Racism on display at University of Virginia

[Tom 1]

Even a MULTIcultural center can be a place for racism, even though it should be a place where things like, you know, multiculturalism would be the entire point of its existence. But instead:

I don't find this kind of argument convincing, it seems pretty superficial.

For a rough parallel, from the late 1600s for a couple of centuries, into the 20th C even, England provoked a lot of strife in Ireland, there was a lot of propaganda against the Irish (as there was against Catholics in general, both in the Uk and the Us for long periods) and a lot of racist/national stereotyping that still persists in Irish jokes. Without getting into all of the ins and outs of it, if an English person were to waltz into a bar in certain parts of Ireland, or certain parts of London even, expecting to be treated on an equal footing and as a welcome guest, that person could hardly complain when they got into a fight, if they didn't respect the views of other punters not to have 'Englishness' shoved in their faces.

In the US, it isn't long since people were being strung up in the street or thrown in jail for life simply for being black. Black men are still regularly killed by the police there, and a black person who uses drugs is much more likely to be thrown in jail for years than a white person doing exactly the same thing. That's without getting into the whole history of people being taken there by white Europeans en masse, with no option in the matter and under the most horrendous circumstances. These are all verifiable facts. It seems simply unbelievable that anyone could think this is something people should just 'get over' and 'move on' and that some resentment against whites isn't entlrely natural. Seriously, give it some thought - if someone whose family had consistently treated yours like dirt for generations just pitched up at your house expecting to be best buds, and flew into petulant whining if you ever mentioned that past behaviour, how would you react?

 

[Ana the Ist]

...past policies have created a society in which those different circumstances have a high level of overlap with racial differences.

Let's assume this is true for a moment....

That doesn't tell you anything about the girl in the OP. Statistics about groups of people are useful when talking about groups of people....but they're useless when talking about an individual.

I can explain this in more detail if you need me to.

If poverty is the root problem, and it takes 5 generations to correct for that, and there were policies that occurred with in the last 5 generations that put one group in a disproportional state of poverty, then the two can't be totally disassociated for the purposes of this conversation.

5 generations is an average....but if that is true, then complaints about racial income disparities aren't really valid until we're 6 generations past anti-discrimination laws...

As for..."policies that occurred with in the last 5 generations that put one group in a disproportional state of poverty"...that's going to apply to nearly any law or policy related to income or benefits or wealth in general. If they double the number of food stamps that every recipient receives...that's going to affect one racial group more than the others. Democratic candidates are playing with the idea of forgiving student loan debt....if this happens, it's going to disproportionately affect one racial group more than the other. And so on and so on....

That doesn't make any of those policies or laws racist..

 

[Ana the Ist]

That's a false equivalence that's attempting to compare "a mountain and a molehill" with "two mountains".

The difference between shoplifting a candy bar and embezzling a quarter of a million dollars is a far greater difference than the notion that a profession (that's primary goal is "law enforcement") shouldn't "enforce the law" when dealing with people who share their profession.

Oh good....you understand why your premise is ridiculous. It's a false equivalence. The idea that because cops are willing to look the other way for cops on a speeding ticket...which they're given discretion over...means they're also looking the other way when their fellow cops use excessive force or violate someone's civil rights is a false equivalency. It's not even in the same ballpark....deciding to let a speeder off with a warning is something they're allowed to do. Ignoring their fellow cops while they beat a man half to death is both a crime and undoubtedly a violation of multiple police policies.

According to the nearly 3,000 cops surveyed, it would seem so...

Lol 3000 cops didn't say that cops should be formally trained to not ticket other cops.

If they hold the value that "cops shouldn't ticket other cops", I see no reason why they wouldn't feel that should be reinforced during the training period.

How about...because there's a huge difference between leaving it a matter of discretion and making it a matter of training.

 

[Ana the Ist]

I don't find this kind of argument convincing, it seems pretty superficial.

For a rough parallel, from the late 1600s for a couple of centuries, into the 20th C even, England provoked a lot of strife in Ireland, there was a lot of propaganda against the Irish (as there was against Catholics in general, both in the Uk and the Us for long periods) and a lot of racist/national stereotyping that still persists in Irish jokes. Without getting into all of the ins and outs of it, if an English person were to waltz into a bar in certain parts of Ireland, or certain parts of London even, expecting to be treated on an equal footing and as a welcome guest, that person could hardly complain when they got into a fight, if they didn't respect the views of other punters not to have 'Englishness' shoved in their faces.

In the US, it isn't long since people were being strung up in the street or thrown in jail for life simply for being black.

I don't recall any cases of being charged with "being black".

Black men are still regularly killed by the police there,

Typically for trying to kill the police.

and a black person who uses drugs is much more likely to be thrown in jail for years than a white person doing exactly the same thing.

Almost no one is in jail for "using drugs".

That's without getting into the whole history of people being taken there by white Europeans en masse, with no option in the matter and under the most horrendous circumstances. These are all verifiable facts.

Some of your verifiable facts sound made up.

It seems simply unbelievable that anyone could think this is something people should just 'get over' and 'move on' and that some resentment against whites isn't entlrely natural.

People who go through actual traumatic experiences can "move on" from them and "get over" their resentment or anger towards their abuser. I've even seen the family of murder victims eventually forgive the murderer and move on....

The idea that black people in general aren't capable of the same is frankly, a bit insulting. It's even more absurd when we're talking about events that happened to other people in the past.

Seriously, give it some thought - if someone whose family had consistently treated yours like dirt for generations just pitched up at your house expecting to be best buds, and flew into petulant whining if you ever mentioned that past behaviour, how would you react?

I don't think anyone is asking people to be best buds....we're talking about racial discrimination.

I don't think asking people to not be racist against you is an unreasonable request from anyone. If people are just excusing racism...then why would anyone make an effort to not be racist?

 

[Ken-1122]

In the US, it isn't long since people were being strung up in the street or thrown in jail for life simply for being black. Black men are still regularly killed by the police there,

In the US the Police kills everybody if you give ‘em the right reason; black men have not cornered the market on that one.

and a black person who uses drugs is much more likely to be thrown in jail for years than a white person doing exactly the same thing.

Thrown in Jail for years for using drugs? I have never heard of this happening in the US; what cities are you talking about?

That's without getting into the whole history of people being taken there by white Europeans en masse, with no option in the matter and under the most horrendous circumstances.

We talkin about today; not 200 years ago!

These are all verifiable facts.

Would you mind verifying some facts concerning black people being thrown in Jail for years for simply using drugs?

It seems simply unbelievable that anyone could think this is something people should just 'get over' and 'move on' and that some resentment against whites isn't entlrely natural. Seriously, give it some thought - if someone whose family had consistently treated yours like dirt for generations just pitched up at your house expecting to be best buds, and flew into petulant whining if you ever mentioned that past behaviour, how would you react?

Are you under the impression that years ago, that all white people treated all black people like dirt? That there weren’t any white people who were against slavery, or the mistreatment of black people after slavery?
I couldn’t help but notice it says you are from Romania; not the US. I don’t know where you got your information about America from, but I suspect things might be a little different than you think.

 

[rjs330]

I don't find this kind of argument convincing, it seems pretty superficial.

For a rough parallel, from the late 1600s for a couple of centuries, into the 20th C even, England provoked a lot of strife in Ireland, there was a lot of propaganda against the Irish (as there was against Catholics in general, both in the Uk and the Us for long periods) and a lot of racist/national stereotyping that still persists in Irish jokes. Without getting into all of the ins and outs of it, if an English person were to waltz into a bar in certain parts of Ireland, or certain parts of London even, expecting to be treated on an equal footing and as a welcome guest, that person could hardly complain when they got into a fight, if they didn't respect the views of other punters not to have 'Englishness' shoved in their faces.

In the US, it isn't long since people were being strung up in the street or thrown in jail for life simply for being black. Black men are still regularly killed by the police there, and a black person who uses drugs is much more likely to be thrown in jail for years than a white person doing exactly the same thing. That's without getting into the whole history of people being taken there by white Europeans en masse, with no option in the matter and under the most horrendous circumstances. These are all verifiable facts. It seems simply unbelievable that anyone could think this is something people should just 'get over' and 'move on' and that some resentment against whites isn't entlrely natural. Seriously, give it some thought - if someone whose family had consistently treated yours like dirt for generations just pitched up at your house expecting to be best buds, and flew into petulant whining if you ever mentioned that past behaviour, how would you react?

Are you aware that studies have shown that less than 1% of police contacts actually result in unjustifiable use of force? Are you also aware that police are more likely to be shot by a black man than they are to shoot one?

Are you aware that black males are more likely to be shot by a black officer than a white one?

All good things to know.

 

[Tom 1]

Are you aware that studies have shown that less than 1% of police contacts actually result in unjustifiable use of force? Are you also aware that police are more likely to be shot by a black man than they are to shoot one?

Are you aware that black males are more likely to be shot by a black officer than a white one?

All good things to know.

Bit of a tangent - ? The level of denial and pettiness of the kind of thing in the OP is the issue in my post, not one point.

 

[Tom 1]

In the US the Police kills everybody if you give ‘em the right reason; black men have not cornered the market on that one.


Thrown in Jail for years for using drugs? I have never heard of this happening in the US; what cities are you talking about?


We talkin about today; not 200 years ago!


Would you mind verifying some facts concerning black people being thrown in Jail for years for simply using drugs?


Are you under the impression that years ago, that all white people treated all black people like dirt? That there weren’t any white people who were against slavery, or the mistreatment of black people after slavery?
I couldn’t help but notice it says you are from Romania; not the US. I don’t know where you got your information about America from, but I suspect things might be a little different than you think.

Source here for the jail time, although i’ve read similar things in numerous places:

Report to the United Nations on Racial Disparities in the U.S. Criminal Justice System | The Sentencing Project

• Of the 277,000 people imprisoned nationwide for a drug offense, over half (56%) are African American or Latino.33)
• 
  And here: Drug-involved offenses ranged from misdemeanor offenses of being under the influence of illicit drugs (e.g., under influence of hashish) to felony offenses of possession and transportation or sales of illicit drugs (e.g., possess hashish; possess hashish for sale). Because we observed all previous arrest charges and dispositions regardless of whether drugs or alcohol were involved, the data set allowed us to construct measures of each arrestee’s complete criminal history.
• 
  Including the misdemeanour charges, anyone who isn’t white is more likely to get a jail sentence and less likely to get referred to drug treatment services, by quite a wide margin: Disparities in Criminal Court Referrals to Drug Treatment and Prison for Minority Men
• 
  Can’t get rid of these bullet points!
  
• 
  
  
• Do you realise it is actually unusual for a countries’ police to ever shoot and kill unarmed people? It may seem to be ‘just something that happens’ there but I am not aware of any other developed, or even semi-developed, nation where that is a regular occurrence.
• 
  
  Lynchings and state sanctioned murder of black people in the US continued well into the 20th C, as did discrimination masse against particular racial groups, a case in point being the Trump family’s rental practices.
  
  How white Americans used lynchings to terrorize and control black people
  
• 
  The 1950s isn’t 200 yrs ago, and neither is this: Lynchings, 1921 Tulsa massacre, and 8 other things school didn’t teach you about race in America | Will Bunch
• 
  
  
• It’s important to understand this kind of thing is not usual or normal across developed nations.

 

[Tom 1]

It’s not a complicated idea. Maybe you are all somehow immune to feeling resentment - well done! If large numbers of people like me had been lynched by another ethnic group only decades ago, if 3 or 4 generations ago they had been enslaved, if I was aware that I was far more likely to be arrested, charged and given a harsher sentence than someone of another ethnic group for the same crime then that would bother me. If you think any of that is ‘made up’ you can quite easily look it up. Or perhaps it just wouldn’t bother you?

 

[Ana the Ist]

Source here for the jail time, although i’ve read similar things in numerous places:

Report to the United Nations on Racial Disparities in the U.S. Criminal Justice System | The Sentencing Project

• Of the 277,000 people imprisoned nationwide for a drug offense, over half (56%) are African American or Latino.33)

"Drug offense" doesn't equal "thrown in jail for using drugs".

• And here: Drug-involved offenses ranged from misdemeanor offenses of being under the influence of illicit drugs (e.g., under influence of hashish) to felony offenses of possession and transportation or sales of illicit drugs (e.g., possess hashish; possess hashish for sale). Because we observed all previous arrest charges and dispositions regardless of whether drugs or alcohol were involved, the data set allowed us to construct measures of each arrestee’s complete criminal history.

• Including the misdemeanour charges, anyone who isn’t white is more likely to get a jail sentence and less likely to get referred to drug treatment services, by quite a wide margin: Disparities in Criminal Court Referrals to Drug Treatment and Prison for Minority Men
• 
  Can’t get rid of these bullet points!

From the study you linked....

"The addition of covariates measuring current arrest and criminal history characteristics as well as county-fixed effects reduced Black–White disparities in prison dispositions to statistically insignificant levels."

If you're having trouble understanding what that says, I'll explain....

It's saying that once they factored in variables like "criminal history" the differences between the prison sentences of black and white convicts was no longer significant.

• Do you realise it is actually unusual for a countries’ police to ever shoot and kill unarmed people? It may seem to be ‘just something that happens’ there but I am not aware of any other developed, or even semi-developed, nation where that is a regular occurrence.

It's also unusual for police to be killed by the criminals in those nations as well.

• Lynchings and state sanctioned murder of black people in the US continued well into the 20th C, as did discrimination masse against particular racial groups, a case in point being the Trump family’s rental practices.
  
  How white Americans used lynchings to terrorize and control black people

Lynching isn't a part of the justice system nor a function of the state. It's done by mobs of angry citizens.

More importantly, lynching happened to white people as well.

 

[Ana the Ist]

It’s not a complicated idea. Maybe you are all somehow immune to feeling resentment - well done! If large numbers of people like me had been lynched by another ethnic group only decades ago,

The example you gave was from a century ago....and every year more black men are murdered by other black men than all the of the lynchings in US history combined. The biggest killer of black men age 18-25 in the US is other black men.

If you think lynching killed a "large number of people" then you must be far more concerned about the number of black men murdered by other black men in the US.

if 3 or 4 generations ago they had been enslaved, if I was aware that I was far more likely to be arrested, charged and given a harsher sentence than someone of another ethnic group for the same crime then that would bother me. If you think any of that is ‘made up’ you can quite easily look it up. Or perhaps it just wouldn’t bother you?

3 or 4 generations ago? The average age for giving birth to a first child has been climbing recently. For black women, it's about 24 years old. This is an increase from 20-21 years old that would be the norm decades ago.

So the average black family has been 6 generations removed from slavery....and that's probably a generous estimate.

 

[Tom 1]

"The addition of covariates measuring current arrest and criminal history characteristics as well as county-fixed effects reduced Black–White disparities in prison dispositions to statistically insignificant levels."

If you're having trouble understanding what that says, I'll explain....

It's saying that once they factored in variables like "criminal history" the differences between the prison sentences of black and white convicts was no longer significant.

Well yes, if you read it what it is saying is that if the histories of the white prison population were taken into account the 'blacks were significantly more likely to receive a prison disposition and less likely to receive a diversion to drug treatment disposition' established overall was less significant, i.e. whites with a history of arrest and/or criminal activity have similar outcomes to the black prison population as a whole.

 

[Tom 1]

Lynching isn't a part of the justice system nor a function of the state. It's done by mobs of angry citizens.

As you can easily find out, there was a lot of collusion from local state officials.

 

[Tom 1]

The example you gave was from a century ago....and every year more black men are murdered by other black men than all the of the lynchings in US history combined. The biggest killer of black men age 18-25 in the US is other black men.

If you think lynching killed a "large number of people" then you must be far more concerned about the number of black men murdered by other black men in the US.




3 or 4 generations ago? The average age for giving birth to a first child has been climbing recently. For black women, it's about 24 years old. This is an increase from 20-21 years old that would be the norm decades ago.

So the average black family has been 6 generations removed from slavery....and that's probably a generous estimate.

Sure, the past has nothing to do with the present, of course. If you can't see how superficial your analysis is, there's little that's worth saying about it.

 

[Tom 1]

It's also unusual for police to be killed by the criminals in those nations as well.

So, what is your point here? There is no historical significance to the division of ethnicities in this? A few decades of affirmative action has just wiped out the problem?

 

[Tom 1]

If you think lynching killed a "large number of people" then you must be far more concerned about the number of black men murdered by other black men in the US.

You don't see how ridiculous that question is? It's not a question of 'concern', it's an observation that things that happen have an influence on other things that happen, it's not a difficult concept.

 

[Tom 1]

"Drug offense" doesn't equal "thrown in jail for using drugs".

No it doesn't, but regarding drug possession alone - as in quantities small enough to be considered as for personal use the following is verifiable:

A black person is more likely to be pulled over when driving or stopped in the street
Once pulled over, a black person is more likely to be searched
Once searched, a black person is more likely to be arrested and charged
Once arrested and charged, a black person is more likely to get a jail sentence, and less likely to be referred for some sort of drug rehab program.

There's an extensive review of studies here, with various links: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...nal-justice-system-is-racist-heres-the-proof/

 

[rjs330]

Well yes, if you read it what it is saying is that if the histories of the white prison population were taken into account the 'blacks were significantly more likely to receive a prison disposition and less likely to receive a diversion to drug treatment disposition' established overall was less significant, i.e. whites with a history of arrest and/or criminal activity have similar outcomes to the black prison population as a whole.

I'm glad you recognize your error. You can remove that particular thought off the table. As Ana pointed out, police in other countries are less likely to be shot or assaulted as well. It's an important point.

There are no blacks alive who went through slavery or even saw a slave. There are very few alive that went through Jim Crow and even fewer who saw or knew anyone who was lynched. Blacks today have the same opportunity that whites do to go to school and get a HS diploma, go to college, work in any field they want to and live in any state or town they want to live in. The opportunities are there for them.

 

[rjs330]

So, what is your point here? There is no historical significance to the division of ethnicities in this? A few decades of affirmative action has just wiped out the problem?

What problem exactly? You've given a lot of generalities here. The most specific thing you've given that is from today and not from 70 years or more ago involved police and sentencing. And we've shown you it's not the big problem you made it out to be.

So what's the "problem" specifically? Because the OP is mentioning the racism the black woman showed and you seem to be offering excuses on why it's understandable if someone is racist.

 

[Tom 1]

I'm glad you recognize your error. You can remove that particular thought off the table.

That's not quite the whole story, that study is about the lower likelihood a black person convicted of a comparable offence has of a referral to drug rehab services, in California, as in my first post. The other review of studies that covers more of the US gives a more complex picture of bias, citing a lot more studies with different aims.

There are no blacks alive who went through slavery or even saw a slave. There are very few alive that went through Jim Crow and even fewer who saw or knew anyone who was lynched. Blacks today have the same opportunity that whites do to go to school and get a HS diploma, go to college, work in any field they want to and live in any state or town they want to live in. The opportunities are there for them.

Yes, I'm not arguing a lack of opportunity, but that is only part of the picture. There are a lot of comparable situations across the world; really, although many individuals within that ethnic group may never give it any thought, if black people as a whole were simply to forget those past events that would be something quite unique in human history. An example in Eastern Europe would be the Roma - enslavement and other shabby treatment of gypsies after their arrival in Europe went on for centuries, and they were targetted as the Jews were during WW2. No-one alive now lived through any of that, but to simply discount that as if it has no relevance now would be absurd. Throughout the middle ages Christian Europe frequently carried out pogroms against the Jews because they had 'killed Jesus' centuries earlier. The number of Irish people directly affected by English actions in Ireland is small, and the majority killed in that conflict within recent decades were British, yet no-one would suggest they should just 'forget about it' as a nation. I'm sure you can think of other examples. A whole ethnic group simply moving on after a few decades or even longer of changed circumstances would be a wholly unique event.