Couldn’t you then just as easily call it discrimination or something equally as disgraceful ,rather than racism.
Sure, but what difference does it make?
Discrimination covers everything ,breaking things down to individual isms seems to pit different groups against each other .We forget that we have all been discriminated against by those with the power.
You can be racist against someone of your own ethnicity. You can be against towards someone of your own gender. You can be classist against someone of your own socioeconomic class.
To me racism and sexism are just labels on specific types of discrimination. In some cases it’s ingrained in personal behaviour/attitudes, but in many cases it’s engendered in societal systems. However, they are not mutually exclusive.
Just because we may all have been discriminated against those with power, doesn’t mean some don’t suffer more, or less. Doesn’t mean that we don’t have those ingrained prejudices that we should wipe out. I think the point that many try to make about this, especially with regards to stop and search policies, is that structural racism can mean that even though the individual isn’t racist, the system that they are a cog in is racist.
In many situations, the structural/institutional racism can even seep into the individual mindset. If you keep getting told, and it keeps getting reinforced because you search them at a higher rate, that black people and poor people tend to be drug dealers/consumers, then it will inevitably affect your own mindset.
I think the point that @Limiescouse made that you were replying to is very important, because people tend to see race as skin colour, when it’s often on ethnoreligious as well as nationalist lines. Look at British social attitudes towards “Eastern Europeans” for example. They’re white, but they’re seen as inferior. Not only that, they’re seen as all the same, even though they might come from rather different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. They’re all the same. That’s part of the discrimination, and it’s the same type of discrimination we see as racism.
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Look, for those who don’t understand where I’m coming from here. There’s no excuse for his treatment, or his death. But trying to understand “why” it happened in the circumstances and the situation.
If you’ve ever been taken down at gunpoint (yes, I have), you’d understand the simple concept of doing whatever the fuck they tell you to do
There’s the “utopia” in your head where this kind of situation doesn’t happen. Then there’s the “reality” that someone has the barrel of the gun pointed at your center of mass as his partner is dragging you out of your car. you may not understand why, but they’re not fucking around.
It’s terrible how this played out, it’s a shitty situation all-around.
Like I said, that’s not a normal traffic stop. multiple cars engaging a stop at a red light, parked in middle of oncoming traffic and the intersection blocking his car in. None of us know what led up to the incident, the footage starts with two vehicles already parked and officers out of the car with guns drawn…
and for the record, I had done nothing wrong. no charges laid, no fines issued. spend a night in a jail cell for no reason. wrong place, wrong time, May 2007.
Should their miss-interpretation result in a loss of life?
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absolutely not. I don’t condone what happened, at all. nobody should lose their life due to someone else’s actions. not by a cop, or a bar fight, or trampled in a mob. senseless death
At the heart of this is expectation of outcomes from the two parties.
From the onset it (from the footage I’ve seen - and admittedly not from a law enforcement view point) felt like the outcome was predictable - the only unknown was how close to death they could take it.
There were a number of moving parts - group mentality, divergent expectations and power. It is within expectations that maybe a large part of the problem lies. A black guy at night, in a car that may or may not have swerved… vs a police unit looking to make a difference and riding high on the us versus them mentality.
Something the mother said struck me - it was along the lines of “my son’s purpose has be fulfilled” or words to that effect. It speaks to both expectations and hopelessness…
One other thing that is maybe relevant is something that is often cited by A&E doctors/nurses in the UK, i.e. they deal with “worst” 5% of the population for 95% of the time… I’m sure that is the same (possibly worse) for police but surely it has to come into their training to recognize that and mitigate poor outcomes.
100% correct. my neighbor has been a paramedic for decades, he quit working Vancouver region due to this very thing. Keep having to attend the same injection sites and crack shacks to dose the same addict multiple times in the same night. he worked the poorest postal code in the country on a regular basis for years, some of the stories are fucking horrific.
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/going-home-downtown-eastside
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let’s hope nobody listens to N.W.A. over there. they going to cancel rap music? or just white guys singing along to rap music.
Would that be same city of Liverpool that maintains a Museum of Slavery as a means of acknowledging and coming to terms with its involvement in the slave trade?
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@jaffod you nasty slave trader you!
Yes it is and I’m all for people educating themselves on any aspect of history be it on local, national or international levels.
However, I wasn’t born until 1964 and wasn’t complicit in the slave trade. That is why I take zero responsibility for any of it and refuse to self-flagellate over it.
Anyone wishing to own it is free to do so, just not my thing.
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No-one is asking you to self-flagellate.
What is being asked of everyone is to be aware of and to acknowledge the role that the slave trade has had in perpetuating the racism that society still suffers from.
I obviously didn’t participate in slavery, but I have benefited from a society that discriminated against black people. There is no harm in acknowledging that.
We don’t have to feel guilt or apologise, but we do have to part our part in putting society right again. It’s the very least we can do.
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Seems a fair enough outcome if it is approved.
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“The 13,000 kids we exclude from schools we might as well give them the prison sentence then”
What monumental and utter fuckwittery. Leave them in school to throw chairs at my child, great idea, genius. The needs of the few obviously outweigh the needs of the many. Maybe some kind of vocational training is in order but schools don’t exclude kids for a laugh.
Shit parents, plain and simple. Nooooo, it’s society’s fault, certainly social media and without question the government’s fault.
If a child can’t comport themselves with respect, manners and a decent level of attention and achievement when they START school, I’m looking at you mum and dad. (Wait for it)
Really fucking easy to type this when one’s child is bloody marvellous.
I may not understand all the context and I do hate it when people always blame everyone else except themselves nowadays for their problems and sufferings. However, excluding children from school because they have bad behavior or perceived to be difficult etc…isn’t the purpose of school play a big part in shaping the future of the child? And now, only good kids can go to school? Its idealistic but to me, I always believe only having a good education can there be a good chance for children to break the poverty cycle in their generation. So for me, whatever reasons they have, excluding children from school is never going to be good.
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