joshuabgood wrote:HondurasKeiser wrote:joshuabgood wrote:
Your line of inquiry, and I must be frank, has underlying systemic racial tones.
Lines of inquiry that seek to understand the fullest picture of the event have 'underlying systemic racial tones'?
Ok. I'll try to explain...where the racial undertones come from as they would likely be interpreted by the black community.
What does any of George's resisting arrest, prior arrests, high on drugs, etc - have to do with a cuffed man, bleeding from the nose, having his neck asphyxiated by a white man for nearly 9 minutes, after he repeatedly said he couldn't breathe. And that after the white man's friend worriedly noted he couldn't find a pulse? And George was limp. The systemic factor of racism is that even though we saw what we saw, for almost 9 minutes, there is a questioning that seems to include a presumption in favor of the "system" and to not acknowledge what we all saw with our own eyes. The knee of a white man, on the neck of black man (who was already cuffed and subdued and who stated he couldn't breathe and who another cop noted didn't seem to have a pulse) for 9 minutes.
There is a reason that police everywhere are expressing solidarity with the protesters. They saw it also. George Bush, Mitt Romney, and many other conservatives have acknowledged what we saw...
I understand why some Black people might see these types of questions as attempt to suborn justice in favor of a white man or the system more generally. That interpretation though is just that, an interpretation or a lens through which they understand both the incident and these lines of inquiry. The problem is, that lens doesn't necessarily or always conform to reality. Thus we would have to ask, is Ken asking these questions because he has a desire to see black men locked up, dead or denied justice? He says not and I say we have no reason not to believe him. If it's fair to ask these questions when the victim/detained person is white, then ought we not always ask them? Likewise, it might be helpful to understand if these types of questions are in fact important, in other words we might need to hear from a different group of people that interpret events like this with a different lens. Like say, police officers. Perhaps they might be able to explain why or why not understanding if Floyd was high on Fentanyl and Methamphetamine or resisting arrest, would shed more light on the incident without necessarily absolving Chauvin and the officers of guilt of Floyd's death.
Finally, insofar as we are concerned with something like police reform, which it seems has a broad, non-partisan base of support. We have spent the last 3 months being told that when it comes to how we ought to live in light of this pandemic, we should defer to the experts, specifically epidemiologists. Obviously, there hasn't been unanimous support for rule-by-experts but most people it seems have been willing to radically change their lives and in accordance with the ever-changing guidance from Drs. Fauci, Birx and others in order to end the pandemic. If expert advice is important here, if our knee-jerk reactions against face-masks, and social distancing and self-imposed economic catastrophe are in fact based in fear and emotion and self-interest, if it is true that the facts of the virus don't care about your feelings; ought something like police reform be guided by something similarly dispassionate. Instead of giving in to our basest desires to f*+#@ the police, abolish them and publicly shame anyone who disagrees with those notions - why not hear from sociologists, criminologists, and law professors on the best way to fight crime effectively and justly?
