If you live in the United States, you should be disgusted with your country

[Kim]

Originally Posted by Kyanbu The Legend

=White privilege may exist to some extent due to racists that still hold on to a dying trend kicking and screaming to stay relevant, the supremacist groups like the KKK which I'm surprised still exists but I'm sure even their days a numbered. But no it's not as big as some people like to make it out to be.

Well, about that...

The 1,217 deadly police shootings from 2010 to 2012 captured in the federal data show that blacks, age 15 to 19, were killed at a rate of 31.17 per million, while just 1.47 per million white males in that age range died at the hands of police.

One way of appreciating that stark disparity, ProPublica's analysis shows, is to calculate how many more whites over those three years would have had to have been killed for them to have been at equal risk. The number is jarring – 185, more than one per week.

Here have some more...

Who is killing all those black men and boys?

Mostly white officers. But in hundreds of instances, black officers, too. Black officers account for a little more than 10 percent of all fatal police shootings. Of those they kill, though, 78 percent were black.

White officers, given their great numbers in so many of the country's police departments, are well represented in all categories of police killings. White officers killed 91 percent of the whites who died at the hands of police. And they were responsible for 68 percent of the people of color killed. Those people of color represented 46 percent of all those killed by white officers.

What were the circumstances surrounding all these fatal encounters?

There were 151 instances in which police noted that teens they had shot dead had been fleeing or resisting arrest at the time of the encounter. 67 percent of those killed in such circumstances were black. That disparity was even starker in the last couple of years: of the 15 teens shot fleeing arrest from 2010 to 2012, 14 were black.

Did police always list the circumstances of the killings?

No, actually, there were many deadly shooting where the circumstances were listed as "undetermined." 77 percent of those killed in such instances were black.

I'd wager that the 78% of those killed by black officers were people of color as a result of location. There are swaths of America where there isn't a huge black population. I grew up in one such area. So, you have places where the only people FOR cops to kill are white and that unbalances things. Whereas communities where there are black officers are much more likely to have black communities as well. I bet if you only counted areas with a significant non-white population, you'd probably find white officers kill people of color somewhere above 80% of the time.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

Which does go with the point I was trying to make. That Police Brutality is something that threatens all races not just black whom I admitted get the worst of it.

[Satan's Onion]

Originally Posted by Kyanbu The Legend

Which does go with the point I was trying to make. That Police Brutality is something that threatens all races not just black whom I admitted get the worst of it.

I feel like there's a certain misplaced emphasis here. I don't think anyone's denied that police brutality hurts everyone, or can happen to all sorts of folks. But apparently the fact that this happens to black people out of all proportion is a thing that lots of people--most of them protected from the worst by layers of privilege--either refuse to believe or don't want to believe is as huge a problem as it is.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

Yeah, I jumped the gun there. Kind of realized that after awhile.

[Seil]

This Peace Train Rolled Through Ferguson During The Protests Blasting Marvin Gaye

[Teal Mage]

I'm pretty sure no one's posted about this yet, but I believe it is highly relevant to this topic:

Darren Wilson has "quit" his job with the Ferguson Police Force. Reading between the lines, they rather obviously intended to fire him if he didn't see the light and willingly step aside. There's also further litigation pending on his account - one of which is a civil rights suit.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

I have actually but no one noticed partly due to my later statement.

It's not the justice many wanted but it's a nice close second.

[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by Teal Mage

I'm pretty sure no one's posted about this yet, but I believe it is highly relevant to this topic:

Darren Wilson has "quit" his job with the Ferguson Police Force. Reading between the lines, they rather obviously intended to fire him if he didn't see the light and willingly step aside. There's also further litigation pending on his account - one of which is a civil rights suit.

Actually, reading between the lines, it's pretty obvious that Police and Prosecutors colluded to ensure that Wilson would be let off the hook on the condition of his resignation. Of course Wilson is resigning: His continued presence would incite social unrest and now the Cops have the perfect 'weapon' of an argument to try to pacify the masses.

...But it's a sweet deal for Wilson too. Avoid jail time, avoid a strenuous trial, avoid any possibility of a guilty verdict, and in exchange all he has to do for his generous employers is precisely what he'd be sorely tempted to do anyway out of self-interest: Leave his position and escape the unrelenting glare of media scrutiny. He'll rest in private, life and liberty intact, and wait for the stories to lose steam and for America to lose interest in the narrative.

It's exactly what anyone with half a brain would advise a client to do in a situation like this, so to characterize it as a 'victory' for the African-American community or for progressives generally is simply falling into the exact trap they want you to fall into. Among other things, this is a character move that looks good for Wilson should the case be appealed (it inevitably will be.) Resigning is a perfect move as it's not perceived as a sign of legal guilt (he's resigning to appease the 'angry mob' and restore order, not out of guilty conscience) but will be interpreted as some kind of noble gesture by privileged white assholes.

[Nikose Tyris]

Originally Posted by Kyanbu The Legend

I have actually but no one noticed partly due to my later statement.

It's not the justice many wanted but it's a nice close second.

He's a millionaire based on payouts and donations. If he puts even half that money away, he's going to be getting a monthly check of $3,000 for the rest of his life.

I'd quit my job too. This isn't anything about justice or even a good thing. Nothing stops him from owning a gun and murdering black kids without a badge; and nothing stops him from being bored and picking up a new badge a county over- kind of like he did last time.

Fake Edit: Oh hey snake covered the other half of the point. Teamwork, yo.

[Amake]

One less murdering, racist asshole with complete legal immunity and guns provided by taxpayers, however brief his absence may be, is always something, I guess. But I don't think it's going to be enough.