Posts by Pacopoolio

24

FINDING a logical way of seeing problems of RACE, RELIGION, TERRORISM

by Terry in

hard questions lead to problematic answers.

"tricky, complicated, and controversial.).

emotions stem from values and values are personal.

Pacopoolio

Those answers are very specific, as they directly answer your points.

1) Oppressed ethnic minorities riot against the ethnic majority. If it's the ethnic majority, they genocide, lynch, ethnically cleanse, whatever for other reasons, outside of oppression. Your question is a difference between power and not. You literally cannot get any more specific of an answer than that - any other answer would not cover the breadth of the question.

2) Is similar. It's religious minority against a majority group. Terrorism is done by the group without the power. Etc. Very similar answer.

3) Would be "they use violence to lash out against those they feel are in power."

Simple, direct answers to your questions. Why are you trying to get people to give logically flawed answers?

551

Officer Wilson not indicted in killing of Michael Brown

by Simon in

after a thorough investigation and weighing of the evidence the grand jury has decided not to indict the officer.. the reaction so far seems as predicted - people refuse to accept that the result represents justice despite claims that is what they wanted.. there is now violence and vandalism, including gunshots.

let's hope the police contain the troublemakers.. .

Pacopoolio

To summarize my stance before it gets lost in individual back and forth replies (and so it can be directly referenced):

The problems, not only with the riots in Ferguson, but also police killing people in general, and killing black people much more, even for the same offenses (cited earlier) are based on a ton of systematic societal problems in this country. They are based on a mix of the aftereffects of hundreds of years of slavery and a century of segregation after that, which ended so shortly ago that people who lived under these systems have positions of power now. They are also based on police standards, militarization of police, styles and types of training, and lethal force vs. alternatives. And they are based on a lack of education, media representation (of EVERYTHING, not just race), and a ton of other things.

However, it should be no surprise that a people who do, by default, daily live under a strain of varying oppression, would react horribly when a pot hits the boiling point. That has been proven to ALWAYS happen. Therefore, the focus of the situation should not be pointing the finger at people who do what people will always do, but pointing at the root causes of some of the issues.

For instance, I can easily sympathize with someone viewing black people in baggy clothes as "thugs" or more dangerous as a default; because there's a ridiculously strong media representation of that, which is constantly pounded in your face every single day. That begs the question, then, why is this representation so skewed, in the first place, and why is it allowed to continue? As some of those papers referenced in other studies; black people, with the same crimes, were more likely to be shown as handcuffed than other races on the news. Clear channel controls music distribution, and they purposely push artists like Little Wayne and such and give them front and center exposure. Movies, for years, only cast black actors in violent or aggressive roles, by and large. Etc. How can you blame people for having skewed images when the images are skewed for them?

You can't change people from being human, but you can hit the core influences, or improve an overall standard of life for large groups of people. That's where the focus should be.

551

Officer Wilson not indicted in killing of Michael Brown

by Simon in

after a thorough investigation and weighing of the evidence the grand jury has decided not to indict the officer.. the reaction so far seems as predicted - people refuse to accept that the result represents justice despite claims that is what they wanted.. there is now violence and vandalism, including gunshots.

let's hope the police contain the troublemakers.. .

Pacopoolio

Pacopoolio,

I selected the first peer reviewed paper you offered to see if it supports your assertion that "black children under 10 are less likely to be viewed as children and less innocent as compared to white children"

Your source DOES NOT support your assertion.

For example, your cited source (above) offers evidence that children under 10 are seen as EQUALLY INNOCENT regardless of race!!!

Get your facts straight, and for goodness sakes READ your own cited sources before you have others spend time reading them for something they never say and, in fact, DISPUTE!!!

I obviously typed "under" as opposed to "over" by accident. Whoops.

You're going to ignore the entire quoted information that directly supports part of my assertion because of a mistype? Are you trying to share ideas and have a discussion, or do "gotchas" to look like you won an argument on the Internet?

You know, all of this information:

"Study 1 provides evidence that children may not be given the

privilege of innocence equally across race. From ages 0 –9, children
were seen as equally innocent regardless of race. However,
perceptions of innocence began to diverge at age 10. At this point,
participants began to think of Black children as significantly less
innocent than other children at every age group, beginning at the
age of 10. Interestingly, after the age of 10, the perceived innocence
of Black children is equal to or less than the perceived
innocence of non-Black children in the next oldest cohort. In other
words, the perceived innocence of Black children age 10 –13 was
equivalent to that of non-Black children age 14 –17, and the
perceived innocence of Black children age 14 –17 was equivalent
to that of non-Black adults age 18 –21."

551

Officer Wilson not indicted in killing of Michael Brown

by Simon in

after a thorough investigation and weighing of the evidence the grand jury has decided not to indict the officer.. the reaction so far seems as predicted - people refuse to accept that the result represents justice despite claims that is what they wanted.. there is now violence and vandalism, including gunshots.

let's hope the police contain the troublemakers.. .

Pacopoolio

Are these based on views of white or people of all races? Are there studies on the views of black people toward whites and toward law enforcement? We hear a lot of accusations of racism so it would apear that both sides judge the other unfairly.

I'm sure many people's views toward blacks and crime is based on the media representations (e.g. current images of looting and rioting) together with crime statistics that show that criminality among blacks is higher (violent crime).

Is it fair or not for people to have views and opinions that match the actual facts? It sounds like you think people should "not think blacks are more likely to commit violent crime even though they are". The only way to stop people believing things that are true is to change the reality - lower rates of crime. Do we really think that people turn to violent crime because strangers may be hesitant to approach them in the street?

Yes, people should be judged as individuals but when you are strangers you don't have that luxury and so skin color, clothing, behavior, speech etc... are all factors that we reach snap conclusions on.

What are you asking in your first statement? The point is not "demonizing whites"; black on black racism only WORSENS the issues. The problem is an endemic social one.

Looking further into the statistics shows that a) black crime directly follows the scale of poverty/class with crime (ie. black people are disproportionately living in poverty, so they can be disproportionately skewed in criminal representation), and b) the statistics are also skewed by ARRESTS and CONVICTIONS, of which black people hugely receive more of, with the same crimes and even lesser criminal references as others. I cited multiple sources which reference those stats directly.

I've studied people's psychology for years; I agree with you that people are very weak to self selection bias, snap social judgments, etc., all for probably obvious evolutionary issues.

The response is not "it's white people's fault," it's that situations like this are directly a result of the social situations that exist based on the United States' history. If you take any large group of people, given them a snap visual identifier, and similar history, things like this will happen. Blaming people as a whole for what people will obviously do doesn't accomplish anything. However, blaming the media for things like disproportionate representation (see links) DOES do something, as it actually helps to change public opinion, which helps mitigate these problems over time.

The only real contention I have with this thread is when people say things like "what happened two or even five generations ago shouldn't matter with a current individual" as that directly goes against everything learned in two entire branches of science.

551

Officer Wilson not indicted in killing of Michael Brown

by Simon in

after a thorough investigation and weighing of the evidence the grand jury has decided not to indict the officer.. the reaction so far seems as predicted - people refuse to accept that the result represents justice despite claims that is what they wanted.. there is now violence and vandalism, including gunshots.

let's hope the police contain the troublemakers.. .

Pacopoolio

Then how do you explain the people (including Whites) who have all the advantages in life and end up losers and failures?

Your arguments are the default of someone looking to make excuses. There's no doubt that what happens in a person's life has an effect, but your arguments are dismally hopeless and depressing and ignore the indomitable will of the human spirit who've proven your hypotheses wrong millions of times.

I directly addressed this in a post above, already. Again, when talking about wholes of people, there will be exceptions on the top end of the curve and the bottom end of the curve. That is how you view a statistical curve in sociology. However, the vast majority will be in middle areas. That's why things like athletes, musicians, and actors aren't relevant; they're representative of less than the 99th percentile, and are at the absolute peak of the curve.

It's not an exuse - it's the entire point of the study of sociology; looking at how groups of people are affected by outside influences, and determining how to adjust those influences, hopefully, for positive benefits. Blaming people for what society made them accomplishes nothing except propping the blamer up in their own minds - the point is to get to the actual underlying problem so as to fix the whole and prevent those things in the future.

Ignoring the effects that hundreds of years of oppression have on a visually distinct people and saying "they should do better" is not only contrary to how human psychology works, but also does nothing to actually address or fix the conditions that result in this.

edit: Again, people ~65 ad above, of which there were millions, lived through segregation and had limited education and opportunity based on that. Their children were raised directly under these effects. Why are you ignoring this and saying "it's in the past?" Those people live NOW.

551

Officer Wilson not indicted in killing of Michael Brown

by Simon in

after a thorough investigation and weighing of the evidence the grand jury has decided not to indict the officer.. the reaction so far seems as predicted - people refuse to accept that the result represents justice despite claims that is what they wanted.. there is now violence and vandalism, including gunshots.

let's hope the police contain the troublemakers.. .

Pacopoolio

Shirley, I did not insult your intelligence, I asked why you had a blind spot to the butterfly effect in this case, but not in the example of other things you discussed. I directly listed multiple examples that DIRECTLY addressed what you're asserting with the "2014" statements - none of which you even countered or acknowledged.

The world runs on causality and chance, it's literally impossible for segregation that existed until 55 years ago to not have stymied MILLIONS of living people, just by default. That's just how those things work. How are people supposed to "get over in and pick themselves up like Tiger Woods" when their entire brain structure was adjusted by the conditions they were brought up in?!

551

Officer Wilson not indicted in killing of Michael Brown

by Simon in

after a thorough investigation and weighing of the evidence the grand jury has decided not to indict the officer.. the reaction so far seems as predicted - people refuse to accept that the result represents justice despite claims that is what they wanted.. there is now violence and vandalism, including gunshots.

let's hope the police contain the troublemakers.. .

Pacopoolio

I see two sides of this generation thing - yes, some families have wealth to hand down and they are priveleged / get a head start. If you don't then it doesn't matter if it was 1 or 100 generations - you got nothing and start from the same place that most other people did.

So, I appreciate that as a group, there are fewer black people who are likely to have inherited wealth. But as individuals, there are lots of people who got the same big fat nothing regardless of their color.

It's what you then do with your life that matters.

And what do you do to change things? You can only change the future, we cannot change the past.

Wealth is only ONE aspect; you can't ignore the psychological effects of the COMBINATION of:

a) being born into poverty
b) having no peers around you that succeed to follow in their example
c) lack of exposure of positive influences or receiving lackluster education. There is a HUGE difference in the quality of inner city education (and also the distraction of dangers within - it's harder to study when you're worried about being beaten or killed daily)
d) the effect of poverty on the brain. Not being properly fed as a child stifles mental development.
e) having no safety net. Successful family, property, etc. all serve as safety nets that allow someone to take more chances. Without these, there's a huge difference.

It's easier for me to "see" how people live in their day to day lives and how these things can affect them because I lived all sides, and can directly empathize. Therefore, in explaining this, I'm not really "attacking" anyone; I'm just showing that most people are only thinking of it in broad terms, and not looking at how broad things effect the microtransactions in one's life and change who the person is, and how they make decisions.

551

Officer Wilson not indicted in killing of Michael Brown

by Simon in

after a thorough investigation and weighing of the evidence the grand jury has decided not to indict the officer.. the reaction so far seems as predicted - people refuse to accept that the result represents justice despite claims that is what they wanted.. there is now violence and vandalism, including gunshots.

let's hope the police contain the troublemakers.. .

Pacopoolio

Marvin:

You defined "gang wear" as a hoodie drawn across the face. That's not a strawman - that's the subject of the assertion in itself.

Are you backpeddling out of that statement or do you still define gang wear as guy in a hoodie? I need to know those specifics before I attack it directly.

Before getting into specific studies, you may want to read a combination of these for perspectives.opinions of why black people in "sports" dress are often viewed as "thugs" in a snap judgment, as opposed to those of other races (basically, normally due to media presentation):

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=gF6-YAWoYAYC&pg=PR27&dq=darwin%27s+athletes+gangster+rapper,+and+the+criminal&hl=en&ei=3Rt7TIHfLY3KOOWIgbkG&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=a_xNaX8QqMIC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

...and keep in mind that black people are incarcirated far more and longer for the same crimes, which may also add to perception:
http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/rd_sentencing_review.pdf
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-43

Then we can note how black children under 10 are less likely to be viewed as children and less innocent as compared to white children: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/psp-a0035663.pdf
How black people are seen as different than human, relating words like "magical" to them as opposed to "citizen": https://static.squarespace.com/static/51e3f4ede4b053e5f0062efd/t/5474ac44e4b097793d2a00a0/1416932420769/a-superhumanization-bias.pdf
And that black teens are 21% more of a risk to be shot and killed by policemen

The, with that knowledge in the background, we can get into the studies that show that people think that black people are more likely to be on drugs or commit crime than other races ( Siegelman and Tuch 1996 ), or that a majority of whites view black people disproportionately as aggressive (Hurwitz & Peffley, 1998), combined with studies to show disproportionate news representation of black males being led away in handcuffs (often in sports gear).

And, then, finally, we can get into media representation of black people disproportionately as sports players or criminals (corelation)(Tucker, 2007), and get into Association test results, if you'd like.

551

Officer Wilson not indicted in killing of Michael Brown

by Simon in

after a thorough investigation and weighing of the evidence the grand jury has decided not to indict the officer.. the reaction so far seems as predicted - people refuse to accept that the result represents justice despite claims that is what they wanted.. there is now violence and vandalism, including gunshots.

let's hope the police contain the troublemakers.. .

Pacopoolio

What irks me more than anything is when black people lament their lot in life in 2014- the age of Tiger Woods, Colin Powell, Denzel Washington, and for god's sake, Obama- and act as if they are still living in 18th/19th century America- still slaves, still without hope, forever trodden down by "the man". If that was true, then we wouldn't have Tiger Woods, Colin Powell, Denzel Washington, and for god's sake, Obama.

You haven't completely thought through the implications of generational progression here. I'm going to just toss some stats at you.

- It's been statistically proven that people, by and large, stay within their monetary class in the next generation, with a 1 or 2% uptick.
- Until the 1970s/1980s, black people as a whole had a problem:

Buying property, especially in good areas
Getting any jobs that were not manual labor, which also capped off job level progression and contacts that could help others out
Getting credit
Getting higher education, or were even allowed to the "better" schools to get a better STANDARD education

The majority portion of Generation X, who are in their mid thirties and early 40s now, when it comes to black people as a whole (of course, exceptions on both ends), were born to parents who:

Own no property, or if so, in the highly sectionized area in which the child grew up
Have no careers that can be passed down to their children, or don't have the white collar/managerial level contacts to help their children get jobs
Have bad credit or a lack of understanding of how credit works
Have very little education, and were thus unable to pass on values and ideas that come with education to their children at developmental ages

So, the vast, vast majority of black people age 35 and up are DIRECTLY a result of segregation, if not having experienced it directly themselves (everyone in their 60s) and are thus starting at a "lower point" at an average, as compared to the average white American at that point. The closest current situation on this level is apartheid, which has similar effects on those people, who are only one generation removed from it (and worse off for it).

Saying "slavery happened to everyone at one point in history" denies the demographic-social effect that having slavery and segregation affect a VISUALLY DISTINCT people, so close in history, has.

Mentioning people's success in situations where you have to be 1/1,000,000s in athletic talent or lucked out to be one of the three black actors that can get leading uni-race roles as an example of opportunities for all is a giant fallacy, as you must know. Mentioning Colin Powell, who rose in his career via the armed forces, which everyone can't benefit from (or should want to), or Obama, who had a unique, wordly history that was not typical for people of his age as "proof" that we're past anything ,especially given what I stated above, makes little sense.

You're normally quite logical on many things here, but you seem to be ignoring huge swaths of history and sociology for a group as a whole in order to accuse them of 'whining,' and I can't even figure out why.

551

Officer Wilson not indicted in killing of Michael Brown

by Simon in

after a thorough investigation and weighing of the evidence the grand jury has decided not to indict the officer.. the reaction so far seems as predicted - people refuse to accept that the result represents justice despite claims that is what they wanted.. there is now violence and vandalism, including gunshots.

let's hope the police contain the troublemakers.. .

Pacopoolio

Post 91 of 92 was in response to your post, which was partially quoted.

Again, what does 'dressed like a gang member' mean? Your assertion of "drawn hoodie" describes half of the people walking around University of Michigan's campus in the fall, for instance. Is that the Wolverine gang?

In other words, I'm using your own language to point out the inherent visual bias that exists. Yes, there are instances where a black person in a hood would be watched more closely than a white person in the same exact hood in the store, and that's because the viewer gets two distinct impressions from them; the black or latino person being viewed as a "gangster." What is even VIEWED as "gang" wear is colored by race and demographics in itself.