Linconshire, would that be the county that recorded the highest Brexit vote? I think your polling may have some methodological flaws.
It wasn't Tear Gas... it was simply gas that made you tear up... Sounds like one of those 'alternative facts'... Tweet— Twitter API (@user) date
I lived in Boston for 14 years and Lincoln for 2, my experience of Lincolnshire was very different to yours. When I left Boston in 2010 it was effectivey segregated, there were British bits and 'Eastern European' bits, British pubs and Polish pubs, even the sports centre had nights when British people came and played five-a-side, then Polish nights. It was no surprise to me that Boston voted most strongly for Brexit as I'd grown up around an entire demographic of people who blamed 'them' for everything from petty crime to their own unemployment.
Is that llike using White Phoshporous as a 'smoke generator'? Secondary effects are purely coincidental.
@fix-the-spade , I think something odd has happened with your quote: you've actually quoted @boiled_elephant but for some reason the post has @DXR_13KE 's name against it. Weird.
A bigot is someone who doesn't tolerate difference of opinion. Voicing opinions, or disagreeing with opinions, does not make someone a bigot. People often try to flip this around to mean just that... when it suits them. i.e. I do not like your opinion so therefore you are a bigot. You do not fall into this category. If you are going to have a discussion perhaps you should all agree on the definitions first? That's the only issue here as far as I can tell. I miss the good old days when we were all going to die from the virus, or murder hornets.
Focusing back on systematic racism in the police specifically, somebody has already done some work collating sources:
God, I love that film. I appreciate the point, but I don't think it's a sufficient plausible explanation for non-white cops joining the stonewalling against inquiries into police brutality. I think the logical conclusion is that police brutality, and the subsequent hushing up of it, is not a racial issue so much as a police brutality issue. So far, I'm suspecting that where police behave badly and then cover each other, the mindset is not "police vs black people" but "police vs everyone else". I take your point about those experiences and - dare I use the term - microaggressions. I'm wary of how much the concept of microaggressions is overused and misused by buffoons, but in the case of interacting with middle aged to old people across ethnic lines, I can well believe that they're very much a real and routine thing. On the infographic, though, I don't entirely agree. Most below the line are somewhat harmful or crass things that I think it is nevertheless disingenuous and tacky to characterize as "white supremacy" - I prefer the term from the earlier video, 'implicit bias'. Implicit bias and microaggressions are valid concepts (though still very prone to misapplication and abuse). White supremacy is the top portion of the graph. But I suppose I'm arguing semantics at this point. Guys...I'm sorry, but I'm going to actually have to excuse myself from this discussion for the forseeable future. I feel more than a little guilty for doing so, because it is just on the cusp of getting really interesting and involved, and I'm eager to see it expand into a fully rounded debate. But as you can probably infer from the time I'm posting this, I'm losing sleep over it. I've thought about almost nothing other than this thread and this situation for the past 3 days and my brain is eating itself, it's just destroying my nerves. There are two reasons why. The first is that I have pitifully low self-esteem, and I find really frictious debate stressful. I struggle to hold my ground in the face of even the most reasonable and polite dissent. The second is that for some reason, I place very high value on other peoples' opinions of me. I don't know why, and I'm working on it. These debates are, among other things, a form of exposure therapy for me. None of this is your fault, of course, and I'm not blaming others for my fragility. It's my own fault I charge quixotically into big contentious arguments with paper-thin emotional armour. I deeply want to be a contrarian and a nonpartisan critical thinker, because I consider it a vital service. My favourite film is 12 Angry Men, my favourite thinkers are Christopher Hitchens, Clives James and Stephen Fry. My favourite philosopher is Eliezer Yudkowsky. I'm obsessed with critical thinking and the process of challenging received wisdom and prevailing fashions of thought. I idolize people who have the courage to ask difficult questions. But it ain't me. I'm a wet flannel. I want to just leave you with my foundational texts, the pieces of media that galvanized the core of my fixation on throwing myself into difficult subjects that I'm unequipped to navigate, because I sycophantically worry that you're all thinking I'm some horrible racist or an unwitting patsy of the alt-right. And because they might be of interest. The first is the essay What You Can't Say by Paul Graham, a deliberately abstract and nonpartisan sketch of the eternal recurring problem of moral fashion and a short manual on how to identify it. It is of benefit to absolutely everyone regardless of their beliefs, because it is a pure crystallised piece of rationality at its best. The second is Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter fanfiction. No, really. It's a stealth delivery vehicle for the entire subject of rationality, and it's both hilarious and deeply educational. Yudkowsky is a strong advocate of rationality and skepticism and has been a huge influence on me. If you don't think a Harry Potter fanfiction advocated by some racist turd on the internet can possibly be worth reading, just go and have a look in spite of yourself. You'll be surprised. The third is Jonathan Pie's video 'President Trump: How and Why'. Like most people, I was aghast and bewildered by Trump's victory, and was grasping at straws like "racism", "sexism" and "boomers" to explain it when I saw this video. It so perfectly attacked my entire way of engaging politically with others, and particularly with people who disagreed with me, that I was left reeling and had to rebuild an entirely new approach to discussion and politics. If it seems like I'm derailing the thread, take solace in the fact that I will not do so again. I'm leaving these here simply because I love them, and to provide, for anyone who cares to examine it, an explanation of my motives in constantly questioning and doubting the presented narrative of systemic racism that drives the Black Lives Matter movement. It reflects a general pattern in my intellectual behaviour, not a specific hangup on this subject. I am still undecided on the subject. It isn't obvious to me if BLM are doing more harm or more good in the long run, and it's still very unclear to me whether the police, specifically, have a problem with systemic racism. The more I dig, the less clear-cut the bodies of evidence on both questions become. I shall continue to read the thread in anticipation of new information. Thank you to those that did for taking the time to read my rambling TL;DRs. edit - I didn't see your post until after completing mine, edzieba, but thank you. It is immensely gratifying to see hard data replace conjecture and hearsay, as it always must for anything to be understood.
@boiled_elephant The only one debating is you. Everyone else sees the obvious, which you just can't seem to grasp because you're enamoured with a contrarian explanation. You bring up things like Michael Brown, who was unarmed at the time he was extrajudically executed, but ignore things like allllll the AR-15 toting white mass shooters who were taken in to custody. Yes, there is a culture of brutality in US police, but that brutality is weighted against black people. Due to racism they are more likely to be perceived as criminals, and less value is placed upon their lives. You say you've done a bunch of research, but I've lived it. Not racism, but sectarianism, which has almost exactly the same dynamics. For example, you claimed it's only the memory of racism that persists, which skews our modern view of things. Well, according to that logic sectarianism would no longer persist in Ireland because there have been no overt examples of it since the Good Friday Agreement was signed. Believe me, it persists. Your thinking about all this is just plain wrong, and you're going to have to trust me when I say that you have no idea what you're talking about, and it's tiresome to argue with you because 1) Where do I even start to try to penetrate your ignorance? and 2) No one has time to address all the points in your 15-20 paragraph long posts.
Oh, go on then, just one more for the road. I can't resist overt rudeness. I never claimed to. I have been very open about the limits of my experience and insight, and have been receptive to new information. With facts, old boy. Edzieba, in the last post above, has done more to change my mind in one swoop than the rest of this thread combined, because it's an infodump of beautiful, pertinent facts that support his argument. You? You've just been rude. That doesn't change my mind. Luckily for you in your abject laziness, others are willing to try, and I am always willing to listen.
I'm rude because you're to lazy to educate yourself, instead expecting everyone else to do it for you. You're on the internet, educate yourself instead of derailing a discussion.
You know what, I've had enough of your attitude. Your posts indicate an assumed air of rude superiority, that you are the only one in the world who understands true human nature and that you alone can save it. YOU are the one who comes across as a bigot, refusing the potential validity of other peoples' opinions. @boiled_elephant has NOT shown 'ignorance'. If anything, he's clearly shown his thought process and that he's trying to learn - an admirable quality. I also admire his restraint in his response to you. There is no doubt in my mind that he also wants a fair world (a man can dream, after all).
Someone mind pointing out which of these is the "bad apple". Because to me it looks like the police just potentially murdered a 75 year old man and didn't bother to even check if he was fine. EDIT: Police are saying he "tripped" Tweet— Twitter API (@user) date **** the police
This is an inflection point, a rare point in history where we can gain momentum and foster aspiration for achievable positive change. Now just isn't the time for anyone to hog the discourse with huge posts, questioning the validity of a problem that is obvious to everyone else around the globe. A desire to learn is admirable, but so is the ability to read the room.
