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I think abolishing police is stupid! That just makes no sense because without police every prisoners will be released and the next thing they will shut down all prison systems!
No, I disagree with you because you are starting with the assumption that Black people did not care, and that is not true at all. Black people have always cares, but haven't always had access to opportunity.
How are schools funded? Is it property tax? How are the school districts formed? Do they include all of Chicago-land or are the Northside burbs another school district.
I live in California, our schools are funded with property taxes (mostly). Or property prices are informed by the long tail of redlining, so the schools that need the most resources are way underfunded compared to the neighboring districts. And property tax is a not very stable funding source - as we also have Prop 13 to contend with.
While the official version is gone, black people in poor neighborhoods have the police roaming often and "encountering" people out and about. For example, in my city, police officers frequently patrol poor neighborhoods and stop people for not having a light on their bike. This can lead to arrests in a lot of cases, but the initial stop was not an important infraction. In my neighborhood (more affluent) that doesn't happen. So even without formal policies, there are patterns that lead to a lot of police contact. There was an expose on Miami where the police were stopping the employees of a convenience store, ticketing them for trespassing, at their place of employment. To top it off, one poor guy was stopped 100 times! You know the police officers knew who he was, they just abused their power to hassle him and detain him.
The thing is, each of these incidents you (as in the collective) would like to call exceptions and not evidence of patterns. But these are the patterns that make it difficult to move forward. Systemic issues.
What makes you think that no one cares about Black lives lost to senseless violence? One of the problems is that police are so busy working on minor useless infractions, they spend very little time working on the murders. There is a really good book on this exact issue called Ghettoside - and how police departments investigate these crimes, and the impact on the communities they serve.
In Chicago, schools are funded mainly through property taxes, and the cities and suburbs fund theirs separately. Chicago homes are taxed at a significantly lower rate because the city gleans so much money from commercial properties, which they have in much greater quantity than do the suburbs. Dissatisfaction with high property taxes here is legendary, I myself pay an annual amount that is between 3 and 3.5% of my home's value, but plan to escape to a lower-tax area as soon as possible. Some AA suburbs are paying between five and eight percent annually, due to property values not rebounding after the 2007 crash, and unfunded pension costs continuing to rise; Illinois is going through some turbulent times now and is expected to get worse.
But it's silly for us to debate what "blacks" are doing as if they are a monolithic group. African Americans are similar to other racial groups in that they cover an entire spectrum of beliefs, experiences, wealth levels, education, etc.; all one can do is look at overall statistics and try to draw some conclusions based on them. One thing that is monolithic, has been their support (mid-90% level, traditionally) for the Democratic party, which has not apparently served them very well. Most cities with high AA populations, are typically universally controlled by Democrats, and are the very places you cite as having extremely oppressive policing, segregation, poverty, low number of opportunities, etc.. I rack my brain trying to figure out why this is, while Trump, who has been in office for three-and-a-half years, gets the blame for problems that have been plaguing the black community for many decades - and with the failure of "moderate" Democratic leadership, you now want to turn to the policies of the FAR left? At risk of repeating myself, if you think you have problems now with professionally trained police forces, just wait until you turn it over to the amateurs, or worse yet, "nobody". You ain't seen nothing yet in terms of crime, anarchy, gang control, etc., look to Beirut in the 1980's for a harbinger.
But it's silly for us to debate what "blacks" are doing as if they are a monolithic group. African Americans are similar to other racial groups in that they cover an entire spectrum of beliefs, experiences, wealth levels, education, etc.; all one can do is look at overall statistics and try to draw some conclusions based on them.
Are you trying to tell a black woman what it's like to be black in America?
I hate to say this but immigrants from Asia and other places arrive in the U.S. dirt poor and within a generation or two they've overtaken the poor residents of the 'hood' or 'ghetto' or whatever you want to call it.
Poor whites and poor blacks often have one thing in common - a disregard for education and chaotic personal lives that lead to chaotic home lives for kids. Immigrants often do better on those fronts and know that the sky is the limit for their kids if they make the right choices.
Being an outsider in this country I'm more than aware of the elites little Ivy League mafia and how hard it is to crack into that elite as a total outsider if you can't afford to take all the right internships, use your parents' networks to get the foot in the door etc., but it's certainly possible regardless of your background to achieve a solid middle-class lifestyle in this country. The failure to achieve that is not race or ethnicity based, the causes are found in families and communities.
I think most people would agree with the statement in bold. Looking at the history of black people in America, it isn't surprising that the family structure is far less intact than that of Asian families. This bit of observation has been bandied about for as long as I can remember, and for the most part it is used as the "evidence" of black American's shortcomings. The fact that families have ethnic and racial histories can't be so easily dismissed, black families are all carrying the burden of their American history. And because that's an inconvenient fact when attempting to compare them to Asians, it's usually downplayed as though all families--or communities, have equal opportunity.
Families and communities. No one doubts that they are two of the most important facets in any attempt to have a decent upbringing. Strong family ties and a community which allows a continuation of that good upbringing serves as an asset to both the resident, and the community. So, take a good look at the state of families and community in America's ghettos, and then ask yourself if that long failed social dynamic, coupled with dilapidated housing, schools, stores, churches, streets and sidewalks--are the stuff of a strong family foundation.
Most Asian countries have their own version of the underdog, an often overlooked aspect of their widely diversified cultural differences. We tend to lump them together for the purpose of making a comparison to black American culture, but many in the Asian American immigrant population aren't realizing the American dream either, as discrimination often blocks them in the same way blacks experience a subtle and not so subtle dismissive attitude from, prospective employers, police, schools, and communities.
Another poster called attention to the fact that few white Americans ever see a real ghetto, and even fewer would want to. So, the myths serve as truth, but the real truth is found in those boring pages of various university studies--that almost no one reads. The fact that few in the white population knows much about Asians, blacks, American natives, or any minority citizens, speaks volumes about the underlying causes of American civil unrest.
That’s hilarious. It’s clear the “defund the police” people aren’t even on the same page or have the same interpretation with how to do it.
A social worker can’t stop a home invasion or gang shootings, hell not even police can stop gang shootings.
Remember the 2015 Baltimore Freddy Grey riots? Guess what, the cops stopped showing up and the crime spiked so high and so fast it would make your head spin.
You want to see how bad crime can get in America? Defund the police and you’ll see.
Has anyone here or elsewhere claimed social workers should be charged with stopping violent crimes? That is simply a strawman argument and reduces the credibility of anything else you might have to add to the conversation.
Cut police budgets, and those of every other governmental agency at every level and reimagine and rebuild from a new starting point.
Anyone notice that this flood of police-hate, based on one event which likely was not race based but may have been because of previous at-work interactions between the two principals, is police-ism? Hate all cops because of one. Isn't racism disliking or disrespecting all of one kind because they're all similar? So all men and women in blue uniforms are the new black then.
But libs typically aren't very bright, no matter their IQ, and their sense of irony is an empty bucket.
If you believe that what you call "police-hate" is based on one event you haven't been paying attention for the last four hundred years. Or, for those with short memories, the last four months.
Defund the police is about reducing the things the police are called for.
Listen, no one is happy when the police show up, when they are not happy they act in a manner that makes the police not happy...
So, there are a BUNCH of things police are called for that can be bumped to social services.
Police do not need to be chasing runaways, truancy cases, or even things like rape. Those types of things can be done by others, who can also address the social and societal issues for those individuals.
It would make the perps/victims happier AND the police happier. It would reduce training the police need. Right now they have to play psychologist, martial arts expert, sociologist, marksman... etc.
Think about it.
If I come home from vacation and find my house had been broken into, I don't need someone with a gun, and combat training, I need an investigator.
If I am home and someone breaks into my house, I need someone with a gun and combat training.
Edited to add: Just found out that my scenario above ^. Some localities already do that.
Some good points.
Do you have a suggestion regarding the following? This isn't hypothetical; this happens and is written about in the local Las Vegas newspaper.
Imagine you go out for a weekly shopping trip - the grocery store, maybe a Costco, the bank, maybe get your haircut. Errands. As you were leaving your neighborhood, you noticed a U-Haul style van parked on the side of the road with some shady-looking characters inside; in fact, they are eye-balling you as you go do your errands.
You return home and discover that U-Haul is now in your driveway. The front door of your house is open and these shady-looking characters are moving boxes into your house! You confront them, and they say they rented the house, paid the landlord in cash, and are moving in. You tell them you own the house & to get the heck out. They ignore you.
You call the police and the police arrive; you tell them what happened and that you own the house and you want these scofflaws ejected. The shady-looking crew tells the Police they rented the house, paying the landlord in cash. The Police ask who is the landlord and ask to see a lease; they produce a hand-written short lease, replete with spelling and grammatical errors, and tell the Police the landlord is a guy they met. No, they don't have a phone number of contact information.
The above happens here in Las Vegas - by some estimates many hundreds of times each year, although most are done in unoccupied homes.
The Police tell you, "This is a civil matter; go to court to seek an eviction if you wish."
You reply, "No, this is a CRIMINAL matter; this is MY house, I LIVE here, and these people are TRESPASSING!"
Today, in Las Vegas, we have hundreds of such squatters who commandeer a home because they can do so with impunity, knowing the police will not step in. Many homeowners want the police to take on even MORE responsibility - enforcing homeowners' rights against squatters. Homeowners want MORE funding for the police rather than LESS
Do you have any thoughts on a practical way to deal with this type of issue?
If you believe that what you call "police-hate" is based on one event you haven't been paying attention for the last four hundred years. Or, for those with short memories, the last four months.
The point stands that we're experiencing this unrest on a premise that is at this point little more than speculation - that George Floyd died as a result of racism.
It seems like whenever a white person does something to a black person we're supposed to immediately and automatically just run with the notion that it *must* be racism..whereas when a black person does something to a white person this possibility is seen as the most far-fetched of notions that needs to be proven beyond any reasonable doubt.
I actually read something about that mentality before the George Floyd incident. And it was said that this could be seen as actually racist in itself because it basically assumes that for a white person to do harm to a black person there must be something fundamentally 'wrong' or 'evil' about that white person. But when a black person does harm to white people it is somehow seen as a 'normal' consequence of black behavioral patterns and thus not worthy of any deeper questioning.
Interesting analysis. This may be behind a paywall (sorry).
I disagree, Stanford did a study and found that police officers, verified with analysis from body cam data, spoke to Black people less respectfully than White people.
And here we have data, local for me, of police officers arresting black people 4X more. And let's be clear, the Bay Area is like 7% Black on the whole, and there are very few Black majority neighborhoods.
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