Houston Deputy Murdered while pumping gas

[Sebastian]

That was over 50 years ago, a lot has changed since then, police had different laws to abide by, you can't compare something from that long ago and act as though it is occurring on a significant level in present day America.

The Stonewall bar had ties with the mafia as well as prostitution. From a short documentary I just watched on youtube, gays at the bar started throwing pennies and beer bottles at the officers and "grabbing their butts, telling them how pretty they were," that doesn't sound like a very respectful and civil way to act towards authority.

The incident encouraged further rioting which you may see as noble, but I see as illegal and unethical.

Whether or not the police were in the wrong for entering the bar is irrelevant, you never attack a police officer even if he uses excessive force, you abide by the law and hire legal counsel to fight injustice. Lack of respect for authority plagues the younger generations and has played a huge role in current police brutality cases.

What exactly are you insinuating here that is relevant to the cop discussion? Are you saying that the alleged Christian cops over there are not supportive of a homosexual lifestyle, therefore, the LGBT community feels as though those bible belt cops are somehow targeting their community? Straight Americans in that area of the country enjoy different treatment from the police force?

No, I don't believe that there is any evidence out there of police brutality cases involving an alleged homosexual in 2015. I am sure there were some remote cases in the past and maybe one or two here and there where a homosexual would make such accusations but nothing detailed or concrete. Even if there was alleged police brutality case involving an officer and a person of the LGBT community you'd have a hard time proving that the officer used excessive force owing to the victim's sexual orientation, it could just be a disgruntled officer who is a disgrace to the uniform.

...it could just be a disgruntled officer who is a disgrace to the uniform.

First off, I think you should re-read my original post. I made a VERY important and clear distinction that the behaviors I described regarding cops harassing those they disliked, such as 'Mos, Pot-heads and brown people, were attributed to bad cops, not all cops. We are in agreement that any cop who would target someone purely for venal personal reasons is a disgrace. Boot them. That said, let us unpack what else you have to say on the matter.

The Stonewall bar had ties with the mafia as well as prostitution. From a short documentary I just watched on youtube, gays at the bar started throwing pennies and beer bottles at the officers and "grabbing their butts, telling them how pretty they were," that doesn't sound like a very respectful and civil way to act towards authority.

Whether or not the police were in the wrong for entering the bar is irrelevant, you never attack a police officer even if he uses excessive force, you abide by the law and hire legal counsel to fight injustice.

As you watched a documentary on the subject (provided it was a credible one) you would know that the NYPD conducted a concerted campaign against gay bars on the orders of Mayor Wagner who wanted every gay bar in the city closed on whatever pretext necessary. You point out that laws change over 50 years, however, there was no legal reason behind that campaign back then and it was strictly the product of the moral objections of some in power.

Whereas it is true that the Stonewall Inn was owned by a family with mafia ties, raids were conducted not to nail the mob, but to harass and arrest homosexuals with little or no cause as justification. Drag queens were arrested for the crime of wearing women's clothing and if you had no ID you too were headed to the slammer.

That you would blithely ignore that history of official harassment without legal cause, in favor of framing the riot as a groundless hissy-fit of cat-calling homos who should have toe'd the line, completely undermines your own argument that police did and do not target homosexuals, or other minorities. By excusing their behavior you admit that they were behaving badly and they did maliciously target people simply because they didn't like them.

Lack of respect for authority plagues the younger generations and has played a huge role in current police brutality cases.

Younger generations? Dude, this shit happens every generation (I am genuinely curious as to how old you are). Are you objecting to the tendency of the young to act out rebelliously or are you suggesting that anyone that doesn't prostrate themselves before authority is asking to be beaten or shot; that in some way police brutality is the fault of the victim? If so, it is an odd position for a conservative to take considering that it is the Right that continually warns us against government overreach and blind deference to authority.

What exactly are you insinuating here that is relevant to the cop discussion? Are you saying that the alleged Christian cops over there are not supportive of a homosexual lifestyle, therefore, the LGBT community feels as though those bible belt cops are somehow targeting their community?

No, I don't believe that there is any evidence out there of police brutality cases involving an alleged homosexual in 2015. I am sure there were some remote cases in the past and maybe one or two here and there where a homosexual would make such accusations but nothing detailed or concrete.

I'm not insinuating anything. I am flat out saying that there are bad cops out there, pick one or all of three patented Stannis classifications of bad cop, that targets folks they don't like. I've seen it first-hand. Shit, I was with my fraternity brothers partying in Wrigleyville in Chicago when we wandered into Boystown where we saw a couple of Gotham's finest harassing three drag queens. They were mocking those weirdos in wigs in a fashion that led us to believe that they were hoping for a confrontation. It was shocking for us considering it was 2009 in a Blue-State.

Now, I understand you misread my original post and thought I meant all cops in referencing this type of behavior, but if you think this sort of abuse doesn't occur, for whatever reason good cop or bad, then I don't know what to say. Maybe tell @gourimoko that there isn't any racism in this country. But, in any case, here is a study that demonstrates that police harassment of LGBT[][][...] people is very much alive and well, and far from rare, in 2015:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/04/us-usa-lgbt-police-idUSKBN0M02JM20150304

not supportive of a homosexual lifestyle...alleged homosexual...

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you probably think homosexuality is a choice?

The incident encouraged further rioting which you may see as noble, but I see as illegal and unethical.

I don't think you understand me in the least.

 

[gourimoko]

I see what you are saying here. Can you provide this information? Are Samoans and Micronesians a race of their own or are they part of Pacific Islanders?

I thought I already had upthread. Yes, Micronesians, Native Hawaiians, and Samoans are completely distinct races of people. The data is according to the 2010 State of Hawaii Crime Statistics.

If a chart includes Native-Americans, Pacific Islanders, Caucasian, Natives and Hispanics, why don't we count the races other Cauc?

No tabulation I know of refers to "caucasians" but instead Whites. This may or may not include almost 20 million Latinos, it depends on the measurement.

Why we don't measure races of Whites is interesting; just as interesting as why we don't measure races of Blacks - as if either color denoted race.

I could see an argument that race SHOULD be broken down further to reflect differences in culture between say Ashkenazi Jews, UK caucasians and say American-Australians and apply that same concept to Hispanics (Central American vs Spanish for example), Asians/Pacific Islanders (japanese, chinese, samoan,etc).

The point is that these people are very distinct. I'm not really saying the Anglo-American experience is somehow qualitatively different than the Franco-American experience; but the Japanese-American experience is very different than the Filipino-American experience and the two should not be lumped together.

I'm more interested in culture's contribution to crime than the outdated races we have on our Tables. But right now, the tables are what they are: black, caucasian, Asian/PI, Hispanic, Natives and Alaskans. In drawing conclusions from these tables, I'm confused on why whites only can be pulled from here.

As I explained earlier, you're overly smoothing the data points by comparing populations of tens of millions of people to populations that essentially only live in very specific regions of the country and in very small populations by comparison. It's not an accurately comparative analysis because, again, you are assuming linearity where none exists.

...and Hispanics, Natives, PI/Asian. And Japanese-Americans aren't broken down specifically on the crime charts we keep here in the US.

Hispanics are not a race of people, but a culture. Latinos are an ethnicity. The FBI data that's used for national comparisons isn't really descriptive, and is why state data with large Latino populations use more specific racial breakdowns. This is also the case for the various races of Asians and Pacific Islanders.

Furthermore, the Asian/PI data wouldn't be relevant on a national scale; again, due to the aforementioned problems of scale/smoothing. Instead, to use Asiatic data, you should reference California, Hawaii, and perhaps New York regional data; not national data.

I've stated that I feel predisposition is determined by the way someone is raised rather than whether they're part of a group. Basically, the way their minds are imprinted by their parents. And you could include the culture they are surrounded by ie neighborhood, schools, friendships, etc.

I don't think people are "imprinted" with a predisposition to criminality. I think they simply lack opportunity. At least, I think that's the largest contributing factor; with the second largest being the war on drugs, and the third largest being recidivism.

These things are tough to measure and they ARE more socioeconomic than racial.

Definitely. But there are studies on these topics.

Mindsets are impossible to measure and I firmly believe that is what predisposes someone to crime.

I don't think people, in a general case, are predisposed to criminality. I think that's a conclusion that one really needs evidence for before making.

What I'm pointing out is that if you multiply the numbers you gave by 1,000 those statistics should be more convincing. I'm suggesting that our society here in America has much larger groups than the island does.

But what your failing to understand is that the question isn't about sample size but discreteness of population.

It's statistics. The point is that the Red and Blue populations are interdependent, and not discrete. So if you try to naively separate the two and make general comparisons across the board you'll fail to make accurate conclusions. This is why we perform adjustments on data to normalize it, this is why we do certain complex operations like regressions.

I don't understand any of this. Not your fault. I'm jus not grasping these concepts because the wording isn't familiar to me anymore.

I see...

Think back to the Love/Jennings conversation.

Does Jennings score more than Love per minute?

This question is fundamentally different than:
Did Jennings score more than Love per minute last season?

The tense is different. The first question is present/future tense, and is thus a predictive argument. What that means is that it is making a prediction, based on some premises which we all have to accept as being true - and a conclusion must follow from those premises.

To me, that's the big takeaway from this and why races as we list them regarding crime aren't as meaningful as culture and parenting.

I would agree with the general point you're making; although I disagree with where you're taking it. I think the data clearly shows high correlation with socioeconomic factors outside of cultural issues (which can be a contributing factor). I think focusing on variations in culture would be less productive if we're now discussing change rather than simply identifying causative factors.

Being of an African-American origin doesn't cause one to be predisposed to crime. Being neglected or abused by parents, growing up in a culture where crime is accepted or encouraged do. Race isn't anywhere near as meaningful to me as family and neighborhood. Race is only really meaningful to me for genetics ie diseases and syndromes, apperance, etc.

I'd generally agree with this.

I don't believe there are genes within races that predispose to crimes. There are genes that predispose to brain disorders, prominent Jaws, narrow eyes, height, etc within smaller sections of society based on breeding within a location. But I don't believe there are common genes that affect behavior in any large sense.

Agreed.

It's observational and based on the classifications listed in our tables.

Then if we're talking about the commonly cited FBI data, again, it's only useful to compare Blacks and Whites. If you reduce the generalized statement from "any other race" to Whites, then I'd of course agree with the statement. It's a statement of fact at that point.

 

[Otsego Mar]

How did I ignore anything in his post? I responded to all of it, in multi-quote form no less.



JSS is an outright racist, you think I came to that conclusion in this thread? People have been calling him a racist for years. Go back to the very first page; I told Mar I wouldn't even respond to him.

What is it he's said you think warrants a response?

He added to his OP.

As for him being a racist, I can't say that I view what he has said in this thread as racist. However, I understand that your history of dialogue with him goes back through several discussions...of which I cannot (nor do I really wish to) speak on behalf.

 

[The Oi]

@gourimoko

Thank you for explaining your position.

Regarding predisposition...First, I'll say that I believe a large portion of society dislikes and mistrusts The Heritage Foundation because it is steeped in conservative moralism. Further, the author of the article is a Catholic...a church the positions of which I often disagree with. Regardless, this article posted by the foundation reflects my viewpoints almost exactly. I hope that the fact that it came from the foundation doesn't detract from the fact that the positions I'm arguing are common to Fagan's. I disagree with many of the foundation's viewpoints and likely his viewpoints as well. The article is also almost 20 years old, so I'm sure that psychology has evolved significantly since that time. That said...here it is:

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/1995/03/bg1026nbsp-the-real-root-causes-of-violent-crime

Now to give a few examples I've come up with my own prior to reading the article...

When it comes to serial killers, it is proven that they have these things in common:

Lack of empathy
Lack of fear response

So their actions are reflective of people who do not feel guilt for harming others and thrill-seeking. That is to say...they injure others to feel something, anything at all.

These people are predisposed to harming others.

There's a higher occurrence of molestation or child rape in individuals who were molested as children vs those who weren't. I'd argue these individuals were predisposed to committing these acts.

Women who were abandoned or abused by their fathers end up with abusive partners more often than women who were raised in a stable environment. They are predisposed to seeking/ending up in this type of male relationship based on the male relationship they experienced as children.

If you agree with these examples, why would you disagree that an individual could be predisposed to violent crime given the correct circumstances?

I'd argue that a child who was raised in a broken home is more likely to have gone without guidance on how to cope with life challenges, is more likely to resist authority, to lash out when life doesn't go as planned and above all...loses control. As these individuals grow up I'd say they are predisposed to lashing out as adults, resisting authority and experiences the type of rage when they lose control that leads to committing violent crime.

What I'm NOT arguing is that people are predisposed FROM BIRTH to commit violent crime, be serial killers, be child molesters etc based on their race.

What I am arguing is that broken homes and certain traumatic life experiences contribute to the likelihood of some of these behaviors.

Hence, a predisposition to violent crime.

 

[natedagg]

Good article: http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/02/us/admitting-racism/index.html and LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL at Osbourne saying she isn't racist.

Excerpt (the story isn't just a current events piece tho):

A group of women were chatting and laughing together like old friends when the subject turned to race.

One of them said she was amazed that Donald Trump, while running for president, could get away with describing Mexican immigrants as "rapists" and "killers."

"If you kick every Latino out of this country," another chimed in, "then who is going to be cleaning your toilet, Donald Trump?"

Someone gasped and there was an awkward pause. One of the group was of Puerto Rican descent and two others were African-American. They were all panelists on the ABC show, "The View," and their conversation before a studio audience was being broadcast live.

The woman whose comment derailed the perky talk-show banter was reality TV star Kelly Osbourne, who is white. She later took to Twitter to "take responsibility for my poor choice of words," but added, "I will not apologize for being a racist as I am NOT."

 

[Randolphkeys]

I blame Bob Marley for this shot deputy and he should be prosecuted, but Eric Clapton should get off with a few dozen hours of community service.

 

[The Oi]

Kelly Osbourne made what, in a standup comedy setting, would have been a hacky joke that was laughed off by the crowd and probably groaned at for being old.

But she made it on The View in front of a Hispanic person and several other hens who probably:

(a) didn't consider it a joke (rightly) and
(b) know they could probably get fired if they supported it.

She also said it and defended it in a serious tone, which was moronic. She didn't even present it as a joke. All of that leads me to believe she probably actually thinks it rather than just jokes about it.

Kelly Osborne is a lunatic like her mother.

 

[Soda]

I'm surprised this Kelly Osborne thing is just getting attention here now.. She said it like a week or two ago.

The wildest part was the executives of the show/station coerced Rosie Perez (the lady that stopped Osborne's comment) to apologize to Kelly! Perez issued the apology and then quit and told the execs to kiss her ass. Rightfully, in my opinion.

@Lord Mar fuckin' TV execs, man.

 

[The Human Q-Tip]

What I am arguing is that broken homes and certain traumatic life experiences contribute to the likelihood of some of these behaviors.

Hence, a predisposition to violent crime.

Two points:

First, it is factually true that blacks commit a disproportionate number of crimes compared to whites. People certainly can debate exactly what "black" and "white" means, but that's really just quibbling on the larger point.. But the reasons for that higher rate of crime are obviously an issue in terms of formulating public policy. There is some evidence that there is a genetic component relating to criminal behavior, but I'm not aware of anything showing that the genetic component is stronger in some racial groupings than others.

http://www.personalityresearch.org/papers/jones.html

There also is a lot of evidence of a strong correlation between income and the propensity to commit crime. But that doesn't explain the entire disparity, and there are a bunch of other factors that also have been shown to matter. Things like performance in school, coming from a broken home, all have been statistically linked to criminal behavior, and those are some of the things that would validate your cultural hypothesis. I yanked just one article that cited a bunch of studies, , but there are tons of other ones out there.

https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/frd030127.pdf

But second, I'm not sure the reasons for that disparity are even relevant to the point made earlier by that JSS guy. As I understood at least his initial point (and it's possible I misunderstood it), the inarguable fact that blacks are disproportionately the victims of police shootings may be explained at least in part by the fact that blacks also are committing more crimes, which means they are more likely than whites to be having adversarial encounters with the police. That is true regardless of the underlying reasons of why there is a racial disparity in crime rates.

In other words, if you have to control for factors other than race before linking crime rates to race, you should likewise have to control for factors other than race (such as crime rates) before linking the higher incidence of police shootings of blacks to their race. Here's one article making that point more clearly than me:

http://www.city-journal.org/2010/eon0514hm.html

....These crime data are not some artifact that the police devise out of their skewed racial mindset. They are what the victims of those crimes—the vast majority of whom are minority themselves—report to the police.

You cannot properly analyze police behavior without analyzing crime. Crime is what drives NYPD tactics; it is the basis of everything the department does. And crime, as reported by victims and witnesses, sends police overwhelmingly to minority neighborhoods, because that’s where the vast majority of crime occurs—by minority criminals against minority victims.....

Before anyone jumps my shit for saying this, I am not stating or implying that there are no racist cops, or that actual race isn't a factor in some of those shootings. I am simply pointing out that as long as there are higher rates of violent crime among any subgroup, that subgroup is likely to experience a greater incidence of police shooting or other negative encounters with police.

ETA: Couple of other things....

To the extent some in the black community argue against politeness to police, or justify fleeing police, those actions (regardless of whether justified or not) are also going to result in more negative encounters with police. That obviously can be a self-reinforcing, destructive course of behavior for everyone involved.

Another issue is what I mentioned before about the different perceptions of what happened with Michael Brown. Regardless of which interpretation is ultimately correct, the fact that black people are much more likely to view the police action as unreasonable/unjustified will result in a greater degree of suspicions/animosity between those people and the police, which is also something that is more likely to lead to additional negative encounters with police.

My overall point is that if there is to be any hope at all of improving this, there must be a conscious, sustained effort on the part of both the police and the black community to work on those relations. Any mindset that places all the blame on the other group is not going to work. Unfortunately, though, the differing views on Ferguson suggest to me that is probably not going to happen.

 

[No Regard]

How did I ignore anything in his post? I responded to all of it, in multi-quote form no less.



JSS is an outright racist, you think I came to that conclusion in this thread? People have been calling him a racist for years. Go back to the very first page; I told Mar I wouldn't even respond to him.

What is it he's said you think warrants a response?

My apologies, gour. I didn't know that it was something he added later.

Nevertheless, I stand by my point. Accusing someone of racism is very serious and a claim that should be used carefully.

You are calling @JSS2306 a racist. According to you, (unspecified) people agree with you and have so for years. That's not good enough. I have yet to see statements by JSS justifying these claims and I can't remember him ever saying that "we should kill Muslims en masse" (which btw is a disgusting thing to say).

I might have overlooked it though, but it's not my responsibility to dig up the proof. You're the one making these claims and therefore the burden's on you.

 

[The Human Q-Tip]

I'm surprised this Kelly Osborne thing is just getting attention here now.. She said it like a week or two ago.

The wildest part was the executives of the show/station coerced Rosie Perez (the lady that stopped Osborne's comment) to apologize to Kelly! Perez issued the apology and then quit and told the execs to kiss her ass. Rightfully, in my opinion.

@Lord Mar fuckin' TV execs, man.

The irony of this is that there apparently was some other incident that led to a blowup on Fashion Police (that Joan Rivers show before she died) where Kelly Osborne went off on some other woman who supposedly made an inappropriate joke.

 

[Lee]

I blame Bob Marley for this shot deputy and he should be prosecuted, but Eric Clapton should get off with a few dozen hours of community service.

If nothing else this could Change the World, and i am 100% sure right now that Layla has Tears in Heaven while Clapton's guitar Gently Weeps for the loss of shot Deputy, i wonder if the perpetrator was on Cocaine.

 

[gourimoko]

My apologies, gour. I didn't know that it was something he added later.

Nevertheless, I stand by my point. Accusing someone of racism is very serious and a claim that should be used carefully.

You're right.. And I don't throw that around lightly. I apologized for calling a long-time poster a racist because I made a mistake and confused his posts with JSS's.. He and I hashed it out and I realize where he was coming from and vice versa. So yeah, I don't throw it around lightly.

But I say JSS is a racist for the same reasons other posters have called him a racist over the past several years. His posts have been so vitriolic at times that they've been deleted and ended conversations then and there. I put him on ignore after one of his latest racist rants in a police shooting thread (again, that got deleted).

On more than one occasion he's cited racist, White supremacist blogs (even recently in another shooting victim thread), and used common lines of reasoning that @Tylons alluded to earlier.

He's shown a pattern of making remarks in every one of these police threads that the person who was killed (if Black) likely deserved it, even when the general consensus is otherwise.

His argumentation shows a motive of advancing a racist agenda, and then he makes the hallmark counterclaim that I am a racist for calling him out.

This has been going on for a long time, and as I said, I really didn't want to get dragged into it. I say that because, to be quite honest, as the sole Black guy in a thread like this - with almost no diversity - I'm not really well positioned.

People will agree with his some of his points, because many people fall somewhere on that racist spectrum of thought, for better or worse, and I guess that's the reality.

The problem is that, if you agree with the honest fact that there is a problem with African-American crime rates in America, then you'd likely believe the misrepresentation that there is a problem with "Black-on-White" crime which is a pivot point into the continuous cycle of stereotyping both African-Americans as threats to society, and Whites as perpetually silent victims of out-of-control Black crime when neither of these beliefs reflect reality.

So what happens is that instead of discussing, rationally, issues of crime and sociology, we end up debating the validity of firmly held stereotypes and myths.

If you pay attention closely, you can see how he and another poster pivoted the conversation about police into a conversation about Whites; even when I said, numerous times, my original argument had nothing to do with White people at all.

Instead, many want to frame this conversation in that way as, considering the demographics here, it's an easier position to be in.

You are calling @JSS2306 a racist. According to you, (unspecified) people agree with you and have so for years. That's not good enough.

No Regard, honestly, good enough for whom?

I would say that there are numerous posters in this thread that are familiar with this back and forth.. I don't think it requires a deeper explanation in every thread he decides to post in. Instead, simply reiterating the point: you are a racist, is sufficient. If it's not sufficient for you, then that's your prerogative.

With that said, I said in my very first post, I don't want to relitigate this topic in every thread. If you want to know why I call JSS a racist, PM me and we can talk about it, but I frankly sick of the conversation about the guy - hence me ignoring his posts, again, at this point.

I have yet to see statements by JSS justifying these claims and I can't remember him ever saying that "we should kill Muslims en masse" (which btw is a disgusting thing to say).

He said we should nuke the Middle East and cited Islam as the reasoning behind it. His posts were deleted, as they often are, but both myself and @kosis among others commented on it before and after. You can go through the Hebdo, ISIS, Iraq, Nigeria kidnapping, etc etc threads and read the posts of his that haven't been deleted. There are numerous posters that comment on this...

I might have overlooked it though, but it's not my responsibility to dig up the proof.

Neither is it mine.

You're the one making these claims and therefore the burden's on you.

There is no burden of proof on me since this isn't a courtroom and since I'm not asking you or anyone else to change your opinion of him. I couldn't care less what you think about the guy. I don't say that disrespectfully, but with honesty, why would I need to go through 5-6+ years of posts simply because you decided to ask me without doing your own research? I have no such obligation.

And to be completely honest man, I know you're not the biggest fan of mine, let's not kid ourselves. I know you have some pretty strong beliefs that I've criticized in the past, and you've lashed out at me personally on more than one occasion. I'm not sure if you're using this as another opportunity to try to come at me but it's not worth my time to be honest.

With that out of the way, was there something of importance you wanted to talk about? If not, as I said, you can PM me.

 

[The Oi]

the black community

I never loved this phrase. It's too all-encompassing.

Like, if someone said the white community and lumped me into it I'd be pretty irritated. I don't want to be lumped in with white trash, child abusers, serial killers, etc who are white. And I wouldn't say I'm part of the same community as Mark Cuban, Warren Buffett and other 1%'ers who work together on a regular basis.

I don't think it's fair to do it to blacks.

Now if black people want to band together as a group to claim that they deserve recognition or treatment they aren't currently getting, then I suppose those groups can be a community of their own.

But is LeBron James part of the same community as the black dude that shot a cop the other day? Is Barack Obama part of the same community as the black dude who was hiding corpses inside of his creepy building in Cleveland? These guys lifestyles, income, locations are so different that they're barely the same species....however differently Barack would like us to feel.

I think there are groups of black people that push for certain rights and I think there's a mindset that ALL black people should band together for common causes, but the idea of a black community seems relatively pointless to me.

Hispanic community or Pacific Islander community seems ever more useless. Native Americans is really the only one that seems cohesive and specific enough.

The more I've re-read my own posts, the more I've realized that the way races are broken down in the US is completely ridiculous. Japanese barely have anything in common with Samoans and yet they're thrust into the same group? Totally different cultures and shit...body sizes.

 

[gourimoko]

I never loved this phrase. It's too all-encompassing.

Like, if someone said the white community and lumped me into it I'd be pretty irritated. I don't want to be lumped in with white trash, child abusers, serial killers, etc who are white. And I wouldn't say I'm part of the same community as Mark Cuban, Warren Buffett and other 1%'ers who work together on a regular basis.

I don't think it's fair to do it to blacks.

Now if black people want to band together as a group to claim that they deserve recognition or treatment they aren't currently getting, then I suppose those groups can be a community of their own.

But is LeBron James part of the same community as the black dude that shot a cop the other day? Is Barack Obama part of the same community as the black dude who was hiding corpses inside of his creepy building in Cleveland? These guys lifestyles, income, locations are so different that they're barely the same species....however differently Barack would like us to feel.

I think there are groups of black people that push for certain rights and I think there's a mindset that ALL black people should band together for common causes, but the idea of a black community seems relatively pointless to me.

Hispanic community or Pacific Islander community seems ever more useless.

The more I've re-read my own posts, the more I've realized that the way races are broken down in the US is completely ridiculous. Japanese barely have anything in common with Samoans and yet they're thrust into the same group? Totally different cultures and shit...body sizes.

Thanks for this..

The "Black community" is laughable...

What community?

Do we have meetings and shit?

It's like when people call Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson leaders in the Black Community.. I always just smh..

It's just a lazy way to avoid doing real research and analysis - so instead of saying "Blacks" people say "the Black community."