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Nice Plant #7: Get me off of this planet
- Thread starter Old Pio
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Re: Nice Plant #7: Get me off of this planet
You ARE the same trisR4kids as on GPL, right? In which case I now understand much more.
You ARE the same trisR4kids as on GPL, right? In which case I now understand much more.
Kepler
Si certus es dubita
Re: Nice Plant #7: Get me off of this planet
The meme is the armchair sociology from wingnuts who wring their hands and rend their garments before regretfully concluding that black people are culturally prone to violence, which is simply the au current way to say inherently prone to violence. National Review and Redstate are using the same narrative as those comments on the Wilson contribution site, just cleaned up for Sunday Talk Show consumption. It taps the same root.
Crime is about economic opportunity. When legal means of opportunity are denied, people are forced to other means. That's Peter Blau / Howard Becker 101. Every underclass in US history has had a quote culture of violence unquote, because it isn't the culture, it's the opportunity. Among the people who have been previously branded as being in some way exceptional in their cultural resistance to responsibility and self-harming in the pursuit of the American dream: the Irish ("drunken"), Italians ("unrestrained Latin blood"), Mexicans ("shiftless"), and Chinese (um... "inscrutable"?). The Echo Chamber couldn't get away with peddling any of those characterizations anymore (well, maybe the Mexicans... but apparently these days they prefer "diseased"), but we still get "black mob culture," "absence of black fathers," "black de-emphasis of education," etc. That's the meme.
If you reversed the history of racism and the present state of economic opportunity of whites and blacks in the US, the results would be exactly the same with the races reversed. Race means something here only in the sense that it's a marker used by both sides to self-identify, but the actual content of race -- who's black and who's white -- is utterly arbitrary.
And that's why a Modest Proposal like send-up of the language being used is appropriate and highly effective.
The meme is the armchair sociology from wingnuts who wring their hands and rend their garments before regretfully concluding that black people are culturally prone to violence, which is simply the au current way to say inherently prone to violence. National Review and Redstate are using the same narrative as those comments on the Wilson contribution site, just cleaned up for Sunday Talk Show consumption. It taps the same root.
Crime is about economic opportunity. When legal means of opportunity are denied, people are forced to other means. That's Peter Blau / Howard Becker 101. Every underclass in US history has had a quote culture of violence unquote, because it isn't the culture, it's the opportunity. Among the people who have been previously branded as being in some way exceptional in their cultural resistance to responsibility and self-harming in the pursuit of the American dream: the Irish ("drunken"), Italians ("unrestrained Latin blood"), Mexicans ("shiftless"), and Chinese (um... "inscrutable"?). The Echo Chamber couldn't get away with peddling any of those characterizations anymore (well, maybe the Mexicans... but apparently these days they prefer "diseased"), but we still get "black mob culture," "absence of black fathers," "black de-emphasis of education," etc. That's the meme.
If you reversed the history of racism and the present state of economic opportunity of whites and blacks in the US, the results would be exactly the same with the races reversed. Race means something here only in the sense that it's a marker used by both sides to self-identify, but the actual content of race -- who's black and who's white -- is utterly arbitrary.
And that's why a Modest Proposal like send-up of the language being used is appropriate and highly effective.
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Re: Nice Plant #7: Get me off of this planet
Even in the stories that exonerate Wilson, Brown started off by leaving (after he punched Wilson), then he stopped and turned around.
This discussion reminds me of Kurosawa's movie Rashomon in which 4 different eyewitnesses relate the same series of event, but tell four very different stories. The main actions are the same but take on a very different context in each version of it.
One story says Wilson tries to drag Brown into the car. Another story says Brown reached into the car to punch Wilson. From a distance, either version would look pretty much the same.
One version says Brown walked away and was shot. Another version says Brown walked away, turned around, charged, and was shot. If someone's view was partially obstructed, either version would look pretty much the same.
So both versions could quite easily fit the same set of actions. There's no "either / or" here yet as far as I can tell.
People could truthfully be relating what they "saw" because they are not only relating what registered on their retinas, they also are relating how their brains interpreted those visual images. We all know that two different people can look at the same thing and "see" very different things and both be truthful about what they saw, because perception is limited and we all unconsciously interpret things to fit patterns with which we are familiar. That's just how our minds work, and there is plenty of empirical research to back it up. An engineer and a hair stylist will not see the same thing even when they are looking at the same thing.
Even in the stories that exonerate Wilson, Brown started off by leaving (after he punched Wilson), then he stopped and turned around.
This discussion reminds me of Kurosawa's movie Rashomon in which 4 different eyewitnesses relate the same series of event, but tell four very different stories. The main actions are the same but take on a very different context in each version of it.
One story says Wilson tries to drag Brown into the car. Another story says Brown reached into the car to punch Wilson. From a distance, either version would look pretty much the same.
One version says Brown walked away and was shot. Another version says Brown walked away, turned around, charged, and was shot. If someone's view was partially obstructed, either version would look pretty much the same.
So both versions could quite easily fit the same set of actions. There's no "either / or" here yet as far as I can tell.
People could truthfully be relating what they "saw" because they are not only relating what registered on their retinas, they also are relating how their brains interpreted those visual images. We all know that two different people can look at the same thing and "see" very different things and both be truthful about what they saw, because perception is limited and we all unconsciously interpret things to fit patterns with which we are familiar. That's just how our minds work, and there is plenty of empirical research to back it up. An engineer and a hair stylist will not see the same thing even when they are looking at the same thing.
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Gurtholfin
Guest
Re: Nice Plant #7: Get me off of this planet
Do poor whites and poor hispanics have the same murder rate as poor blacks?
Do poor whites and poor hispanics have the same murder rate as poor blacks?
ExileOnDaytonStreet
Drunkard
Re: Nice Plant #7: Get me off of this planet
It's sort of a counterpart to the reflexive use of the word "thug" (but only when talking about black people).
The only time that it's racist(ish) is when it's a knee-jerk reaction that someone tries to shoehorn into the discussion of any crime involving a black person. Like when someone thinks that it's somehow relevant to Officer Wilson shooting Michael Brown.
It's sort of a counterpart to the reflexive use of the word "thug" (but only when talking about black people).
unofan
Well-known member
Say he did. What does that have to do with the shots which hit him from the front? Are you saying they ricocheted and hit Brown on the rebound or something?
We know he wasn't fleeing when he was hit.
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Gurtholfin
Guest
Re: Nice Plant #7: Get me off of this planet
It's not racist.
When used to excuse a cop, it's a deflection.
Reality or pointing out facts is not racism.
It's not racist.
When used to excuse a cop, it's a deflection.
Reality or pointing out facts is not racism.
unofan
Well-known member
It can be if the fact is a complete non sequitur used solely to make that race seem inferior. Context matters.
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Gurtholfin
Guest
Racist though? Or just disingenuous?
I don't see it as making them seem inferior. I see it as changing the subject to excuse one's own behavior or the behavior of someone you are trying to defend.
unofan
Well-known member
It depends on the context. The fact itself is not racist. The usage of said fact certainly could be.
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Gurtholfin
Guest
Re: Nice Plant #7: Get me off of this planet
It could be in some instances and when used by some individuals, but it gets a little tiring where every factual observation that is pointed out becomes racist.
It could be in some instances and when used by some individuals, but it gets a little tiring where every factual observation that is pointed out becomes racist.
St. Clown
Ideas Posted are Likely Not My Own
Kepler
Si certus es dubita
Re: Nice Plant #7: Get me off of this planet
Poor whites from multi-generational poor communities are actually worse than poor blacks overall (the worst of all are poor Pacific Islanders -- go figure), but that's apples and oranges -- you'd need multi-generation poor whites vs multi-generation poor blacks and I've never seen that data. Poor whites overall are the best, which could reinforce my thesis: the "transitional" poor (people who hit the skids for a decade because of some traumatic event) will still tend to have opportunities because, for one thing, they don't face institutional racism -- though that gets dicey because you're talking about correlatives and there's no way to know which way the arrows go. I haven't seen any data comparing Hispanics -- it's gotta be out there, it just wasn't the spotlight issue when I was doing this stuff in grad school.
What we knew from studies circa '89 when I left the game:
1. Class matters a lot...
2. ... but mobility matters more.
3. Family formation doesn't matter at all (which is very counter-intuitive, but that's how the numbers are. As of the 80's, anyway, when you controlled for the other factors single parent / divorced / long-term married had no significant differences)
4. When you control for mobility, race doesn't matter, but population density matters a lot, with middle density being much better than either rural or urban.
5. Gender matters most of all. There is no constellation of controlled conditions you can put together where the gender difference in murder rates disappears excerpt for violent criminal history, which for obvious reasons is a methodological no-no.
Poor whites from multi-generational poor communities are actually worse than poor blacks overall (the worst of all are poor Pacific Islanders -- go figure), but that's apples and oranges -- you'd need multi-generation poor whites vs multi-generation poor blacks and I've never seen that data. Poor whites overall are the best, which could reinforce my thesis: the "transitional" poor (people who hit the skids for a decade because of some traumatic event) will still tend to have opportunities because, for one thing, they don't face institutional racism -- though that gets dicey because you're talking about correlatives and there's no way to know which way the arrows go. I haven't seen any data comparing Hispanics -- it's gotta be out there, it just wasn't the spotlight issue when I was doing this stuff in grad school.
What we knew from studies circa '89 when I left the game:
1. Class matters a lot...
2. ... but mobility matters more.
3. Family formation doesn't matter at all (which is very counter-intuitive, but that's how the numbers are. As of the 80's, anyway, when you controlled for the other factors single parent / divorced / long-term married had no significant differences)
4. When you control for mobility, race doesn't matter, but population density matters a lot, with middle density being much better than either rural or urban.
5. Gender matters most of all. There is no constellation of controlled conditions you can put together where the gender difference in murder rates disappears excerpt for violent criminal history, which for obvious reasons is a methodological no-no.
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trixR4kids
New member
Re: Nice Plant #7: Get me off of this planet
Because he's claiming that it's "science" that Brown wasn't fleeing because the actual bullets that hit him were from the front (when the body was placed in an anatomical position). Which doesn't disprove the idea that Wilson might have fired at a fleeing suspect.
If Wilson fired on an unarmed fleeing suspect, then Brown turns around and Wilson proceeds to waste him, do you not see the issue here? That would mean he made a non deadly situation into a life and death situation.
Because he's claiming that it's "science" that Brown wasn't fleeing because the actual bullets that hit him were from the front (when the body was placed in an anatomical position). Which doesn't disprove the idea that Wilson might have fired at a fleeing suspect.
If Wilson fired on an unarmed fleeing suspect, then Brown turns around and Wilson proceeds to waste him, do you not see the issue here? That would mean he made a non deadly situation into a life and death situation.
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Re: Nice Plant #7: Get me off of this planet
No S, Sherlock... Nobody is arguing that darker skin makes people more prone to violence. But culture is a real thing, as you've been pointing out yourself, and culture does matter. Someone who grows up in inner-city Detroit or Chicago has grown up in a completely different culture than I did, and it's perfectly reasonable to expect differences in attitude, beliefs, and behaviors. I'm sure you believe such cultural differences exist when it comes to evaluating candidates for jobs or college applications. This is just the other side of the coin.
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Gurtholfin
Guest
Re: Nice Plant #7: Get me off of this planet
Trixie... we get it. You want the facts to conform to the narrative that you believe.
Cops are bad and they pick on black people.
Every post you've made on this subject has been from that angle.
You may ultimately get what you're hoping for... we'll see.
Trixie... we get it. You want the facts to conform to the narrative that you believe.
Cops are bad and they pick on black people.
Every post you've made on this subject has been from that angle.
You may ultimately get what you're hoping for... we'll see.
Kepler
Si certus es dubita
Re: Nice Plant #7: Get me off of this planet
No S, Watson... The point is that violent blacks are portrayed as "black culture" but violent whites are portrayed as "poor culture." The a-holes over at NRO and Breitbart specifically tag this as a "black" issue. It aint a black issue, it's an issue with lack of resources and opportunity. When my meth head West Virginia neighbors shoot up the A&P nobody runs concern-troll editorials about "what does the white community think?!" or "why don't white leaders address this?!" Pre-pending race on this stuff is, at best, just lazy and, at worst, is a dog whistle for the usual suspects to get their racist yips in.
No S, Watson... The point is that violent blacks are portrayed as "black culture" but violent whites are portrayed as "poor culture." The a-holes over at NRO and Breitbart specifically tag this as a "black" issue. It aint a black issue, it's an issue with lack of resources and opportunity. When my meth head West Virginia neighbors shoot up the A&P nobody runs concern-troll editorials about "what does the white community think?!" or "why don't white leaders address this?!" Pre-pending race on this stuff is, at best, just lazy and, at worst, is a dog whistle for the usual suspects to get their racist yips in.
trixR4kids
New member
Re: Nice Plant #7: Get me off of this planet
Uhhhh law enforcement confirmed that Wilson shot while he was fleeing. So unless that nytimes piece isn't true, that part of the story is no longer simply a "narrative" or even a matter of debate.
Uhhhh law enforcement confirmed that Wilson shot while he was fleeing. So unless that nytimes piece isn't true, that part of the story is no longer simply a "narrative" or even a matter of debate.
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