Once again the inhumane brutality of the bourgeoisie's thugs, alias police agents (yes, those are the real thugs, not a bunch of people raging because of systematic murder and abuse by the authorities), manages to trigger the just rage of many many thousands across the streets of the cities of the supposedly most powerful state on Earth, totally unable to control its own racist cops.
On Twitter:
→ #BaltimoreUprising
→ #NewYorkCity2Baltimore
→ #BlackLivesMatter
→ #FreddyGray
→ etc.
I don't research any of this stuff and I'm young(less learned). I still think I should post my opinion here, but remember what I wrote in the first sentence. First I have to say I want to stop any type of injustice committed by Police as the next guy. I also want to stop all kinds of injustice and racism, which includes elements in these anti-Police brutality movements.
ReplyDeleteDo I think there's racism and brutality in American Police:
A resounding Yes. Although, In most cases they do good, and should also praise them. What you describe in this post is an exaggeration and generalization.
Do I think the Cop Wilson was motivated by racism in Ferguson?:
For Ferguson I don't think racism was involved and that the cop was in the right. There's little evidence the killing of Micheal Brown was unjustified, let alone that the cop was motivated by racism. When hardcore science became involved it was clear the cop was in self defense. People who think racism is the reason the cop killed Micheal Brown are obviously biased and want that to be true.
Now I'll just make make statements of my opinion.
>The idea that somehow the USA justice system is involved in a racist conspiracy to not find Darren Wilson guilty is simply insane.
>The idea America is an overwhelmingly African-American hating nation is insane. It’s as insane as thinking America is still run by Anglo-Saxon Protestants(it’s quite the opposite). Blamming every problem that faces African-Americans on racism is insane. Constantly Victimising them won’t solve anything.
>Why are people suddenly now obsessed with only blaming the cops and not the criminals? Doesn't that seem a bit backwards? Racism is part of the reason African-Americans take up the majority of America's' prisons. But does that make them all innocent? There's a problem with racism(I'd say mostly profiling, etc. not by law) and we should address it, but it's not the only problem!
There's a serious problem with the worship of gangsters and crime in the African American community, that everyone is too afraid to address. Michael brown robbed a store and beat up a cop, and now he's a hero! I mean for crying out loud have people lost their sense. I guarantee you that if Brown killed Wilson you would have never heard about it. That’s messed up.
If we use a history of racism against African-Americans as an excuse for the ones who commit crimes, I guess we should also blame Julius Caesar for criminals in France or Adolf Hitler for criminals in Jewish communities.
>This sudden movement against police brutality is largely artificial(created by the media). Once again, I’m not saying there isn't Police brutality. Just saying these movements aren’t grass-roots underdog movements. They have the support of popular culture in America and in a sense the establishment.
>African-Americans are ideologically more homogenous than any racial group in America. Over 90% vote Democrat. Look back at the case with OJ Simpson. African-Americans siding with OJ because he was African-American was why it became a race thing. Their reaction to Ferguson, etc. is similar for obvious reasons. I don’t understand why people don’t discuss this. The idea that White-Americans opinions are based on race is partly true but not as true as it is for African-Americans.
It's easy for you as white person to ignore the reality of the black community (and other minorities like latinos, natives). The reality is that the black community has never seen the end of slavery and segregation (formal improvements yes but the harsh racist colonial reality persists). For example, check this: http://forwhatwearetheywillbe.blogspot.com/2012/02/slavery-after-slavery-after-slavery.html
DeleteThe US private prison system is a true slave system, where most victims are blacks.
For example, blacks and whites use marihuana about the same but the vast majority of arrests and imprisonment for this arbitrary reason are blacks.
For example, blacks in the 50s segregated USA did not benefit from the housing "miracle" that basically gave a very decent home in property to most whites.
As for the rest:
AFAIK Michael Brown did nothing of what you say: he was falsely accused. Police has the upper hand in this for as long as the media primarily reports their version (and they do: there's no free mass media in the West, it's all owned by some four oligarchs), the judges and juries believe their word over anything else.
This is something that I'm most familiar in the case of Spain (a US vassal and copycat state in most aspects). And beware, because here the targets of police abuse used to be minorities like Basques and immigrants but today it's happening across the board. Worse: even more restrictive laws, against the most basic human rights, are being passed to ensure that the police state rules unchallenged.
"Why are people suddenly now obsessed with only blaming the cops"...
Because people is awakening to the reality they suffer of constant police harassment, brutality and militarization (today US police is more heavily armored than the US Army). It's true that police terrorism uses to target mostly minorities (easy picks to fill the slave camps you call prisons) but it is becoming more and more evident that they are also ultra-violent against whites when these protest, for example in the Occupy Movement.
Voting democrat? Actually most blacks surely abstain because they know the system is heavily rigged against them and the USA has one of the highest abstention rates through the World. Voting dem is just the lesser evil for a hopeful minority of blacks but it doesn't really matter in most cases (you tell me what's the difference between Clinton and Bush: nothing!, the only one slightly original is Sanders but he will be surely displaced one way or another, including state murder if he manages to rally enough support to challenge Bush or reach the White House).
...
...
Delete"This sudden movement against police brutality is largely artificial(created by the media)".
Not at all: the media is systematically silent and protects the cops. It is created by the Internet or more exactly in the Internet by actual individual action (video-recording partly, viral spread of evidence against the propaganda). Eventually mass media can't remain silent and credible, so they have to report.
I don't think the Simpson affair and the police murder of one after another minority person just because they are not white (they also murder latinos, mind you) can be compared in any way. There were no riots nor protests of any sort in the Simpson case, it was totally a media thing (in fact I barely know who's that Simpson guy but seems he has a high profile in your country).
The real issue is class war and most blacks are in the working class (or the lumpen, which is where workers end when they can't pay the bills). The black mafia is petty mafia, always subservient to white mafias like the Italian or the Jewish ones. And of course to the big mafia of white-controlled Big Capital. There is also police mafia, mind you, including unions that appear to defend the "right" of cops to murder or beat senseless whoever they want (usually blacks but not necessarily so).
There's a lot of never solved racism in this but it is more than that: it is about the police state, it is about who controls the cops, if anyone.
“AFAIK Michael Brown did nothing of what you say: he was falsely accused.”
ReplyDeleteThere’s videotape and Darren Wilson was beaten. If it wasn’t Brown then who? What evidence do you have Wilson killed Brown because of racism?
“For example, blacks in the 50s segregated USA did not benefit from the housing "miracle"”
I agree past discrimination has caused blacks today to be in a worse situation. Today I think racism affects African-Americans more so in a mental way. The way they and other Americans think about themselves is largely shaped on their past in America, and it’s hurting them. These things are root causes as to why so many are committing crimes and struggle financially.
Although they are still committing crimes and deserve punishment. In some cases they’re mistreated by Police and wrongly convicted, but certainly not most. For an individual who commits a crime, past events in his life(were their parents criminals, etc.) isn’t a good enough excuse to get out of prison.
Police brutality and racism are problems, and so is the culture black men grow up in that causes them to commit crimes. We have at least two problems.
“The US private prison system is a true slave system, where most victims are blacks”
Except in most cases the inmates deserve to be there. Yes, some don’t, but that isn’t enough to call US prison slavery. The difference with our opinions seem to be: You think racism in America is much worse than I do.
“The black mafia is petty mafia, always subservient to white mafias like the Italian or the Jewish ones.”
There is no sole black mafia. It’s 1000s of different gangs all over the country and worship of the badass. It’s a culture most African-Americans are influenced by, which is why it’s much worse than any mafia. This culture is the main reason so many are in prison, and even a cause for economic issues.
“And of course to the big mafia of white-controlled Big Capital.”
“There is also police mafia, mind you, including unions that appear to defend the "right" of cops to murder or beat senseless whoever they want (usually blacks but not necessarily so). ”
Are you afraid to say there’s a crime problem with African-Americans?
“Not at all: the media is systematically silent and protects the cops.”
You must not be watching the news. I’m not going to give you 100s of article of evidence. Every other second it’s “white man kills black unarmed man”. They’ve been looking for these stories since Ferguson.
Look: I'm not following the cases in such detail and passion as you do. But I remember well that there was no evidence at all for the framed accusations of Michael Brown: it was all police cover-up, as usual. The real problem anyhow is that it's not an isolated incident: it happens once and again because people like you believe that police have a license to kill, that just because they wear a uniform they are beyond all standards of common sense and professionalism, when actually they must be held to much higher standards than a civilian precisely for that reason.
DeleteIn the USA police kills much much more people than in Europe (and Europe has double the population). Most of those victims are minorities, because the system, including people like you think that just because he's black and because police were the ones who killed him, it's right. Murder is never right but it's doubly wrong when its perpetrated by those who are supposed from protect us from murder precisely. But even with a random gunner like that Cuban vigilante of Florida with fake German name who murdered an unarmed kid: he totally got away!
"We have at least two problems".
I understand that most of that "black criminality" is actually just racist ("racial") profiling: black people are much more likely to get caught (or often even framed just so police can pretend they are doing their job, filling their quota of arrests, as with Stalin's quota for gulag deportations) and much more likely to be severely punished for the same offense than whites. There may be a tiny bit that is cultural and a bigger motivation caused by deprivation (when you are nobody and have nothing you still have to survive somehow) but most is just racist profiling and racist persecution.
Recently there was a viral video in which a white man pretended to rob a car in a major street. He was like that for a long time (30 mins or more) without a single person calling to police or doing anything about. Then the performers repeated the scene with a black man: police arrived in minutes and brutalized the actor. Sadly I don't have the link right now but that's experimental science!
"... in most cases the inmates deserve to be there".
I don't believe it. Of course there are a few that are actual criminals but in many cases they are just there recruited like in the old day of Jim Crow by the local sheriff to fill a quota and make sure that prisons, private prisons, like slave plantations of old, are profitable. Whoever thought about making prisoners profitable was really sick!
The USA has the highest prisoner per capita ratio on Earth. That's not normal: it's just wrong. But then the cops who actually murder people get away... because they have a uniform and, like the marines abroad, it is a patriotic duty to back them blindly, stupidly, sheepishly yet so arrogantly.
"Are you afraid to say there’s a crime problem with African-Americans?"
DeleteI don't think that there is such a "problem". I've walked the Bronx, Loisaida and the deep country of Virginia and never saw it. I saw many wretched people, some drug dealers and such... sometimes black, sometimes not. Nothing I can't see in my hometown and it is the same thing: minorities are pushed to the edge and take most of the lumpen positions but then again also police acts racistly and with undue violence way too often, triggering protests. Luckily here death incidents are much rarer and, when they happen, are usually in the context of political repression (rubber bullets kill and maim more here than lead ones - but they do not kill more than in the USA and not with the racist profile we see in your country).
However such abuses cause an uproar and I have reported several here as well. I don't see any reason not to mention those from the USA or any other country, more so when we are just a province of the USA without even the right to vote.
"You must not be watching the news".
I don't watch TV, I get better and faster info via the Internet. By the time certain issues hit the waves (if they do at all) they are already old news in the Net. And that's the case.
"They’ve been looking for these stories since Ferguson".
Maybe it's because the issue is very hot and Ferguson was just a few months ago. How many people have police killed since then? Just from memory at least four or six, plus several other cases of videos of totally brutal gratuitous beatings.
Are you denying that there is a problem of brutality, of impunity, of crime in fact, in the US police? I think you are.
One thing that I saw in the USA and you don't see that much over here is homeless people sleeping in the streets. A friend of mine (white, elderly, not affiliated to any organization) from whom I got most of the first hand info on stuff like Mike Brown, the calamitous problems of fracking or the "9/11 Truth" graffiti apparently being everywhere because police doesn't even bother anymore deleting it, etc. (mostly the same stuff I read online but with some more gritty details) commented the last time she came to Bilbao: "something that always surprises me when I come to Europe is not seeing the streets filled with people sleeping". In the USA that is a chronic problem and it's surely tightly related to criminality because for many drug-dealing or whatever they do is probably the only way to pay a rent and feed their families. Here there is still some welfare and that keeps most desperate people (there are way too many) away from crime (or suicide or whatever).
DeleteIt's been nice discussing with you. There's isn't much more to discuss. We can only go in circles from here. I don't pay much attention to current events(I don't watch the news either) but did have an opinion on this so that's why I posted. I'll keep reading this blog.
ReplyDelete→ http://rt.com/usa/259757-iraq-veteran-police-custody/
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think? Will you also blame "black criminality"? Will you stand by the cops again or by the murdered war veteran?
Or what about this:
ReplyDelete→ http://rt.com/usa/260293-jackson-sues-cleveland-police/
?!
How does it fit with your belief that "in most cases the inmates deserve to be there". Police framing up, particularly of black men, is extremely common. As I mentioned above, they have to fill their repression quotas, much like Stalinist gulag recruiters.
It's American Gulag, man!
What do people in Spain and Europe in general think of this issue?
ReplyDelete"What do you think?"
I'm glad those articles didn't mention race, unlike every other news article recently. The articles don't appear to be biased to me at all making them a novelty.
The guy being framed is an example of Police injustice. I wouldn't be surprised if race had something do with Mr. Jackson being framed, but there's no prove.
The guy who died in jail was a big guy, which is probably why they sent in so many cops to hold him down. He didn't respond to the cops, a possible signal of dis respect.
The cops should have listened to him when he was pleading for help. And when they did it was too late and not enough.
The cops should have been more lenient with him and listened more carefully to his pleas. I agree the cops in this case were too rough and maybe in some people's minds abusive. There's no convincing evidence race had anything to do with it though. In summary my opinion is the cops were wrong and deserve serious punishment. It's a very sad story.
To me it seems the cops had self-esteem issues. They wanted to be tough and exert their dominance on the veteran. They may have assumed everything he said was rebellious and didn't listen carefully. This is happens often with teachers, parents, coaches, etc when with trouble makers. This case doesn't look like an extreme example of brutality. It could be but I don't see prove.
Your logic is sick, fascist: you are justifying murderous cops, when these officers, precisely because of their institutionalized position of power should be held much more responsible of their actions than any random civilian. Each time a cop or bunch of cops bully a citizen is a blemish on the legitimacy of the state, the law and the justice system: it cannot be tolerated, much less defended.
DeleteIn theory cops are there to protect citizens, not to murder them, hence each time one of them goes overboard, he must be very severely punished, more so than a civilian. Instead in your sick logic it is the other way around: civilians are nobodies without rights and cops, civil servants in theory, must be protected from very legitimate public criticism and the weight of justice because, you know, they have "issues" (well, more reason to held them responsible and the whole police apparatus, seemingly unable to hire psychologically stable staff, only bullies).
Did you know that New York City Police doesn't hire people with an IQ above X (not sure right now but maybe 110)? Why? Because high IQ people are generally more sensible and nit-picky about legality and human rights and that's a problem for their fascist logic. But, with IQ test or not, in general police corps tend to hire psychologically unstable former school bullies, because that's what they want: thugs, not civil servants.
As for the race issue, suffice to say that, regardless of emphasizing or ignoring it, it's obvious for anyone in which racial category the victims of these horrible abuses belong, right? And isn't that a most serious issue? It is. Of course police and the judiciary system can also be brutal and unfair to whites but the frequency is a lot smaller, so sociologically and ethno-politically speaking there is a race issue here and a big one indeed.
Does this video mean all Black men are raciest?
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/WNFTfR6WycA
I don't think it does. Almost all I've meet are not raciest at all. Although it reveals an extreme of the way liberals think of race in America. Just like the KKK is an extreme of the way conservatives think of race in America.
Most people don't understand how complicated "racism" is. I'd say the majority of Americans have some form of a raciest tendency.
I totally agree with racism towards African-Americans you discuss. I just think you overreact and appear to ignore other forms of racism.
That only shows the simplicity of some people. Of course anyone can be racist and I'd dare say we all are to some extent at subsconscious level (nobody is 100% color-blind but that applies to some extent, more mildly surely, even for hair color, as you as red hair may have noticed). And racism or xenophobia can be relatively "color-blind" as well, and be articulated along religious or other identity issues, for example in Palestine or even in Europe, where black Christians or agnostics are no doubt much better integrated than white Muslims.
DeleteWhat I could appreciate in that and other less biased videos is that there have been lots of white people mobilizing in solidarity with the black community. It's not a white vs black issue (unlike some people may believe at both sides of the ethnic divide) but an issue of human rights, an issue of police accountability and then of course also a racism issue, an issue of racial profiling of holding every single black man, particularly, guilty until proven otherwise (or even beyond any possible proof).
And what about this: http://rt.com/usa/265639-mckinney-cops-pool-party-girl/ ?
ReplyDeleteWhite party teenager: Everyone who was getting put on the ground was black, Mexican, Arabic,” said Brooks, who shot the footage, and is white himself, according to inquisitr.com. “[The cop] didn’t even look at me. It was kind of like I was invisible.”
It is clearly a most serious problem of institutionalized racism and also of low standards when recruiting and forming officers, who seem unable to even deal with mere kids without resorting to outrageous and definitely racist violence.