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Hate Crime : it's a Knockout.

I couldn't find anything about the ten commandments in any of these articles so I stopped reading them.
 
Well, at least Al Sharpton took a stand on a non-event. :)

I like the "nothing to see here" crowd.
 
Lectro said:
Well, at least Al Sharpton took a stand on a non-event. :)

I like the "nothing to see here" crowd.
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Any time you can call a community to non-violence, I think it's a good thing. And the "nothing to see here" crowd includes some pretty reputable news sources. Again, I think it's kind of about how you frame the story, as the NPR article does a good job discussing. Wrangor wants to frame it as a symbol of our civilization in decline. 2&2 and LK want to see it as another reason to be terrified of black people. You want to...I have no idea what you want, lectro, you're nuts. I think most people want to avoid being sucker punched in the street; we can all probably agree on that point. As long as I'm not being sucker punched on the street, I don't care what race isn't doing it.
 
I need a scorecard to know when conservative white guys take Al Sharpton seriously. Don't they usually say, "If it was a black guy doing ______ against a white person, you wouldn't hear Al Sharpton talk about it" or something like that? Funny to see Lectro believes Sharpton legitimizes this hysteria.
 
TownieDeac said:
Any time you can call a community to non-violence, I think it's a good thing. And the "nothing to see here" crowd includes some pretty reputable news sources. Again, I think it's kind of about how you frame the story, as the NPR article does a good job discussing. Wrangor wants to frame it as a symbol of our civilization in decline. 2&2 and LK want to see it as another reason to be terrified of black people. You want to...I have no idea what you want, lectro, you're nuts. I think most people want to avoid being sucker punched in the street; we can all probably agree on that point. As long as I'm not being sucker punched on the street, I don't care what race isn't doing it.
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Well the NRA says, "A good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun". Maybe we should only walk out of our homes or offices with black belts or ex-pro boxers. This way if someone tries to sucker punch you your shadow can beat the shit out of him.
 
RJKarl said:
Well the NRA says, "A good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun". Maybe we should only walk out of our homes or offices with black belts or ex-pro boxers. This way if someone tries to sucker punch you your shadow can beat the shit out of him.
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Or you can modify your statement to say, "A good guy with a gun stops a bad guy. Only good guys carry guns."
 
My friend was a victim of this Tuesday. Clocked in the head while on a train in NYC, perpetrator ran off the train as the doors were closing.
 
Reading this thread I would be led to the conclusion that a black guy was racist because he crossed the street in Jackson, MS in 1964 to avoid a few white men he didn't know and had never seen - even if what led him to take this action was a fear the white guys would attack him because of his race. His action would be just as irrational as the white guy in Philly who crosses the street today to get away from the black teens out of fear he's going to get sucker punched because of his race.

Neither is a per se "racist" act. Racism is the belief races have distinctive characteristics that lead one race to be superior to another. If you are afraid a group of people doesn't like your race and may hurt you because of it, that doesn't make you a racist. You are likely an irrational tool, but it doesn't make you racist for craps sake.
 
The above post trivializes what a lot of people went through in the 1960s.
 
PhDeac said:
The above post trivializes what a lot of people went through in the 1960s.
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No, it doesn't. And you can stop with the off handed comment that is somehow does. No one is proclaiming that there weren't enormous racial challenges in the South in the 1960's. Obviously there were. And nothing in my post said there weren't.

But that doesn't change the cold hard fact that your odds of suffering an assault in 1965 in this country were ridiculously low (111 per 100,000). Never mind a random assault propogated against you by someone you didn't know - even longer odds. And the even longer odds that it would be racially motivated. Just as your odds of suffering an assault today remains ridiculously low (252 per 100,000 people). Never mind a random assault propogated against you by someone you don't know are even longer odds and the odds of a racially motivated assault even longer.

The vast majority of whites in the South in the 1960's never physically harmed anyone - much more physically harmed someone because of their race. Just as the vast majority of black teenagers today don't run around trying to knock white people out without warning. Yet you wouldn't automatically paint anyone who crossed the street in Memphis in 1965 out of fear they might get attacked because of their skin color as a "racist". Nor should you proclaim the same thing today.

Racism is the belief that races have particular inherent traits and that one (or more) races are superior to another or others. It is exclusionary and, because it is a belief, it is conscious. That's what it is. We have lost sight of that definition in today's society. And the fact we have lost sight of this fact prohibits lots of rational discussions we should be having as a society about race, stereotypes and racial biases. Racism is the white guy at the hockey game who yelled at my kid during a warmup "No spics on the ice!" That guy is racist. The old black guy who doesn't think whites are inherently bad but thinks the group of white teens walking towards him may be about to cold cock him as a result of watching the news of late isn't racist. He's just irrational, scared and biased in that moment. Ditto for the white woman who is married to a guy from Peru who crosses the street upon seeing a group of hispanic teens because she's heard about the knockout game.

I'm with the crowd who says these fears are irrational. But that never stopped anyone from being afraid. Per the FBI there were about 7,000 hate crimes in 2011 in the U.S. 45% of these were racially motivated. Even if I presume only 1 in 100 hate crimes are ever reported that still places your odds of being the victim of a hate crime at .02%. 45% of .02% lowers your odds of a racially motivated crime to .01%. And only 60% of hate crimes are against people, the rest are against property. So you odds of a racially motivate hate crime against a person are about .005%. Never mind only some fraction of those crimes are violent. I can assure you way, way, way more than some fraction of .005% of the population has concern about being personally targeted for a crime at some time during the course of the year because of their race. That doesn't make them inherently "racist".
 
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DeacMan said:
No, it doesn't. And you can stop with the off handed comment that is somehow does. No one is proclaiming that there weren't enormous racial challenges in the South in the 1960's. Obviously there were. And nothing in my post said there weren't.

But that doesn't change the cold hard fact that your odds of suffering an assault in 1965 in this country were ridiculously low (111 per 100,000). Never mind a random assault propogated against you by someone you didn't know - even longer odds. And the even longer odds that it would be racially motivated. Just as your odds of suffering an assault today remains ridiculously low (252 per 100,000 people). Never mind a random assault propogated against you by someone you don't know are even longer odds and the odds of a racially motivated assault even longer.

The vast majority of whites in the South in the 1960's never physically harmed anyone - much more physically harmed someone because of their race. Just as the vast majority of black teenagers today don't run around trying to knock white people out without warning. Yet you wouldn't automatically paint anyone who crossed the street in Memphis in 1965 out of fear they might get attacked because of their skin color as a "racist". Nor should you proclaim the same thing today.

Racism is the belief that races have particular inherent traits and that one (or more) races are superior to another or others. It is exclusionary and, because it is a belief, it is conscious. That's what it is. We have lost sight of that definition in today's society. And the fact we have lost sight of this fact prohibits lots of rational discussions we should be having as a society about race, stereotypes and racial biases. Racism is the white guy at the hockey game who yelled at my kid during a warmup "No spics on the ice!" That guy is racist. The old black guy who doesn't think whites are inherently bad but thinks the group of white teens walking towards him may be about to cold cock him as a result of watching the news of late isn't racist. He's just irrational, scared and biased in that moment. Ditto for the white woman who is married to a guy from Peru who crosses the street upon seeing a group of hispanic teens because she's heard about the knockout game.

I'm with the crowd who says these fears are irrational. But that never stopped anyone from being afraid. Per the FBI there were about 7,000 hate crimes in 2011 in the U.S. 45% of these were racially motivated. Even if I presume only 1 in 100 hate crimes are ever reported that still places your odds of being the victim of a hate crime at .02%. 45% of .02% lowers your odds of a racially motivated crime to .01%. And only 60% of hate crimes are against people, the rest are against property. So you odds of a racially motivate hate crime against a person are about .005%. Never mind only some fraction of those crimes are violent. I can assure you way, way, way more than some fraction of .005% of the population has concern about being personally targeted for a crime at some time during the course of the year because of their race. That doesn't make them inherently "racist".
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You're missing a huge component to this analysis. Yes, the vast majority of black people in the south were never physically victimized by white people. However, 100% of blacks in the south during the 60s were verbally, mentally and emotionally victimized by whites. This abuse was so pervasive that it was completely rational for every black person to fear most (not all) white people that if they "got out of line" there could be physical consequences.
 
PhDeac said:
The above post trivializes what a lot of people went through in the 1960s.
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Have to agree with PH here. Those two situations are worlds apart. I don't think crossing the street out of fear is inherently racist, but there is a pretty large scale of difference between knockout (which is somewhat of an isolated specific phenomenon) and the prejudice towards African Americans displayed all over the US in the 1960's.
 
Ah yes, a "hate" crime. As opposed to...what, again?
 
DeacMan needs to read that post from a few days ago about which comparisons not to make.
 
Les Grossman said:
You're missing a huge component to this analysis. Yes, the vast majority of black people in the south were never physically victimized by white people. However, 100% of blacks in the south during the 60s were verbally, mentally and emotionally victimized by whites. This abuse was so pervasive that it was completely rational for every black person to fear most (not all) white people that if they "got out of line" there could be physical consequences.
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You are absolutely correct that blacks were massively victimized in the South in the 1960's. But their odds of suffering some random assault at the hands of white people they didn't know on a public street were still incredibly low. So I get your point. No one is proclaiming there wasn't massive disfunction in Southern race relations in the 1960's. But that doesn't change the facts about the rate of crime. We can look those up and get a pretty good feeling about just how threatened someone should feel they'll suffer some random attack. And it is also a fact (and always has been) that violent crime is way, way, way more likely to be perpetrated against you by someone you know as opposed to someone you don't. That has been the case since statistics on crime have been measured. The assault rate in 1965 in Mississippi was .01%. That means 1 out of every 10,000 people in the state were assaulted in 1965. It is actually slightly higher today than it was in 1965.

And, to be clear, I'm not the one trying to proclaim that crossing the street because you are afraid some random stranger might attack you because of your race makes you a racist. That's being stated by others here. That type of fear is not rational, but it doesn't make people racist. It wouldn't make the black man in Jackson MS racist in 1960. And it doesn't make the white woman in 2013 racist either. It makes them afraid they'll be targeted because of the color of their skin.
 
DeacMan said:
And it doesn't make the white woman in 2013 racist either. It makes them afraid they'll be targeted because of the color of their skin.
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Um that white woman crossing the street isn't crossing because she's afraid of being white. She's crossing because she's afraid of black people because they're black.
 
There was a 0.000032% chance I would be killed by a muslim terrorist in the last 12 years.

And we crossed oceans not streets because of it.
 
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Oh, I see you have pierced the mind of my hypothetical person. How big of you to subscribe her motives. You left out a few facts as you subscribed her to be "racist."

1 - She has been happily married for the last 15 years to a black man.
2 - She is walking in downtown Chicago in broad daylight on a hot summer Friday evening.
3 - She is with her 9 year old daughter and her 7 year old son. When you look at them they are obviously of mixed race.
4 - Last week a random white person at the grocery store asked her what race her kids happen to be and she was offended by it.
5 - She voted twice for Obama.
6 - She lives in Oak Park, IL - a suburb with a fair number of black people in it but she lives in a predominantly white neighborhood.
7 - Two weeks ago when a black teen came to her door to sell candy bars for the H.S. football team fundraiser she looked out the window, chose not to open the door and then called to police to complain about solicitors in the neighborhood.
7 - When she was in college she was mugged by a hispanic male who stole her purse.
8 - She watches CNN all the time and is alarmed by the reports on the "knockout" game. She believes from watching the news that some of these attacks are racially motivated.

Go on and continue with your psycho analysis. How should she behave and what does she believe?
 
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