This is now war. Watch out Obama. Watch out black lives matter punks. Real America is coming after you. – Joe Walsh.
No. No. Racism and guns cannot help. They can’t “win”. Racism, guns, and cops being allowed to murder people of colour got us here. Rescue those shreds of humanity, please. Listen to Charles Blow:
"You can't have selective outrage and selective grief" — @CharlesMBlow discusses the #Dallas shooting https://t.co/AFQaYNezLN
— New Day (@NewDay) July 8, 2016
“You can’t have selective outrage and selective grief” — @CharlesMBlow discusses the #Dallas shooting.
I want to cover my eyes and pretend that whatever’s coming next isn’t something heartbreaking and violent. Something even more heartbreaking and violent, that is.
Scared for you, too, Caine.
Yes! This times a million.
Any well-meaning people who went from indifferent to the news the past few days to all of a sudden grieving starting Thursday night really, really need to do some introspection and decide if their voice is on the right side.
Now is the time to de-escalate the violence and bring actual justice, reforms that make it possible, accountability also to the cops. I feel this has to be said aloud, even though we know it already.
Walsh is a particularly despicable person.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/08/the-complicated-racial-track-record-of-the-former-gop-congressman-who-warned-obama-to-watch-out-after-dallas-shootings/
I remember his congressional race against Tammy Duckworth well. The local conservatives were yelling about how much they loved veterans and how people need to take more personal responsibility. And then they supported the dead-beat dad running against a decorated veteran injured in combat.
We will now get to see the difference between how black lives matter and how cop lives matter. We will see how fast the murderers in each of the different cases from this week are detained, indicted, prosecuted and punished.
rq:
I’m okay. Scared for everyone.
Saad:
Word. That really says it all. Now, if we can just get people to think about it long enough for it to sink in.
Kengi:
The Dallas shooter, Micah Johnson, is dead, killed by cops.
Caine @ 6
Not good. Maybe it was inevitable, but this doesn’t make anything better.
Caine, #6
Yeah, he was literally blown up with a bomb. I thought that was really an weird way of handling it.
Aren’t they saying there were 3 or 4 attackers?
I thought this was pretty obvious already.
Also what Saad said.
Saad @2:
Agreed! There is, however, a serious problem with people spouting rhetoric about “war” like the idiot above. These are people who have been pissed off for eight years that a black man won the presidency (twice!). They are bullies and internet tough-guys who would probably fold under the first sign of pressure in a real combat situation. But they want an excuse to go out and execute some people to prove what a manly man that they are. Toxic is what they are.
Saad @ 8:
I think they are going on the assumption there was at least one other person involved. From what I’ve read, there’s more than a whiff of “eh, he couldn’t have been smart or good enough to pull this off himself.”
If the shooter had been white, we’d already be hearing “lone wolf” and other shit of that kind. The decision to blow him up took me aback, too. Is this the new way to deal with people of colour?
The decision to blow him up took me aback, too. Is this the new way to deal with people of colour?
It sounds like he was cornered in a good position where the cops couldn’t get at him any other way. After all, they’d already seen he was willing and able to kill cops.
They probably would have called in airstrikes and flattened the building. Just wait -- cops’ll be asking for strike aircraft soon.
Yup, the cops have killed one suspect and arrested a few others. A nice, swift response. How long before we reach the “detained” part in the cases of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile?
It took more than a year before arresting the cop who shot Laquan McDonald 16 times. Heck, it took more than a year to just get the city to release the video of the shooting (there was a mayoral election preventing such a release earlier).
The differences in how the cases are being handled can’t be more stark. Police lives do matter very much in our “justice” system while black lives still do not.
Kengi @ 13:
There’s an article at Raw Story about the cops who murdered Alton Sterling -- they’ve been reported and reprimanded a number of times for excessive force, unnecessary violence, and other assorted badness. When I say reprimanded, I mean lightly slapped on the wrist, of course.
Kengi, #13
Yup, the anti-BLM / BlueLivesMatter people are wrong on a level they don’t even realize.
When they point to cases of the police being killed, they don’t realize they’re making our point for us. It’s all in the response to killing.
This also seems to be a pattern -- toxic masculinity at its worst, protected by the state to boot. It seems so counterintuitive to employ people obviously not able (or willing) to learn self-restraint and patience and give them the duty of interacting with the community they are supposedly serving.
rq:
Any “good cops” who somehow get in the system are abused and mistreated until they quit or are fired. It’s a self-reinforcing system.
I think there are cops who are decent people, but they aren’t the majority, by any means. Cop shops don’t want to hire people they think are “too smart”, and they have a bad habit of hiring people who are assholes who desperately crave power over others. There is no standard hiring practice for cops, and that’s a big fucking problem.
Real America scares me.
Caine@#18:
I think there are cops who are decent people, but they aren’t the majority, by any means.
Part of the problem is that the decent cops are virtually guaranteed to encounter the corrupt, racist, dangerous, cops — and they keep their mouths shut. That makes them somewhat less than “decent cops” it makes them “enabler cops.”
Marcus:
That’s true. I have a cop relative who is one of those.
Ugh, heartsick is right. Fuck.
I said this before in another thread; the anti-BLM/Blue Lives Matter guys can make this out to seem like police are entirely the injured party by continuing to deny that black people have any legitimate grievances with the police. To them, all of the victims of police brutality were “black thugs” that deserved to be killed. Instead of being explainable as retaliation for equally unjustifiable murders, the Dallas shooting will be treated as proof that black people just hate cops. Instead of seeing this as violence breeding more violence, regressive assholes will paint this as evil protestors who are angry over nothing getting cops killed. Selective grief and outrage is all we can expect from conservatives.
Emergence:
I know. An earlier post touches on that. It has a link to a paper on white fragility. Interestingly enough, no one has clicked on it. Colour me all surprised and stuff.
sarcasmInstead of being explainable as retaliation for equally unjustifiable murders, the Dallas shooting will be treated as proof that black people just hate cops
It’s fairly normal for the forces of the state to be in denial until there’s a full-blown insurgency.
Pocahontas. Cigar Store Indian.
Things are going to get worse. Much worse. I think I’m just going to wander off and dissolve into tears.
Caine, #25,
Yup. This country is very severely damaged. Beyond hope it seems.
I was expecting tons of hatred towards Obama for this, but wasn’t expecting Warren. And throwing in the completely irrelevant “Pocahantas” shit. WTF.
I’ve already read it.
What I’m wondering is if this sort of thing has happened before. Back during the days of the civil rights movement in the 60s, were there cases of white violence on black people by police or civilians met with black violence on white people in response? Back then, was it lynchings that conservatives were trying to defend as justified? I wouldn’t be surprised if something exactly like the shooting in Dallas happened back then. I doubt that any of these totally-not-racist conservatives today would see the civil rights movement as tainted because of retaliatory violence on part of some of its members. I might be being optimistic, though.
rq @ 27:
You’re good for my heart.
Sorry, that was way out of line.
rq: read # 29. :D
Jesus Fuck.
Yeah, that will help.
Caine
Yeah, cross-post. I just thought it sounded defensive after I hit “Post Comment”. :)
re: link @32
I’d been wondering on FB where the Oath Keepers had disappeared to. Shouldn’t have. :/
Caine @25
I guess black people are just supposed to shut up about shitty treatment they’re getting from police, otherwise they’re “inciting racial violence”. As if the cops that kill unarmed black people aren’t engaging in racial violence themselves. Black people are not the instigators here. If anyone should be blamed for motivating the shooters, it should be the cops that killed Sterling, Castile, and all of the other undeserving black people.
Also, I’m going to look at that article later. It sounds interesting.
*The article about white fragility.
emergence
If you’re white, it’s uncomfortable reading. But well worth it, I think. Don’t be too fragile to read it! :)
Emergence @ 35:
It’s good. It’s not about finger pointing or blame, it’s about why and how these ideas and attitudes which fuel bias come about. People don’t set out to become biased, these things are absorbed from childhood.
re Pocahontas and the Oath Keepers:
The race-baiters and gun-nuts are doing their best to start the race war that they will try to lay at Obama’s feet. It would not be surprising that they try to cause martial law to be instituted just so that they can say “told you so”.
Caine re article:
I had read that previously also, but after your comment above, I went back and read it again to refresh my memory. It is especially good for white people (me) to read. It would be a good thing if all white people would read it and try to understand the perspective examined. I have definitely lived with white privilege my entire life, and I try to not be white fragile.
Can I also say how much I despise that “real America” horseshit? No one group of people in the US gets to claim to be real Americans. These regressive thugs think that they somehow own the US, and anyone who isn’t a conservative WASP needs to be marginalized. Also, I can’t help but see that “we’re coming after you” thing as an attempt to intimidate people into silence. Walsh is a nasty piece of work.
Caine @ 23:
Thanks for the pointer. I downloaded the PDF and will read it this weekend.
Emergence @ 41:
Indians can. ;) But no one listens to us anyway.
Unfortunately, he’s not alone. Trump has done a lot to bring racism back into the open, and groups which had been pushed back to the fringe a couple of decades ago are rebounding and resurging once again. People aren’t being quietly embarrassed anymore over having repellent views. This is not just happening in the States, either. A lot of the nationalist leaders in other countries are thrilled with Trump, because he’s doing them a favour by making racism look good to a lot of people once more.
The religious right had been pushed back, but now they are feeling the power again, and happily going hand in hand with wannabe fascists. This isn’t just happening in the States either. Now we’re dealing with people who already didn’t care about people of colour being killed, but will be willing to start a war over dead cops. No matter how I look at this, I can’t see any way it can get better at this point. It’s open season, on pretty much everyone.
I think, when political hucksters such as Trump, Le Pen and so on use white fragility and phenomena related to it, it’s going to be a disaster for the minorities and may not actually do much tangible good for most whites any way, so they can be fooled again by the next scapegoating campaign. Some will be rewarded with tangible rewards, not just with the notion of being the higher race, of course.
I’m not immune to the racist or sexist thinking and I have white privilege.
Marcus Ranum says:
I just want to point out that there’s at least one reason for good cops not to speak out that doesn’t make them horrible people: fear. Remember, no one knows better than other cops just how bad bad cops can be, how many there are, and how little accoutability there is for them. How many other Frank Serpicos out there? How many more cops still fear to speak out after seeing what happened to him?
Obviously, it’s hard to tell a “good cop” who is afraid to speak out from a “good cop” who doesn’t care enough to do so.
According to the Grauniad, the shooter was a combat veteran (Afghanistan). I suspect it will turn out that he acted alone.
mithrandir@#45:
Neither is a “good cop” they are both different degrees of complicit enabler.
That’s an ought, not an is.
The phenomenon undeniably exists; to deny reality is to be in denial.
—
The scientific method acknowledges the reality of bias, the social method (laws and norms), not-so-much. But perhaps it can.
John Morales:
No shit, Sherlock. It was also a plea, a desperate one, in these horrible times, and you’re smart enough to get that, but you just have to fucking pick at shit. If that’s the level of your ability and contributions, stay away. My one rule here is don’t be an asshole. You get close to violating that by breathing.
Mithrandir @ 45:
That’s true, too. That said, there has to be a tipping point, somewhere. Whenever a black person is killed by a cop, all you hear about is how darn scary black people are, and of course cops are afraid, and so on. If cops were truly afraid of being shot by Joe Q. Public, they’d be lobbying, hard, for strict gun control, and they have the voice and power to do it, but no.
They don’t do that because of racism. They are okay with Joe Q. White having guns, they just aren’t okay with Joe Q. Black having guns, even though white people aren’t more trustworthy with guns.
In reference to the mass murder of law enforcement officers in Dallas: has anyone else noticed that, when a white man commits a mass murder, the timing between the media covering the murders and the first contemplations of mental illness can be measured in nanoseconds (and the media keeps repeating it despite racist/mysongynist writings, etc.), but, a black man commits a mass murder and it is treated as a by-definition racist killing? That police officers can murder black men at a rate 3 to 6 times higher than any other group, and those are all isolated incidents, look at how ‘bad’ the victim was, the victim was mouthy, or talked back, or was acting suspiciously?
Sorry if this was off topic, I was thinking about it last night and needed to write it down.
Ogvorbis @ 51:
Yes, I’ve noticed. I’d think anyone would be hard pressed to not notice that, but bigots blissfully skate along on their cognitive dissonance, thinking that all makes sense.
If you can stomach it, look at the loving retrospective the NYT did on Dylann Roof:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/17/us/charleston-shooting-dylann-roof-troubled-past.html?_r=0
It’s an entire piece about how Dylann Roof was totes not a racist in any possible way during his entire life because, you know, he hung out with black people when he was young. His racism is just something that, mysteriously for some completely unknown reason, happened right before he declared his white supremacy online and killed a bunch of black people.
Total mystery!
Maybe he became racist by reading the NYT.
Kengi @ 53:
Jesus, it’s exactly like I wrote in the Noble post from the other day:
@Caine
Sorry, I should have thought about the people who were here first. I’m usually good about remembering American Indians in these types of discussions. I think my point still applies to all of us descendants of immigrants, though.
Emergence @ 55:
Yes, of course it does. It’s a good and valid point. It’s a point which can also be used to point out the poisonous bigotry aimed at every single immigrant wave this country has ever seen. People hated the Irish. People hated the Italians. People hated the Jews. People hated the Russians. And on, and on, and on, and on.
As far as the States is concerned, there’s never been any love for any immigrant, no matter where they were from. This toxic notion of American Exceptionalism poisons everything.