Officer Wilson not indicted in killing of Michael Brown

by Simon 551 Replies latest social current

• 

  Cadellin

  After watching nonstop news coverage on a variety of stations, what strikes me is how uniformly mainstream media is subtly (and maybe not so subtly) disapproving of the no-indict verdict. The media's job is to present the facts, not take sides. Okay, I'm naive. But I have to wonder how much the media is feeding the chaos and the public frenzy to destroy Wilson.

  In particular, interview after interview (of the Brown parents, Brown's friend, Brown's attorneys, etc. suggest where the media sympathies lie and, moreover, focus on "how did the decision make you feel?" (stupid question) or "Do you believe Darren Wilson's testimony?" (ditto), and make little or no reference to the forensic evidence. In a case like this, it's all a jury has to go on. Otherwise, it comes down to he said/she said between all the witnesses. And from what I understand, the forensic evidence was pretty clear and supported Wilson's account, as well as the account of (some) of the other witnesses. Moreover, the media is completely ignoring the fact that Brown is on camera committing the strongarm robbery literally moments before the fatal altercation. He has proven himself to be a thug with little fear of retribution. It doesn't take a huge leap of imagination to visualize him carrying that stance forward to the moment he meets Wilson.

  It chills me how solidly masses of people are coming down on the side of an out-of-control thug and rejecting the testimony of a police officer, when the evidence supports the police officer, as does their patterns of behavior leading up to the altercation. What does this portend? I can see police officers pulling back from using force in the future, for fear of being in the same situation as Wilson. I can see more officers being murdered in the line of duty. I can see good men and women choosing other careers because of the unrealistic standards and potentially abusive situations they will be subject to as an officer.

  Something else: This situation has so dramatically deepened the color breach in this country. You see white journalists (albeit mouthing support for the protestors, directly or indirectly), white police offers, and then black protestors, black family members, black attorneys. Why haven't any black police officers spoken up publicly in support of their brother Darren Wilson? Why haven't any intellectuals spoken out publicly for the rule of law? Why has the impetus of mob force (which is what all of this is) silenced any other voice? I know why in part--because if you're white, you're terrified of being perceived as racist. And to say the wrong thing in the wrong place is to be labelled.

  It's all so sad.
• 

  Marvin Shilmer

  Dammit it's so hard to lve in a culture where young thugs have the power.

  A culture that allows that to happen is responsible for that outcome.

  I see parents bickering with one of their children and then complaining about how their child bickers all the time. I have to ask myself, "Who is the adult in the room?" Children tend to grow up and act as their parents allow them to act. If a child finds his or her parent engages in bickering then the child has just learned that bicking is allowed, and then it continues.

  I see cultures that allow for thugs*. We all do! Guess what? If you allow it you're going to have it and it will only get worse.

  What folks grow up to become starts with what happens within the family unit. After that comes the immediate community a person identifies with and is embrace by. After this comes the greater community. Problem is, the greater community can only rarely undo what a family has allowed the development of and its closer community has reinforced by tolerance.

  Today I see more demonstrations just like I've seen a hundred times before. The greater community has changed over the years. But what has not changed is what is going on inside family units and closer communities where thuggary is allowed. The greater community can only do so much. At some point families have to CHANGE what they allow and closer communities have to STOP allowing things like thuggary. Otherwise the greater community will continue to grow and improve whilst a closer community inside that greater community languishes in yesteryears ditch.

  *thug: a person engaged in criminal violence or threat of criminal violence
• 

  Pacopoolio

  Preface: I'm black, and grew up in poverty in black neighborhoods Detroit, and rose up gradually through the classes to be around a 1%er now. I have also taken numerous sociology and psychology classes and read hundreds of related studies on social and biological influence on development.

  I'm prefacing because people keep saying "you aren't black, so you don't know" in responses: I -am- black, and DID make the class jumps where other people haven't, and not only have I seen with my own eyes what happened, but have compared it with wide scientific studies on related issues.

  -------------------------

  The BIG thing that people ALWAYS miss in these types of discussions is that no one is in control of the person that they are. People are just made up of a mix of the chemicals that make up their body combined with the influences that they have in their lives. Everything that makes you, you, is determined by outside sources. The right wing type "bootstrap" mentality is just egocentric self-fellation that ignores the reality; every success that someone has is based on a large amount of combining luck. For instance, yes, I worked hard to go from powdered milk and government cheese and a barely running Chevy Nova that I grew up riding in to the best steakhouses and the fastest sports cars. However, me "working hard" was entirely contingent upon the right influences happening in my life at the right time, combined with having the emotional and psychological makeup based on early developmental influences and genetics, to make the "right" choice at the right time. And even still, hundreds of people with more potential than me, all around me in various stages of my life, are now living in relative poverty or "the system" just for their lack of right thing/right time situations.

  THAT'S why people attempt to attack privilege or point out how race holds people back. If you're talking about LARGE NUMBERS of people, a negative start will result in a negative finish for the majority. True, there are special butterflies like myself that get lucky enough to "make it," but on the flipside, there are equal percentages of people that start off with every advantage in the world and fail spectacularly. That's the high and low end of the curve, not the masses in the middle that generally follow the curve.

  And since, in America, many black people in this countries are only ~4 generations from those directly affected by slavery, many of all races still alive that lived through segregation, etc. - its ludicrous to think that we can be "post racial" enough this close to those times where an average black person's life and perspective would not be markedly different from those of other races. This gets even worse in places where races compete for the same resources, as people's natural tendency to "other" due to visuals, combined with the relative recent nature of BLATANT oppression (with many in power still alive from that era who held negative viewpoints at that time and still do), creates a certain "boiling pot" of social-racial issues, that can easily explode.

  Any people that constantly feels oppressed will lash out when pressed too much; normally over a specific, publicized issue that puts it over the top. This has been true throughout history, all over the world. It's an expected outcome. The people of Ferguson, along with many black people in America, feel constantly oppressed, for obvious reasons if you even attempt to empathize with their backgrounds and every day life, and what's happening now is a sad result of the social conditions that heated the pot in the first place.
• 

  Pacopoolio

  A person who walks around dressed like a gang member is going to be watched as a potential gang member. It won't matter whether the person is black or white, or lives in the projects or Beverly Hills.

  The problem with your premise is that it's been proven that black people and white people wearing the same clothes or doing the same actions are viewed and reacted to differently. The black teenager is viewed as a "thug" by the same people that view the white person as "normal."
  
  For somewhat comedic representations of this, look at the video setups that have been done that show a black male, a white male, and a woman cutting a chain on a bike or fiddling with a car - and see how people IMMEDIATELY call the police or confront the black male, ignore the white male or ask him if he needs help, and go over and help the woman "steal" the bike or car.
• 

  Marvin Shilmer

  The problem with your premise is that it's been proven that black people and white people wearing the same clothes or doing the same actions are viewed and reacted to differently.

  I've seen no proof--and you've offered none--suggesting a person who walks around dressed like a gang member will not be watched as a potential gang member regardless of skin color.

  If, and that's a BIG IF, you can provide evidence suggesting my premise is faulity then please provide it. I'd like to examine it for whatever it says.

  Why do you think gangs WEAR DISTINCTIVE GANG DRESS if not to TELL everyone THIS is what I am?

  I think you're transposing a relevantly dissimilar set of observations atop a completely different premise.
• 

  Pacopoolio

  What is gang dress? You said "a hoodie drawn over ones' face" (which I'm guessing is a loose hoodie worn inside?). That's not "gang dress." That's what people, in, say, Michigan, wear in the fall/spring. It's just that certain people are equated with "gangs" when they do it, and others are "casually going out."
• 

  Marvin Shilmer

  What is gang dress? You said "a hoodie drawn over ones' face" (which I'm guessing is a loose hoodie worn inside?). That's not "gang dress." That's what people, in, say, Michigan, wear in the fall/spring. It's just that certain people are equated with "gangs" when they do it, and others are "casually going out."

  I responded to what you wrote.

  Take a closer look at your post 91 of 92 above.
• 

  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.
• 

  Marvin Shilmer

  Brown's mother reportedly accuses officer Wilson of lying and then says:

  "I know my son far too well, he would never [attack a cop], he would never provoke anyone to do anything to him, and he would never do anything to anybody."--(http://www.aol.com/article/2014/11/26/he-wanted-to-kill-michael-browns-mother-insists-ferguson-cop-darren-wilson-lying/20999457/?ncid=webmail1

  "[H]e would never to anything to anybody."

  That is self-delusion if I've ever observed it. How can a parent say something like that knowing perfectly well her son HAD in fact robbed a retail store AND threated violence to the poor shopkeeper?

  Why does her supporters let her say things like that when it flies in the face of demonstrable FACT?

  For the life of me I can't understand people like that. Not for the life of me.

  Grieving is fine and understandable. Denying what is right in front of your face is delusional.
• 

  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:

  1. Buying property, especially in good areas
  2. Getting any jobs that were not manual labor, which also capped off job level progression and contacts that could help others out
  3. Getting credit
  4. 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:

  1. Own no property, or if so, in the highly sectionized area in which the child grew up
  2. 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
  3. Have bad credit or a lack of understanding of how credit works
  4. 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.