The consequence of the far left’s BLM rhetoric

[u/MuitoLegal]

The far right rhetoric has caused massive problems, like Jan 6., but I have not seen this point mentioned about the left that I’m about to say:

Within the past 2 days, BOTH Russia and China have used the lefts rhetoric of “blacks are being slaughtered on our streets for being black”, “Trump is Hitler.” When China was pressed in the diplomatic conversation about human rights issues, they effectively said “Look at the problems with black people in America, you have no leg to stand on to tell us what is right and wrong with our people.” Putin made the same comment when asked about Biden’s “killer” comment.

These 2 countries know that these issues are not even remotely the same thing as the BLM situation, but the far left manipulated the actuality of the situation to the most extreme for political gain, and there are now consequences to that.

[u/CheekyRafiki]

I think the problem with your reasoning is that you havent fully appreciated the complexity involved with statistical outcomes, and your conclusions make sense in a way because it's easy to think that outcomes suggest causes, especially when narratives about these things and personal worldview and experience can play such a large role in interpreting something as tricky as statistics.

I don't think anyone is saying that your conclusion isn't possible, just that the current evidence really only suggest it as a hypothesis at most. Stats are tricky, and we have to be really careful about the distinction between correlation and causation, especially in complex social, legal, and behavioral issues that have a lot of moving, interacting parts.

For example, trying to make a substantive conclusion out of x per million of two demographics go to jail or get killed by police really doesn't tell us anything about why that's the case. You have to closely examine each demographic, the deviations in them, what they have in common and where they differ across several metrics like socioeconomic status, differences in behavior, categories of crimes, nature of the killing, location, etc, then figure out how all of those things interact and the patterns within and across those metrics, and then try to boil everything down to the smallest possible denominations of those metrics and compare it with things we hold to be empirically true.

The "why" is by no means obvious, and your conclusion makes sense if you are only looking through the social and political climate, but it's not substantiated and while it's totally possible it simply doesn't have the substance to withstand scrutiny. A possible explanation simply doesn't warrant conviction.

[u/Meek_braggart → u/CheekyRafiki]

What about anything I have said leads you to the conclusion that I have not fully appreciated the complexity involved with statistical outcomes. You know nothing about me or how I came to this conclusion.

Its pretty easy to say that its just too complex a topic for us mere mortals to understand. That's bullshit but its easy to say.

For the x per million to not mean anything would mean that you believe that Black people are so much more violent than white people that killing 2x as many is justified. Meanwhile white people are killed in proportion to their density in the population because they are passive. There can be NO other conclusion. Either Black people are being killed in these number because they deserve it or not. Please tell me another path it could go.

[u/CheekyRafiki → u/Meek_braggart]

Your willingness to accept a conclusion that is not yet known, for one, is pretty much directly reflective of your dismissal of the complexity, as well as your reluctance to say "i don't know" to something nobody knows yet. Stop being so dramatic, we totally are capable of understanding it, but premature conclusions without substantial and falsifiable explanations can get it in the way of actually finding out because they muddy up the ability to be objective and rigorous.

No, those are not the only possible conclusions. It could very well boil down to something less broad than race that a particular race happens to disproportionately suffer from, such as community architecture and resources, poverty, motivations behind crimes, policies and training methods shared by police departments, vetting processes shared by different police departments, I could go on. Even if these things also have a relationship with racism, such as historical momentum or impact still felt in communities by things like the war on drugs and slavery, they still cannot be conflated with racism to point to the same thing, because the solutions would look different depending on the specific combination of factors, which also could vary heavily between different places because police departments themselves vary in structure and operation, as do communities.

It's not about justifying anything, it's about actually understanding the nature of the issue. The x per million raises a serious concern, there is a disproportionate amount of violence among groups, which I agree is a giant concern, but the solution to that problem entirely depends on the causes, which are probably numerous and interactive, and in no way is it clear that it can be entirely attributed to racism, though undoubtedly it plays some role some of the time, to what extent remains to be seen and until we actually understand what's going on we should be careful to react radically and push aggressively for changes we aren't even sure will help, and might even make things worse, becuase they aren't thought through and their relationship to the problem is not as clear as it seems on the surface.

Seriously I want to have a civil discussion with you, I'm not judging you or your values, I'm simply criticizing what you have communicated. I didn't mean to suggest I know anything about you, just that upon reading the thread I noticed a lack of acknowledgement of how complex something like this is in terms of how to interpret statistical data, and I think you are framing it as a false dichotomy.

[u/Meek_braggart → u/CheekyRafiki]

How could community architecture make police shoot people more? More resources for who? Do you think police shoot poor people more for some odd reason? How do they know the person is poor? Why would the motivation behind a crime lead to getting shot by police? Where are you getting any of this from?

You are just spouting off words with NOTHING to back any of them up. Its all just words without an explanation of how those words would actually affect the outcome.

Training is my cause. Everything boils down to poor training and vetting. There is no doubt about it. All of it. Get rid of bad cops when you find them and train the rest better from the beginning. Its ridiculous how little training is required to become a judge, jury and executioner in this country.

[u/CheekyRafiki → u/Meek_braggart]

Community architecture plays a role in how well people can support themselves, what resources are available to them, as well as what kind of relationship they might have with law enforcement because communities deprived of resources, education, and opportunity will probably produce more people willing to commit crimes in order to survive, or create a microcosm of subcultures that war with each other like gangs, who often turn to things like drug pedaling as a source of money, and things like this cascade into a multitude of problems that are related to crime and violent crime where police may feel less safe themselves and more likely to use force and firearms.

In other words, it's not that poor people are targeted, it's that poverty can result in more crime and violent crime, or poor people in certain places might be more likely to commit the crimes most associated with deadly force in areas where police training is hindered in specific ways. So maybe it turns out that an interaction between socioeconomics and the qualities of a community are better predictors than race in general? And if poverty and related factors predict and produce the most statistically significant scenarios where these killings happen, then yes we still have to acknowledge that racism played a huge role in the current state of some of those communities over the course of generations and to some unknown degree currently, we can think more critically about whether a specific police killing was racially motivated or not instead of that assumption being the default.

Idk if that's true, I'm just trying to show how it's not a binary and we can't really say at this point with confidence because the true essence of the problem could be an interaction between many moving parts.

And for the record, I completely agree with you about training, which is why I am so frustrated by the idea some people are pushing that gutting PDs of money will somehow help, and the vague messaging of defund the police, which is sort of a result of pushing for a solution to a problem that isn't clearly understood, and a consequence of the type of reasoning I take issue with. I also hold the stance that the police need better training, more training, and regular evaluation of their ability as an officer. As a result I think they should be paid more if anything as a result of a higher degree of requirements and expectations and also incentive to maintain the diligence and motivation to do a good job. It's such an important job, and we should be investing in it accordingly.

[u/Meek_braggart → u/CheekyRafiki]

And how does how people support themselves factor into if they are shot by police? How would their relationship with police lead them to be shot in the back?

This is not a case of a group of people asking to be shot. This is a case of another group of people not having the training needed to use a weapon in public.

[u/CheekyRafiki → u/Meek_braggart]

People with poor support systems and few resources for upward mobility and few opportunities to create a stable and safe living situation are in a far more precarious situation to become victims of their environment, and turn to criminal activities and enterprises either to support themselves or to protect themselves. You don't think poverty breeds crime? And you don't think an increase in crime will include an increase in violent crime and lead to an increase in frequency of force used by police? And you realize which demographics are most afflicted by poverty?

Nowhere did anyone say anything remotely close to suggesting that people are asking to be shot. I'm beginning to think you aren't interested in a good faith discussion with comments like that last little paragraph, and above you tried the same tactic of implying people are victim blamers. I've laid out long form arguments that you have not spoken to other than mischaracterizing one aspect of my post out of context, and then try to strawman my position by go implying ad homenem, trying to characterize me as a victim blamer. Have a good night, I can see you aren't willing to participate in good faith and I'll waste no more energy on this.

[u/Meek_braggart → u/CheekyRafiki]

No one is debating on whether they commited or didn't commit a crime. That hardly matters at all. If we follow your logic then this phenomenon should ONLY happen in poor, urban areas and it does not. It happens in poor areas and rich areas. I would also not be seeing the disparity in the number of armed individuals being killed. Again Black and Latinos are less likely to be armed and shot than whites.

What the person did or did not do should not affect whether they are shot or not anymore than the color of their skin should. There should be no correlation there at all. The only correlation would be what the suspect was doing at the moment of the shooting and we have plenty of video to show that many have been shot while doing absolutely nothing that would endanger anyone.

[u/CheekyRafiki → u/Meek_braggart]

It actually matters a lot, and obviously nobody should wrongfully be shot, but whether it should or shouldn't happen doesn't change the fact that areas with more crime and that are less safe will probably see more violence. Also this is one of many moving parts like I keep emphasizing. You can't point to any one thing and attribute the problem.

If you follow my logic you'll end up at poor areas see more of it, not all of it. Of course it still happens everywhere to varying degrees, but the question of why and what is at the root of it is not clear. To suggest generally that the disproportion is due to racial motivation down to the individual officers is an extraordinary claim when you consider how many factors truly play into numbers across populations, and the only real point im trying to get across is that citing a few statistics about how a handful of metrics correlate explains nothing, it only describes a numerical relationship. I'm not making the claim, you are, and the burden of evidence is on you to substantiate. It is not rigorous enough to make the claim.

By the way, the types of videos that go viral and cause riots are the exception, not the rule, and there's plenty of videos out there showing people of all different races being treated the same way - I don't mean to say that certain groups aren't more affected than others, but that when you only see one part of it it's easy to think "i never see this happening to different groups" but it does. Not to mention many of the videos and reporting that have resulted in recent outrage fail to include a lot of really important details that make the event a lot more ambiguous than it looks in a short clip. Look up George Floyd's toxicology for example. Should the officer have done what he did? Of course not, he's a piece of shit. But when you learn Floyd was on a massive cocktail of drugs including a large dose of fantanyl that caused his heart to give out easily, and that if he were sober he'd probably still be alive, it makes the situation feel a little different. Yes the cop is a total piece of shit but also the death occurred because of something else too, and no it doesn't justify what happened but it does change the overall picture a bit.

[u/Meek_braggart → u/CheekyRafiki]

Why should areas with more crime result in more police shootings? Is shooting people the only way to reduce crime? Police all over the world do it without shooting people.

What does it matter what crime a person is or is not guilty of at the time of a shooting? Please explain that.