As I Suspected...

There's the problem that many of your assumptions, however, are false.The people involved weren't from Black Lives Matter, for example.The "absent black father" is a myth, too, according to the CDC. Add on top of that the fact that one out of six black men will be incarcerated, their ability for them to maintain their involvement in their children's lives is quite remarkable.And as soon as you whined about Sharpton, it was obvious that you don't have an actual argument. Instead, you're making the same argument as those who fought against ACT UP. They're making you uncomfortable. If only they could be "reasonable," things would just get better.You can't be "reasonable" when people don't even recognize the problem and refuse to listen to the people who are experiencing it first hand. Before you can begin to offer solutions, you need to recognize the size and scope of the problem."Lawless, anarchy nonsense."That's cute.The original observation remains: Somehow two people have made you write off thousands.Very telling.

Jon responds to me:

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So you have no counter argument

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Counter-argument to what? Your claim that BLM is no longer worthy of being listened to?I should think that pointing out that all your justifications for such are based upon things that aren't true is the definition of "counter-argument."Hint: i don't have to prove that 2 + 2 = 4 in order to prove they don't equal 5.

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and offer no real solutions.

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Solutions to what? Centuries of racism? I should think that listening to the people who are affected by it is the first step. As I said, before you can even begin to come up with a solution, you need to understand the size and scope of the problem.But hey, they made you uncomfortable, so clearly they're not "serious."Here's someone who explained it much better: Now, if you want to complain about this specific example (it appears that she's a right-wing Palin supporter), let's talk about it. If you want to talk about why Sanders has been bearing the brunt, let's talk about it.But to complain that black people should be nice and quiet and stop making waves and instead just ask politely is to dismiss their lives.

Jon responds to me:

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Not the point I'm making.

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You should try again.

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Then perhaps you should "try again" and restate your argument. Because now it seems that you're all about the "effectiveness" of BLM, as if this one incident is the sole action, and again ignoring the fact that she isn't even a part of it.Please explain how your argument about the "effectiveness" of the protest actions of BLM isn't precisely as I described: Complaining that black people should be nice and quiet and stop making waves and instead just ask politely for their rights.Let's not forget that the very first question MLK was asked when he first appeared on Meet the Press was: How is your argument any different? Why are things different now?

Jon responds to me:

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You still offer nothing.

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You still hear nothing.

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If you could demonstrate the effectiveness of BLM on even one issue capable of actually improving the live of African Americans, you would have done so by now.

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Except you have been given examples. Laws have been passed. Sanders has brought BLM into his campaign.You seem to be of the opinion that unless things change immediately, there is no "effectiveness" to be had. Do you really think that centuries of racism are going to be changed in a year? And on top of that, BLM is just the latest in a long line of protests going back to King and before. Do you really not understand this? That you and I are even talking about this is "effectiveness."Time for you to indicate what it is you would accept as "effectiveness."

Jon writes:

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If these movements want to be taken seriously, a good place to start would be for the people involved in the police 'mistreatment' to not be criminals, thugs, or hooligans.

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And you wonder why you keep getting called out for your privilege for that is a statement that comes from a place of privilege.In the US, about one-third of all black males will spend some time in prison at some point during his lifetime. In New York City, during the stop-and-frisk period, more incidents of stop-and-frisk were carried out on young black men than there were young black men in the city (168K stops versus only 158K individuals). In Brownsville, Brooklyn in 2009, 93% of the entire population was stopped by the police.Thus, to complain that the people being killed by the cops are "criminals, thugs, or hooligans" is to ignore the very racism that resulted in those people being "criminals, thugs, or hooligans" in the first place.And your invocation of MLK is very telling.Edited by Rrhain, : Incorrect attribution

My apologies. I've corrected the attribution.

Jon responds to me:

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Of course, blame someone else.

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Of course, blame the victim. But blaming the victim won't solve the problem of crime. Blaming the victim won't make crime happen...because crime is at its lowest levels since we've started keeping track.Indeed, black people are incarcerated at vastly higher numbers than the presence in the population.That isn't a sign that blacks are criminally inclined. That's a sign of systemic racism. Blacks are more likely to be stopped, more likely to be questioned, more likely to be detained, more likely to be arrested, more likely to be prosecuted, more likely to be convicted, and more likely to receive a harsher sentence than white people. At every level, the justice system seeks to punish blacks more harshly than whites and you think that the presence of more blacks in the prison population is a problem of the black community rather than the racism of the justice system?Your statistics don't take into account the fact that blacks are a minority population. The raw numbers of black-on-white crime is higher than white-on-black crime, but that is because there are more white people in the population. For example, in 2010, according to the DOJ, 447 whites were killed by blacks compared to 218 blacks killed by whites. But because there aren't that many black people in the population, the white-on-black murder rate represents a much higher risk of a black person being killed by a white person than the risk of a white person being murdered by a black person. Any given black person is nearly three times more likely to be murdered by a white person than the other way around.This has to do with the encounter rate between races. Due to segregation (white flight, ghettoization, etc.), the typical person a white person meets has only about a 3% chance of being black. But the typical person a black person meets has about a 57% chance of being white. Given the number of offenders out there, the black-on-white crime rate is actually lower than what you would expect it to be.Um, did you read your own source?The claim isn't that the raw numbers of blacks killed by police is larger than whites but that a black person is more likely to be killed by a cop than a white person. And those numbers directly state it. According to the US Census, whites make up 77.7% of the population, blacks 13.2%, Hispanics 17.1%, and Asians 5.3% with American Indians and Alaskan Natives being 1.2%.So why is it blacks are getting shot at more than twice their representation in the population?

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Racist oppression is not what is causing the high crime rate amongst African Americans. There's something else going on; something that desperately needs to be discovered and addressed. Something that waving around sociology slogans and protesting in the streets over dead criminals won't fix.

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Dismissing the very obvious racist oppression that is taking place and blaming the victims of it is deliberately ignoring the problem and pretending that it is merely "sociology slogans" will never fix it.And you're quite right that I invoked MLK. After all, he was confronted with your exact argument: That somehow "protesting in the streets" won't actually help anything.So if MLK himself says you're wrong about MLK's opinion, who are you to contradict him?

Phat responds to me:

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Not simply climbing on soapboxes (or posting You Tube videos) and making speeches. This is, i think, Jons point. BLM is only effective so long as they walk the walk rather than simply talking to the media and getting press coverage.

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I agree. But what makes you think they're not? After all, their actions with Bernie Sanders have led to him taking them onto his campaign. Clinton is asking them to help her develop legislation.Exactly what is it they need to do that will result in Jon not considering the actions of two people not connected to the movement to dismiss the movement? Unlike ACT UP getting drug trials through, racism isn't going to end by changing some policies. Things like California deciding that officer-involved prosecutions are no longer taken to secret grand juries are a good thing, but there's more to be done and that's only one state.But BLM was part of the reason why it happened.

Jon responds to me:

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The percentage of overall population isn't what matters; it's the percentage of representation in the criminal population.

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I see...and since blacks are criminals, their being killed more often by cops is just an artifact of them being criminals.If you're black holding a toy gun in a toy store that sells the toy gun, you're a criminal and should be shot.If you're a black child in a park playing with a toy gun, you're a criminal and should be shot.You're assuming that blacks are criminals and thus deserving of the treatment they are getting...and in the process ignoring the fact that white people engaging in even worse criminal activity such as shooting at the cops while being chased by them manage to get taken into custody while not getting shot.You seem to ignore that the entire justice system is rigged against black people so that you can blame them for the consequences of being caught in it. That somehow it's up to blacks to change their lives so that the cops stop shooting them.

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and when you adjust for those figures, when police get themselves into a sticky situation with white people they are more likely to shoot the suspect than when they get themselves into a sticky situation with black people.

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Incorrect. It is the exact opposite.

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And that's a flat-out lie. The percentage of the prison population that is black continues to rise even as old-style racism is becoming an endangered species.

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And yet the facts contradict you. Your claim that "old-style racism is becoming an endangered species" simply isn't true and is being reinforced by more pervasive and subtle forms.In Ferguson, for example, despite the neighborhood being overwhelmingly black, the police force and justice department are overwhelmingly white.

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Unless you think there was less 'systemic racism' back in the days of Jim Crow

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dOr, perhaps, system racism hasn't lessened but simply shifted in its methodology. When a black man can be pulled over simply for "making direct eye contact" with a cop, do you really think it's an "endangered species"? Black man pulled over in Ohio for making 'direct eye contact' with cops is from Detroit

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As I have said a number of times now, racism is not the cause of the disparities between white and black life achievement, and black folk agree (last question):

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Do you really not understand the difference between "perception" and actuality? Your survey only looks at what people think, not at what actually happens. You can't be aware of things that you aren't paying attention to. When you don't get the job, you don't have access to the other applicants to be able to determine if it was race that was involved in you not getting an interview.But even your survey indicates blacks see a much higher level of discrimination.Why do you dismiss them?The black community doesn't need your pontificating. Your insistence that we are somehow "post-racial" is ineffective. Your refusal to recognize reality will ensure that no "real" solution to "real" problems will ever happen.Your intentions may be good, but the evidence overwhelmingly shows they are misguided.

Jon responds to me:

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If you think fighting racism is going to have a significant impact on the lives of African Americans, then prove it.

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Did you not just claim MLK for yourself? What do you think he was fighting against? Merely poverty? Do you really think the Civil Rights Act had no significant impact on the lives of black people in this country?

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As you know, I've already started a thread where you can lay out your argument with all your evidence and logic.

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And as you know, I've already pointed out the fallacy of your opening post.

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This thread is specifically about BLM and is not the place to make the argument you're trying to make.

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And exactly what do you think BLM is doing? Oh, that's right...they're just a bunch of rabble-rousers who want to whine. That's why you can dismiss them after seeing two people who aren't even connected to BLM make life slightly inconvenient for a white man.