The US Politics |OT|

[tsogud]

KLAMarine said:

tsogud said:

You are falsely equating a profession, with which you have a choice, with a racial group, with which you don't. How can that make sense to you?? They chose to be a cop, they chose to take and follow an oath to protect the citizens of their country not murder them, they chose to stay silent and standby while someone was getting murdered. You don't choose, or change, your race, you don't choose the society in which you are born into, you don't choose to be systematically targeted because of the color of your skin. Their badge comes off at the end of their shift or when they quit or get fired, but black people cannot take off their skin when they're tired of the injustices. They are themselves 24/7 and because of that they're callously targeted by an oppressive system day in and day out. How can you seriously equate the two and treat it as if they don't have any major difference??

We need major criminal justice reform in America and defunding of the police across the board to ever hope to stop the problem of police brutality that's been going on for decades. The system is broken and has been broken for far too long.

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality." - Desmond Tutu

You can't, as a white person, decide how black and brown people are supposed to act when their family members are being murdered in cold blood. That's just not how it works. The same way a straight cis person can't decide when and how it's appropriate for queer people to protest the injustices and murder of their own. What do you think happened at Stonewall?? What do you think happened when black people demanded not to be property?? Do you think they just held hands with the slave owners and the KKK and sang Kumbaya until they felt guilty and everything was solved?? It is never when the oppressor is comfortable with change that actual change happens, because they are never going to be comfortable, change has to be demanded by the people. From what you're saying, if you were alive back then you'd describe the slaves as extremists because they didn't take your self described "proper route"???

In our constitution it says: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

The current system of governance has never appropriately and fairly secured these unalienable rights for black people in this country. EVERY. SINGLE. INSTITUTION. Whether it's housing, education, the crimal justice system, etc. has systematically, overtly and covertly, targeted black and brown people in America for centuries. Until there's justice there can never truly be any peace.

"You are falsely equating a profession, with which you have a choice, with a racial group, with which you don't. How can that make sense to you?? They chose to be a cop, they chose to take and follow an oath to protect the citizens of their country not murder them, they chose to stay silent and standby while someone was getting murdered. You don't choose, or change, your race, you don't choose the society in which you are born into, you don't choose to be systematically targeted because of the color of your skin. Their badge comes off at the end of their shift or when they quit or get fired, but black people cannot take off their skin when they're tired of the injustices. They are themselves 24/7 and because of that they're callously targeted by an oppressive system day in and day out. How can you seriously equate the two and treat it as if they don't have any major difference??"

>I think the point Pemalite is getting at is you CANNOT paint a multitude of people with a broad brush be it along lines of profession or along lines of skin color. It's faulty logic that denies the individual merits of the people you are painting with said broad brush.

Our job is to separate the good from the bad and promote the good and condemn the bad. Painting with a broad brush achieves the opposite of that.

No. That's not the point because he would have said that. He used specific words like "equally dangerous" to describe painting all people of a certain profession one way to being racist. They're not the same thing at all.

And that's not even the issue or concern I raised. So if that is his point then he's attacking a straw man because in nowhere in my posts did I paint all cops with the same brush. The problem I was talking about is the system of governance and the institution itself in combination with America's systematic racism is what leads to the kind of police brutality we see.

Last edited by tsogud - on 01 June 2020