US Bishops on George Floyd Killing: ‘Racism is Not a Thing of the Past’

[Donkey]

Regardless of whether Chauvin is a racist, it was police brutality. You don’t kneel on a neck for 8 minutes.

I agree.
I don’t know why they didn’t tase him if he was out of control and more than they could manage. Didn’t we all see a bad outcome of another black man who was tased? Seems that there is no good way to get a safe arrest sometimes.

I really don’t know why most people refer to anyone as ‘black’. That is nonsense.
Blacks call themselves blacks. Other people call them black. We should stop calling people black.
People should stop calling themselves black.

 

[josie_L]

Jon, answer me this how do you define “the pursuit of happiness”? And is your definition going to be the same as another’s?

 

[ProVobis]

Those shared values are free markets,

Now if we can only get Huawei to negotiate directly with Qualcomm et al instead of Trump working with the Communist government…

 

[StudentMI]

Jon, ask me this how do you define “the pursuit of happiness”? And is your definition going to be the same as another’s?

Know you weren’t asking me but thought I’d chime in. The ‘pursuit of happiness’ is a phrase from John Locke whose philosophy stands diametrically opposed to Catholicism. He was anti-Catholic and even aroused the anger of more than a few Protestant leaders for his views. Though commonly contrasted with Thomas Hobbes, the two are much more similar than commonly thought, to the point that Christopher Ferrara invented the phrase ‘Hobbelockean’.

 

[PetraG]

I think you’re right. We cannot agree on what the terms of our societal compact ought to be. We can’t agree on what our duties are or what expectations are right, let alone what is realistic. We are in a world of hurt over that.

I am not even sure we see ourselves as a single group of mutually-acceptable human beings. It’s like a marriage between two people who think they have to change their spouse and then they’ll be happy. The difference with our nation is there is no way for the warring factions to get a divorce.

We need to figure out how to get along and be United in spite of ourselves. I have no idea how that’s going to work out.

 

[JonNC]

Jon, answer me this how do you define “the pursuit of happiness”? And is your definition going to be the same as another’s?

Broadly, it encompasses many things, which is the reason for the Constitutional protections in place of individual rights and limited government.
Narrowly, it replaced the word property. Property rights is one of the central foundations of all rights.

 

[JonNC]

Or else what?

A suggested review of the eighth commandment.

The violence escalates when the police murder someone and then don’t respect the right to protest.

The police, who are the agents of the government headed by the mayor.

This is an issue of government abusing power. If a Trump sends in federal troops, then he is abusing power. But any police abuse of power sits squarely on the mayor’s hands.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

sloancaprice:

There is a lot of racism on the city police departments…

This is easy to assert, after all, even bishops are saying it; the difficulty exists in actually demonstrating that it is true. Where is the evidence? And by evidence I don’t mean individual anecdotes, but actual statistics. If police are racists then that ought to show up in the records. Does it? Actually, no.

Actually, yes. Statistics do support a finding of racism.

In 2019 data of all police killings in the country compiled by Mapping Police Violence, black Americans were nearly three times more likely to die from police than white Americans. Other statistics showed that black Americans were nearly one-and-a-half times more likely to be unarmed before their death.

A database collected by The Guardian found that 1093 people in 2016 were killed by the police. The rate of fatal police shootings per million was 10.13 for Native Americans, 6.6 for black people, 3.23 for Hispanics; 2.9 for white people and 1.17 for Asians.

A 2015 study found that unarmed blacks were 3.49 times more likely to be shot by police than were unarmed whites.

But regardless of the racial component, we have a problem with the way police are deployed in a manner that does not do justice to people of any race.

 

[Ender]

Statistics do support a finding of racism.

Cite your sources please.

In 2019 data of all police killings in the country compiled by Mapping Police Violence, black Americans were nearly three times more likely to die from police than white Americans.

If all that was done was to compute the ratio of blacks killed versus their population then I could believe this number. This does not, however, indicate much of anything given that the rate of black crime is so much higher. I suspect that this is an example of how statistics are used to distort the truth. Show us the studies.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

LeafByNiggle:

Statistics do support a finding of racism.

Cite your sources please.

They are here:

Infographic: Black Americans 2.5X More Likely Than Whites to Be Killed By Police

This chart shows the percent disparity between each state's African American population and percentage of blacks killed by police in 2019.

www.statista.com

https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/

POLICE KILLING OF BLACKS: Do Black Lives Matter? - Sociology Toolbox

The Society Pages (TSP) is an open-access social science project headquartered in the Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota

thesocietypages.org

Ender:

This does not, however, indicate much of anything given that the rate of black crime is so much higher.

That observation should give you pause right there. Yes, it is true. Why do you think that is? Is there something inherent in the black DNA that makes them more prone to criminal activity? Or, as is more likely, is it the result of a social structure that has never fully recovered from the legacy of slavery? Or is it something else? But it seems to me that George Floyd, Jamar Clark, Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Botham Jean, Ezell Ford, Michael Brown, Redel Jones, Stephon Clark, Tamir Rice and Eric Garner were not in the midst of committing violent crime where they needed to be stopped by deadly force, and it is hard to believe they would have been killed had they been white and innocent.

 

[WingedHussar]

Always love it when someone brings up Michael Brown. Committed a strongarm robbery, severely beat a police officer, and tried to take his gun and people still think that the shooting was bad.

 

[StudentMI]

Is there something inherent in the black DNA that makes them more prone to criminal activity?

I don’t think it’s conducive to a conversation to bring this up. No one is arguing that.

 

[Ender]

They are here:

From Infographic: “Overall, in 2019, 24 percent of all police killings were of black Americans when just 13 percent of the U.S. population is black – an 11-point discrepancy.”

This is precisely what I predicted: they simply compared the number of blacks killed by police as a percentage of their population to claim this shows discrimination. Serious studies (see below) are not so simplistic.

The truth behind racial disparities in fatal police shootings

New research from MSU reveals findings that contradict what many people think about racial disparities in fatal police shootings.

msutoday.msu.edu

Many people ask whether black or white citizens are more likely to be shot and why. We found that violent crime rates are the driving force behind fatal shootings,” Cesario said. “Our data show that the rate of crime by each racial group correlates with the likelihood of citizens from that racial group being shot.

That observation should give you pause right there. Yes, it is true.

This acknowledgement (that black crime rates are well out of proportion to their population), coupled with the recognition that “violent crime rates are the driving force behind fatal shootings” pretty much eviscerates the claim that black shootings by police are racially biased.

Why do you think that is? … is it the result of a social structure that has never fully recovered from the legacy of slavery? Or is it something else?

I suspect it has nothing whatever to do with the legacy of slavery. I imagine that if you graph the rise in black crime rates it will closely track the destruction of the black family as measured by the rise in the percentage of fatherless homes.

…it is hard to believe they would have been killed had they been white and innocent.

Yes, I imagine for many people it is impossible to believe otherwise. As I wrote earlier, we are dealing with a serious misperception, one that is reinforced by each individual example of a white killing a black person, despite the fact whites have a much greater likelihood of being killed by a black than vice versa.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

LeafByNiggle:

Is there something inherent in the black DNA that makes them more prone to criminal activity?

I don’t think it’s conducive to a conversation to bring this up. No one is arguing that.

And yet Ender has just denied the alternatives.

I imagine that if you graph the rise in black crime rates it will closely track the destruction of the black family as measured by the rise in the percentage of fatherless homes.

Which in turn is caused by what?

 

[Ender]

StudentMI:

LeafByNiggle:

Is there something inherent in the black DNA that makes them more prone to criminal activity?

I don’t think it’s conducive to a conversation to bring this up. No one is arguing that.

And yet Ender has just denied the alternatives.

Oh come on. That is absurd. None of my comments (before my last post) even addressed that point. I took that to be a rhetorical question, and even considered defending you to StudentMI…and you can suggest that I somehow believe that absurdity?

Ender:

I imagine that if you graph the rise in black crime rates it will closely track the destruction of the black family as measured by the rise in the percentage of fatherless homes.

Which in turn is caused by what?

That question is completely and totally irrelevant to the issue of racism in police shootings. If you want to have that discussion open a different thread. I am willing to participate in it, but I am not willing to derail this thread by having it here.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

LeafByNiggle:

StudentMI:

LeafByNiggle:

Is there something inherent in the black DNA that makes them more prone to criminal activity?

I don’t think it’s conducive to a conversation to bring this up. No one is arguing that.

And yet Ender has just denied the alternatives.

Oh come on. That is absurd. None of my comments (before my last post) even addressed that point.

But you need to address it. You made a claim about the causation for blacks being killed at the higher rate than whites because you did not want to accept the explanation of systemic racism. But I claim that systemic racism is the only reasonable explanation. I claim that because none of the competing explanations bear close scrutiny. You gave an explanation in terms of a higher percentage of fatherless homes. But if that condition is itself the result of racism, then we are back to racism being the ultimate explanation. If you don’t address the explanation of why there are so many fatherless homes among the blacks, you haven’t really given a totally non-racism explanation for the killings. I mentioned the DNA explanation rhetorically because in the distant past that was actually believed to be true. I don’t seriously think you or anyone else here believes it, but I mention it just to frame the debate. So, what is the non-racism explanation of why the rate of police killings of blacks is so much higher than whites?

 

[Ender]

You made a claim about the causation for blacks being killed at the higher rate than whites because you did not want to accept the explanation of systemic racism.

The evidence produced by those who have made serious studies of the issue do not support the charge that racism by police is a problem.

I claim that systemic racism is the only reasonable explanation.

All that is lacking is evidence. This comment, however, diverges from the topic of specific racism on the part of the police to generic racism on the part of white society.

You gave an explanation in terms of a higher percentage of fatherless homes. But if that condition is itself the result of racism, then we are back to racism being the ultimate explanation. If you don’t address the explanation of why there are so many fatherless homes among the blacks, you haven’t really given a totally non-racism explanation for the killings.

Stop hopping back and forth between racism among police and racism in society. There is no serious evidence of racism as an explanation for black killings by police. That claim is dead.

If you want to move to the claim that racism is a problem in white society then, again, where is the evidence, and how could racism possibly be the explanation for choices blacks make among themselves that it would explain the rise in fatherless children?

what is the non-racism explanation of why the rate of police killings of blacks is so much higher than whites?

Blacks commit violent crimes at higher rates than whites, and “violent crime rates are the driving force behind fatal shootings”. This question has been answered.

If you now assert that only racism explains why blacks commit violent crimes at higher rates than whites you might find it difficult to explain how it manifests itself, why it is white society’s fault when black men father children they take no responsibility for raising, and why rates of black crime have increased even as institutional racism has been eliminated.

 

[josie_L]

Jon, here’s a quote from “The Unintended Reformation” by Brad Gregory (Catholic professor) that touches on the constitutional right to the pursuit of happiness:

"It was their legally protected freedom, if they so chose to live for their own enjoyments and pleasures and the acquisition of material things, to pursue the fulfillment of their desires while ignoring whomever they chose to ignore. It was constitutional. Each American citizen had a right to it . . . .

The collective impact of individual human decisions taken according to one’s affective religious preferences and in pursuit of one’s own desires would in time TRANSFORM THE NATURE OF SOCIAL RELATIONS IN SOCIETY AT LARGE.

They could see the unplanned cumulative, collective product of Americans exercising their freedom. They could see the costs of having construed religion as narrowly and interiorly as the FREE EXERCISE OF THE INDIVIDUAL CONSCIENCE, whether in the increasingly pervasive effects of market in the nineteenth century, the deliberate flouting of Christian sexual and social morality in the 1920’s . . . "

 

[LeafByNiggle]

LeafByNiggle:

You made a claim about the causation for blacks being killed at the higher rate than whites because you did not want to accept the explanation of systemic racism.

The evidence produced by those who have made serious studies of the issue do not support the charge that racism by police is a problem.

Appeal to authority?

I claim that systemic racism is the only reasonable explanation.

All that is lacking is evidence.

Did you read the list of names of black victims I posted? And I posted statistics that you discount because of “fatherless families”. Well, there is one more fatherless family now, thanks to police violence because 6-year old Gianna Floyd has lost her father.

 

[Ender]

Appeal to authority?

I don’t think asking for serious evidence counts as an appeal to authority. The alternative is relying on one’s own personal (uninformed) opinion…which is pretty much what we have today.

Did you read the list of names of black victims I posted?

I discount argument by anecdote.

I posted statistics that you discount because of “fatherless families”.

I actually discounted them before you even posted the sources because of what I predicted they measured, which did not support the claim. As Mark Twain said: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics .”