Don’t have much to say on Baltimore that Ta-Nehisi Coates didn’t say, as Anne Laurie posted earlier. I’m still sickened (and tired and depressed and hurt, still processing) all this, and what it means, and the last year plus of police brutality towards black America. I’m sick of being told what I should do and what I should have done (?) to prevent this from happening in the future. I’m sick of being told that nothing has changed from 1968’s riots, and sick of being told that everything is different now and better when that’s clearly not the case either.
Most of all I’m sick of carrying this burden and being told the struggle to do so gives me “dignity”. It’s demeaning, it’s depressing, and I’m goddamn tired of this happening over and over again. I’m sick of seeing a cop and wondering if this is the day.
I’m bone weary of this.
Open thread.
Emma
I can never really understand, in my bones and soul, what it is that you go through on a daily basis. The best I can do is to try projection, and that’s at best at one remove. But even so, I am sick and tired of it. Mostly I’m sick and tired of how easy it is to turn the conversation away from the real problem to every shiny distraction that can be dragged out from under a rock. How we allow ourselves to be distracted.
OzarkHillbilly
But Zandar, things are better. Now you can be beaten to death in the front of the bus.
Elizabelle
I think things are getting better. It just does not look like it now.
Face
I’m having a hard time understanding how looting and fires are the appropriate reaction to police brutality. Seems like one will just justify more of the other, and this time, with much less sympathy/concern (by the media) for the brutalized.
A Ghost To Most
@Face:
Would you prefer “Thank You, Sir, May I Have Another” ?
scav
@Face:1) Sometimes “appropriate” response are broke and been broke for so long it probably just doesn’t matter. 2) don’t confuse “appropriate” response with “ideal” response, or “pareto-improving” response or anything more than “not bloody entirely unexpected” response. Looting and fires aren’t exactly “appropriate” reactions to Winning basketball games, but hey, so it goes.
Henry
It is so very sad that here, USA in the ’21rst century’, and all that, and still the only way for a poor person especially of color can be heard is by the thousands in a riot.
I hear people crying for an even break but all they get is the gas and the nightstick.
This is Not the America the taught me about and Change needs to come NOW.
w3ski
wilfred
You’re sick of the wrong thing. Racism is a byproduct of social and economic injustice. What to cops make? They’re just the praetorian guard of the rich, whose empathy for the people who suffer worse economic injustice than them is clouded by the screeching of the 1% and their agents in the press, who always advocate mightily for one more crumb for the starving.
Race consciousness changes nothing. Race consciousness is not political consciousness. When the lower, exploited and oppressed economic classes join forces, then change will happen. Until then, it will be more of the same – just as it always has been.
Big ole hound
As the picture/phone recording increases the nation begins to realize just how brutal cops are. Maybe a suspension WITHOUT pay could speed up investigations. These 12 week paid vacations while under investigation provide no incentive to obey the law for the power crazed macho cops so maybe a little hit in the wallet would help weeding out these guys who think they are all powerful.
OzarkHillbilly
@Face: Appropriate? I don’t understand why there isn’t more of it.
Eric U.
a suspension without pay seems only fair if a guy that could run from a cop ends up dead with a severed spine after the cops are done with him. And in fact, they should all be in jail. I’m all for paying cops more, but there needs to be accountability.
LAC
You and me both. Sometimes i wish I could be so disconnected from things that I worry about the Baltimore game being cancelled (as I overheard two white guys banging on about) or if so and so made the appropriate comment because it is all about 2016. But I cannot. I carry that burden with me daily, as a person of color. We rarely get too far away from it. It can eat at your soul sometimes.
Hang in there. I wish I could find the words that could make it better, but I do not have them right now. Just keep on keeping on…
OzarkHillbilly
@wilfred: Let me guess: You are white.
C.V. Danes
@wilfred: I don’t think racism is a byproduct of social and economic injustice. I think social and economic injustice are a byproduct of racism. But the rest of your comment I agree with.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
I’m not going to suggest that anyone is sick of the wrong thing. Especially when that is wondering if today is the day s/he’ll be damaged or killed under color of law (to be fair, mostly males are the victims).
Hell, *I’m* bone weary of this and I don’t have to live with that concern. I suspect I’d already have been quite violent if I did.
C.V. Danes
@Henry: that’s the way it has always been, pretty much for the entire history of civilization.
A Ghost To Most
@C.V. Danes:
I disagree – I think they are all a product of FYIGM.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Struggle never conveys dignity, and even dealing with it without complaining doesn’t really confer much on a person except just make it more likely that sooner or later, they’ll get pissed off and start yelling or breaking shit.
@wilfred: Sadly, you are correct. Police brutality is not solely a black people’s problem. Nor solely a Hispanic problem (saw the cops harassing and interrogating two guys pulling weeds yesterday…really?) They’re beating people everywhere they go.
At some point, whites are going to realize that, to a cop, your skin color doesn’t matter – you’re just another punching bag. But they don’t yet. Whites still get annoyed when the blue lights come on in the rear view. That is stupid. Your reaction should be terror, no matter your race, for to a cop all people are equally worthy of abuse.
Belafon
@Face: Did you know there have been protests going on for two weeks? Or, like most Americans, did you find out about the protests because they turned violent?
Are violent protests helping? Probably not. But, as I saw on twitter yesterday, there wasn’t some successful PR campaign going on that the looting suddenly derailed.
You might contemplate this MLK Jr quote:
One last thing, any quote someone makes about their concern for the looting should be preceded by “Those cops need to be in jail.” Your focus on the looting is exactly why the Baltimore police unleaded the school buses yesterday and then threatened kids who stood in groups. The cops were wearing riot gear while approaching kids they forced off the buses.
Morzer
I wish I could believe that most of America wasn’t more focused on the NFL draft than the reasons for the riots in Baltimore. Unfortunately, I know where I’d place my bet.
Mike E
Watched a PBS docu last night on the military draft, and the class/race violence goes back long before 1968 or the turn of the 20th century…northern cities had race riots (read: white gangs) during the Civil War over being drafted to fight for Emancipation, then afterward did same when northern politicians/editors incited white fear over freed blacks driving wages down/stealing jobs. That well can be exploited anytime, seemingly.
Keith G
@Big ole hound: @Eric U.: No.
It’s not good to jump due process rights. While it might feel good to do it to cops accused of abuse, eventually it would spread to other public sector workers who are often accused of petty misconduct and that would be quite a weapon for management. And guess who makes up a lot of entry-level public sector workers.
No.
Keep the suspension with pay, and then throw a big mother fucking book at them when wrong-doing is proved.
Diana
Here’s something for all those here saying the violence is legit:
“……….For years now, the showy embrace of the legitimacy of political violence has been a cheap affect of today’s radicals. I hear it all the time, these strutting, self-impressed invocations of the righteousness of political violence. What makes this very strange is that it emanates from people who, without exception, harbor no pretense that a left-wing armed resistance movement could ever succeed in this country, ever. It’s a very proud stance expressed by those who know will have no earthly impact on their own lives. I don’t think any left-wing essayists out there are busy putting together a plan to take DC. So you have this chest-puffing embrace of political violence coming from people who know they will never take part in any themselves, know that any such violence will never be part of a meaningful campaign of armed resistance to the state, and know that such a campaign would be doomed to utter and near-immediate failure if it did. That is an awfully strange thing to be proud of. ….”
from this guy, whom I found via Brad deLong’s website: http://fredrikdeboer.com/2015/04/28/were-all-very-impressed/
Morzer
@Diana:
Quoting Freddie Boners on the subject of how radicals should think? Damn, we do live in strange times.
Cluttered Mind
@Belafon: That quote also explains why centrist “both sides do it” media is worse for the country than right wing media. Monsters can’t get away with monstrous behavior if they aren’t given cover by the moderates of society.
I can’t condemn rioting anymore. I just can’t. Property damage and looting are objectively bad, but they are not objectively worse than state sanctioned torture and murder, which is what our widespread epidemic of unpunished police brutality amounts to.
Belafon
@Diana: I see a lot of words that don’t apply. First, find me someone who’s saying the violence is legit. Second, the violence occurring is not political, it’s just looting. Third, find me an armed left-wing resistance movement (it’s the right wing that thinks that if they get enough guns, they can beat the government).
Once again, the Baltimore police force wins if you are going to focus on the looting over the killing of Gray.
Cluttered Mind
@Keith G: It doesn’t have to spread to other sectors of public service if you put one simple rule in place: If someone dies in your custody or during your arrest, that’s automatic suspension without pay. Linking it to death would prevent the sort of creep you’re talking about. Post office workers accused of misconduct have rarely caused any death with that misconduct.
Spanky
I don’t trust anything the authorities say. I too am tired. I am the mother of 3 black sons and I fear for them every time they leave the house. I’ve watched my husband get past over for promotions and bonuses for 30 years. But I still have hope it will get better.
Face
@Belafon: Yes, I was very aware of the ongoing protests. My point was, since the concern is excessive police brutality, why protest in a manner that will certainly lead to further, perhaps worsening, police brutality? Doesn’t this change the media story from “police are killing young Blacks” to “Blacks are killing our city”? To many people, I would argue it has. And that’s the opposite of the lesson that this crime needs to expose.
Cluttered Mind
@Face: Question for you then. When do you think it will become a reasonable assumption that no amount of police brutality captured on film will ever motivate White America to do something about it? When does it become a reasonable assumption that the status quo will not be changed by peaceful protest no matter what happens?
I’m not saying I like rioting, I’m just saying that given all the high profile cases of police brutality over the past few years and the lack of any sort of meaningful change, I can understand why they’re doing it. Why should they expect change through peaceful protest?
The Other Chuck
@Zandar: I got nothing, except maybe turn off the news and blogs for today and go give a hug to someone you love. Or hell, even a stranger.
magurkurin
@Face: You won’t get your mind around it as long as you are thinking about the “appropriate” response. Violence is the inevitable response in the case of repeated and seemingly unending police brutality and murder of citizens. The appropriate thing to be done is for the police to stop fucking killing unarmed and handcuffed citizens.
Belafon
@Morzer: Another awesome reason why Freddie didn’t last very long here.
Sherparick
1. I understand it is very fatiguing, but 300 years ago the planter elite discovered a wonderful way of dividing the white working class from the Black and breaking down the privileges of that system will probably also take 300 years.
2. Because people got tired, and moved on to “other things.” Because people stopped agitating and protesting non-violently, things stopped getting better, and in many communities drifted worse as factories closed and jobs went to the suburbs, or to the South, or overseas.
3. And in the vacuum, because violence of the late sixties and endemic crime that followed in the 70s and 80s, a large group of politicians rose to power on the theme of “law and order” and Ronald Reagan was able to go to Philadelphia, Mississippi and spit on the graves of Chaney, Goodman, and Shermer and get himself elected President. From Steve M at “No More Mister Nice Blog:
…But to bring this back to the sort of thing I usually write about: Sooner or later, this is going to influence national politics — and not for the better. Sooner or later, right-wing politicians are going to rediscover the language of “law and order” that elected Richard Nixon twice and that gave us racially divisive politicians, of both parties, such as Ed Koch and Rudy Giuliani in my city and Frank Rizzo in Philadelphia. And the new round of “get-tough” pols might be worse than the ones from my younger days — many of those guys, at least, had some lingering fondness for the New Deal or the Kennedys. The new crop will probably combine “get-tough” attitudes and Koch economics. It’s not going to be pleasant…. http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2015/04/tin-soldiers-and-nixon-coming.html#links
One can already here Scott Walker, who has thrived in the toxic racial politics of Southeastern Wisconsin, prepare his speech about how “leadership” is standing up and backing up cops against “thugs,” thugs empowered by President Obama and tolerated by Hilary Clinton.
scav
People do seem intent on conflating “not unexpected” with “100% Justification as Most Appropriate Tool for the Task” I smell agenda. At best, a disinflation to engage. I also am somehow reminded of a no doubt gracious and effortlessly genteel and Christian Dowager Dame sniffing and exclaiming “No we can Not feed the poor — they have used the salad instead of the fish fork! How InAppropriate!” The tut-tuttery of the comfortable.
Belafon
@Face: There are people that will take advantage of any situation. But you should continue to focus on the real problem, which is that the police killed a man, in a very painful way I might add. It would be a lot harder for people to loot if the problems that lead people to protest weren’t there.
Morzer
@Belafon:
I honestly thought Freddie had deliquesced into a pool of self-satisfied goo years ago. I should have known that the self-appointed Heir of House Brooks wouldn’t go so easily.
Keith G
@Cluttered Mind: That could be a thought.
I do care about a presumption of innocence and I do think it is would be impossible to correctly assert that all deaths that occur in the process of an investigation and arrest are the result of abuse by the officer(s). I do not like punishing the innocent no matter what the occupation or ethnicity of that innocent person.
Omnes Omnibus
@wilfred: Maybe it’s just me and my crabbed bourgeois views, but I tend to think that a person at risk of being shot dead by the police for no real reason has a pretty strong right to be sick of living with that risk. The fact that there may or may not be other things to be sick of doesn’t enter into it.
Matt McIrvin
@Diana: It’s not a bad essay, but just so you know, its author has had some old feuds with the people here, which is why you might see some pushback.
D58826
@OzarkHillbilly: And on prime time TV
LanceThruster
During the LA riots after the Rodney King verdict, I saw live news footage of a young black girl of about 15 or so amidst her own neighborhood on fire. She was so eloquent, with tears in her eyes and anguish on her face said, “Why are people doing this to their own neighborhood? This doesn’t help anybody. People will think we’re *animals*!”
That last line left her sobbing as the producers cut away to more burn footage.
She had no reason to feel any shame, but knew the judgmental attitudes she and her community would be subject to following this. I think of this young woman to this day, and feel shame for a society that considers such remarkable individuals as part of a faceless disposable class.
Fort Geek
This morning it was my turn to unfollow a Facebook acquaintance–the wife of a good friend. She’s got a history of “liking” racist anti-Obama crap from her friends and family. HATES hates hates Obama but apparently lurves her some Hillary.
This morning she shared out a pic with MLK marching–“This is a demonstration” and some black kids bashing in a car window–“This is a riot” and some crap about if you can’t tell the difference blah blah blah.
At first, I was going to comment with a pic of the Vancouver white kid riot, but why even bother? Just a bunch of wingnut shitheads on the other end of the line. So I cut the line. Hell with ’em, and with her.
Morzer
@Matt McIrvin:
Not to mention the fact that Freddie Boners has never been remotely close to radical in his whole life. Advice from him to radicals is like an earthworm opining on how tigers should go about their business.
Face
@magurkurin: So you believe the solution to criminal acts (police on Blacks) is more criminal acts (Blacks on property, police)? Does reciprocal violence ever solve anything?
If the goal is to stop this behavior by the police, then it would behoove the aggreived to collect the sympathy, understanding, and outrage of the greater populace (read: non-urbans, mostly whites) and use that to drive change (like accountability). But looting and destruction of property, so seemingly unrelated to the protest of a wrongful death, wont likely work to build sympathy and understanding; it will undermine that. IMO; I’m sure I will be flamed for it.
Mandalay
@Cluttered Mind:
That assumes the cop is must be guilty of something, which ironically is the very thing that cops do with black citizens all the time. A simpler and fairer approach is automatic suspension with salary, but the salary and related benefits are forfeited/repaid if found guilty.
But this is a side issue. Making the police more accountable for their conduct is the central issue.
celticdragonchick
@Face:
When you see a riot like this through in any period of history…you know that it is not related to just one event.
Things led up to it over the years, whether you look at the Jacquerie in medieval France, Boston in the early 1770’s, LA in 1992 or this last year across the country.
When American colonists started breaking shit and burning buildings in Boston, they didn’t stop there…officials got tarred and feathered (which could give you fatal 3rd degree burns)…and the causes included brutality and corruption from what passed for law enforcement.
The Rodney King affair capped off 10 years of the LAPD and Daryl Gates treating South Central like the fucking Palestinian Occupied Territories with “carpets up, walls down” drug raids that destroyed houses and personal property.
What you see is that peaceful protests and attempts at problem solving fail or are simply ignored until things reach the breaking point.
Also, as TNC said last night at the Atlantic, it is bit fucking rich for the Agressors to lecture the other side about “peaceful protesting” when they have been using violence and leaving bodies all along…
Betty Cracker
@A Ghost To Most: I think you’re right, though it’s quite the “chicken-or-egg” question in the US. Have there been racially homogeneous societies with rampant inequality and social justice issues? It seems that people will find SOME way to separate themselves into factions and oppress one other, even without the handy social marker of skin color, if power and material gains can be had.
Mnemosyne
@wilfred:
If you can figure out how to get the American white working class to realize that they have more in common with working class blacks and Latinos than they do with the white upper class, you’ll be a fucking genius. But so long as our class system is tightly tied to race, and “black” = “lowest class,” you’ll never manage it.
Matt McIrvin
@wilfred: You keep saying this kind of thing, but strangely it’s always the anti-racists you jump on for creating a distraction from the real problem.
I agree that racial tension in America serves as a way to keep people divided in the face of economic oppression. I do not agree that the solution is for the people on the sharp end of it to shut up about it. American white/black racism is not just class oppression in disguise: it’s a separate but intertwined thing stemming ultimately from the slave system. Efforts to level out economic oppression alone are not going to get rid of it. It is both possible and necessary to fight more than one thing at a time.
Belafon
@Face:
Because, as has been shown over the last few months, the police do not need an excuse for police brutality of black people. Somehow, the police were able to arrest the white guy in Colorado who shot people in the theater without killing him, they let white people punch on them, but a black man can be riding a bicycle and get shot or can be thrashed around in a van until he suffers life threatening injuries.
Does the looting help? No. But the looting didn’t come before the death of Gray, it came afterwards. Gray would have been dead without the looting.
Diana
@Belafon: “Once again, the Baltimore police force wins if you are going to focus on the looting over the killing of Gray.”
Either you think the violence is legit or your don’t. And whatever you think, I still get to have an opinion on it.
celticdragonchick
@Morzer:
You might try reading the essay.
Mike in NC
@Sherparick: Exactly. Incidents like this can turn into electoral gold for Republican politicians.
Terrorizing the population didn’t work in occupied Baghdad, and it won’t work in Baltimore or any other place.
Zandar
@Mnemosyne:
–LBJ
Diana
@Matt McIrvin: Didn’t know that. But I respect opinions not people.
Punchy
I think a better post title would have been “Baltimore O’Really-oles?”. Hard to watch.
ETA: can we get a SCOTUS gay marriage thread this morning?
Morzer
@celticdragonchick:
I have.
Keith G
@Sherparick: I can easily agree with some of what you wrote.
I will say that aside from my concern and despair at the suffering of that community and the seeming bleakness of it all, I also am worried about this incident delivering a wild card into the campaign season. Like a true wild card, I don’t think anyone can calculate what the impact will be.
Who will be more motivated, who will become more disillusioned?
What message will strike the most energetic note with a key voting block?
There are so many worrying unknowns to be added on to an already distressing situation.
NotMax
@Diana
He’s listed right there on the front page in the “select an author” listing.
Diana
@Mnemosyne: Wasn’t there a famous quote from the robber baron Jay Gould, after he hired the Pinkertons to shoot the striking steelworkers, when he was told that the Communists were organizing the strikers? I think he said something to the effect that, “I’ll be afraid of communism only when I can’t hire half the working class to shoot the other half.” Communism came and went, but the robber barons are still with us….
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker:
The caste system in present day India. Although, the caste system too has its roots in racial discrimination. The Sanskrit word for caste (varna) is hue or color.
Diana
@NotMax: never saw that, thxs. However, I’m still not going to decide an opinion is wrong just because others have been. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
SiubhanDuinne
@Sherparick:
So Chris Christie is a contender again?
Belafon
@Face:
Tell me how killing of the they boy with the toy gun has caused white people to focus on the problem of excessive force used on blacks by police. Whites are comfortable, it doesn’t affect them. It would be really nice if whites (I am one, btw) would start believe blacks, but most whites want excuses to not engage.
FlipYrWhig
I don’t understand why people want to link dissimilar things and call them both “rioting” and _then_ say that of course rioting is bound to happen because people get left behind, feel desperate, etc. If you’ve had all you can take and you feel like taking up arms and showing disrespect (Coates’s key term) to the power structure, OK, I see the logic, so… confront the police. Throw a brick through the window of the police station. Burn a patrol car. Those are symbolic acts of retribution and disrespect. Acts of terrorism have that logic too: asymmetrical and all that. There’s a logic to the deed. But throwing a brick through the window of CVS isn’t a symbolic act of retribution and disrespect. It’s something you do because you know you can grab stuff and get away. That’s not a protest. That’s just fucking around. No one is being caught up in the moment to do things they’re unaware of doing. It’s calculated and it’s petty and we don’t need to justify it, not even to be provocative and counterintuitive like Coates.
Belafon
@Diana:
And that has zero to do with the fact that Gray was killed by those policemen. If you are going to focus on the looting over his death, then nothing will change.
AndoChronic
If it hasn’t already been said:
I blame the police and power elite for the riots. They’re a natural response to some degree. Unfortunately, those who may have previously sided with the oppressed, including MSM, will now most likely not, those who already marginalize these folks will now try to marginalize them even further, and the police will arm-up even more.
So no, rioting will not help this movement in anyway in my opinion other than say for a quick cathartic release. It’s exactly what they want you to do dumbass.
Bobby Thomson
These cops are criminals and should be tried and they won’t be. As David Simon says, it’s understandable how that could lead someone to want to pick up a brick. But the mob won’t change anything and will ultimately make things worse. Those who aren’t in it for the grift are stepping on a rake. I understand why they are doing it, but I also think this country is a lot more capable of formal apartheid and final solutions than people want to admit. People need to organize or they will be crushed. It’s that simple.
Belafon
@Belafon: Also (I can’t edit) I have said the looting was wrong. But try to stay on the real topic.
NotMax
@Diana
An awfully low bar for anyone who puts him/herself out there as a pundit.
(Referring to him, not to you.)
Cluttered Mind
@Keith G: That too is easily fixed. Keep the pay in escrow. Should the investigation determine that there was actually no wrongdoing on the part of the officer, they get their back pay.
Cluttered Mind
@Mandalay: If someone dies while interacting with the police, the police ARE guilty of something. They screwed up. The only question is whether it was an understandable and/or justfied screwup or not. People aren’t supposed to die in a confrontation with the police, ever. The police begin the interaction so the burden is on the police to make sure no one dies.
If the police can bring Richard Poplowski in alive, they sure as hell can bring in an unarmed black man.
Brachiator
@Face:
From the Wikipedia:
When white people loot and destroy property, they’re patriots.
trollhattan
@Zandar:
Yes, and especially since the saintly days of saintly Saint Reagan and Lee Atwater they’ve been playing the blue collar white voter like a Stradivarius. Even if they don’t know a Stradivarius from an F-250.
And I agree with the notion that until we shift the national dialogue on class suppression, racial suppression isn’t budging in a meaningful way. If those blue collar folks still haven’t figured out they’ve been robbed by the paymasters of the folks they vote for, we have to figure out how to learn ’em.
In the meantime, psych profiling of police recruits has to get real. For us all.
sharl
@Matt McIrvin: Yep, that’s the thing with Freddie: as a reader you need to bring your full attention, intellect, and self-awareness to the game, because while he writes some pretty good stuff IMO, on occasion he tosses out some hammered dog shit perfumed with purty words and tenuous links to what appears to be high-minded thinking. An example of the latter is a comment of his [and follow-on(s)] that earned him this and follow-on responses (e.g.) which led to him being assigned by some the nickname Freddie BONERS! (see Morzer at #24).
Germy Shoemangler
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) – The relatives of eight people killed by police say they’re coming to Albany to demand that Gov. Andrew Cuomo order a special prosecutor to investigate deaths at the hands of officers.
Organizers say the group includes the mother of Eric Garner, whose Staten Island death in an apparent police chokehold was recorded last year by a bystander.
A grand jury declined to charge that officer, which was followed by protests in New York City.
The group plans to gather outside Cuomo’s office at the Capitol, saying they’re tired of waiting for a meeting with him requested months ago.
A spokeswoman says they were contacted by the governor’s office Tuesday morning about a possible meeting.
A Cuomo spokesman had no initial comment.
FlipYrWhig
@Brachiator: If you destroy the right symbolic property, you can be. But choice of target kind of matters. Consider the Haymarket affair.
Morzer
@NotMax:
It’s the same old Freddie Boners essay. People [unspecified and unquoted] have said [apparently] things online of which Freddie disapproves. This is very bad and wrong and must stop because it [the things said by these unspecified people] is not helpful to the cause which Freddie holds dear [in a non-specific kind of way].
As a display of empty, pseudo-logical hand-waving, it is superb and could usefully be framed and hung over the salad bar at Applebees. As a discussion of a problem in meaningful terms, it is trite and uninformative.
scav
@FlipYrWhig: Mob/Crowd Psychology is not exactly the same as individual psychology and GSD knows individuals can make non-optimal (and I’m still not convinced there is an optimal) decisions, especially in the heat of a moment. Mobs are even weirder. Mobs/Crowds are also anonymizing, kinda like the inter webs only with fewer tubes, and everybody knows people make their best actions, decisions and behaviors on the Internet.
Keith G
@Cluttered Mind: Could you deal with a 14 day, hell even thirty days or longer, delay in receiving a pay check? If so, good for you.
It is still punishment before the determination of guilt.
burnspbesq
@A Ghost To Most:
Of course not, and that’s a massively fucking stupid thing to say. But your position seems to be that it’s silly to expect African-Americans to be able to figure out that certain behaviors are rational and self-interested and some aren’t, and that’s a perpetuation of some really nasty old racist stereotyping.
Tenar Darell
@scav: wasn’t there more than a little research that the riot gear and helmets and armor of the police actually makes it more likely for protests to get violent? (I’ll try to find it later if no one remembers this).
sparrow
@FlipYrWhig: This is a really good point, I totally agree.
Cacti
In case anyone thought that Rand Paul was something other than a bog standard Republican on police brutality issues:
Link
Linnaeus
@Brachiator:
I made a longish comment in the early morning open thread, which I won’t repeat verbatim, but will distill a little bit here.
Back in November, Ta-Nehisi Coates made the point (rightly, in my view) that Americans, particularly white Americans have never really believed in nonviolence. They oppose violence when it threatens the social order that they wish to maintain.
Cluttered Mind
@Keith G: I could not, no. Were I faced with the prospect of that happening if someone died in my custody, I might be rather motivated to make sure that no one died in my custody.
It’s my understanding that police officers are a rather fraternal group. I doubt any officer who had to go without a paycheck during their investigation would go without basic necessities.
Even in the harshest of circumstances, 30 days without money is survivable. 30 seconds without a spine isn’t.
burnspbesq
@Cluttered Mind:
So, if you open fire on a cop, he/she is not permitted to retun fire? Is that a fair summary of your position?
sharl
Zandar, I’m so sorry that you and so many others have to put up with the kind of crap that we low-melanin types don’t experience. B-J commenter Rare Sanity once commented with great eloquence on this matter, and JGC quite wisely front-paged that comment. I still track that down and read it on occasion; the full implications of having to live its truths every day is something I cannot imagine.
Take care.
Diana
@Belafon: I’m going to disagree. For example, here in NYC, two cops shot an unarmed black man just a few days ago on East 6th street:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/nyregion/detective-kills-man-during-attempted-arrest-on-the-lower-east-side.html?action=click&contentCollection=N.Y.%20%2F%20Region&module=RelatedCoverage®ion=Marginalia&pgtype=article&gwh=E1CC45DCC5FFA239DEEA1AF7A9967053&gwt=pay
All that happened in the way of protests was one old white guy who dutifully help up a sign protesting police brutality for a few hours on a nearby street corner. If the police brutality is the only thing that matters, why would the reaction be so different?
Elie
@wilfred:
Absolutely agree. When we can turn rage to political action and power, then we get the change.
Cluttered Mind
@burnspbesq: Considering I brought up Poplowski, clearly that’s not what I’m saying.
scav
@Tenar Darell: Could be, I’ve not made a serious study of it, although I’ve been minded to go back and re-read what went on during the London (et al) riots of a few years ago in the UK. There was escalation and hop-frogging between cities.
Rafer Janders
@Betty Cracker:
Um, what? Of course. Throughout most of human history, most societies have been racially homogeneous and yet have had rampant inequality and social justice issues. It’s the default condition. Just think of ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, imperial China, ancient Japan, India, feudal Europe, the Mayans, the Aztecs, the Incas, France under the Bourbons, Victorian England, Czarist Russia, etc. etc. etc. (Note: yes, many of those societies had pockets of minority ethnicities, yet they were still overwhelming of one majority race).
Howard Beale IV
Repeal the limited and absolute immunity protection preventing the prosecution of cops and prosecutors and the scales will change.
Elie
@FlipYrWhig:
Well said…
Lavocat
It seems that we are all stuck in the merciless Groundhog Day of incremental change.
Is it getting better?
Yeah, very gradually.
Is it getting better fast enough?
Let Ferguson, and NYC, and Baltimore, and all of Black America answer that.
Cluttered Mind
@Rafer Janders: Ancient Egypt was in no way racially homogeneous. Other than that, your list works.
Betty Cracker
@Rafer Janders: It was a rhetorical question. Thought that was clear from the following sentence, but I guess not….
Keith G
@Cluttered Mind: Wow. That is an ginormous set of assumptions.
I would agree that a significant changes can occur if police get better training and higher expectations on the handling of conflict without escalating it, bit to assert that…
.
…is just plain wrong unless one uses a very casual definition of ‘guilty’.
Nonetheless, I do agree that there is a moral and professional burden on the police to avoid the use of force (or the threat thereof) unless it is absolutely necessary.
Omnes Omnibus
@burnspbesq: Don’t be an ass. Of course that wasn’t what was being said. If there is a shootout, then something necessarily went wrong.
Punchy
OT:
If random articles popping up on various sites are to be given any credence, it appears that SSM is not doing very well in front of SCOTUS this morning. Of course this could all be bullshit, but to everyone who thought the libs had at least 5 solid “yea” votes, this may not be the case.
Wow, if they were to actually vote it down….the legal mess for those already married in Southern states would be epic.
Brachiator
@FlipYrWhig:
It’s the cause, not the property.
The goal of the May 1 strikes: “Eight-hour day with no cut in pay.” How quaint.
Back then, German, Irish, Bohemian immigrants were demonized. They weren’t considered to be good white people, according to the Anglo Saxon model.
Today, many try to rally behind the cause of a living wage. The poor, blacks and Latinos are demonized, and derided as lazy dupes of an anti-American Muslim Atheist “not a white man” and “not a real black man,” probably a communist president Obama.
Because, as we all know, real white Americans love Libertarian Jesus.
Kryptik
@Face:
If this is your understanding of the situation, then you’re only going skin deep. Precious few here are saying the rioting is justified, just that it’s understandable. Understandable in the sense of ‘I can recognize why things came to a head here’. Were there some in that group who were just being violent for the sake of being violent? I’m sure, it happens a lot with any large demonstration with people who just want to be instigators. But there’s a long history here of the black community getting generally shit on by the city police department, and any attempts at actually garnering that ‘sympathy and understanding’ as you put it has met with a collective ‘meh’. This isn’t an isolated incident, it’s a point on a long timeline regarding the adversarial relationship between city police departments and their respective black communities, where they’re allowed to act with impunity and any attempts to lobby for rectification is met with cries of ‘THUG THUG CRIMINAL SAVAGE THUG’.
As MLK Jr. said “A riot is the language of the unheard’. While the spark might have well been violence for violence’s sake, this was a powder keg waiting to explode for many reasons, and until those reasons are examined and addressed, shit like this will keep happening
Felanius Kootea
Didn’t know this: following a 2014 Baltimore Sun investigative report on police brutality and ~$6 million in taxpayer money paid out to victims, city leaders tried to get 14 bills addressing police brutality through the state legislature. The bills all failed one week before the Freddie Gray incident. I wonder what those state legislators are thinking now.
Mandalay
@Cluttered Mind:
Absolute nonsense. Think about it for ten seconds and see if you can come up with a scenario where the police are not guilty of anything. It’s not hard.
Patricia Kayden
@Diana: “So you have this chest-puffing embrace of political violence coming from people who know they will never take part in any themselves”
That’s what I find most disturbing. Most of us will never engage in any form of violence, political or not, so how can we justify the violence in Baltimore? Perhaps it’s easy to cheer on people who we are not related to and have no connection to except in a voyeuristic way. Looting and burning down stores in your own neighborhood is not revolutionary and it’s not something anyone would condone if they were actually living in a neighborhood that was being ransacked by rioters.
This doesn’t let the police off the hook for their abhorrent, thuggish behavior towards people of color. I don’t see how rioting is going to lead to justice for Gray’s family. Period.
SatanicPanic
That’s a heavy burden to bear Zandar. Damn.
FlipYrWhig
@sparrow: @Elie: I think I sound like I’m defending terrorism. But, you know, if you’re disaffected and rage-filled and you give up on “respectability” and want to smash things and insult people, I get that. It’s not my thing, but it’s coherent. It’s kind of a tradition, globally, everywhere, for millennia. But at least smash relevant sorts of things and insult relevant sorts of people.
The Thin Black Duke
Unfortunately, it’s painfully obvious that not enough white people care about the brutalization and murder of black people to make a difference. So, to maintain the status quo and not make white people too uncomfortable about the ugly reality of race relations in America, we just have to accept that the Michael Browns and Freddie Grays and Eric Garners are acceptable collateral damage.
Mike J
@Punchy:
It is very, very, very common for the questions to not really indicate how things are going to go. The justices will often ask the toughest question of the side they favor to know how to address them in the decision.
Cluttered Mind
@Mandalay: Okay, guilty is too harsh a word and completely inappropriate for use in that situation, I have no problem accepting rebuke for being extreme there. I got very angry and was being a moron.
Let me try to rephrase and not be a hothead about it:
If someone dies in an encounter with the police, something has gone wrong, and while presumption of innocence on the part of the officer is important, we also need to remember that we DO empower police to employ deadly force essentially at their own discretion, and as such they should be held to a higher standard than some random jackass on the street who decides to be an aggressive jackass. What we are currently witnessing is a lower standard for the police, not a higher one. When someone dies in an encounter with the police, there are rarely any meaningful consequences for the police in question. The reason I’m okay with such extremes as automatic suspension without pay in the case of a death is because I’m honestly not sure what else has any chance of working given that so much of our legal system seems stacked in favor of absolving police from any consequences of their actions. At least if people knew that a cop who kills someone will automatically face at least SOME kind of meaningful consequence, there might be a little less anger floating around.
celticdragonchick
@Patricia Kayden:
The problem is…non violence sure as fuck hasn’t been doing anything either.
I have seen a meme on twitter over the past week showing a photo of an anti police brutality protest in NYC from the 1940’s juxtaposed with a similar photo from a week ago.
If the social and political levers can ignore peaceful protests or subdue them (like the Bloody Sunday incident in Ireland), violence becomes inevitable and possibly utterly necessary to effect change.
Peale
@Belafon: Lordy. The only one ever calling for armed left wing resistance movements are the folks who want to patrol the borders as vigilantes and who go running wild after American Sniper heroes to protect cattle ranchers. And those types who believe that the shire-reeve is still the supreme government official.
I’ve really not heard anyone asking the people of Baltimore to go into a state of permanent riot. Wrtie me when we have fantasy “riot camps” to teach would be lefties the most effective way to start a fire.
Cluttered Mind
@celticdragonchick: Yyyyup. That’s what I’ve been saying. It’s one thing to preach the virtues of nonviolence, but at some point you need to be able to show results too.
How quickly people forget the lessons of the Rodney King incident. L.A. erupted in riots…and in the end actual meaningful reforms came out of the whole thing.
Belafon
@Diana: I’ve said already that I think the protests are wrong. But I can say the protests are wrong and still think that the focus should not be on the protests, but the fact that Gray is dead, and so far, nothing has happened to the cops. And, from what I understand, Gray did not put up any kind of fight. Most of his injuries occurred in the van. That’s a big difference between this and the case you cited in NYC.
Do you consider the damage to property to be more important than Gray’s life?
Belafon
@Belafon: Not the protest, the riots.
Belafon
@Belafon: I wish I could edit, but I think the browser is causing issues.
Patricia Kayden
@Cacti: I’d love to hear Rand’s opinion about the roots of police brutality. Were the police who kill unarmed Blacks raised in broken homes with no morals? Were they not taught right from wrong?
And by the way Rand, you do know that White people riot too, right?
Cluttered Mind
@Belafon: Yeah, people need to consider that. Property damage and theft are bad, but they’re objectively not as bad as murder.
Punchy
@Mike J: I really hope so. Would find it absolutely stunning for Kennedy to vote for gays in 2003 (Texas vs. somebody) and w/r/t DOMA and then royal screw job them in marriage equity. Of course I never thought Scalia could square Hobby Lobby with his past opinions, but somehow he did.
The Thin Black Duke
Unfortunately, it’s become painfully obvious that not enough white people care enough about the brutalization and murder of black people by the police to make a difference. So, to maintain the status quo and not force white people to recognize the ugly reality of race relations in America, we just have to accept that the Michael Browns and Freddie Grays and Eric Garners are acceptable collateral damage.
Cluttered Mind
@Patricia Kayden: What? No they don’t! White people celebrate, sometimes vigorously. Only black people riot.
LAC
@Fort Geek: had the same thing happen as well. Got the word “savages” thrown in as well. Good riddance to rubbish. I am done with explaining shit to shitheads. And I got enough friends on Facebook to not grieve the loss of an asshole.
Matt McIrvin
@Punchy: I don’t know how Obergefell is going to go, but I’ve been following the liveblogging on SCOTUSblog, and I think a lot of people were disheartened just because the pro-SSM side went first, and got some pointed questioning about “millennia of tradition” from Kennedy. When the anti-SSM side came up, he was as tough or more tough on them.
japa21
There has been a lot of talk over the last several months about the term “white privilege”. I am not one of those whites that deny the existence of such a thing. Yet reading the comments here and elsewhere has given me a different kind of understanding of what white privilege is all about.
White privilege is saying things like “Don’t those people understand they are hurting their own cause?” or “Why would people want to destroy their own property?” or “Sure, I can get peaceful protests, but this is going too far.”
White privilege is being so far removed from the everyday life that black Americans live that one can have no empathy for the burdens they deal with.
I read somewhere that one of the reasons whites fear black violence so much is that deep down, they know that if they had to endure the same things they would have exploded into violence long ago. I think that gives whites too much credit of being aware of what blacks, and other minorities, go through.
Yet I agree with the sentiment. At least for some whites. If the Feds had gone through and attempted to arrest Bundy that day when whites had guns pointed at them, would violence have erupted? I have no doubt. For the cause of not having to pay grazing fees, whites were willing to commit violence. For something that compared to what blacks live with everyday is merely a pimple on one’s ass, violence would have been okay.
And that is the real picture of white privilege. Okay for us to get our panties in a bunch and even go violent for rather petty things in the scheme of things but not for THEM to do so over major things.
Yes, I am against the violence in Baltimore, all the violence including that done by the police. But thanks to so many that have spoken out, I do understand it and have to admit, I don’t know that I would not have contributed to it under the same circumstances.
celticdragonchick
@japa21:
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: Don’t forget the other great divider, religion.
Brachiator
Meanwhile, as the Supreme Court hears arguments in the gay marriage cases,
Update 11:13 a.m.: The man who disrupted court arguments this morning was yelling and screaming outside the courtroom doors before police officers dragged him out of the building and put him in handcuffs, according to Lane Hudson, a witness who was standing outside the courtroom doors.
“He was yelling and screaming about God, fire and brimstone were going to rain down on this country if the Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay marriage,” she said.
Patricia Kayden
@Face: Are non-urban Whites doing anything to push politicians to do something about police brutality though? How many unarmed Blacks have to be killed by the police before non-urban Whites (or non-Blacks in general) give a damn? You cannot use one riot in Baltimore as an excuse for any inaction on the parts of Whites since there have been so many cases just within the last three years of unjustified police killings, plus one by a non-police officer (George Zimmerman). So far, it’s been riots in L.A. in the 1990s and now in Baltimore. Not enough to justify White inaction and indifference in my opinion.
Anyways, I don’t link the Baltimore riots to White inaction. Seems like some youngsters took advantage of a tense situation to loot and pillage.
Elizabelle
@Fort Geek:
@LAC:
on cue: Facebook friend muting as a trend hits the New York Times. Muting Friends’ Political Views on Facebook Is as Simple as Clicking ‘Unfollow’
But oh noes! they warn. Mute that racist in-law’s in law and we will all end up in MSNBC enclaves!
And Ms. Payne is 27!
celticdragonchick
@japa21:
This.
For the record…I have zero problem with burning police cars or state symbols of power in Baltimore at this point. Non violence ony gets you so far when the other side is shooting you and breaking your neck…literally.
Burning a CVS pharmacy and liquor stores…not so much, but actions of this sort become uncontrollable very quickly.
japa21
@Cluttered Mind: I can understand that thinking and to some degree, agree with it. At the same time, it goes against most of my being which believes strongly in the innocent until proven guilty aspect.
Part of the problem is that the people who make the decision on what to do with police officers are directly invested in maintaining good relations with the police. Taking the decision making out of those hands and placing it in the hands of a truly independent investigative agency would help. Of course, how does one determine if such an agency is truly independent.
Diana
@Belafon: Most people consider their own lives and their own property to be most important, so the question here is, when and how do you get someone to care about someone else’s life and property? For if all that matters is one’s own life and property, then there’s no reason for anyone white to care about police brutality towards black people, nor is there any reason for anyone black to care about any property belonging to anyone not black.
The argument against the rioting is, in essence, that it will choke off empathy.
If your argument is that empathy never matters, then you are saying no reform can ever happen, and now therefore there is no reason for the cops not to do whatever it takes to protect property.
If you are arguing that here the offense against life is so great that there is no reason why we should not extend empathy regardless of the rioting, then does rioting not matter as long as there’s a question of a life involved? And if rioting doesn’t matter, then, again, there is no reason for cops not to do whatever it takes to protect property.
I’m trying to point out to you that whether you realize it or not, you’re basically arguing for fascism.
celticdragonchick
@japa21:
This.
For the record…I have zero problem with burning police cars or state symbols of power in Baltimore at this point. Non violence ony gets you so far when the other side is shooting you and breaking your neck…literally.
Burning a CVS pharmacy and liquor stores…not so much, but actions of this sort become uncontrollable very quickly.
celticdragonchick
testing.
weird…comments keep going into moderation.
Patricia Kayden
@Brachiator: Poor guy. He knows his side has lost the war. Wonder if anyone has told him that if SCOTUS decides in favor of gay marriage (which it certainly will do), no one will force him to marry a man. Perhaps that would calm him down a little.
Belafon
@japa21: Great comment.
mzinformation
I can’t imagine the bone-weariness that you are experiencing. I am beyond ashamed of the culture in this country that allows these deaths. I can only wish that you will hang in there knowing that a great many people – even though they seem asleep – are not. I’m one of them who cares deeply but feels helpless as to how I can help affect change.
Bobby Thomson
@Cluttered Mind: that was an anomaly. Ask Detroiters how well riots worked at bringing social change.
Fridaynext
@Betty Cracker:
As in so many things, Dr. Seuss showed how this can happen in his parable of The Sneetches.
People will ALWAYS find a way to divide into tribes and hate the other. As the bard once sang, “How can we be in, if there is no outside.”
LAC
http://touch.citypaper.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-83403290/
Interesting. Any volunteers on hassplaining this?
Patricia Kayden
@celticdragonchick: Not sure if I agree with your assessment of nonviolence. It worked for Dr. King. Several Civil Rights laws were passed during his lifetime as a result of nonviolent protests. It can work again if protesters have clear goals and demands. Putting pressure on political leaders to change the police culture is a first step.
Matt McIrvin
@japa21:
And it’s lumping them all together, too. It sounds like the people trashing drugstores and such are, basically, dumb kids being dumb. White college students do this over football games. I don’t approve of this but nor am I primarily concerned about it.
All these people being murdered by police, that I am concerned about. A point I keep coming back to is that it doesn’t just feed into general violence by making people angry: it’s also depriving them of any benefit of the law. If the police are just an invading gang out to harass and kill you, not only is that a problem in and of itself… they’re also not being police, really. Which means you don’t have any police to call when you really need them. Is there any wonder that would exacerbate crime?
Elizabelle
FYWP just eated my comment. Prob good riddance.
Waysel
I find it peculiar, and disheartening, that so many commenters here assume that the rioters and the 10,000 peaceful protesters are the same people, hence ‘they’re harming their own cause by rioting’. Greedy, violent, destructive assholes are part of any population, and will use the protests as cover for self indulgence.
schrodinger's cat
@Patricia Kayden: Word. People give the example of Gandhi, but his non-violent methods did not bring instantaneous success. It took decades of struggle and WWII for India to gain its Independence.
raven
@LAC: Seems self explanatory to me.
Elizabelle
@schrodinger’s cat:
And has anyone noticed these nonviolent leader types tend to keep getting shot?
People might have been paying more attention to history than some give them credit for.
FlipYrWhig
@japa21:
Who are you addressing here? I don’t think anyone in these threads who’s been lamenting the violent turn in Baltimore (I’d add/clarify _misdirectedly_ violent) would be quick to apologize for white violence. It doesn’t seem like very compelling evidence of white privilege if white people deplore riots when black people do it _and_ when white people do it. I’ll confess to having felt inspired, or at least viscerally sympathetic, to see Palestinian kids throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers. I don’t know if I like it when people throw rocks at cops, but, you know, the cops are pretty well protected, which makes it more symbolic than life-threatening. I think the point of contention is not so much “how could you throw rocks at cops?” vs. “how _couldn’t_ you throw rocks at cops?” but rather “why are you throwing rocks at CVS when you’re mad at cops?”
Belafon
@Diana: Boy, talk about heading in the wrong direction. I’ve already said the looting was wrong, and I totally understand that most whites, sitting in their comfortable home after passing by a cop that didn’t stop them, will use any excuse possible to avoid the fact that cops are killing blacks way more than whites (did you know that there have been 10 people killed by cops in Baltimore this year, and all of them were black). I understand that empathy is something most people have in short supply.
But I choose to not waste my empathy on people like that. I don’t really want to know why they are more worried about a CVS than why another black man dies. I would argue that, since most of them claim to be Christians, that they probably need to figure it out on their own before they go to meet their maker. I own property – a house, two cars, a TV, lots of computers – and I can undersand not wanting to lose it, but most Americans didn’t lose their property. So, unless you’re the owner the proerty, your choice of which to be all aggrevated over should be the loss of life. Because the insurance company will replace the property. No one is going to replace Gray’s life.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
Malcolm X:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXo0lgcOHhg
Belafon
@Patricia Kayden: It also helped that the violence to blacks showed up on TV.
Paul in KY
@Cluttered Mind: Agree. Good points!
FlipYrWhig
@Matt McIrvin:
But I think that lumping is necessary for Coates, too. Without it you can’t say that perhaps a riot is required when the social compact and [ETA] the order it institutes have broken down–hence rioting as the speech of the silenced and so forth. If the protesters and the rioters are different, then the riot isn’t part of anyone’s speech, it’s just opportunism and disorderliness. You can’t defend a riot that way. And a lot of leftish people yesterday and today deliberately want to defend a riot.
Paul in KY
@japa21: Also great points there on white privilege.
Mandalay
@Cluttered Mind:
If someone dies as a result of interacting with the police then there should always be an automatic investigation of the death by an external agency. That could be (say) the FBI, or another (out-of-state) police department. The days of having police departments being able to exonerate themselves from any wrongdoing when people die have to end.
And those investigations should be immediate. When a plane crashes it doesn’t take weeks for investigators to turn up at the crash site, yet it was nine days after the death of Freddie Gray before the DOJ even announced that they had decided to investigate. And throw in prison time and loss of all benefits to any cop who is shown to have lied to the investigators.
There’s not a chance in hell of any of that happening, but that approach would get results.
Linnaeus
@FlipYrWhig:
The thing is that, generally, white Americans’ characterization of and response to white crowd violence tends to be very different from the way they characterize black crowd violence.
When whites even notice the fact that sometimes, white people in groups get violent, they either laugh it off as some silly exercise or consider it to be an unfortunate momentary lapse of reason fueled by enthusiasm and/or drink. The response is to shake their heads, have the mess cleaned up, and move on, with some admonishments to not do it again (but it will be).
When black Americans do it, the response of white Americans tends to be bafflement as to why it’s happening (whatever the original grievance may be) and some kind of commentary about how the violence reflects some deeper truth about the innate violent tendencies of their fellow citizens who are black (of course, an honest look at American history would demonstrate something quite different, but that’s another discussion). Then the “proper” long term response is to clamp down harder.
Kropadope
@Waysel:
It’s definitely not fair to be lumping the non-violent protesters in with the rioters. Still, the protesters should consider a response to the rioters. Some who want to lump the groups together want to do so to discredit the premise of police abuse. It would be wise of the protesters to consider how to disarm that.
ETA: Hopefully the peaceful protests are well-enough organized for this to be a possibility.
magurakurin
@Face: I believe the solution is for cops to stop severing handcuffed and shackled suspects. I thought that was clear.
Morzer
@FlipYrWhig:
Coates isn’t defending the riots. He’s saying that they are inevitable in certain situations as a reaction to oppressive conditions that disrespect the citizens of a given community.
maurinsky
I think that many blacks have already been practicing rational and self-interested behaviors and are finding out that it’s apparently not enough to make the police start treating them as anything than another black person who is guilty of something.
Kryptik
Seriously, how many people, here and elsewhere, are actually defending the riots rather than saying it’s understandable why they happen? This is starting to become strawman level.
Xantar
@Patricia Kayden:
You’re absolutely right, but the thing people always seem to skip over is that it’s really hard to get every single person in a large crowd to act peacefully and non-violently when confronted by the police. Even if you got all the protesters themselves to behave, it just takes a few selfish idiots or a few drunks slinging racial slurs to break a few windows and then suddenly the media thinks Baltimore is on fire. Very few media outlets are paying attention to, say, the march of hundreds of clergy members calling for an end to the looting.
It took months of training and organizing for Dr. King and his organizers to put together those demonstrations. An impromptu protest in Baltimore with a few days of preparation doesn’t stand a chance.
I live here in Baltimore and every single person I know abhors the violence. But they’re not bleeding, so they don’t get front page coverage.
Tenar Darell
@scav: Found one reference from the WaPo at the beginning of 2014 Study: Those lockstep riot-police phalanxes make cops more aggressive. And here’s an interview with a sociologist at the end of last year. He did a large amount of data analysis on multiple police-crowd interactions.
ETA – It sounds like the data isn’t fully analyzed yet (for the section I blockquoted.
FlipYrWhig
@Morzer: Yes, and I think his rhetoric is sleight of hand. Rioting isn’t like a forest fire. Trees don’t know what they’re doing. People do. Breaking into a CVS isn’t inevitable. The big line that people have been using is “I don’t condone it, but I do understand it.” Well, fuck that. I don’t understand “it” when “it” morphs from confronting the cops or other avatars of the corrupt power structure to just fucking shit up because it’s there and you’re mad. At that point, you’re not like a forest fire where actions just happen to unfold through your unthinking zombie body.
scav
a) @Linnaeus:
b) This is beginning to wander off into the same territory explored after 9/11, when it was anathema to wonder about the motivations of terrorists and how even to consider they might possibly have recognizable human reasons to be grumpy about policies in the ME was equivalent to cheering on all the planes into all the skyscrapers. And that’s ignoring the mixed bag of exact motivations and whims that fuels into what mobs get themselves into.
And then there’s Miss Diana who’s not going to hand out any cupcakes unless the children without any are perfect and win her empathy, because apparently she is the sole giver of cupcakes that must be won over.
Belafon
@Kropadope: They did that in Ferguson after the first looting, and yet, strangely, the cops never ended their tactics.
Chris
Dude on CNN: “I mean, when Obama was elected, everybody thought it was this beautiful post-racial symbol, and now we’re finding out that nothing has changed…” (paraphrased).
Passing on the obvious response for a minute (if seven years of teabaggers hadn’t already shown you that “nothing has changed” on race relations, you’re too fucking dumb to be having this conversation), who the fuck ever thought that Obama’s election somehow signaled some end of racism in America? Put this down to yet another meme the MSM invented and then projected onto “the public” as a whole when it turned out not to be true.
Belafon
@FlipYrWhig: And, just like the cops in Baltimore hope, you’re more hung up on rioting than Gray’s death. And don’t deny it, there wasn’t a single comment about the police or Gray in your comment.
Kryptik
@Xantar:
It also ignores that King and the non-violent movements succeeded, precisely because they understood why racial violence and rioting can and would happen, and essentially proposed to the American consciousness “You can deal with us, who at least attempt to negotiate with you in a peaceful manner, or reject us, and end up with the building wildfire that you’re cultivating already. Your choice.”
As TNC has pointed out, King and his allies didn’t succeed just from the purity of their heart and the righteousness of their message and intent.
Diana
@Belafon: not trying to make an example of you, but I keep reading arguments pro and con and all the proriot arguments boil down to either “peace is impossible, because nothing will ever accomplish the necessary reforms” or “peace doesn’t matter,” both of which are actually fascist arguments, see, e.g.,
http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/mussolini-fascism.asp
And I liked Freddie Boner’s take because he also points out that it is fascism on the cheap, by people who do not intend to take part in it.
Mandalay
President Obama just said this:
A small step in the right direction, but we need politicians at the top to turn up the heat on the police. I expect nothing from Republicans, but Democrats such as Biden, Pelosi and Clinton need to start getting vocal. I’m not holding my breath though.
gvg
It is probably unrealistic to expect every kid to already be wise. Kids that get told by parents to fear police and authority for justified reasons and only know people who are poor with dim prospects of better…plus adolescent attitudes…I don’t see every single one of them having thought of the wider implications of their own actions, considered political tactics etc. I don’t think everyone of them has parental figures that they respect who are wiser and able to redirect the anger. Soooo…stuff is going to happen.
Adults, politically engaged people, experienced people, people who read political news and history and care, we can see those actions as …counter productive, something the forces of darkness will use against justice. Some of those kids are wise and do see because it is right in their face. But every single one of them? No. So I guess we just have to try to figure out how to get justice anyway. I do feel discouraged today. Still have to keep on though.
Looking back on history I am always rather surprised we didn’t have more black on white violence. I can see why whites in the past anticipated it so much too.
FlipYrWhig
@Kryptik: Saying it’s understandable is conceding that a bunch of stupid shit is one and the same with protesting. I’m not going to concede that. That’s laundering the bad (wanton destruction) with the good (confronting injustice and neglect). Wanton destruction doesn’t confront injustice and neglect. The only way destruction can be used to confront injustice and neglect is if you destroy either the thing that’s immediately harming you or symbolic things that stand in for it. Far too little of what’s being destroyed has any such resonance, as far as I can tell. I might be persuadable on the check-cashing place, but even there I think that falls into the category of stupid people doing stupid shit, not Coates’s politics of deliberate “disrespect” (a phrase I actually rather like–I just doubt that it suits what I’ve been seeing on TV).
Diana
@Belafon: BTW the arguments justifying the behavior of the Baltimore police are also fascist arguments, it’s just that I haven’t seen anyone making them. Virtually everyone agrees there is a problem; the question which provokes debate it, what should anyone do about it?
Elie
@Patricia Kayden:
Totally agree. Then the key follow up — voting.. regularly. Yes, not every candidate is excellent. But if your community votes and is represented, they cannot be ignored as readily as when they do not vote. The poor black neighborhoods in Baltimore are ignored politically because they can be.(not absolute I know – other factors involved from the larger society)
Linnaeus
@Chris:
Hell, I know plenty of people who thought “racism ended”, or at least ceased to be a significant problem, years before Obama was even on the political radar.
FlipYrWhig
@Belafon: You can give me some credit for being a human being with basic human decency who thinks that cops shouldn’t beat people to death, because it’s an obvious thought that doesn’t need to be articulated openly. Or you can go fuck yourself. Whichever.
Mandalay
@Chris:
Good catch. There may have been a bigger strawmen than that one in the past century, but offhand none come to mind.
Kryptik
@Chris:
The kind of folk that use the idea of ‘racism is over’ to push Calvinistic, Alger-esque, ‘if you can’t pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, you’re just a failure and didn’t try hard enough’ bullshit. The kind of people who want to ignore structural inequalities so they can simply shout ‘SEE, SEE, things are all even and you’re still failing, that just means you and your kind really are inferior savages!’ And lets not forget Chief Justice Roberts and his rationale for gutting the VRA.
This wasn’t a meme invented by the MSM. It’s a meme invented by racists and conservatives and peddled by the MSM who swallow everything from the right side of the aisle as gospel truth until it’s fully debunked 100%, and even then.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Diana: Allow them a shot at having lives worth living, and the chance to actually acquire property of value; homes, business, etc.
We still to this day do not allow the black community to have any of these things. The laws forbidding them to have them are long gone, but all the barriers are still in place, every one.
Chris
@Face:
Whoever said this was about “appropriate?”
I said this a few times last summer when the topic was Gaza, Palestinian terrorism, and Israel; you’ve got a population that’s seen absolutely everything from armed revolution to civil disobedience treated with exactly the same contempt and indifference, and watched the processes oppressing them continue unhindered no matter what they tried. That kind of hopelessness can do a hell of a lot to power the sentiment that “fuck it, let’s just burn some shit down. It’s not like anything else is working.”
Inner city America is no Gaza. But I can more than see how a similar mentality might crop up. (As various people have pointed out – exactly how many of us had even seen the protests over the killer cops until this started?)
Kropadope
@Belafon: They need to persist at that and the police aren’t their only, or even their primary, audience. They need to find way to stand apart and they’d be best served to make opportunities to dissuade rioters. Change takes time. They aren’t just going to hire a whole new police force overnight, especially when some of the folks that need to be turned out need to be voted out of power.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Linnaeus: I was one of them. I thought blacks, as a whole, were more or less lazy whiners.
The last six years have been most educational in showing me just how full of shit I was. Needless to say, I stand corrected.
Elizabelle
@Mandalay: The other side to that is that President Obama has been subjected to a level of disrespect that I have never seen in my life.
Even by the guy who threw the shoe at GW Bush.
That’s not gone unnoticed. An African American man was elected — twice, decisively and honestly — and does not even get the respect given the worst president in history contender he replaced (and has spent years cleaning up after).
I didn’t expect racial utopia, but the level of overt ugliness has scared a lot of us, time and time again.
People can only compartmentalize so much.
schrodinger's cat
@Kryptik:
That’s true about Gandhi too, there were plenty of bomb throwers (literally and figuratively) in the Indian independence struggle. Gandhi had to call off many a protest when the non-violent protest turned violent. Example, the Chowri-Choura incident which ironically enough was a reaction to police brutality.
Chris
@Fort Geek:
Conveniently passing over the fact that back when MLK was alive, Polite White Society treated him exactly like the dangerous, rabble-rousing, reverse-racist, possibly communist agitator that they now consider Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to be. And that black people marching, then just like now, tended to be considered “a riot” by definition. (In both cases exactly, I suspect, by the kind of person the lady you’re describing is).
Aleta
I have friends who are parents of white teens and white 20+ year olds. I’ve known these kids since they were born, played with them, talk with them, spent vacation time with them. Their background is: wealthy or very well off; involved parents; best possible schools; travel, music, skiing, soccer. Family dinners, expensive food. (And of course, they are not without dysfunction and mental illness in their families.) They have also been part of a large extended “family” of decent left-wingish adults who interact with them.
These kids have never been called thugs, criminals, hooligans, and so far never been arrested. Yet:
Lots of drinking, drug use –check
Stealing, break-ins, selling stuff they stole –check
Lighting fires that got out of control –check
Destroyed ‘private property’ – check
Roaming around in packs –check
Hanging with drug dealers –check
Lying to parents –check
Concerned parents who cannot ‘control’ them -check
The fking media does occasional glossy pieces about teenage drug use in Orange Country, or particular criminals from wealthy backgrounds. Around here, local white kids who are not well off escape media attention for their escapades. White college kids pretty much get a pass for their sport of getting drunk and breaking things on weekends. After a big game, bedlam in the streets. White kids who rape: yes.
National media coverage that treats crime by white and black kids as similar ? No. But I’ll bet that the white talking heads, white policemen and lawyers, white reporters and producers, white congressmen are full of stories about the bad behavior of their own kids.
Fck the media for their racist coverage. Fck the system that lets white parents smooth things over with the police, get charges dropped, keep their kids out of the papers. Fck the white blindness and the sanctimonious opinions about black young people and their parents and culture.
Bobby Thomson
@FlipYrWhig: well, I can “understand” mob mentality as a phenomenon but still think it’s criminal and/or stupid and counterproductive. People kill in the heat of passion all the time but unless they are cops, we generally don’t just shrug it off, even if we cut them some slack on the penalty. And if a drug store can’t get insurance and someone has to take a bus to get meds for her kids, this property crime isn’t as victimless as some might like to think.
Elizabelle
@Chris: Caught a Meet the Press with MLK, Jr. and about the first question out of journalist’s mouth was “are you a communist?”
People elide right over that now. Does not fit the narrative.
gene108
@Sherparick:
Reality can sometimes influence things and crime is at an all time low. As much as you can try to run on a law-and-order platform, you are pushing a solution in search of a problem.
You can see the push back against “broken windows” policing that happened in NYC and other cities that will continue because crime rates no longer justify extraordinary and innovative methods of policing.
What is happening, with regards to the push back against police excesses is the fact that there is not enough crime to justify such aggressive police tactics anymore.
The only reason such things happen, like in Ferguson, is for cops to extract money from the citizens.
Kropadope
@Chris:
The authorities treated him as such. However he probably did more than any other to change public perceptions to effect a positive change. To this day he exists in the public memory (for the most part) as a paragon who provides the foundation for many people’s thinking on race relations.
Chris
@Elizabelle:
Clicking “unfollow” (and depending on the person, “unfriend”) keeps my Facebook sane, and by extension, me.
Kryptik
@FlipYrWhig:
How is it exactly conceding anything? That people are going to react harshly when they’re shoved into a corner and see no way out? That’s human nature. That violence is inevitable when things like this happen? It’s not inevitable, no, but it’s sure as hell likely. Rationality and civility kind of go fuck all out of the window when you’re going to be treated like a criminal anyhow, and it takes a patience of a saint to try and deal with it the way some like King.
Far as Wanton Destruction goes, is it healthy? Is it rational? Is it productive? Fuck no, of course not, but as much as anything, it’s a symptom rather than the disease itself. Understand the source of the unrest and address it, don’t act like the rioting in and of itself is the only problem. Shit like this doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Like I said, even if people being assholes for being assholes was the spark, it needs a powder keg for it to erupt into something like this. Watts didn’t happen in a vacuum. LA didn’t happen in a vacuum. Ferguson didn’t happen in a vacuum. This isn’t an isolated incident, it’s a flashpoint on a long timeline of events leading to people seeing no other way to be heard than through violent display. And lets not forget that many times, people thinking rationally, rather than using the chance to be symbolic, will rather use the chance to be opportunistic. Someone taking advantage of a situation doesn’t mean that situation isn’t somehow genuine, just that someone is taking advantage.
None of this condones burning and destroying shit. But unless you understand why the will to destroy and burn shit erupts out of situations like this, it will keep happening, because the underlying factors will continue to go unaddressed, and we as a society will continue to treat the symptom rather than the disease.
Mandalay
@Chris:
Indeed. Some folks here are arguing that violence never achieves anything, but I doubt if President Obama would be mentioning his concerns with policing this afternoon if there had not been rioting in Baltimore last night. We got the right result, but for the wrong reason.
celticdragonchick
@Patricia Kayden:
The police have done a good job of insulating themselves from political pressure, and the unions (unfortunately) have had a lot to do with that.
While violent crime has been droping steadily for a generation, police treatment of the public has gone in quite another direction as has been amly demostrated over the past year. SWAT teams in almost every town and village being used to serve traffic ticket warrents, ridicuous amounts of force used in anodyne situations, and so on and so on.
As long as police continue to not be held accountable for beatings and deaths and cities continue to put taxpayers on the hook for police misconduct…we will continue to have 70+ years of ineffectual police brutality protests punctuated with violent responses. I see nothing ahead to break this pattern.
Kryptik
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yeah, I wouldn’t doubt it, though my extensive knowledge of what Gandhi faced is terribly limited, so glad someone better read on him could chime in there.
Aleta
@Elizabelle:
A Baltimore woman interviewed in her neighborhood last night by Vice news https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wks84RJxgh0 said:
(paraphrased) Why would they (city officials, police, etc) respect us ? They don’t even respect the black president of this country. Some in Congress won’t even shake his hand. They are not going to respect us if they won’t even show respect to the President of the United States.
rikyrah
I feel you Zandar.
I feel you.
Kryptik
@Mandalay:
Things happening for the wrong reason often means the ‘right’ reason wasn’t working. Being right sometimes doesn’t mean a whit when the whole couldn’t care less about what you’re right about.
Fridaynext
@Bobby Thomson:
In general I agree. But on this historic day when the Supreme Court is hearing arguments on same sex marriage, I cannot help but think we would never have gotten this far, so fast, if a group of gay men had not said “enough” and fought VIOLENTLY against police harassment and brutality. The Stonewall Riots are generally agreed by historians to be the start of the gay rights movement and modern LGBT politics. I want to believe violent protest is criminal, stupid, and counterproductive, and in most cases it probably is. But I cannot consider what those men were going through and look at the progress they started, through mob action and resistance, and say it was counterproductive or stupid.
schrodinger's cat
@Kryptik: I think what most people know about Gandhi in this country is because of Attenborough’s movie Gandhi. A hagiography which paints him as a modern day saint rather than a gifted politician and a human being with flaws who changed the course of history.
schrodinger's cat
@Aleta: Sad but true.
celticdragonchick
@Fridaynext:
Stonewall was initiated largely by drag queens and trans women.
Cluttered Mind
@Mandalay: 100% agreed. I think we’re on the same page here.
Elizabelle
@Aleta: Yep. Crap behavior like that comes back to haunt.
Unfortunately, the chickens are roosting at the wrong door today.
At least now. In the long run …. cause for optimism, I think.
Ferguson and Tamir Rice were huge wakeup calls, for anyone who cared to wake.
Elizabelle
@Chris: I like “unfollow” too. Diplomatic.
Weirdly, it’s sometimes because the person puts up too much liberal angst stuff up, post after post after post. Becomes a downer, much as I like the person. Not like I’m not getting the Robert Reich and anti-Koch brothers stuff doled out — in smaller doses — by many other pals.
The Thin Black Duke
@Kropadope: And he was assasinated for it. Thanks, Dr. King!
LAC
@raven: to you, yes. But it might surprise some who thought white Baltimore residents just went home after the all-American sock hop at a local church basement, nursing their milkshakes and getting ready to toddle off to bed. You know, the ” golly gee” crowd.
Linnaeus
@scav:
It’s messy, and there are a lot of conflicting and contradictory impulses. Dealing with that reality isn’t comfortable or easy.
Bobby Thomson
@Fridaynext: they organized. Organized violence has been very effective at bringing social change. Just ask Uncle Billy. So has organized nonviolence. Disorganized petty crime usually accomplishes nothing good.
Matt McIrvin
@Aleta: I knew a rich white trust-fund kid in high school whose favorite pastime was vandalizing construction sites. He seemed proud of the fact that daddy would make it better if he ever got in trouble.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Linnaeus:
This. I do not condone what happened in Baltimore, but I find it much more understandable than when college kids riot over a basketball/football game. At least the rioters in Baltimore have a legitimate grievance.
Chris
@Patricia Kayden:
Having not lived through that era, I wonder how much of the progress made on civil rights can be explained by the simple, unglamorous fact that there was about a thirty year period in history during which black people, electorally, were a “swing vote” which was winnable for Democrats from FDR onwards, but not actually locked down until… I don’t know. Goldwater? Nixon?
Whereas during this same time period, the single biggest and loudest bloc of white racists (Southern Democrats) was not a swing vote and easier to take for granted. (Even when Strom Thurmond broke away, the concern was that the Democrats would lose votes, but not that these votes would be added to the Republican column. Yet).
I can totally see how that would’ve created a climate where politicians (and by extension, the people they led and the other elites they interacted with) would have an incentive to care about black people’s opinions in a way they didn’t before and haven’t since.
After the sixties, it was the reverse, with the black vote pretty well locked down while white Southerners were the ones in play (leaning Republican, but not impossible for the Democrats to get back, as late as the nineties Clinton was still pulling in Southern states). And lo and behold, that’s just when politicians stop caring about black people and start being immensely concerned about the needs of white people with racial hangups.
NorthLeft12
@Keith G: I cannot disagree with you more about your “due process” concerns for police officers.
The facts are that when ordinary citizens are apprehended at the scene of a crime, they are charged, booked, and jailed. That is the due process most of us would receive whether we actually were guilty or not. In a police officer’s case, he will not be charged, or booked, or jailed until the investigation [such as it is] is completed.
How about some equality and they extend the same treatment that the rest of us get to abusive and violent cops?
FlipYrWhig
@Fridaynext: Yes, and at Stonewall the fight was _against the police_. If other non-protesters just started fucking up a Duane Reade on the next block, that wouldn’t be treated as a great moment in social justice history either.
Citizen Alan
@Patricia Kayden:
Dr. King also had the advantage of being able to say “you can deal with me or you can deal with Malcolm X.”
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Black Baltimore has a lot of legitimate grievances. There are also opportunists piggybacking on legitimate grievances to smash and grab. I don’t think it’s helpful to lump those into a single phenomenon. Some people like to fuck shit up when the police are distracted. That’s not protest and to me it’s not “understandable” either.
Mandalay
Obama’s speech today was excellent, and I’m really glad that he used the jarring words “spine snapped”.
Over two weeks after the killing we still have not heard from Baltimore Police on how and why it happened. They know, and they are still not telling.
dedc79
The band Deer Tick (yes, that’s really their name) has a good song called Baltimore Blues No. 1
Fair Economist
@japa21:
Oh, definitely they know, because the history shows they have. The Tulsa race riots, the Rosewood massacre, assaulting the North Carolina statehouse during reconstruction – racist whites have done for worse for far less on many occasions, some still within living memory. Never mind the whole slave trade itself, with millions killed and enslaved just to make money.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@FlipYrWhig:
Right, but the problem is they they’re already lumped in as a single phenomenon in the popular imagination, like it or not. That’s why people like Face complain about the protesters “not helping themselves.” And, as many other people brought up, black rioting is seen as much scarier than white rioting.
If you can figure out a way to get the media to separate the two and not talk about the protests as somehow being the cause of the riots, I’m all ears.
Gravenstone
@Waysel:
A bit trite, but I saw this on FB last night and thought it fit; “Saying the looters represent all the protesters is the same as saying the Westboro Baptist Church represents all Christians”
Paul in KY
@FlipYrWhig: What’s a ‘Duane Reade’?
Paul in KY
@Fair Economist: Draft riots in NYC back in 1863.
Betty Cracker
@Paul in KY: Pharmacies in NYC (and perhaps other places).
Heliopause
Why yes, TV pundits, you’re right, there are a lot of unanswered questions here, but you seem to have forgotten the two primary ones: How did Freddie Gray die and why is nobody in a particular hurry to find out?
Uncle Ebeneezer
@Xantar: Also, too: there was another guy named Malcolm X who was using a very different method of protest at the exact same time as MLK. I read somewhere that King acknowledged that he needed Malcolm and the Panthers more threatening presence in order to have any chance for his own non-violent approach to be taken seriously.
Whoops I see Citizen Allan beat me to it.
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: Thank you, Betty!
Mandalay
@Heliopause:
This. Why aren’t politicians and folks in the media going ballistic that twelve days after his murder the cops still haven’t come close to offering any explanation for his death?
At least the DOJ are finally investigating, so Baltimore PD better make sure that their web of lies can’t be broken.
Ben Cisco
Zandar,
The only thing I can say in response to your posting is: The afflicted will never be comforted until the comfortable become afflicted.
There is an almost sociopathic determination on behalf of the larger society to ignore this issue until it literally blows up in their faces. The only reason for any attention at this point is a) property damage and b) potential for uncomfortable train rides for the Villagers. It. Is. Sickening.
Howlin Wolfe
@Face: Who are you directing this rather abstract inquiry at? The looters? The Baltimore community that is demonstrating, which has no police power to stop it? The cops are trying their best, but if they can’t stop all the violence, who do you think can? Sure, I agree violence is not the answer. Neither are hurricanes, floods, or tornadoes, but what an unremarkable observation.
Any deeper than that, and it sounds like you are bashing people, i.e., the black community in Balto., for something out of their control.
CzarChasm
(Posted this in another thread as well, to improve exposure0
Hello.
I think I have a good metaphor to help explain the underlying forces involved with the current situation in Baltimore, using The Hulk:
http://czarchasm.livejournal.com/102638.html
What do you think? Does it need work?