Something doesn't feel right about BLM

[LostMarbels]

VANDALIZATION OF FEDERAL PROPERTY - WASHINGTON, D.C. | Federal Bureau of Investigation

 

[istodolez]

I'm offended when I see monuments that mark historical events being destroyed.

Presumably you are NOT talking about most of the Confederate statues which were put up across the US in the 1920's to reinforce the myth of "the Lost Cause" and establish white supremacy, right?

I'm offended when the history of my country gets rewritten to conform to the wishes of the most violent people on the Left side of society.

I agree with you on this if we are talking about the non-racist stuff. And that's why I mentioned the French Revolution. One of my favorite spots is St. Denis Basilica north of Paris. The first gothic cathedral ever. It is amazing. All the French kings except one are buried there. After the French Revolution when the Terror started they apparently dug up all the tombs and threw the bodies into a mass grave. Such a loss of history. Apparently they came close to gutting Notre Dame and renaming the "Temple of Reason".

But the bigger lesson is: if we don't heed the disaffected bad things happen. Sure you can blame the bad people for destroying these things, but you have to remember: they don't feel like they have any investment in that history we thought we all valued. And why should they? If you have black people who feel like there's nothing for them in this country (whether YOU agree with that or not) what do you expect will be of value to them among the things YOU value?

That's the whole point! If you don't LISTEN to what people are telling you and you let these problems fester (because you don't see them or whatever) then you WILL experience what history shows us always happens!

I'm offended when businesses feel coerced into changing their names or logos to conform to those violent individuals.

Oh, well, I call that being "decent". If someone were to be offended by something I was doing I would hope that I would change. But you also seem to dislike free market capitalism. Because that is EXACTLY how things get named. It has to APPEAL to a BROAD CUSTOMER BASE. So if you find that you accidentally named your brand something that just so happens to OFFEND a large number of people then you will probably change that brand name.

I'm offended when the mainstream media glorifies the violence from the Left that it used to condemn from the Right.

No one is glorifying the violence on the left. That is your strawman. But that violence cannot be ignored.

That is just "strategy". It is strategic to listen to people who are aggrieved.

Remember what Trump said about the men who came into state capitals a couple weeks ago brandishing fire arms and intimidating law makers to open up the economy in the face of the worst pandemic in a century. He advised we "listen" to what they want.

These same armed men threatening lawmakers got to go home afterwards. Philandro Castille, however, legally carrying a licensed firearm with proper paperwork was gunned down in his car and he wasn't even intimidating lawmakers!

Armed men aimed loaded weapons at US law enforcement in Nevada when Bundy's clan wanted to steal forage from public lands and they got to go home unharmed as well.

The Right's violent acts seem to be kinda "ok" meanwhile black men get killed on the street for counterfeit $20 and selling loose cigs.

Does any of that matter to you?

Yes it does. I've tried ad nauseam to explain it but apparently I can't find simple enough words.

 

[DaisyDay]

That’s why the military is such a great option for low income people seeking to go to college.

Yes, it can be now. Before, blacks were specifically excluded in GI housing and education.

 

[DaisyDay]

Thats like saying that a fish tank full of the same type of fish should all swim in the same direction because they’re all the same type of fish. No some swim to the left, some right, some up, some down, it’s going to be completely random. It just depends on what the fish feels like doing at that particular moment.

Not in the artificial environment of a tank, but in the wild, schools of fish do swim in unison.

 

[DaisyDay]

Perhaps those communities should alter their expectations. You know going to college and figuring out how to pay for it, brings character and strength. Struggle is good for you and NOT and excuse. Especially these days when access to student loans is so available. And universities are trying to get African Americans to come.

Do black college grads make as much as white high school grads yet?

The Republicans fixed it so that those with minor marijuana offenses were ineligible for Pell grants and guaranteed loans. That coupled with stop and frisk laws, made a generation of people unable to afford college easily. Then, too, many for-profit schools prey upon naive teenagers and unsophisticated young adults, saddling them with unforgivable debt and nothing to show.

 

[rturner76]

First of all he wasn’t complying he was refusing to get in the vehicle and second your windpipe isn’t in the back of your neck. You can’t strangle someone from the back of their neck. If his windpipe was being crushed or obstructed he wouldn’t be able to speak.

Yeah, I'm sure he could breathe just fine. When your neck is being crushed by someone putting all of their weight on it, your windpipe is crushed as well. The fact that he could push out some worgs doen not mean he was getting sufficient oxygen. I think that was proven by his DEATH.

Even if he resisted arrest, does that give the police the right to execute him on the spot? Does it give police the right to use non-standard in fact illegal chokehold (Knee on the neck)

Quit justifying murder, it's not right period

 

[gaara4158]

Cultural development doesn't fall neatly into a byproduct of institutional racism. As i said before, statistics consistently show that in the US, Asians outperform whites (as well as other racial groups) both educationally and economically (i.e. income levels). I'm pretty sure we both agree that the reason for their success isn't a pro-Asian bias. You acknowledged this previously:

You’ve got it backwards. It’s not that institutions have a bias toward any particular culture. It’s that different cultures prioritize different aspects of life, while our institutions are geared toward a specific function. That function isn’t anything as overt as “oppress the blacks,” ... usually. It just happens to work better for people who have things that some demographics have more of than others. And that’s natural and not necessarily anyone’s fault, but it’s problematic.

I acknowledge that institutional racism plays a large part in the disparate outcomes for black people in the US, but if i suggest that there could also be a cultural factor at play - such as black people not valuing educational achievement or fostering a hostility towards authority - i would be called a racist by many in these forums. I believe there are these cultural factors present, although i also believe that these cultural behaviors are a natural response to being oppressed and discriminated against for such an extended period of time. That being said, to improve outcomes, we not only need to address institutional racism - either ongoing or historic - but we need to find a way to change that culture. It's a path that begins at reform from the top, building trust, and ultimately involves those in those communities bringing about change in the culture.

What you’re describing is institutional racism. The solutions you prescribe are well and good, so I don’t know why you go to such pains to parse institutional racism from certain cultures thriving better than others in a capitalist democracy. What exactly do you think the forces operating in institutional racism are, if not cultures and institutions?

There needs to be a better dialogue if we're going to get more people into agreement, because even though i am on your side - i believe institutional racism is a big problem that needs to be addressed - i find way many adherents frame the discussion as counterproductive to the end goal.

I think the poor messaging comes partly from the left and the right having two separate definitions of institutional racism, and then naturally framing it either as important or a myth. You can see it happening in this thread. Even you and I aren’t on the same page. Is institutional racism strictly the residual effects of past overtly racist policies, or does it include all of the incompatibilities between certain cultures and modern institutions? I don’t really think the two are entirely extricable, but it seems you’re using the former and I’m using the latter.

 

[rjs330]

Do black college grads make as much as white high school grads yet?

The Republicans fixed it so that those with minor marijuana offenses were ineligible for Pell grants and guaranteed loans. That coupled with stop and frisk laws, made a generation of people unable to afford college easily. Then, too, many for-profit schools prey upon naive teenagers and unsophisticated young adults, saddling them with unforgivable debt and nothing to show.

The cost of college is another topic. Guess what they are run by liberal leftists. Wonder why it costs so much?

 

[gaara4158]

The cost of college is another topic. Guess what they are run by liberal leftists. Wonder why it costs so much?

Because there’s a limit to how much you can charge someone right now, but there’s no limit to how much someone can owe you over time.

 

[istodolez]

Thats like saying that a fish tank full of the same type of fish should all swim in the same direction because they’re all the same type of fish. No some swim to the left, some right, some up, some down, it’s going to be completely random. It just depends on what the fish feels like doing at that particular moment.

Not a very good example. BUT one I'm willing to work with in hopes of helping you better understand the value of statistics or stochastic processes.

Let us take a tank full of fish and measure, at random, the speed and direction of any single fish. Then I repeat that with a different fish. I start to record the speed and direction of the fish. I'm going to assume that all the fish are randomly swimming around so there won't be any specific speed or direction.

After a while I note that MANY of the fish are moving in a specific direction and they have an average speed of "x". I can now infer that something is causing the fish to move in a specific direction and with a specific speed.

So when we go to look at a population and we measure the "income" of a bunch of random samples. After you gather a bunch of data on income you see that there are two "distributions" in income:

NOW, look closely at this. There's some overlap there's some in the "solid" distribution (in our example you find that these are white people) that fall far enough out into the "dashed" distribution (in our example you note that these are black people).

The "null hypothesis" is "THESE TWO DISTRIBUTIONS ARE NOT SIGNIFICANTLY DIFFERENT" and we test against that. The null hypothesis is that there is no real difference between income of white and black people on average. That the reason these two distributions look sorta separate is random chance in our sampling or some error.

There are statistical tests to tell us if these two distributions are actually DIFFERENT. In intro statistics this is called a t-test for these two distributions but I'll spare you the gory details.

At the end of the day you have collect enough data to see if you can see a siginificant difference between the two distributions. IF THE NUMBERS SHOW A SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE then you can REJECT THE NULL HYPOTHESIS.

Now in the case of income that's probably going to be a skewed distribution meaning that you won't just do a simple t-test (which assumes a normal distribution) but rather a comparison based on the median income so you compare the medians of the distribution rather than the means. The math is a bit different but the concept is roughly the same.

 

[BNR32FAN]

Okay - and is there any reason why you would expect the pink fish to swim to the right more than the blue fish? Or, given a sufficient quantity of fish of the same species (but with various chromatic variations), would you expect to see a roughly even distribution in directions between the colors?

No I would expect it would be completely random.

 

[istodolez]

No I would expect it would be completely random.

Which is the "null hypothesis". So when you find one group of fish swimming in a DIFFERENT direction you have to figure out why.

 

[BNR32FAN]

Yes, it can be now. Before, blacks were specifically excluded in GI housing and education.

How many decades ago was that?

 

[BNR32FAN]

Yeah, I'm sure he could breathe just fine. When your neck is being crushed by someone putting all of their weight on it, your windpipe is crushed as well. The fact that he could push out some worgs doen not mean he was getting sufficient oxygen. I think that was proven by his DEATH.

Even if he resisted arrest, does that give the police the right to execute him on the spot? Does it give police the right to use non-standard in fact illegal chokehold (Knee on the neck)

Quit justifying murder, it's not right period

He was speaking and breathing for 7 minutes. You can’t do that with a crushed windpipe and the coroner reported that he didn’t die of strangulation or asphyxia. He died of a heart attack, he had a history of heart disease and high blood pressure along with the meth in his system and the trauma of the use of force from the officer was the cause of his death. The officer had no way of knowing about any of these complications. Floyd was saying he couldn’t breath while he was still standing before he fell to the ground because he was refusing to get in the vehicle. Why was he saying he couldn’t breathe? Because he was pretending to be claustrophobic because he didn’t want to get in the vehicle. He didn’t seem to be claustrophobic when the officers removed him from the vehicle they found him in. But nobody wants to pay any attention to these facts. Everyone only wants to view it from Floyd’s perspective and not from the officer’s perspective. Floyd appeared to be in exceptional physical condition and the officer had no way of knowing that his heart was weak. Your distorting the facts and inflating the situation. If Chauvin had all his weight on Floyd’s neck he wouldn’t have been able to speak at all especially for 7 minutes.

 

[RocksInMyHead]

No I would expect it would be completely random.

That didn't answer the question. By definition, "completely random" would result in a roughly even distribution, given a sufficient quantity of fish. Do you agree? Yes or no?

 

[rturner76]

He was speaking and breathing for 7 minutes. You can’t do that with a crushed windpipe and the coroner reported that he didn’t die of strangulation or asphyxia. He died of a heart attack, he had a history of heart disease and high blood pressure along with the meth in his system and the trauma of the use of force from the officer was the cause of his death. The officer had no way of knowing about any of these complications. Floyd was saying he couldn’t breath while he was still standing before he fell to the ground because he was refusing to get in the vehicle. Why was he saying he couldn’t breathe? Because he was pretending to be claustrophobic because he didn’t want to get in the vehicle. He didn’t seem to be claustrophobic when the officers removed him from the vehicle they found him in. But nobody wants to pay any attention to these facts. Everyone only wants to view it from Floyd’s perspective and not from the officer’s perspective. Floyd appeared to be in exceptional physical condition and the officer had no way of knowing that his heart was weak. Your distorting the facts and inflating the situation. If Chauvin had all his weight on Floyd’s neck he wouldn’t have been able to speak at all especially for 7 minutes.

You can defend the actions of a murderer all you want. I'm sure a knee parked on his neck did not abate his inability to breathe. When someone can't breath you check there airway, you don't out your knee down on their neck.

With 3 other officers backing home up, don't tell me he was afraid for his life with an incapacitated man under dude's knee. You only see what you want to see, a big bad black man getting rightly put in his place. It wasn't his place to be murdered.

 

[BNR32FAN]

Which is the "null hypothesis". So when you find one group of fish swimming in a DIFFERENT direction you have to figure out why.

If it’s random they will swim in all directions. So they’re all swimming different directions.

 

[istodolez]

That didn't answer the question. By definition, "completely random" would result in a roughly even distribution, given a sufficient quantity of fish. Do you agree? Yes or no?

I am willing to bet that BNR isn't going to really engage on the statistical inference topic. It's really pretty cool, though. It's a nice way to learn about things like t-tests, F-tests and even non-parametic analyses as well!

 

[BNR32FAN]

That didn't answer the question. By definition, "completely random" would result in a roughly even distribution, given a sufficient quantity of fish. Do you agree? Yes or no?

It still renders the outcome to be completely random and only based on which direction each individual fish felt like swimming at that particular time.

 

[Radagast]

Floyd was saying he couldn’t breath while he was still standing before he fell to the ground because he was refusing to get in the vehicle. Why was he saying he couldn’t breathe? Because he was pretending to be claustrophobic because he didn’t want to get in the vehicle.

I don't think that Floyd was "faking it."

I think Floyd saying "I can't breathe" while he was still standing was because he was already experiencing the first stages of the heart attack that killed him.

It is likely that being restrained on his stomach contributed to Floyd'd death. The knee on his neck probably did not, given the autopsy result.