Civil-Rights Protests Have Never Been Popular

[SummerMadness]

Civil-Rights Protests Have Never Been Popular

One common response to the national anthem protests originated by Colin Kaepernick is to disparage them as polarizing. Joe Scarborough, host of Morning Joe, summed up this particular critique in a tweet last weekend:

Joe Scarborough
This may be unpopular but it is a political reality:

Every NFL player refusing to stand for the national anthem helps Trump politically.

9:16 AM - Sep 24, 2017

The idea here is that kneeling NFL players are committing an act of such blatant disrespect that they hand Trump an easy image with which to demagogue. Often attendant to the idea that protesting players are shooting themselves in the foot is the notion that in some other era, black protest proved to be a unifying force that altered the psychology of some critical mass of open-minded whites.

David Leonhardt offers a version of this in Monday’s New York Times:

In one of his first prominent speeches, during the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of “the glory of America, with all its faults.” At the March on Washington, King described not just a dream but “a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.” Before finishing, he recited the first seven lines of “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” ending with “Let freedom ring!”

A year-and-a-half later, marchers from Selma to Montgomery carried American flags. Segregationist hecklers along the route held up Confederate flags. Within six months, Lyndon Johnson had signed the Voting Rights Act.

Leonhardt goes on to contrast this species of activism, which aligned “the civil-rights movement with the symbols and ideals of America,” with kneeling during the national anthem, which presumably signals opposition to those same symbols. Leonhardt is sympathetic to the aims of Kaepernick’s protest but he contrasts this “angry” approach with the “smart” approach of the civil-rights movement.

I am reminded of the writings of the John Birch Society against the Civil Rights Movement. They used a lot of the racist arguments used today, like the lack of equity is due to differences that should be there. However, back then, they still lived in the racist biology/genetics world of "natural" differences, whereas today you hear more references to "culture."

 

[ViaCrucis]

The idea that the civil rights protests of the 1960's were "better" and today's protests are "bad" is anachronistic and in hindsight. In the 1960's the civil rights protests were quite unpopular, and people were upset that black people couldn't just leave everything well enough alone. Martin Luther King, Jr. wasn't considered an American saint back then, he was considered a menace to decent society--it wasn't until after his death that King's political apotheosis took place (largely by sanitizing him to make him palatable to power).

The difference between sit-ins and marches then, and kneeling and marches now is nil; and in fact it is the same dark specter of humanity which condemns both because what such protest is a challenge to the "sanctity" of power--and power is being challenged, and the powerful do not like it. The powerful never like it, and the powerful always try and destroy it.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[hislegacy]

What are they doing for the dozens and dozens of black men and woman being killed monthly in Chicago?

 

[ViaCrucis]

What are they doing for the dozens and dozens of black men and woman being killed monthly in Chicago?

-CryptoLutheran

 

[SummerMadness]

What are they doing for the dozens and dozens of black men and woman being killed monthly in Chicago?

Hey look everyone, a shallow attempt to change the subject with a Willie Hortonesque whataboutism. They talk about Chicago as if they actually care about the place, but they don't, they don't care about people being killed in Chicago, it just shows the racism inherent in this argument. Besides Chicago not being the most violent city and the ignorance of treating violence committed by black people as being somehow different from "white violence," it is brought up in order to ignore civil rights issues. Regardless of the crime rate anywhere in this country, police corruption and violence is never acceptable. But as Wikipedia Brown said, "You don't know anything about us. You don't know what we do/don't protest here. You don't care. Don't you fix your mouth to speak our name."

Stop talking about Chicago, we know you do not care about Chicago,

 

[Rion]

The idea that the civil rights protests of the 1960's were "better" and today's protests are "bad" is anachronistic and in hindsight.

The difference being that the protests in the sixties were about actual oppression while today's are by people who cannot understand basic cause and effect.

 

[SummerMadness]

The difference being that the protests in the sixties were about actual oppression while today's are by people who cannot understand basic cause and effect.

Sounds like an updated version of the John Birch Society complaining about the Civil Rights Movement. But I guess you can't expect the same response from the people in the unaffected group, they too argued that there wasn't oppression during segregation, I mean, they weren't slaves, so how can they call it real oppression?

African Americans in the United States are so much better off than people of African descent anywhere else in the world. But the whole truth goes much further. The average African American has a tremendously higher standard of living than people of African descent anywhere else; and far higher, in fact, than at least four-fifths of the earth's population of all races combined. African Americans own more automobiles than all sub-Saharan Africans combined. The average African American not only has a far higher standard of literacy, but better education opportunities, than people of African descent anywhere else. The average African American has complete freedom of religion, freedom of movement, and freedom to run his own life as he pleases. So what is all of the complaining about?

 

[Rion]

Sounds like an updated version of the John Birch Society complaining about the Civil Rights Movement. But I guess you can't expect the same response from the people in the unaffected group, they too argued that there wasn't oppression during segregation, I mean, they weren't slaves, so how can they call it real oppression?

If you look at the statistics There Is No Epidemic of Police Brutality against Black Men

Only 0.6% of black men experience physical force by the police in any given year, while approximately 0.2% of white men do.

"But Rion, that's three times as much for black men than white men!" Yep, it is, most likely because according to NCVS, black men are three times more likely to commit violent crimes than white men. Three times as more likely to commit violent crimes, and also three times more likely to experience physical force by police. Huh. Must be a bunch of racist cops! /s

 

[LoAmmi]

If you look at the statistics There Is No Epidemic of Police Brutality against Black Men

Only 0.6% of black men experience physical force by the police in any given year, while approximately 0.2% of white men do.

"But Rion, that's three times as much for black men than white men!" Yep, it is, most likely because according to NCVS, black men are three times more likely to commit violent crimes than white men. Three times as more likely to commit violent crimes, and also three times more likely to experience physical force by police. Huh. Must be a bunch of racist cops! /s

I will agree that the narrative that BLM employed does not help their cause. I would have framed it as the following:

All too often when the police do use force and it is excessive, they suffer no consequences for their actions. Even with the indictment rate well over 95% in every other instance, somehow these officers are regularly not indicted when the prosecutor, who works closely with the police and has a conflict of instruct, spends time in the indictment hearing presenting or allowing someone else to present a defense for the police officers. In most other indictments, defendants do not present a defense. That's left for the trial. This is a problem with our current system and my solution would be an independent prosecutor investigate the instances and determine if indictment is correct. I suggest this because it removes the conflict of interest local prosecutors have. I'm not even saying these police officers are guilty, but many of these events don't even go to open court where the public can see the case presented and a jury of peers makes the determination.

 

[Rion]

I will agree that the narrative that BLM employed does not help their cause. I would have framed it as the following:

All too often when the police do use force and it is excessive, they suffer no consequences for their actions. Even with the indictment rate well over 95% in every other instance, somehow these officers are regularly not indicted when the prosecutor, who works closely with the police and has a conflict of instruct, spends time in the indictment hearing presenting or allowing someone else to present a defense for the police officers. In most other indictments, defendants do not present a defense. That's left for the trial. This is a problem with our current system and my solution would be an independent prosecutor investigate the instances and determine if indictment is correct. I suggest this because it removes the conflict of interest local prosecutors have. I'm not even saying these police officers are guilty, but many of these events don't even go to open court where the public can see the case presented and a jury of peers makes the determination.

BLM is much like Occupy, in that they both had issues which were legitimate (Money in politics, police brutality), but the way they framed their arguments and how they behaved ultimately destroyed any chance for a positive change from them.

 

[SummerMadness]

We can pretend there is not a problem, but there is. Most people do not commit crime, yet how often is Chicago bandied around as a distraction? Nonetheless, the data, DOJ reports, and peer-reviewed papers demonstrate there is a problem with police violence and corruption.

Our view: Policing disparity is now a quantifiable problem

A Multi-Level Bayesian Analysis of Racial Bias in Police Shootings at the County-Level in the United States, 2011-2014.

A geographically-resolved, multi-level Bayesian model is used to analyze the data presented in the U.S. Police-Shooting Database (USPSD) in order to investigate the extent of racial bias in the shooting of American civilians by police officers in recent years. In contrast to previous work that relied on the FBI's Supplemental Homicide Reports that were constructed from self-reported cases of police-involved homicide, this data set is less likely to be biased by police reporting practices. County-specific relative risk outcomes of being shot by police are estimated as a function of the interaction of: 1) whether suspects/civilians were armed or unarmed, and 2) the race/ethnicity of the suspects/civilians. The results provide evidence of a significant bias in the killing of unarmed black Americans relative to unarmed white Americans, in that the probability of being {black, unarmed, and shot by police} is about 3.49 times the probability of being {white, unarmed, and shot by police} on average. Furthermore, the results of multi-level modeling show that there exists significant heterogeneity across counties in the extent of racial bias in police shootings, with some counties showing relative risk ratios of 20 to 1 or more. Finally, analysis of police shooting data as a function of county-level predictors suggests that racial bias in police shootings is most likely to emerge in police departments in larger metropolitan counties with low median incomes and a sizable portion of black residents, especially when there is high financial inequality in that county. There is no relationship between county-level racial bias in police shootings and crime rates (even race-specific crime rates), meaning that the racial bias observed in police shootings in this data set is not explainable as a response to local-level crime rates.

'Wild animals': Racist texts sent by San Francisco police officer, documents show

 

[SummerMadness]

BLM is much like Occupy, in that they both had issues which were legitimate (Money in politics, police brutality), but the way they framed their arguments and how they behaved ultimately destroyed any chance for a positive change from them.

Again echoing the John Birch Society... now see, that's hilarious. Arguing against civil rights group and sounding exactly like the group in the 1960s that opposed the Civil Rights Movement. "Oh, but this time it's different!"

 

[LoAmmi]

BLM is much like Occupy, in that they both had issues which were legitimate (Money in politics, police brutality), but the way they framed their arguments and how they behaved ultimately destroyed any chance for a positive change from them.

I wouldn't say it's destroyed, but people do need to realize that the only way to bring about change is to get everybody involved. The turning point in the Civil Rights movement was when people saw the police being brutal toward peacefully protesting people. That got a lot of white people involved and that's what won.

 

[Rion]

I wouldn't say it's destroyed, but people do need to realize that the only way to bring about change is to get everybody involved. The turning point in the Civil Rights movement was when people saw the police being brutal toward peacefully protesting people. That got a lot of white people involved and that's what won.

Any hope BLM had for affecting positive change was over the moment they were on camera chanting for cops 'fried like bacon' and it wasn't immediately denounced. Since then, the riots, murdered police officers, etc. has only helped enshrine the movement as radical and violent, which means that the public at large (of all colors) are going to mostly reject it. They have cloaked themselves not in the spirit of MLK Jr, but the Black Liberation Army.

 

[SummerMadness]

Any hope BLM had for affecting positive change was over the moment they were on camera chanting for cops 'fried like bacon' and it wasn't immediately denounced. Since then, the riots, murdered police officers, etc. has only helped enshrine the movement as radical and violent, which means that the public at large (of all colors) are going to mostly reject it. They have cloaked themselves not in the spirit of MLK Jr, but the Black Liberation Army.

I find your comments rather ironic considering the thread topic.

There is this fake argument that they encourage and condone riots, when their language echoes that of the man conservatives pretended they loved in the 1960s.

As The Washington Post noted last year, only 22 percent of all Americans approved of the Freedom Rides, and only 28 percent approved of the sit-ins. The vast majority of Americans—60 percent—had “unfavorable” feelings about the March on Washington. As FiveThirtyEight notes, in 1966, 63 percent of Americans had a negative opinion of Martin Luther King. The popular hostility toward King extended to the very government he tried to embrace—King was bugged and harassed by the FBI until the end of his life. His assassination sprang from the deep hostility with which he was viewed, not by a fringe radical minority, but by the majority of the American citizenry.

 

[Rion]

I find your comments rather ironic considering the thread topic.

Fake? No, legitimate. Please stop trying to sully MLK and the other Civil Rights leaders of the 1960's by associating them with extremist groups like BLM.

 

[SummerMadness]

Fake? No, legitimate. Please stop trying to sully MLK and the other Civil Rights leaders of the 1960's by associating them with extremist groups like BLM.

Please stop trying to use MLK to differentiate between civil rights movements in the 1950s and now. Using words like "extremist" is still irony because that's a term anti-Civil Rights folks also used 50 years ago.

 

[hislegacy]

Equating a privileged group of multi millionaires taking a knee to what Dr King did in the 60’s is a disservice to his memory.

Dr King would not be on a football field demonstrating, he would be in the neighborhoods of Chicago encouraging men and women to rise up and live a good life.

 

[SummerMadness]

Equating a privileged group of multi millionaires taking a knee to what Dr King did in the 60’s is a disservice to his memory.

Dr King would not be on a football field demonstrating, he would be in the neighborhoods of Chicago encouraging men and women to rise up and live a good life.

Yep, those same words were said of athletes and musicians that protested racial inequality in the 1960s. What these artists and athletes realize is that just because you have money does not mean you escape racial injustice. The tackling of James Blake demonstrates that much. I also notice the attempt to ignore all the work these athletes do off the field, not surprising, since you have no idea what they've done, you simply want to attack them.

 

[Rion]

Please stop trying to use MLK to differentiate between civil rights movements in the 1950s and now. Using words like "extremist" is still irony because that's a term anti-Civil Rights folks also used 50 years ago.

Sure, if you stop using the term oppression then, as that was the a term used 50 years ago.