(January 7, 2017 at 2:37 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:(January 7, 2017 at 12:57 pm)Brian37 Wrote: NO nobody is minimizing or excusing. You are actually perpetuating it by ignoring the inequity.
No, I'm not ignoring it. What I'm doing is commenting on the incident alone -- and your insistence at pointing out the flawed behavior of other ethnicities, which does indeed minimize the crime on the video. "Look Ma, he did it too!" is exactly the reasoning in play, seeking to mitigate the effects of the offense tendered by pointing out that others do it, and do it more often.
The next time you want to talk about my opinion, you'd ought to at least have the good sense to learn it first, instead of assuming I'm ignoring a problem simply because I don't see fit to agree with your fulminations.
Hold on now, "Look maw, he did it too" is not what I am doing, it is what far too many whites do.
You cannot comment on one incident alone. It is the same error in selection bias and sample rate error in logic that causes people to go "It's cold today so climate change is bullshit".
That could have been me doing that in that video when I was young. I was lucky never to have gone that far, and that was growing up on a street full of racist bullies. NOBODY IS OR SHOULD GIVE THEM A PASS. OK? But it still remains that our economy and law system negatively affects minorities on average at a higher rate than whites. If a group of white frat boys had done the same thing to a black disabled kid, sure there would be outcry, but a jury is still going to be more likely to punish them less severely or a judge is more likely to plea them out less severely.
Ignoring that long term reality is why still today, blacks have to fear being pulled over. I see excuses by whites about why armed or unarmed why a black person end up dead by comparison at a far higher rate ON AVERAGE than when whites interact with law.
Eric Garner died in a choke hold unarmed. Yet a white guy goes into a movie theater in Colorado murders several people and still ends up in the back of the squad car in one piece. Law enforcement bought Roof fast food on the way to jail, and again, he murders 9 blacks, and still makes it to jail in one piece.
YES they did that horrible act and YES it was wrong and YES they need to face punishment. Nobody is arguing that part. Nobody is making excuses for what they did. But they will not get an O.J. dream team defending them either. Poor and middle class whites who would do the same thing do not get punished as severely on average as when blacks do the same thing.
If you are not willing to look at economics and law in terms of who is affected more negatively you wont ever get a handle on race relationships in this country.
"BLM" isn't saying "only black lives matter" nor would they excuse or condone what these black teens did. But it took less than a day when the news broke for the alt right bigots to try to attach these teens to that movement. I am offering you a solution to reduce things like this and to improve race relationships in this country.
