Summations Only

I consider myself a recovering racist.

I think you have that right: white kids are taught that resisting arrest is wrong; black kids are taught that resisting arrest is dangerous.Jaywalking isn't "wrong" in any moral sense but it can be dangerous. (By the way, I have occasionally "helped" aboriginal people across the street by walking with them because white drivers often won't stop for them.)

When somebody is killed by a bullet, we do assume it's a crime until it's been shown to be otherwise. At least we should and we should make that assumption equally whether the victim is a young black man with a criminal record or a middle-aged white grandmother who's never had a parking ticket.

There should definitely be an investigation to see whether or not a trial is necessary.

I agree. The process should be more rigorous. And independent of the jurisdiction in which the event occurred. In Canada, for example, a shooting by municipal police is sometimes investigated by the RCMP. I think it should always be investigated by an outside agency.Faith seems to be suggesting that the current system is fine or that it should be relaxed even more in favour of police officers.

Of course it's "possible" to make a judgement without a trial. It always is. Police states do it all the time.The question is whether it's a good judgement. Without a standardized system of determining what is "good evidence", there's no justice.

What I'm talking about is one step before the grand jury, the investigation itself. It makes no sense to have the police policing the police. Every police shooting should be investigated by an outside agency (preferably a civilian agency). The officer should not be allowed to carry a weapon during the investigation. The results of that investigation should determine whether the shooter is prosecuted, the same as it would for a civilian shooter.

"Demonstrating" racism in a specific case is beside the point. The point is that we need to consider the possibility of unconscious racial motivations - more in ourselves than in others, though.

Yes, that's the point: it could be there. Even it it hasn't been "shown" to your satisfaction, it could be there. The thread isn't about arguing whether racism "was" a factor in specific cases. It's about raising awareness about unconscious racism.

Again, "these incidents" are not the issue.

In order to detect the unconscious thoughts, you'd have to see all of the subject's actions, not just a miniscule selected few on the Internet. That's why specific cases aren't particularly relevant to the topic. It isn't always possible to "diagnose" racism in individual cases. It's only possible to notice that racism is likely to be prevalent in police officers in general, for example.

Maybe you noticed that "police officerS" is plural in my sentence and also in yours. So no, you can't demonstrate it in every singular police officer but yes, you can demonstrate it in plural police officerS - because it exists in EVERYBODY. It just happens to show up more often in police officers than in janitors because janitors don't often have the power to act out on their unconscious feelings.

The only claim I have made is that everybody, including police officers, has inherent traces of racism. We have evolved an us-versus-them mentality that no amount of rational thinking can completely eliminate.

You keep saying that and then you go into irrelevant details. I'm saying that dogs naturally have four legs and you're pointing to one or two who lost a leg in an accident. If you want to show that dogs don't naturally have four legs, go ahead and do that.

quote:

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Matthew 7:3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

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How can we see racism in others if we don't recognize the possibility in ourselves? On the contrary, personal responsibility is the foundation on which society is built. If we're not responsible for the way our unconscious thoughts manifest in our conscious behaviour, we might as well all be Charles Manson.