I saw, the more tragedy, the more savagery, the more violence, the more loss of life of a black man at the hands of another black man….the more I realized…Black Lives do not matter to most black people. Only the lives that make the national news matter to them. Only the lives that are taken at the hands of cops or white people, matter. The other thousands of lives lost, the other black souls that I along with every cop, have seen taken at the hands of other blacks, do not matter. …
They watch a couple videos and then they magically know in 2 minutes 35 seconds, how you are supposed to handle a violent encounter, which took you 6 months of Academy training, 2 – 3 months of field training, and countless years of blood, sweat, tears and broken bones experiencing violent encounters and fine tuning your execution of the Use of Force Continuum….I realized that most in the African American community refuse to look at solving the bigger problem that I see and deal with every day, which is black on black crime taking hundreds of innocent black lives each year, and instead focus on the 9 questionable deaths of black men, where some were in the act of committing crimes…. more than the lives of the innocent cops who were assassinated in Dallas protecting the very people that hated them the most….
Stalien acknowledges that some of the shootings are the result of bad cops…
“…I realized that they refuse to believe that most cops acknowledge that there are Bad cops who should have never been given a badge & gun, who are chicken shit and will shoot a cockroach if it crawls at them too fast, who never worked in the hood and may be intimidated. That most cops dread the thought of having to shoot someone, and never see the turmoil and mental anguish that a cop goes through after having to kill someone to save his own life. Instead they believe that we are all blood thirsty killers, because the media says so, even though the numbers prove otherwise….”
And he concludes,
“…I realized that some of these people, who say Black Lives Matter, are full of hate and racism. Hate for cops, because of the false narrative that more black people are targeted and killed. Racism against white people, for a tragedy that began 100’s of years ago, when most of the white people today weren’t even born yet. I realized that some in the African American community’s idea of “Justice” is the prosecution of ANY and EVERY cop or white man that kills or is believed to have killed a black man, no matter what the circumstances are….”
Obviously I particularly applaud this part, as it echoes what I have written here and thought about the Black Lives Matter movement from the moment it reared its racist, hateful head. This group, which is still endorsed by President Obama as part of his intentional or inadvertent Divide American Initiative ( it really doesn’t matter which), which has bullied Hillary Clinton into submission, which intimidated Bernie Sanders into allowing it to hijack one of his appearances as he sat nodding, and which the Democrats cynically view as a campaign asset against Donald Trump, is indeed, as Rudy Guiliani observed over the weekend, becoming a an anti cop, anti-white terrorist organization. Some of us, our vision unblurred by bias, could discern this result immediately. There were not enough of us, however, to overcome the fuel provided by Obama, Clinton, Marilyn Mosby, Sanders and Al Sharpton, as well as respected black opinion leaders in politics, academia and the news media, which has now propelled Black Lives Matter into an unhooded, reverse negative version of the KKK.
Permit me to pause and remind everyone of this:
“[T]he DNC joins with Americans across the country in affirming ‘Black lives matter’ and the ‘say her name’ efforts to make visible the pain of our fellow and sister Americans as they condemn extrajudicial killings of unarmed African-American men, women and children.”
—-The Democratic National Committee, in its resolution passed last August —and never retracted—endorsing Black Lives Matter
The attacks on Officer Stalien will be along presently. I’m sure he expected that. He is a brave, articulate, passionate man, and he ends his post this way:
“I realized that the very reasons I became a cop, are the very reasons my own people hate me, and now in this toxic hateful racially charged political climate, I am now more likely to die,… and it is still hard for me to understand…. to this day.”
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Pointer: BizPac Review
Ethics Alarms 
Yep.
I believe there are tens of millions of African Americans who believe as this gentleman does but are afraid for their own safety to speak.
OR to post on Facebook.
Yes, there is a dangerous precedent for self-censorship running amok in this country if you ever speak in opposition the Left-anointed narrative.
Which makes me unspeakably sad. This man put into words everything- EVERYTHING- that I have thought about treatment of cops, about BLM, about how little thought (contrasted with too much emotion) most in the black community put into their complaints, and about race hucksters in general, but he said it 10x more eloquently than I ever could. And, he was speaking from a position of authority, which significantly helps.
Last hour, on CNN I watched a woman I had never heard of, Michaela Angela Davis (apparently a Cultural Critic/Writer) claim that the issue is that people think BLM “are attacking individual police. They’re (really) attacking the structure under which the police are working. A white supremacist structure….It is much bigger, about structural, institutional racism, in which all of them (cops) are pawns, all of us (blacks) are suffering under this institution…it’s intellectually lazy, it is also immature to just look at individuals.”
I’d like to stress, that I NEVER curse, for my own reasons; I believe that there’s almost always better ways to express one’s self than using gutter language. Yet, my first thought after listening to this “Culture Critic” was, “what utter, f***ing bulls***! F*** you!!”. STOP telling me that I am “suffering”. STOP using a nationwide platform to indoctrinate minorities to believe that they are victims. STOP treating cops (aka, pawns) and blacks as incapable of independent thought, agency, and feelings. And above all else, STOP speaking for me, and millions of blacks who you’ve never met, to “explain” to the media what the black experience is. And tell that “it’s immature to look at individuals” bulls*** to the widows of the 5 fallen officers.
Contrasted that with what I watched next, on Fox News (yeah, I know, I know…), which was a black woman, who had be shot during the events in Dallas, explaining how cops rushed to her area, asked if anyone had been hit, and when she told them that she had been, the asking officer laid across her body, and the body of her son, while another covered her head with his body, to prevent her from further harm, until she could be moved to a safer location. She teared up as she recounted how she saw 2 other cops shot in front of her.
And I was instantly angry. Why are stories like this limited to Fox News? For all their warts, they don’t withhold newsworthy stories. I watch CNN all day long, and never see stories like this. And I’ll pay $10 to anyone who can prove this woman’s face graced the monitors over at MSNBC.
How can stories like this happen if the cops, treated as a monolith, are inherently racist? Dallas Police Chief David Brown has made huge strides to reduce the number of police involved shootings and increase the officer-citizen relations in Dallas….but, according to people like Ms. Davis, none of that matters because we should treat policing as a “structure”, and ignore the individual.
And for the president to continue to stick to the “we’re not as divided as some people would like you to believe” narrative is either internationally, self-servingly dishonest, or jaw dropingly detached from reality.
Last part of my unhinged rant: Im sick of how #BLM gets away with redefining what racism means. To the layman, it means believing that each race has specific characteristics, district from other races, that cause it to be superior or inferior to other races. But to #BLM, that’s just discrimination, and racism requires power in addition to discrimination, and that whites can only hold that power, which is why minorities cannot be racist.
The hell they can’t! If I, as a minority, yell “I hate my neighbor, because he’s white!”, that’s not racist, because I have no power? What if I knock him over (exerting a level of power over him)…is it racist then? What if I shoot him? What if Im his boss, and I fire him? What if I’m a boy scout leader, and I condition my troop, dozens of young black men, to distrust whites? What if Im the president? At what point will I ever have enough “power” to be racist?
Now, if you’ll excuse me, there are some clouds outside that need to be yelled at.
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/old-man-yells-at-cloud
Aww man, why didn’t THAT picture publish?? Proof positive that the internet is racist….
Well played.
Try this next time.
https://frinkiac.com
I’ll carry on lurking.
Thanks!
And as a side note, Prof. Frink really is such an underrated Simpsons character.
IMO, to understand the BLM movement and a rising tide of rebellion now felt one has to backtrack into 60s politics. The idea of resisting ‘the system’ a system that seeks out wars for dubious and questionable reasons (Vietnam) and the rise of mass social movement in resistance to that war, with solid intellectual and civic concerns about the war industry, about power, about democracy, that arose to oppose what was seen and described as ethically and morally wrong, has to be taken into consideration. Intimately connected with that resistance, obviously, the civil rights movement established itself as an oppositional movement to the very structure of power.
‘The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975’, interviews and footage filmed by Swedish journalists and assembled into a chronicle, included 2011 commentary by present Black activists: Erykah Badu, Talib Kweli, Adiodun Oyewole, and numerous others. They explain their present relationship to the Sixties movement radicals and resisters, and offer an understanding for a rebellion developing in the present. By any reckoning it is very interesting, very historical, and very American, footage.
Our present: It is all about power and perception, about interpretation of the world, about analysis of ‘structures’, history, the conquest of the Americas, about capitalism, multinationalism, multiculturalism, media, propaganda and so many other things.
If one cannot *see* one’s world accurately, one cannot hope to cobble together a narrative to resist the powerful narratives that are set in motion. I mean in this case to resist the ‘acid’ undermining of American governmental power through delegitimizing of it.
The other side of that critical narrative is one that looks at the very structures which were critiqued in the Sixties, but from a very conservative or even ultra-conservative position. I’d suggest that some ‘sixties concerns’ dovetail into honest conservative concerns and critiques. The larger one in my view is the establishment of a culture and a society based on war-economy, attacking other countries, and provoking war response which feeds itself in an unending cycle.
I think there might be complete versions of the film available on YouTube. This is one that shows all the same footage but was part of a PBS program. It is worth watching.
How many times has he been called an Uncle Tom for posting this?
It’s early yet.
Maybe the Republicans could draft this guy for president at their convention.
I’d vote for him.
Or Police Chief David Brown…talk about a man who speaks common sense!
This is probably the only communications method where you can finish making your point on an issue like this without being shouted down or threatened.
Well spoken man!
I commend him for speaking out.
I commend Officer Stalien for this thoughtful and courageous post. Will the people who should see it really see it? Maybe. Will it make people think? Probably not. Will any people change their minds or take a different look or stance on race and policing? Probably not. Because, I think, most Americans have become so inflexible in their thinking that it isn’t thought anymore; so dedicated to their ideologies that they rationalize away any ideas that diverge from them; and/or so lazy that they hang onto the easiest or most widely-espoused belief system they find (in their communities, from the media, from the President of the United States).
I read so much frustration and fear in Stalien’s post. And I share both. I never had the courage to put my life on the line for my community or my country, so my fears are more general. But honestly, I can’t see a way out of this. Who else is being honest about this? All the calls for “dialogue” are just posturing, because the people who can help really inform and perhaps change minds don’t want a dialogue: they just pretend they do so they can get on with their agit/prop.
We are devolving rapidly here: between this issue (only one, especially if you consider the average IQ of our lawmakers) and our probable chances with whichever presidential nominee is elected, we are ensuring the total loss of three of the most precious resources we’ve ever had: our sense of unity and pride as a nation; our respect for each other as citizens; and our presence and respect as a world leader.
I just want to cry.
E2 wrote: “We are devolving rapidly here: between this issue (only one, especially if you consider the average IQ of our lawmakers) and our probable chances with whichever presidential nominee is elected, we are ensuring the total loss of three of the most precious resources we’ve ever had: our sense of unity and pride as a nation; our respect for each other as citizens; and our presence and respect as a world leader.
I just want to cry.”
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It takes me a day or two, sometimes a week, to react to some statements I read here. ‘Tropes’ and predicates that are common in our thought and yet, IMO, when examined are false or partial truths. Well, here goes:
Sense of unity and pride as a nation.
Respect for each other.
Presence and respect as a world-leader.
I really think the second one is important but I will get to that. The first one is a very tricky one because it is a knotty set of ideas which has to be disentangled. It is related to the notion of the ‘propositional nation’, a belief-nation which you join by accepting the Lincolnian Proposition. Isn’t that a sort of abstract Federal personhood? I think this is idea is not only wrongheaded but is also destructive. It requires an intellectual exposition to take it apart so it can be examined and refuted.
I am not even sure anymore — and I am certainly not alone — what ‘nation’ and ‘nationhood’ you are speaking about. You mean the Federal nation? You mean a nation joined together by their consumer and TV program preferences? The giant American shopping mall nation? The American war-machine nation? (That is, the attack and murder military institution that, according to some, had taken over the country at a certain point?) This enumeration can go on and on. When you say ‘pride as a nation’ I need to know what you mean. The Gay American Nation? The White House Nation lit up in Rainbow colors? The indoctrination nation of state schools? The media nation? The multinational-multicultural nation? The socialistic PR nation that is flexing its proto-totalitarian muscles?
There are so many ‘nations’ that I don’t know which one is being talked about. And because it is clear that what I am saying is that we simply no longer know what ‘nation’ we are speaking about and what we belong to, that this idea of ‘unity and pride as a nation’ is a false abstraction, a term that can only function in false and misleading political narratives.
I negate therefor and counter the narrative of a ‘united people’. It is vital in my view to turn against this false and debilitating narrative. I have no desire to be part of such an ill-defined ‘unity’ and so I propose and revert to older orders of identity. I have no desire to be a ‘Federal Person’ or a ‘US person’ as they say on the forms. I would desire to be a person of my region within the Republic with a specific link to specifc soil. I’d also choose my biological and cultural group as my prmary identity, and yet would (as was intended I believe) offer myself out of this identity to ‘national projects’ if I felt sure they were moral, responsible, valuable, and served my interests as a moral being. Yet I would reject a false ‘patriotic self’ that could be manipulated by demagoguery, by PR, by advertising, by coercive public opinion. I respect legal institutions — laws, courts, etc. — and the ideas upon which they are founded while I assert my regional, my cultural and biological identity as-against the false identity of Federal Idealism.
With these definitions in place I would not be able to emphasize MORE how totally important it is to respect other people who define themselves according to their own lights. In fact it becomes possible to respect others when one is well established in self-respect. But it has to be correctly-founded self-respect. And this self-respect has to be rediscovered as it is, IMO, being swamped over by other, false identities which seem manipulation tools and not tools to achieve sovereignty.
Presence and respect as a world-leader:
Anyone with a glossary knowledge of the present knows that many people now fear the Federal Person that is the United States. They look at its face and see a shifting face. They do not know what specific person or nation is being referenced. As I have said a few times there is a developing anti-American section among the European Right which feels it has to resist both America and ‘americanization’. If what ‘americanization’ is has to be explained to Americans, well then, that is part of the problem! Not everyone in the world wants it, and not every American feels it should be defended.
What is the relevancy of this post in the context of the present issue? Well, we are coming into an era in our nation of ‘exploding narratives’. It is all going to fall down into peices. You know. ‘The centre cannot hold’. The center is dissolving. There are larger issues that surround the smaller issues. To understand the present, one has to expand one’s perception to include a lot of new perspectives. That is my understanding in any case.
Thank you for what I am sure is your thoughtful response. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), I was unable to read past the 2nd paragraph, as I realized that your carefully-crafted post would not enlighten or amuse or interest me, and that it was very likely that whatever point you were trying to make would be obscured by your needlessly pompous and convoluted faux-academic style. Sorry, just didn’t have the time. “That is my understanding in any case.”
I understood every word of Alizia’s post.
Two thoughts, E2.
Why be snarky?
Pearls before swine.
Hello Elizabeth. We have the same name, but mine is ‘Elizaveta’.
A few things. One is that I notice, on this blog, that among some of its denizens one of their tactics is to place the hands over the ears and say ‘I am not listening to you!’ (I can’t help but think of a funny film I saw recently The Princess Bride’).
If you don’t like what someone says you feel justified in either shutting them down or shutting them out. I suggest to you that this itself is a terrible and destructive activity. I also suggest to you that you should not do it. You should never ever rupture communication.
And though I assume you are ‘crying your eyes out’ because of Lost Unity, I’d suggest that you are demonstrating how unity is lost when you do not RESPECT other people, people who see and think differently from you. It is a sign of respect to take in what other people offer — their ideas, their vision — and to consider it, and not to insult it.
You are going to give me a complex! Although I use a few words and terms that are ‘academic’, and admit to a certain pretention (some of which is histrionic), there was nothing over the top at all in what I wrote. It was factual, direct, and informative.
Alizia Tyler said, “You should never ever rupture communication.”
Never ever?
What about when the communication being ignored or “ruptured” is nothing but violent or belligerent personal insults, or pointless random babbling, or faux intellectual bull shit that rises to the level of genuine Frontier Gibberish? Are you going to figuratively “stand there” worrying about rupturing communication with others while you’re on the receiving end of whatever communication someone chooses to spew your way, forever?
By the way; above you said “Well, we are coming into an era in our nation…”; I been getting the impression that you are a Venezuelan in Venezuela? Have I gotten the wrong impression?
Honored Zoltar. First, I am a naturalized US citizen. I was born in Venezuela and raised there but spent some months out of the year in the US in the Bay Area (mostly Sacramento). Venezuela is an important reference for me and a backdrop of my experience because it is a country overtaken by ‘progressives’ and destroyed through their intentions. That is one reason I mention my context. I reognize the importance of *locating* the people we speak with, to understand their context, their situation, their history. The more we know, the better we can respect them.
One hopes — I hope — that your impression of this Ethics blog and the forum it provides is not one of violent or personal insults. I see no violence here but I do notice people who get personal when what is always more interesting is discussing ideas. I am sure that the blog would be much better if people stuck to the ideas and avoided the personal. Do you agree?
‘Random babbling’ is a subjective assessment and I have a sense that you use it as a peronal insult. Be that as it may: When you encounter what you think is random babbling, and if you asked me, I’d say you are best off demonstrating, in argument, before your peers, how and why it is such.
In my opinion we have an obligation to make every effort to avoid the personal and stick to conversing and debating ideas.
I am not sure what impression you have of me except I assume that you think I speak in Frontier Gibberish and suffer from other defects. I adamantly disagree (if you do think that). All my ideas are reasoned, as was the entire post offered to Elizabeth. If I had a blog that is EXACTLY the sort of post I’d feel contributed. There were no insults in it, though there may have been an irony or two, and my interest was and is only to discuss ideas. I have no need to bicker.
In respect to that, and since the post was general, maybe you can select a part that 1) you agree with and 2) you disagree with and talk about it.
Ms. Tyler,
You failed to say in what country you’re currently living.
Alizia Tyler said, “…maybe you can select a part… …and talk about it.”
Since that is exactly what I did; why did you feel the need to say that? Did I not talk about a piece of your comment that you wanted to talk about?
By the way; I communicated my very generalized point about your “never ever rupture communication” in 66 words, why must you always be so wordy, it’s one verbose comment after another from you?
The reson is simple: I do not at all understand 1) your approach to ideas 2) what you are defending and explaining (in your general presentation), nor do I 3) grasp the logic of your reasoning, nor 4) your style of participation in a forum.
Overall, I really cannot say that I understand you. I think you must be around a thousand years old though, possibly ex-military? I don’t sense you are a Glock man. But I could be wrong. I sense that you have a black and rather small pet. I have no idea why but ‘peanutbutter brittle’ just popped into my mind. I also note have an authoritarian aspect. Do you have an afflicted Mars in your birth chart?
Thats a joke BTW 🙂
What I read in your post was unspecified complaints. Who is the subject of them? I could only guess. What, if anything at all, do you wish to say to me, directly, about the ideas I have just presented, above to Elizabeth? (As a place to start).
I wrote a post that dealt essentially on ‘aspects of America’; what America is and how it is seen. It is those things I desire, above other things, to talk about. I really only want to talk about those sorts of things. But I am not opposed to building communication platforms with others. Or with you.
If I wish to be ‘wordy’ it is my business to be so. Let me put it this way: I am exactly what I want to be. I say what I wish to say.
And I give you the exact same right.
Please tell me a little about where you live and what you do and I will happily expand on my present location, occupations, etc.
One thing at a time…
Alizia Tyler said, “The reason is simple: I do not at all understand 1) your approach to ideas 2) what you are defending and explaining (in your general presentation), nor do I 3) grasp the logic of your reasoning, nor 4) your style of participation in a forum.”
I can only assume that you were trying to answer one of the three questions I asked; please tell me which question that “answer” is to be applied to so I can read your answer in context with the appropriate question.
Alizia Tyler said, “What I read in your post was unspecified complaints. Who is the subject of them? I could only guess.”
What part of my pointed followup statement “I communicated my very generalized point about your “never ever rupture communication” “ did you not comprehend?
Alizia Tyler said, “I wrote a post that dealt essentially on ‘aspects of America’; what America is and how it is seen. It is those things I desire, above other things, to talk about. I really only want to talk about those sorts of things.”
If that is the only part that you wanted to talk about, why did you run off at the mouth about other things? I picked the parts of your actual comment (you know, the words you actually wrote) that I wanted to talk about. I can’t read your mind to know what you “want” to talk about and I really just don’t care, you chose your words, I chose which of those words to reply to – that’s how this works.
Alizia Tyler said, “If I wish to be ‘wordy’ it is my business to be so. Let me put it this way: I am exactly what I want to be. I say what I wish to say.”
That’s certainly your choice; but stop whining at others when they choose part(s) of your verbose comments that you don’t want to talk about or don’t want to engage you with every detail contained within your verbose comments and stop being so pompous towards people like E2 (nee Elizabeth I) that don’t appear to want to engage your pompousness at all.
I’ve noticed time and time again that you’re more than willing to dish out your pompous advice to others but you’re not willing to take the advise of others, you figuratively smile nicely and move on without learning a thing; if you’re trying to set some sort of an example, you’re not doing a good job.
Alizia Tyler asked, “Please tell me a little about where you live and what you do and I will happily expand on my present location, occupations, etc.”
I was born of United States citizens while parents were abroad for military duty so I was born a United States citizen, I’ve lived in the United States all my life since the ripe old age of two, and I currently live in the United States; the rest is none of your business.
Now Ms. Tyler, answer the question that, for some reason, you just intentionally dodged; in what country are you currently living? I don’t want, need, nor did I ask for any additional personal details so please don’t run off at the mouth on this one and provide personal information that is not relevant to the simple question asked.
So, you’re 1002 then? What’s that like?
You are not planning to run for president are you? You may want to just up and post the ‘long form’ here right off the bat and save everyone a lot of time.
It was not dodged. It was turned into a tit-for-tat. My legal residence is Sacramento, California. I go back and forth between there and Colombia where my folksies live.
How’d I do?
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I would enjoy hearing your thoughts on paragraphs 3, 4, 5 and 6 of my ‘thoughtful’ post to Elizabeth. Are you up to it?
Alizia Tyler said, “So, you’re 1002 then? What’s that like?”
What?
Alizia Tyler said, “You are not planning to run for president are you? You may want to just up and post the ‘long form’ here right off the bat and save everyone a lot of time.”
What?
Seriously Alizia, WTF was that all about?
Alizia Tyler said, “It was not dodged. It was turned into a tit-for-tat.”
How obtuse! Requiring a tit-for-tat WAS and intentional dodging of the question.
By the way, even after I asked you not to, you ran off at the mouth again; I didn’t ask what city or state you were in, I asked what country, and I certainly didn’t ask or need to know where your parents lived.
Alizia Tyler said, “I would enjoy hearing your thoughts on paragraphs 3, 4, 5 and 6 of my ‘thoughtful’ post to Elizabeth.”
I thought I was crystal clear that I chose the part I wanted to talk about.
I suggested previously that you were 1000 years old. I added 2 years = 1002.
You were born outside of the US. If you run for president you’d have to prove citizenship. Best to submit the ‘long form’ now.
I think this sums up our exchange today, and also provides answers to you ‘sleep with asp’ issue:
Time to get a room, you two.
Forgive me. Won’t happen again.
Alizia Tyler said, “I think this sums up our exchange today”
You don’t know how correct you are; similar to the Dread Pirate Roberts, I have spent the last few years building up an immunity to faux intellectual BS.
Alizia Tyler said, “Won’t happen again.”
You, Jack, and I all know that there’s only one way for you to keep that promise.
Good day.
Today, there is a very interesting article in the NYTs dealing on issues of moment for the present.
The article, which is overall quite good I think (I mean ‘fair’ and ‘objective’) opens up a view to a phenomenon that should be of interest to everyone writing on this blog and to all those involved in debating these hot topics having to do with racial questions, race, oppression, black identity, white identity, counter-narratives to ‘multiculturalism’, increasing social and cultural divisions, America and americanism, and the rise and expression of an entire range of ideas and opinions which, radically and openly, oppose what I have called a general post-war liberal narrative.
I am interested, Zoltar, in your term ‘intellectual BS’. Part of what I tried to communicate to Elizabeth had to do with what ‘nation’ or what aspect of America one speaks to when one speaks of ‘national unity’. I think it is a very important question. I do not think that thinking about it that issue and suggesting definitions about it is ‘intellectual BS’ but I am open to be shown that it is and how it is. What I find interesting in this Times article is its own tacit stance. It comes through and reminds me of reading blurbs on the SPLC website under ‘Hate Watch’. Similar inflection but with more apparent objectivity.
The NYTs, generally speaking, represents the opinions and views of the so-called NY Intellectual class. A powerful intellectual class in this country. Defining in fact. This is an ‘old school’ intellectual school which, according to itself, deals on nothing but antidotes to ‘intellectual BS’. It defines whatever is the opposite of ‘BS’. Would that be ‘truth’? Clear seeing? ‘What way things really are’? I’d suggest that THAT is the perception structure or perception system that functions in our present, generally speaking. (I often use the term ‘metaphysic’ to refer to a range of ideas which are taken as ‘fact of perception’, as ‘truth’.)
And yet now, in a developing present, there are developing counter-narratives to what seem to be entire Viewpoints, entire Interpretive Projects about man, about progress, about the reigning ideas in our present, about ‘structures of perception’, and certainly too about race, racial identity, democracy, and so much else. This is a very momentous shift it seems to me. And it seems to me wise and necessary to begin to talk about the ‘structure of ideas’ that are used to support any perceptual and interpretive system. Is that too much ‘intellectualese’? I am not sure how else to put it but would welcome suggestions.
What I also notice is this interesting tendency to ‘shut the ears’ when ideas which run against and counter to established ideas are mentioned and the first order of strategy and attack is to call the holder of those ideas various names (hello there Beth). One dismisses them from the conversation. One slanders them. One refuses to even listen to their discourse. I think most know how this tactic works and is played. I do not think it is a wise course, myself.
I think one has to enter into the fray and analyze and refute badly-founded ideas. This requires a great deal of intellectual work which sometimes takes years of study. (That is certainly an effort I have made, at least according to me). One thing that I do appreciate about the Times article (among numerous things) is that it gives an indication about the strong intellectual capacities of some of the folks who are working to define alt-right positions. It also provides links to other articles which can be looked into. Pretty good journalism really.
I think it will prove to be rather hard for folks — perhaps like Zoltar, or perhaps like Elizabeth, certainly like Chris and some others — who think it possible to refute ideas simply by refusing to hear them or by villifying the speaker. I’d suggest that there is indeed an intellectual platform informing these newer interpretations, or revisions of ideas, and that many of its ideas are worthy of consideration. ‘We’ who think them are not, contrary to ‘your’ perceptions ‘evil’ or ‘bad’. It is true that there are badlyand unsoundly founded ideas but one can only know that if one has done the hard work of analysis of them. I won’t say that these ‘alt’ are not difficult or problematic ideas, but then all ideas have consequences.
Alizia,
I’m not reading another one of your verbose comments here; I’ve moved on. C’ya.
FYI: It was not directed to you exclusively. And I am not speaking in general to one person alone. I am speaking to ideas alone and almost exclusively. I am content if even one person reads what I write.
Alizia Tyler said, “It is a sign of respect to take in what other people offer — their ideas, their vision — and to consider it, and not to insult it.”
It’s a sign of stupidity not to have learned from previous mistakes.
Learned what? Your comment is a non sequitur.
Even if someone does not engage with me as I might wish it is my CHOICE to continue to respect them. It is an aspect of my personal sense of ethics and what is ethical.
Ms. Tyler,
Some things blow straight over your head.
Here let’s try these…
It’s a sign if stupidity if you crawl into bed of vipers and expect not to get bit.
It’s a sign if stupidity if you wallow with the pigs, and expect to smell like a rose.
Charles? Beth? deery? valkygrrl? fattymoon?
Oh where oh where have the progressives gone? Oh where oh where could they be?
Deery’s on the case.
Shamelessly so. I was going to make a point of saying that it`s almost like when the demographics that they don`t belong to, but ostensibly deign to speak for say something contrary to their progressive marching orders, they get uncomfortable.
But I guess they get around it by writing off the Uncle Tom and immediately taking umbrage against the safe enemy: You. Or Me. The white guys. Notice that neither of their comments spared a single word for Stalien, now why do you think THAT is?
As the lone black representative of Jack’s peanut gallery (as far as I know), I’m eagerly awaiting a reply to one of my several posts from those with leftist leanings….
Yo! Fatty here. Fatty doo doo two things. Fatty tweet Jack’s column, then Fatty post Medium pointy finger here. Fatty listen all sides Medium. Fatty step in yesterday when poo poo post all cops are devils. Fatty advise poster not good demonize all cops cause, come THE REVOLUTION, we gonna need all the help we can get. VIVA LA REVOLUTION!
How’s that, guys?
I always thought that was a stupid image, you need another row of pawns to win, if you play that out, the king still wins…. You line up your two rooks a bishop and a knight so they take a run at either edge, and then get your queen behind the pawns and take them out a piece at a time, that leaves you with the other bishop, the king and a knight to clean up anything that tries to rush forward.
I suck at Chess, though I enjoy playing. I will ponder your critique, HT, with a large glass of box red.
OK, I did what I said I would do… https://medium.com/@FarkleUp/black-police-officer-serves-notice-or-does-he-d3c061307dda#.o848p5q5o
Expanded a bit to bring in Snopes, as well as call for a general uprising against “the system.” And, as usual, invited people here to debate.
We should play on line. I used to be good, now am as rusty as the Tin Man, because I hate playing computers and nobody I see regularly can play. You’re a lateral thinker: you should be a natural.
That will be fun, Jack. I’m on Chess With Friends. https://www.zynga.com/games/chess-friends
Search for Fattymoon and we’ll hook up.
And anyway, if the pawns won, they’d end up killing each other off in a series of post revolution purges since none of them really agreed on what utopia looks like anyway.
Gold Star!
This exhausting, my soul is tired, and I’m tired of the same old tropes being tossed up to discredit a very simple, and long-standing request from the black community: to please stop corrupt policemen from preying on the black community; to actually make sure that police shootings are fully justified and not swept under the rug. It seems like a very simple thing that everyone should be able to get behind, but apparently not.
I think everyone is against crime and criminals. There are many, many organizations that grapple with crime in cities and within black communities. There are many demonstrations and marches about this subject. Black Lives Matter does not focus on this subject, but there are many worthy organizations that do. Anyone ignorant on this subject, yet sincerely interested should familiarize themselves with those organizations if they would like to do more.
But, as I’ve mentioned before, “black on black crime” is a red herring, used to shut down conversation about police abuse, rather than someone actually being interested in doing more. There is no such thing as black on black crime. There is only crime. Black people, like most people, kill acquaintances, friends, and family. White people kill each other at about a 90% rate, yet we never hear about “white on white crime.” Why is that? Should every time ISIS makes an attack on Americans should we pontificate that until white people stop killing each other we can’t condemn ISIS attacks? Of course not. Those are two different things that have nothing to do with each other.
Besides that, those condemning the “black on black crime” seem, unknowingly to be calling on black people to kill more white people (and other nonblack people). The “black on black” crime rate is a ratio of black people murdered by black people compared to nonblack people murdered by black people. The only way to get that ratio to come down is for black to step it up and get out there and start murdering more white people than they do black people. Yet somehow that doesn’t seem to occur to most people condemning the “black on black” crime rate.
As to his other points, it is also hard to credit that somehow that black people just happen to be targets for police frisks, stops, and arrests when we have it on tape that police officers are explicitly ordered to target black people for stops. We have the Rampart Scandal, where minority suspects were explicitly target, and had evidence planted on them. We have the “black ops” sites in Chicago, where minority suspects were whisked away to be tortured, with the full knowledge of other people in the police departments. This is more than just a “few bad apples”, this is systematic, this is from the top-down, and this has been going on for decades, if not for hundred+ years. The only thing which has changed in recent years is the ubiquity of the cell phone camera, and the lack of gatekeepers in the media, so that elites not longer decides which stories are newsworthy and which ones are not, so stories of abuse are widely disseminated far and wide before traditional media has a chance to catch up.
I don’t think anyone truly believes that all cops are bad. But the ones who try to speak up against the bad ones are the ones who are punished instead, and drummed out of the force instead of the bad ones. Ones who try to fight against the implicit and explicit racial biases baked into the system are instead punished and demoted. If he wanted to affect some change, he could try actually being brave and speak out against the bad cops that he talks about seeing and knowing in his own system. Who are they? What have they done that he has witnessed/heard about? But instead it is always easier to agree with the same tropes that everyone else also employs.
He’s not saying anything new or innovative, especially from a police officer who believes the system is more or less fine as is, and that black people are merely paranoids who whine too much. The only semi-notable thing is that he is black…which requires people to ignore all the black/minority officers who have gone on record saying just the opposite. A much braver stance with their careers on the line, imo. But fine, lets start with what we can all agree on. Let’s drum out the “isolated” officers who are corrupt and abuse their power. Let’s reform police complaint boards and the system for punishing officers who abuse their power. Surely no disagreements about that, correct?
1. He doesn’t say anything about the system being fine as it is.
2. The point that there is mass outrage when a cop shoots a black citizen but rampant gun violence within the black community is treated as the status quo is a legitimate observation. It’s just easy to dismiss it as a “trope.”
3. Bringing black crime within the range expected by the demographic would fix much of the perceived police shooting problem in many ways. That is undeniable.
4.”I don’t think anyone truly believes that all cops are bad.” Twelve Angry Men, Juror Ten (the Bigot) : “Hey, I’m not saying they’re all bad! Some of them are OK!”
5. “Let’s reform police complaint boards and the system for punishing officers who abuse their power. Surely no disagreements about that, correct?” I disagree, as long as the definition of abuse is “dare to shoot anyone black.”
‘2. The point that there is mass outrage when a cop shoots a black citizen but rampant gun violence within the black community is treated as the status quo is a legitimate observation. It’s just easy to dismiss it as a “trope.”’
I think the treatment of black on black crime as a trope is… telling. It normalises black on black violence. Despite more black people dying to violent non-officer-related crime, we focus on these shootings. Maybe it’s because they think the cops are more accountable, or maybe it’s because of the injustice perceived in having law enforcement with a finger on the scale… But a lot of the reason for cop on black violence is because they`re stopping black on black crime. If you cripple the police’s ability to police… You’re just going to have more dead black bodies. I’m not saying we bury our heads in the sand, but the advent of cell phone cameras and body cameras (When they don’t ‘fall off’. Jesus, those idiots) will help the system make the adjustments necessary and we can move on and improve, and we HAVE to stop assuming that every arrest or police involved shooting with a black suspect is per se racism. It costs the movement legitimacy.
If you think this individual is not being brave, then you have a serious misunderstanding of the word.
A person can be acting in a brave manner even when they disagree with you.
deery,
Stop ignoring the most important point here; about 99+% of the time (in my opinion) the problem is NOT the police, it’s the boneheaded idiots (most of which are active “criminals”) not complying with lawful orders from police officers which usually ends up in the citizen choosing to intentionally and sometimes very violently resist arrest. This is true regardless of the skin color of either the officer or the “citizen”; PERIOD! There is a mindset that citizens need not comply with police officers commands and they are right to physically fight back when confronted by police, this IS the problem.
P.S. It’s truly irrelevant what other groups are doing about crime, BLM is the squeaky wheel; so no excuses; no bull shit; BLM IS racist, PERIOD! If you don’t think BLM is racist, then you might want to take a look inward at your own bigotries.
“I think everyone is against crime and criminals….I don’t think anyone truly believes that all cops are bad.”
Serious question…why do you think this?
“There is no such thing as black on black crime. There is only crime.
But according to deery there is such thing as police focusing on blacks for unnecessary force and killing…
racist double standard no?
I am open to being shown to be wrong, but I think one can isolate a ‘core animus’ in the BLM movement if, as I believe, the ‘narratives’ of the BLM movement are understood to be continuations of and revamping of Sixties political narratives. The link is (obviously) undeniable. The militancy, the Black Panther look, even the borrowing of names as in ‘Michaela Angela Davis’, and then of course the same police-hatred. In the 1960s the Panthers taught their children to sing:
‘Pick up a gun, pick up a gun,
pick up a gun ‘n put the pigs on the run’.
and now it is:
‘Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon’ among numerous others.
One question about BLM is: Is it a genuine cultural movement, as the movements of the 60s were, or is the movement a sort of reprise, an invention of bored youth, a romantic-political movement with more connections to the possibilities of social-media tools than to some sort of structural revolution as was envisioned by Sixties youth?
This is not, Deery, a ‘simple request’ to “to please stop corrupt policemen from preying on the black community”, it is rather a very complex group of different concerns, objectives, ideas and currents, and has to do with all of the same ‘tropes’ which moved in the Sixties. These are undermining, revolutionary and deeply divisive tropes that are anything but ‘simple’.
It seems more accurate, and more prescient, to link this activism with the general political-socializing trends that are beginning to make their way into determining public policy in the post-Reagan era and certainly under Obama and democratic leadership. I mean a left-leaning market capitalism with socialist tendencies. And that may be the main reason why ‘the media’ is well behind it: It is a general socialization of American culture and the disruption and possibly the overturning of ‘structural power’. But since you can’t literally overturn those structures they have to be transformed radically, by radical interpretations and interpreters. Isn’t that essentially what the battle over the make-up of the Supreme Court is all about?
The 60s narratives dealt in narratives to delegitimize white institutions, revisualize and reinterpret and revise white history (the conquest of America by destruction of indigenous culture, the enslavement of Blacks, establishing a white-rune empire, etc. etc) and to see it all in a very different way, to reinterpret it. It was also structured in delegitimizing white identity. To vilify it, to undermine it, to render it as ‘false’ and also as ‘oppressive’ and, some say, to begin to do away with it.
In essence then, the Movement represents an attack on white identity and, in essence, white people. Once you have revisualized history and the present, your vision ends up delegitimizing the very structures, legal and institutional, upon which the country is founded. From that perspective they are obviously corrupt.
Deery writes: “It seems like a very simple thing that everyone should be able to get behind, but apparently not.”
I wonder why it is, or how it comes about, that you and others can look at an issue or a situation and fail to notice a looming backdrop? The uprising that is beginning to show itself, and which to some degree Obama himself, and people like Sharpton and Rev Wright participate in, has intimately to do with unseating what is understood to be non-legitimate power. I also think it has as a legible sub-text one that is essentially opposed to white identity and to in essence ‘being white’. If this is so it is a political rebellion of one sector of the population — people of color perhaps — against its white sector. And on the other side, that is among white, a recognition at varying levels of clarity of ‘what really is happening’ and ‘what it really means’.
I have a sense that no one (?) or few on this blog wish to describe it in this way, which means they resist framing it in this way, which means that it cannot and won’t be understood in this way. I notice denial. But denial that tries very hard to reframe things in a specific way.
Thanks so much for posting this, Jack. I don’t use “social media” so I would have missed it entirely.
One of the problems I’ve had with explaining the Trayvon-and-Mike, racism, police and gun legends and their origins* to otherwise intelligent people has been the lack of publication of this kind. And, of course, black words that matter. Yours are there, of course, and I had found a few others, but they were all piecemeal, deeply (rightly) concentrating on the meme of the moment. Arguing that way was like punching one side of a pillow at a time: the other side just puffs up the higher.
Now I have Officer Stalion’s whole post to use with non-believers who read first and shout later. That’s a start.
*only Obama’s inceptions are missing; I appended a reminder about that since I’d brought them up before.
I am so sick of these “black on black” crime statistics. People who cite them are already in confirmation bias mode when it comes to police misconduct.
I was raised in a 100% white county. All the crime there was white on white. All of it — because there were only white people. I grew up thinking that “thug” and “punk” were non-racist words because I only heard them uttered against white people. I had to erase them from my vocabulary once I moved to a more diverse area as an adult. Before writing this entry, I checked census demographics from where I grew up. It is now 0.6% percent black — wow, times have changed! Maybe in another 30 years, it will be 1% black!
And I know what some of you are thinking, wow, I bet there wasn’t any SERIOUS crime. After all, an all white population = a safe population, right? Not even close. In my neighborhood, we had arsonists, thieves, lots of drugs, cross burnings (since there were no blacks, they targeted suspected homosexuals), gay bashings, and occasional shootings. There was a lot of well-known child abuse and spousal abuse. We had a serial killer — no joke. Just last month, my cousin (I think he is a second cousin, I can’t keep track in our large family) was murdered and later set on fire by two of his friends from his motorcycle gang. To be fair, he is from a neighboring county so maybe I shouldn’t have included him here. My point is simple — not once did I hear a police report discussing the white on white crime problem in my county. It was just described as “crime.” If we are going to segregate ourselves by race, then the crime in our communities will be segregated by race. The poorer the community, the more crime there will be. If certain races tend to live in poorer areas, then those races will experience more crime. It is about poverty, not race. And, if police are told to interact more with a certain race, then there will be more police shootings of that race — justified or not.
That’s not the point. The point is that the reality of criminal activity in the black community greates the tendency for police, black and white, to be biased toward an assumption that blacks are more likely to be dangerous and engaged in criminal activity. Hence more suspicion. Hence more stops. Hence more unjustified stops. Hence more distrust and fear. Hence more resistance. Hence more over-reaction to that resistance.
It is relevant. When Jesse Jackson famously said that HE was nervous when he became a aware of young black men behind him on teh street, there was briefly a discussion about where this fear came from. It comes from in part, crime statistics, and people’s awareness of them, and people making instinctive decisions as a result.
“My point is simple — not once did I hear a police report discussing the white on white crime problem in my county.”
Well, yes. And when did police feel that they were automatically presumed to be racist assassins when a white man was shot in the course of resisting arrest? Remember this case? https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/former-fairfax-police-officer-charged-for-murder-of-unarmed-springfield-va-man/2015/08/17/d9b73460-3630-11e5-b673-1df005a0fb28_story.html? It took a ridiculous amount of time and much prodding by the news media to move it along, but I don’t recall any demonstrations, riots, or accusations of racism.
This also.
By the by, in your county, was there a great deal of complaining done by the white population that police were selectively focusing on them because they were white? When police did kill a white suspect, was there a great deal of complaining about that suspect being killed? Did the population ONLY seem to care about white people being killed when it was at the hands of police but pretty much not care at all when a white person killed a white person?
No?
Ok cool, then bringing up black on black killings is a valid point to make when it seems the black community only cares about black lives when a police officer (especially a white one) kills a suspect. (Never mind the situation being exacerbated by the suspect).
It just rings out as complaining for complaining’s sake.
And also what Jack said.
The police were pretty much hated in general, but the population tended to hate all things government. So yes, they cared if there was a police shooting. They also cared if anyone was murdered — I remember the entire county being frozen in fear until the serial killer was caught. Importantly, most of them were racist and suspected all black people of being criminals — even though we didn’t interact with black people in our day-to-day lives. Funny how they can explain away white on white crime as “poverty begets crime” but black on black crime as the result of some defect that black people share regardless of income.
What?!
This looks like a Leftwing pivot and prattle.
1) You failed to address anything I mentioned that showed why your analogy is shaky:
2) You went on to add irrelevant details given the way you hoped your analogy would support your complaint.
“The police were pretty much hated in general, but the population tended to hate all things government. So yes, they cared if there was a police shooting. They also cared if anyone was murdered — I remember the entire county being frozen in fear until the serial killer was caught.”
Swell, so they raised a huge stink every time a white person was killed by the police?
“Importantly, most of them were racist and suspected all black people of being criminals — even though we didn’t interact with black people in our day-to-day lives.”
That’s swell, but what exactly does it have to do with your original analogy? This is just obfuscation.
“Funny how they can explain away white on white crime as “poverty begets crime” but black on black crime as the result of some defect that black people share regardless of income.”
I’m sure some people do this often, what’s the relevance to your analogy?
None.
Thanks for the non-answer all around.
“And I know what some of you are thinking, wow, I bet there wasn’t any SERIOUS crime.”
Actually, if you want to give me the Zip code of where you used to live, I`ll compare the statistics against say… and equally populated but majority black Zip code. I WASN’T thinking that, but now that you’ve put the bug in my ear, I wonder what the comparison would be.
‘My point is simple — not once did I hear a police report discussing the white on white crime problem in my county. It was just described as “crime.” If we are going to segregate ourselves by race, then the crime in our communities will be segregated by race. The poorer the community, the more crime there will be.’
This is a very obvious point, absolutely true. So why do we have such a hard time stumbling over the fact that black people will tend to commit more crime because black people tend to be poorer and poor people tend to commit more crimes? There’s a built in Pavlovian expectation that black victims are a product of racism, regardless of the race of the accused. Look at the Freddie Grey case; of the six officers charged, three were black. The officer charged with the most serious crime was black, and the case is falling around Mosby’s shoulders because she’s incompetent.
If it makes more sense that in areas like say…. Baltimore…. That black people, being the majority of the demographic, would be both victim and suspect, what leap in logic do you have to take to make the police who deal with black suspects racist?
Long term racism results in systemic poverty which results in more crime. Police being told to make more stops in poor black communities than white communities results in more black people being arrested and more black people being hurt during police encounters than white people.
Anyway, you’re from Canada. Isn’t everybody there white? 🙂
Even the people who aren’t, it’s a ‘whiteness’ thing. Maybe it’s all the snow.
Long term racism results in systematic poverty except when it doesn’t. You have minorities like Jews and Asians, who were at times just as oppressed as black people, but something in their culture overcame that racism. Perhaps it’s because their trials were generally resolved in the same generation that experienced them, and they didn’t experience the same amount of cultural erasure.
Regardless, I’m interested in what you think the rub is. Let’s say you’re right…. 100%. Do we ignore black on black crime? Pretend that it doesn’t exist and hope it sorts itself out?
Because unfortunately the fact is that these crimes are being committed, and we owe justice to the victims. And that justice will invariably include a certain number of officer involved shootings, which will invariably mean dead black people.
It’s…. Interesting. You point out that I’m Canadian, in Canada, we treated our Natives poorly. They experienced an amount of cultural erasure similar to that of African Americans: They were taken and enrolled in residential schools, they weren’t taught their languages, often they didn’t know their real family names, or the areas where their parents came from. And in a lot of important ways, their struggles mirror that of the Black American. Something I noted last year, during the ‘Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women’ (MMIW) talks was that there were very often cases where the indigenous community was Up. In. Arms. to find the asshats who killed their women, only to find that said asshats were indigenous men, and then they were all about forgiveness and reconciliation. I think there’s some sort of shared experience that these people feel that makes them… less than eager to hold their in-group responsible for something they’d be more than eager to hold the ‘other’ responsible for. It’s understandable… but wrong. And perhaps we need to be better than their feelings allow for and actually treat all men and women with equal protection under the law.
Tired of black on black crime discussion? How about Black/White & White/Black violent crime?
Takeaway 1: There are 5x more whites than blacks in the US, and whites are crime victims at a rate of about 4:1…sounds reasonable thus far.
Takeaway 2: In 13.7% of violent crime where a white was the victim, a black person was the perpetrator…which falls in line with our representation in the population. This percentage equates to about 560,600 violent crimes where blacks targeted whites.
Takeaway 3: In 10.4% of violent crime where a black was the victim, a white person was the perpetrator. Very low, relative to whites representation in the overall population…and because of the lower # of incidents where blacks are the victim, relative to whites, this percentage equates to about 99,400 violent crimes where whites targeted blacks. 560,600 vs 99,400.
Takeaway 4: This means blacks were the attackers in 85% of the violent interrace crimes.
Takeaway 5: Yes, there are 5x more whites than blacks in the US, which leads to a higher opportunity for blacks to encounter whites, than vice versa. But the fact that there are marginally more Hispanics than blacks (17% vs 13%), yet black-on-Hispanic violence is almost as lopsided as black-on-white violence is telling.
Takeaway 6: Many say that, although whites are shot more than blacks by cops, blacks are more likely to be shot, a legitimate concern (when not considering levels of detail and mitigating circumstances). In this situation, (no doubt, fraught with complexities and mitigating circumstances), blacks are 27 times more likely to attack a white than the other way around.
The reason Im not sick with black criminality statistics, regardless of who the victim is? Because I want to be honest and knowledgeable about the flaws of my race. Avoiding the topic, to focus on the crimes and racism of whites, is directly and actively interfering with the self-improvement of many, many blacks. Viewing the world though such stringent blinders flies in the face of honesty, reason, and people who want to view the complete picture of the world. Racism exists. Not to the extent that most on the left would have you believe, at least not from the experience of this black man, but is does exists, and at a higher level for some blacks. But purposely slanting reality, to absolve blacks of their own flaws, and to scapegoat whites, treating the flaws of few as the flaws of all, leading to blacks living a life of eternal victimization, is:
1) Intellectually insulting
2) Paternalizing
3) Racist
Takeaway #5 is irrelevant. Every instance of a black meeting a white is ALSO a white meeting a black. The count is the same, so there is no actual difference in opportunity.
Interestingly, there were 560,600 (.137 * 4,091,971 ) black on white violent crimes, while white on black violent crimes only come to 99,403 (.104 * 955,800). That’s about 5.6 times the rate when you count it against all cross racial interactions.
Phlinn wrote: “Interestingly, there were 560,600 (.137 * 4,091,971 ) black on white violent crimes, while white on black violent crimes only come to 99,403 (.104 * 955,800). That’s about 5.6 times the rate when you count it against all cross racial interactions.”
__________________________
What you are saying, or what the statistics say, is that the level of black-on-white violence is over five times as much as white-on-black crimes? Is that right?
If that is so, the actual issue to be dealt with is black-on-white violence. If this is so then the issue taken up by BLM is possibly a sort of foil to hide some other sentiment? Some other intention? That is what I have wondered about. What is the real meaning?
There is a man who documents black-on-white violence who has a good deal of presence on YouTube. His presentation is very poor and it is hard to watch or listen to him, but I have wondered if these statistics are correct. He asserts that there is a media blackout and that they will not write stories or report on the ‘epidemic’ levels of black-on-white violence, some of it random (apparently).
It is hard to get a clear picture of the world, and that much harder when one cannot trust media. So many conflicting stories, and one narrative that nullifies another.
I didn’t think your county had a lesser crime rate than that of a similarly situated black county. Further, I was a little insulted by you telling me what I would think about something.
I think your main point is that poverty begets crime, and that more blacks are poor than whites. You also seem to be saying that it’s disingenuous to ignore this fact in the debate.
Well, let’s take that for a fact. Let’s assume that the poorer a population the more likely they are to commit crimes. That then leads to the following question: Why in the world would you think the appropriate place to lay that burden is on the shoulder of police officers?
Police officers respond to the crime when it is being committed or shortly thereafter. They have no power to effectuate the poverty that has lead individuals into the criminal activities in which they engage. How is it fair to expect them to suffer an increased risk of harm or death because we, as a society, have failed to properly address the problems associated with poverty and the crime that accompanies those problems? And if you do expect the police officers to holster their weapons and allow themselves to be assaulted/shot/killed, aren’t you making police officers a scapegoat for our societal shortcomings? That doesn’t seem very fair, does it?
Finally, your logic seems very self defeating. If it’s true that poverty begets crime, and if it’s also true that black people are often poorer than white people on the aggregate, then it’s true that the police SHOULD interact with black people more than with white people. To hold otherwise is to hold that the police should interact with the persons who commit less crimes. And yes, poverty may make it unfair and may lead more black individuals to a life of crime, but again, I don’t see how we can fairly place that on the backs of police officers.
‘If it’s true that poverty begets crime, and if it’s also true that black people are often poorer than white people on the aggregate, then it’s true that the police SHOULD interact with black people more than with white people.’
This is the struggle… You’re right, but it’s still racist to stereotype. It’s like Muslims trying to go through airport security. Is it wrong to treat them with more suspicion than Granny? Well yes, it probably is. But it’s also probably the smart thing to do. There’s a point where we have to ask ourselves ‘Is it racism, or is it a demographic?’ Are these people demographically different? And if they are, are we willing to accept the label of bigot to put forward common sense initiatives? Was Stop and Frisk racial? Absolutely. It was also effective.
I think you are suffering from a common mistake that occurs in our era. When something is motivated or effected by race, we say that it is “racist”. That’s not actually what the word means. To be racist is to believe one race is better than another, regardless of all proof to the contrary. For instance, if I thought that black people were intellectually inferior and I continued to believe that despite my wonderful and intellectually gifted professors at Syracuse University (Arthur Flowers and Laurence Thomas), then I would be a racist. If, however, I noticed that black individuals at the school were often less inclined to academic studies, that would not be racist. It’s just something I noticed that was affected by race.
When we say to ourselves that poverty leads to crime, and more blacks are poor than whites, we are not, in fact, stereotyping. We’re using common sense to come to conclusions that have some relation to race. It’s not wrong to treat Muslims with more suspicion at airport security. They’ve given us plenty of REASONS, not based on race or religion, to be more suspicious. The following would be racist:
1.) Treating Sikhs with more suspicion BECAUSE they are Sikh
2.) Assuming black persons are stupid BECAUSE they are black.
3.) Making Chinese individuals sit in the back of the bus BECAUSE they are Chinese.
Here are things that to me, are not, racist.
1.) Treating Muslims with more suspicion BECAUSE they have already used planes to blow buildings up.
2.) Assuming black people commit more crimes BECAUSE the FBI statistics say that the commit more crimes.
“To be racist is to believe one race is better than another, regardless of all proof to the contrary.”
This is way too simple. I think a more elegant definition of racism is “ascribing a characteristic or trait to someone or a group of people based solely on their ethnicity”. Often times that characteristic is “superiority” or “inferiority” leading one to assume the best definition is the one you used.
As for stereotyping, a commentator on Freakonomics said it this way:
or summarized:
I think we’ve said the same thing, albeit slightly differently.
A white male blew up a government building in Oklahoma, killing many people and children. A white male was the unibomber. White males have shot up movie theaters and schools. But we don’t have mass suspicion against white males. We tend to treat these incidents as outliers in an otherwise peaceful race. The same treatment is not given to Muslims.
Really, the problem is with men. They are committing the vast majority of the crime.
“A white male blew up a government building in Oklahoma, killing many people and children. A white male was the unibomber. White males have shot up movie theaters and schools. But we don’t have mass suspicion against white males. We tend to treat these incidents as outliers in an otherwise peaceful race.”
Which is all ignoring a holistic reading of statistics. We treat those incidents as outliers, because statistically they are outliers. The violence plaguing the African American community is statistically SIGNIFICANT.
A denial of that is a denial of reality. But by all means, continue.
“The same treatment is not given to Muslims.”
Ah, the favorite Shibboleth of the left…conflation of Islam with a race. No. Islam is a cultural ideology, an ideology which has specifically stated open-ended expectations of violence, which a SIGNIFICANT component of the Muslim community ENACTS, and a dangerously greater component of the Muslim community tolerates and permits.
Other cultural ideologies, such as Christianity or Buddhism or Judhaism etc may possess bits that can be interpreted violently, but for the vast majority those communities DO NOT enact nor tolerate such.
So no, suspicion of Islam is not unfair. But by all means, continue.
“Really, the problem is with men. They are committing the vast majority of the crime.”
Men are *by nature* more physically aggressive. This is true. I do wonder what kind of world we’d have though, if we completely took man’s naturally more assertive and aggressive attitudes out of the picture?
Probably would still be chiseling stone into flake arrowheads or less…
“Probably would still be chiseling stone into flake arrowheads or less…”
You’re worthless.
So I suppose then you deny the role of assertiveness in advancing civilization on several fronts?
That’s tantamount it saying “I’m a moron”
By the by, I note you avoided commenting on the meat and potatoes of the discussion and rather focused on my quick wit at something you stated tongue in cheek.
Worthlessness value, thy name is Beth.
Police DO profile by gender. Males are chemically more likely to engage in risky or physically forceful behavior, and generally bigger and more dangerous, so it’s logical for them to do so. Should they not?
I can’t even respond to the “white mass murderers” speal; it’s just too dumb. There’s no hysteria about white men because mass killers are a proportionally tiny part of the population, as opposed to Muslim extremists; who commit terrorist acts at a tremendous rate considering their tiny share of the population. What’s the point of hashing over all of this data to try to understand what’s going on if progressives just keep completely ignoring numbers and facts?
This already appears to be getting the “snopes” treatment.
“Scant portions of the writing could technically be subjected to fact-checking, as by and large the comments simply reflected Stalien’s own feelings on race and policing.”
http://www.snopes.com/2016/07/11/black-officer-jay-stalien-shares-views-on-race-and-policing/
Interesting…I checked snopes.com right off, and there wasn’t anything. Why is a Facebook post being “fact-checked” by Snopes? Their function I THOUGHT was to distinguish facts from myths.
Does anyone know this officer’s real name?
” Stalien” looks to be a mash up of “st” (street) and “alien”. So the name can be read as “Jay Street Alien”. The author says he is from Brooklyn… and Jay Street is an actual street in Brooklyn. Add “alien” as evocative of outsider status… or whatever… and you have a nifty alias.
The Facebook page has zero content other than the photo and the long essay. If you can locate any other information about Officer Stalien on the Web, you’re a better internet detective than I am, Gunga Din.
What evidence is there that this person is who he claims to be and has had the experiences that he describes? That this is a person rather than a fictional persona? Whose interest does this essay serve? Who is eager to believe it, and why? Why did it appear NOW and not, oh, last year or last month?
There was the post, and the Facebook page, which appeared to be a normal page, with thetyical selection of photos. On Google, there were multiple photos of Stalien, resembling the photo I used. There’s nothing unusual about a Facebook page with little or no content. I have many busy friends who literally post nothing, and are too busy to maintain one. That wouldn’t make a single long statement on their page suspicious if the mood struck.
The page is down right now. That’s more consistent with a real officer’s page than a fake one: he may have been ordered to cool it.
But you got me: MA is the symbol for Massachusetts, where “Jack” is supposedly from, R stands for Red Sox, and SHALL alludes to a call to duty. “Jack,” as my teachers kept telling me, isn’t a real name. This blog i written by an imaginary person.
Not down as of 5 minutes ago…
Hmmm. The “typical selection of photos”? When I looked at the Facebook page, there was exactly the one photo, the one I see everywhere I look for information about Officer Stalien. Also, in a search for anyone named Stalien, I find only three examples… in Greece, India, and Norway. In one of these the name is a given name, not a family name. There is a mononamed DJ with that moniker, but no way to tell if it’s a first, last, or even real name. The most common appearance of the term is as a typographical error for “Stalin”. I remain unpersuaded that it is a real name of any kind, unlike your own name (first and last together), which produces 13.1 million hits.
And while your conjecture about the disappearance of the page is creative, it is not persuasive. I can think of at least one other explanation for its vanishing, and I’ll bet you can too.
There’s also the matter that nothing, nothing at all, in the long essay is fact-checkable. No names, dates, case names, references to verdicts or even trials, nothing.
The language is without the kind of detail that speaks of personal experience. It talks ABOUT love, hate, fear, etc. but in detached, almost journalistic terms. No visceral connection to the author or any of the people described (and I use the term “described” very loosely).
Your lead-in to the essay mentions that you doubted its veracity, that it seemed too good to be true (I second that emotion) but you then assert that it IS TRUE. Any evidence or documentation that you care to share?
I imagine that radio and TV talk hosts as well as print journalists will respond to the viral spread of this essay by seeking to get Officer Stalien to submit to interviews or make personal appearances. He should be everywhere and unavoidable soon. Unless, as you say, he’s been ordered to “cool it”. But such a brave and bold individual surely won’t allow himself to be intimidated, much less silenced. I look forward to more from him.
Jim Morton said, “Hmmm. The “typical selection of photos”? When I looked at the Facebook page, there was exactly the one photo, the one I see everywhere I look for information about Officer Stalien.”
You are mistaken. My count is 21 photos.
I see them now, and am surprised. I am surprised because they weren’t there when I looked at the Facebook page 26 hours ago. I clicked every clickable thing on the page, and the photo that heads this page is the only one that was there then. I am baffled about what went on and why that was the case. As for the 21 photos that are indeed there, all but about three look like stock photos that could have come from anywhere. Most are as idiosyncratically impersonal as the text of the essay. I don’t know exactly what’s going on here, but it is more or less than what it seems to be.
Jim Morton,
I can’t fix your tendency to migrate towards conspiracy theories.
Conspiracy to me means bigger than the one or two people who could perpetrate a deception of this relatively simple sort. Hoax is what I’d call it if its the product of one or two folks. Conspiracy of two? If you like that term.
They were there when I wrote the post.
I do not doubt this.
Say what you will, there’s plenty of reason to assume that it is one black guy who said all this. It has additional value from a police officer. If it were a white guy who said it, it’d be just as valid, it just has additional value coming from a black guy.
But I’d say, based on the images being a fairly consistent portrayal of *the same guy*, that the *same guy* certainly has something to do with the statement.
Given the viral nature of the piece, if some random black guy’s image had been commandeered for a huge statement like this, I’d think random black guy at this point would come out and indicate that his image had been appropriated.
I agree that one way or another, the truth will out. As for the man in the photos, if he is who he is presented to be, we’ll be seeing him soon in other media. If the image is borrowed without the subjects knowledge or permission, we’ll doubtless hear from him once he gets wind of it. The idea that he’s perhaps someone who; endorses the content of the essay is possible, but again I think we’ll know soon enough. There are probably other possibilities neither of us has thought of. It just crossed my mind that the person might be an individual paid to “model” and with no interest in how the images are used as long as he gets paid. I think that you are as tired of the back and forth as I am. I doubt I’ll respond to any more messages on this but will wait to see what develops in the media.
Jim Morton,
Every time you open your mouth, you are presenting a CONSPIRACY THEORY and you’re sounding as if nothing logical or truthful will sidetrack your migration towards that conspiracy theory even at the risk of making yourself look like an ignorant fool. No matter how much you want to believe your conspiracy theory, the lack of fact based evidence to support your theory does NOT make your theory true.
“Say what you will, there’s plenty of reason to assume that it is one black guy who said all this. It has additional value from a police officer. If it were a white guy who said it, it’d be just as valid, it just has additional value coming from a black guy.”
What “plenty of reason”? Please enlighten me. And “additional value from a police officer”? If we need reason to believe that a person named Jay Stalien even exists, we’d need it to verify his status as a police officer. And “if a white guy said it it’d be just as valid” is just a step away from “If its all made up, the points he makes are still true.” It reminds me of what people used to say about Carlos Castenada’s fictional claims about his mystical adventures…. “Who cares if it really happened? It’s true anyway.”
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
-Abraham Lincoln
Now, to dispense with having to wait to make a point.
You’ll say “Abraham Lincoln didn’t say that, someone else did”.
To which I’ll say “does that invalidate the point?”
To which you’ll say “Oh I see, now I understand that even if we strip away EVERYTHING about the essay this post centers around, the essay has extreme value. I also understand that if indeed the source of this IS a black man, it has even greater value because, theoretically, the audience may identify more closely with the speaker. I also understand that if indeed the source of this IS a police officer, then this melds together the very two icons around which our current crisis is revolving. Furthermore, upon deeper consideration, I also agree that at some point, if these images have been lifted from someone else’s possession and are not actually indicative of the source of the essay, then given the viral nature of this, the actual person whose image has been appropriated will likely come forward and deny such. But from the looks of it, it seems pretty valid to make the connection that indeed, these images ARE of the originator of the essay or at a bare minimum, the images are of someone who certainly endorses the essay.”
To which I’ll say “sweet, we have an understanding! Have a good day!”
To which you’ll say “and you too!”
Dishonest analogy. The facts, as stated are accurate. The argument he makes has equal validity whether he is a man or a moose. His authority is greater if he is a police officer, and there is no reason to believ he isn’t one.
If he were a moose, his argument would have two more legs to stand on.