[Rushy]

You have rape in your genes.

I guess that explains Rushy.

dafuq is that supposed to mean

[Densoro]

Right, you need to pick a story and stick to it. Either you're accusing Ferguson police of discriminating against non-whites (or just blacks), or you're accusing them of being a secret society that actively lynches blacks. If you're in the latter camp - frankly, I don't know what to say. I had assumed we're talking about the former.

If you are talking about the former, I would be very surprised if Hispanics were somehow off the hook from the big bad white racist man.

Far as I can tell, Tausami only brought up the KKK to demonstrate how racism can affect different races in different ways and to different extents. For example, only Jewish people get accused of killing Jesus. So no, it's not surprising at all that black people find themselves in front of a greater amount of harmful bias than Hispanic people. It just shows that anti-black racism is more prevalent and deeply established. We think they feel less pain than they actually do and so much of our culture places them in an animalistic role, from jokes about 'getting raped by a big black man' to outright calling them demons and animals, as was done several times over the course of the whole Ferguson thing. You don't hear them talking about Asian and Hispanic people like that because different racism is different.

I'm not waving it away. It's quite possible that about 5% of all stops were caused by racism. In a town as small as Ferguson, this would require a few individuals to have racist tendencies. I am by no means not disputing that racist people exist. I am, however, dismissing as absolutely ludicrous any notions of this being a widespread or commonplace phenomenon in that town.

Racism isn't an 'individual' thing. You're thinking of prejudice. Racism is what comes of millions of people's subtle prejudices stacking the deck against specific groups through social stigma and terrible but convincing logic that convinces them that, for example, black people are more threatening -- even if they don't consciously realize they think so, they just freak out and go 'He's got a gun!!' when they see a black guy with a sandwich. And that's the crux of it: nobody goes around hollering about hating black people anymore because that's stupid and they know it. People try to be logical. They just do that with misinformation about different races, so they tell themselves 'lol its such a stereotype but it's so trueeee!! XD' Maybe they wouldn't think so if they actually spoke to black people regularly. Maybe the law would deal with them differently if it hadn't been framed in all of this shit when it was established.

Hatred would be easy to identify and remedy. Racism is a problem because it's ignorance, which can go unnoticed.

The only way you can be stopped for an equipment violation is if you're committing an equipment violation. Unless you have some data to prove that white people in Ferguson are just as likely to commit those but are let off the hook, I don't see how this could be racist. Again, the simple fact that the poor people of Ferguson are mostly black seems to fit in much better here. Not because it's stereotypical, but because car maintenance costs money, and a notable characteristic of being poor is not having much money.

There's no such thing as a statistic for the stops not made. 'How many people didn't you arrest last week?' They don't end up on any kind of roll sheet because they weren't looked at. However,

(in which case I await evidence), or it is not statistically provable, in which case it's an unfalsifiable hypothesis. In my epistemic system, which is largely based on pragmatism, unfalsifiable hypotheses are not useful, because they do not lead to any useful conclusions about the world that surrounds us. So, if the systematic racism in Ferguson is invisible and functionally ineffective, it may as well not be there.

it's not unfalsifiable, it's just a matter of who is given voice in our culture and who is dismissed or silenced. Tausami's earlier mention of the stereotypical cop stopping people of color for stupid shit like license plates pointed to the common knowledge among them that that's the situation where police brutality lies. They pull you up on some minor BS and come completely unglued on you, sometimes grievously injuring you in the process. Hell, white people within the system pull teeth trying to get the same mistreatment to show that the system is equal and fail. However, every time they bring this up, they're told that they're just one instance, not statistically-significant, written off, dismissed, ignored. Add to it, nobody's going to admit 'Yeah I saw a white dude driving around and I should've stopped him but I didn't' to anybody because it'd make them look bad -- and they won't admit it to themselves because they wanna think they handled the situation correctly. This isn't a conspiracy; it's what spawned the phrase 'cover your ass.' So the countless single voices of the people affected by this can't stand up to the 'official statistics,' omissions and ass-covering and all. How many millions of 'just one instance's will it take to finally match the statistics? This is what is meant by 'the voice of the people,' and it's being ignored.

We are discussing institutional/systematic racism. This means differences in equality of opportunity, not outcome. If you want to cry about the fact that many black people are poor, take it up with someone else.

To be clear, you're insinuating that hundreds of years of social stigma and generational wealth/poverty exacerbated by redlining and gerrymandering have had no effect on people's equality of opportunity? That they got the same head-start as anybody else in spite of all of those forces? That is an aspect of racism in and of itself: the belief that all the impoverished brown folks in the country got what they deserved and were in no way exploited by those with social and financial leverage over them. They're poor now because they got screwed continuously for generations. The fact that there are outliers does nothing to minimize that.

All of your points are easily explained without invoking a big bad racist white man conspiracy. Historical factors, education, economic disparity, attitude, and crime statistics simply fit reality better.

The fact that you just described several contributing factors to the very racism you deny shows that you're working off a flawed definition of racism. It's not a conspiracy, because it's not about any individual asshole sitting around going "God damn I hate brown people. How can I screw them over?" This isn't a video game and the villains aren't that easy to spot. Historical economic disparity worsens issues of education and crime because generational poverty taxes mental health and thus incentivizes sometimes unhealthy coping behaviors. The stress of working several jobs simultaneously, trying to find time to take care of other business, and still being so underpaid that you can't keep your head above water would wreck anybody's judgement. Shoving the blame for this off onto the people being exploited is a way of dehumanizing them, because you deny the stressors they put up with every day and ignore all logical reasons for them being where they are, instead painting this surreal portrait of some hick who doesn't want to be able to buy their own food at the end of the week. No human being is like that.

The biggest thing is that all of these points are interconnected, so it's impossible to refute just one of them at a time because you need to refute the very relationship between them. Which is incidentally a lot like the prejudices that got us into this mess in the first place. People are logical, so any one misconception causes their entire worldview to reorganize in order to support it, spawning countless other misconceptions which have logical consistency within themselves but not with the rest of the world.

[Saddam Hussein]

Densoro!  Your wisdom has been sorely missed.  Welcome back.

[Densoro]

D'aww, makin' me blush

[Pete Svarrior]

Far as I can tell, Tausami only brought up the KKK to demonstrate how racism can affect different races in different ways and to different extents. For example, only Jewish people get accused of killing Jesus. So no, it's not surprising at all that black people find themselves in front of a greater amount of harmful bias than Hispanic people. It just shows that anti-black racism is more prevalent and deeply established. We think they feel less pain than they actually do and so much of our culture places them in an animalistic role, from jokes about 'getting raped by a big black man' to outright calling them demons and animals, as was done several times over the course of the whole Ferguson thing. You don't hear them talking about Asian and Hispanic people like that because different racism is different.

Again, we are talking about institutionalised racism. Social attitudes are skewed - I already acknowledged that, but it's entirely irrelevant to this conversation.

Racism isn't an 'individual' thing. You're thinking of prejudice.

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/american-english/racism - TIL an individual cannot hold certain beliefs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism

If you want to redefine words to suit your narrative, you're gonna have to find someone else to discuss with. My statement is clear: the notion of institutionalised racism (as actually defined in reliable sources) is an unfalsifiable hypothesis.

There's no such thing as a statistic for the stops not made. 'How many people didn't you arrest last week?' They don't end up on any kind of roll sheet because they weren't looked at.

Correct. That's why I called the notion an unfalsifiable hypothesis. Because it's a hypothesis that's not falsifiable. Do you recall the reason why I said that? Oh, that's right - it's the exact same reason which you now seem to think somehow invalidates my statement.

it's not unfalsifiable, it's just a matter of who is given voice in our culture and who is dismissed or silenced.

Okay, please provide falsifiable evidence to that claim.

Tausami's earlier mention of the stereotypical cop stopping people of color for stupid shit like license plates pointed to the common knowledge among them that that's the situation where police brutality lies. They pull you up on some minor BS and come completely unglued on you, sometimes grievously injuring you in the process.

Please provide falsifiable evidence to that claim. We already analysed Tausami's data. If you disagree with parts of the analysis, point it out and provide reasoning. Just saying "the data points to <x>" won't cut it.

Hell, white people within the system pull teeth trying to get the same mistreatment to show that the system is equal and fail.

Oh boo-hoo, some provocative piece of crap was identified for who he really is and the cops didn't fall for his race-baiting crap. What a shame. This happens everywhere. Dumb people think that if they pretend really hard to be criminals, they'll be treated as criminals.

Add to it, nobody's going to admit 'Yeah I saw a white dude driving around and I should've stopped him but I didn't' to anybody because it'd make them look bad -- and they won't admit it to themselves because they wanna think they handled the situation correctly.

Please explain why you hold this belief. You assume that police officers are incapable of admitting to having made mistakes despite ample evidence to the contrary.

This isn't a conspiracy; it's what spawned the phrase 'cover your ass.' So the countless single voices of the people affected by this can't stand up to the 'official statistics,' omissions and ass-covering and all. How many millions of 'just one instance's will it take to finally match the statistics? This is what is meant by 'the voice of the people,' and it's being ignored.

Evidence, evidence, evidence, evidence, evidence. Unsubstantiated claims are worthless. If you want to claim that official statistics are fabricated, show some evidence to it. More importantly, show it to the FBI whose investigation into this exact issue is ongoing - that way you might actually achieve something.

To be clear, you're insinuating that hundreds of years of social stigma and generational wealth/poverty exacerbated by redlining and gerrymandering have had no effect on people's equality of opportunity? That they got the same head-start as anybody else in spite of all of those forces?

Of course. That's true by definition. They have had an impact on people's equality of opportunity in the past. Nowadays, it's an equality of outcomes thing.

That is an aspect of racism in and of itself: the belief that all the impoverished brown folks in the country got what they deserved and were in no way exploited by those with social and financial leverage over them. They're poor now because they got screwed continuously for generations. The fact that there are outliers does nothing to minimize that.

Again: not something I denied and not the subject of this discussion. Making true statements about things which are irrelevant doesn't make your case any more convincing.

The fact that you just described several contributing factors to the very racism you deny shows that you're working off a flawed definition of racism. [...]

No - you're just either dishonest or misinformed and act as if we're talking about "racism", when we're talking about institutionalised racism - specifically, Tausami's claim that institutionalised racism is statistically provable. If you'd like to start a discussion about social attitudes, historical factors, or anything other than institutional racism and the statistic provability/falsifiability thereof, feel free to. However, these points are completely irrelevant to this specific discussion.

[Lord Dave]

Do y'all think it's possible that white guys will shoot quickly when they find a black person because the area they're in has a lot of crime done by black people? 

I mean, you aren't a racist if you're in Iraq and shoot a kid who may have had a gun.  Why?  Because plenty of them do and will shoot you.  Just so happens that THAT one kid didn't.

Anyone got the statistics on white cops shooting ARMED black people ages 12-21?

[Rushy]

I'm surprised Pizza spent so much time responding to a poster who obviously didn't even read the argument before making a long winded rant.

[Pete Svarrior]

I'm surprised Pizza spent so much time responding to a poster who obviously didn't even read the argument before making a long winded rant.

Admittedly, I never know how to react to these arguments. I feel like if I don't respond, many will just think I'm conceding. It's also what makes me excellent trollbait.

[rooster]

pizaa has been my hero in all this.

My FB is literally congested with nothing but emotionally charged rants and opinions for one side or the other. I'm really sick of it. But I'm glad at least one rational and logical person is speaking up.

[Tau]

[Moving] I could imagine black residents of Ferguson being 20% more likely to commit traffic offences, or even 45%, but 400%? That's stretching my imagination. And I know that's an argument to personal credulity, but I also think it's a reasonable one. I'd need to see some fairly solid evidence before I believed it.

It makes perfect sense. Poor people are overall more reckless. Therefore, a demographic that has more poor people will have more bad drivers. Also, you're looking at 200% as likely, not 400%. You'd expect twice as many stops because there are twice as many black people. 4/2=2.

http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/810995.pdf

If black people drove worse they would also have more car crashes. The statistics show they they have slightly fewer (12.3/10000 fatalities, vs 12.5/10000 for whites). Aside from Rooster's anecdotal evidence (and the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'. I've seen people say similar things about women, and the evidence suggests that women tend to be better drivers than men), there's no reason to believe blacks are worse drivers. Certainly not twice as bad. I can see no possible explanation, aside from racism, for pulling them over twice as often.

I'll respond to the rest later, but it's thanksgiving. I just didn't want you to think I'd stopped responding.

[rooster]

I said they drive slowly and change lanes without a care in the world. Not that they're always causing wrecks.
Just like you can tell a privilege asshole when they speed around you when you're just going the speed limit.
Or you can tell a redneck for having a super loud truck.
Everyone is a dick driver, it's just that the first stereotype forces me to go 10 under the speed limit if I'm stuck behind them.

This doesn't reflect their skin (as in anyway with black skin is this way) but it definitely reflects the careless and arrogant culture they come from. We owe them something and they live by that idea.

I will say that when I went to Memphis the traffic seemed much safer than in Nashville.

[Pete Svarrior]

If black people drove worse they would also have more car crashes.

Not if they were stopped from causing car crashes by an effective police force. Also, not all traffic offences lead to car crashes. In fact, most don't.

Also, to assume that nationwide data is applicable here is probably the most racist thing anyone has said in this thread. We're not saying that black people are bad drivers. We're saying that the black community of Ferguson consists of mostly bad drivers.

Also, you're still completely ignoring the fact that even if we completely concede this point, you're looking at a measly fraction of the disparity, most of which is still explained.

[rooster]

And I should point out, you're taking nationwide statistics.

According to the 2010 census the racial makeup of Ferguson was 67.4% African American, 29.3% White.
If most of the population in Ferguson is black then it's not racist when black people are pulled over more often. There are just more black drivers.

[Pete Svarrior]

In all fairness, they're still twice as likely to be pulled over when you adjust for that.

[Ghost of V]

Do y'all think it's possible that white guys will shoot quickly when they find a black person because the area they're in has a lot of crime done by black people? 

I mean, you aren't a racist if you're in Iraq and shoot a kid who may have had a gun.  Why?  Because plenty of them do and will shoot you.  Just so happens that THAT one kid didn't.

Anyone got the statistics on white cops shooting ARMED black people ages 12-21?

Different thread, Dave.

[Tau]

If black people drove worse they would also have more car crashes.

Not if they were stopped from causing car crashes by an effective police force. Also, not all traffic offences lead to car crashes. In fact, most don't.

Also, to assume that nationwide data is applicable here is probably the most racist thing anyone has said in this thread. We're not saying that black people are bad drivers. We're saying that the black community of Ferguson consists of mostly bad drivers.

Also, you're still completely ignoring the fact that even if we completely concede this point, you're looking at a measly fraction of the disparity, most of which is still explained.

As I said, I planned to address the rest of your points later (meaning now).

If black drivers are worse drivers, they will cause more crashes. I really don't think you can argue with that. And if you want to claim that black drivers in Ferguson, specifically, are worse drivers than white drivers in Ferguson than you need to provide evidence for that. That's how debate works. Can you even provide a possible reason why blacks in Ferguson would be such horrifically bad drivers as to be twice as likely to get pulled over than whites there? That's some pretty awful driving. Why?

Even if it is a small fraction, it's a fraction which I have demonstrated can only be explained by racism. Thus, statistically proven racism. Even if we're talking 5%, that's a 5% which proves that there is racism in Ferguson.

Doesn't seem that odd to me. I'm not aware of the KKK lynching any asians, either (although I could be wrong)

Right, you need to pick a story and stick to it. Either you're accusing Ferguson police of discriminating against non-whites (or just blacks), or you're accusing them of being a secret society that actively lynches blacks. If you're in the latter camp - frankly, I don't know what to say. I had assumed we're talking about the former.

If you are talking about the former, I would be very surprised if Hispanics were somehow off the hook from the big bad white racist man.

I'm not accusing Ferguson cops of being members of the KKK. That was an analogy, the point of which is that racism against one group of people does not require racism against any other. Hispanics don't have a deep history of racism in America. Asians do, but it's still different. Racism against blacks is very different from other forms of racism.

[Investigative] Regardless of the overall number, I'm not sure you can just wave away a 1200% disparity like that. What could possibly explain such a difference? It's not like black drivers are 12X as likely to be found driving drunk, at least according to the statistics.

I'm not waving it away. It's quite possible that about 5% of all stops were caused by racism. In a town as small as Ferguson, this would require a few individuals to have racist tendencies. I am by no means not disputing that racist people exist. I am, however, dismissing as absolutely ludicrous any notions of this being a widespread or commonplace phenomenon in that town.

Once again, I never claimed that 100% of the disparity is caused by racism. I just claimed that the racism in Ferguson is statistically provable. We're now in agreement that there are two factors here motivated by race, and neither of us can come up with a possible explanation that doesn't include the words 'racism'. It's not quite enough to hold up in a court of law, but this is an internet forum. I have very little doubt that the more research we do, the harder it would become for you to dispute that there's a lot of racism in this town.

[Equipment] I actually got the opposite reaction from the amount of equipment violations. The cliche racist cop in Georgia pulling someone over for being black says that his lights are out. It just struck me as stereotypical.

The only way you can be stopped for an equipment violation is if you're committing an equipment violation. Unless you have some data to prove that white people in Ferguson are just as likely to commit those but are let off the hook, I don't see how this could be racist. Again, the simple fact that the poor people of Ferguson are mostly black seems to fit in much better here. Not because it's stereotypical, but because car maintenance costs money, and a notable characteristic of being poor is not having much money.

Agreed.

I've already disputed quite a lot of that, but let's go a step further. What are the warrants for?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/08/28/1325453/-In-2013-Ferguson-gave-out-10-000-more-arrest-warrants-than-people-in-Ferguson

I know it's not an amazing source, but I trust you won't dispute the raw information

You're talking about a community that just torched up their own town.



(Sure, the recent riot is more violent than previous ones, but we've had three of those in half a year now)

You're talking about a community that causes traffic accidents and then claims that those only happen because someone crossed a red light.



You're talking about a community that destroys itself, and then blames others for its poor state. Does it seem suspicious to me that these sort of people would overall disrespect the law? Gee, I wonder.

Now you're just grasping at straws. You're blatantly ignoring half of my point. Their second largest source of funding is fines. By all accounts, the fines are for stupid things like jaywalking. The town is drowning in fines. In fact, the more we discuss this the more I start to think that the riots are about money, as much as everything else. You can't give out that many fines. It's Draconian.

We're talking about a city whose second largest source of funds is fines, which also has an above-average poverty rate and a disproportionate amount of blacks among the poor section of the population [...]

Earlier this year, in the series Guilty and Charged, NPR's investigations unit found that the practices in Ferguson are common across the country.

Oh, okay, so you dislike how your courts work. No worries, just don't call it racism when it isn't that.

A system which disproportionately affects a particular minority is racist. That's the definition of institutionalized racism. We aren't talking about the police officers here, and I doubt that this institutionalized racism is racially motivated, but that doesn't mean the blacks in Ferguson (and indeed, in other places where this is the case) shouldn't be pissed off about it.

Even if the officers weren't racist (and neither they nor you have done a great job of demonstrating otherwise)

Yes, I also haven't demonstrated that God™ doesn't exist. Please repent immediately or He™ shall smite you.

You see, it is not my job to prove that there isn't a big bad white man conspiracy out there to kill all blacks in Ferguson. It's your job to show that it is there. So far you showed me data which doesn't show anything unusual going on and branded it as "oh I dunno it looks racist to me". No one gives a fuck if things look stereotypical to you. Either there is a

statistically provable, systematic racism in Ferguson, and many other similar places in America

(in which case I await evidence), or it is not statistically provable, in which case it's an unfalsifiable hypothesis. In my epistemic system, which is largely based on pragmatism, unfalsifiable hypotheses are not useful, because they do not lead to any useful conclusions about the world that surrounds us. So, if the systematic racism in Ferguson is invisible and functionally ineffective, it may as well not be there.

Saying I don't have any evidence extra loudly doesn't make it true. You sound like an angry noob in the upper fora. I've provided you with evidence that several things in Ferguson are racially motivated. You've been able to explain some of them, but your position on two of them is basically "I can't give a good reason for this, but it's not racism." That's not how logical arguments work.

So, going back to the 4 categories of stops. All of them disproportionately affect black people. 2 of them are difficult, at best, to explain without using the word 'racism'.

Yes, the two smallest ones. Like I said, I'm sure that several racist individuals exist in the police force. That in no way proves any systematic racism.

Unless those 'several racist individuals' are the only ones who pull people over for the reasons mentioned, your argument makes little statistical sense.

One of them also suggests racism.

No, you're just seeing what you want to see, and for some reason you appear to be convinced that I need to disprove your unfalsifiable hypothesis.

Once again, saying I don't have any proof very loudly is not the same as demonstrating that I don't have any proof. You've failed to do that.

Are you telling me that isn't suspicious at all to you?

I don't know what I could possibly be suspicious of. All of your points are easily explained without invoking a big bad racist white man conspiracy. Historical factors, education, economic disparity, attitude, and crime statistics simply fit reality better.

[citation needed]

[Pete Svarrior]

If black drivers are worse drivers, they will cause more crashes. I really don't think you can argue with that.

It's a ridiculously racist hypothesis to propose. Rushy's assessment is quickly turning out to be quite true.

Also, you continue to fail to acknowledge that there exist traffic offences which do not lead to crashes, despite me pointing it out.

And if you want to claim that black drivers in Ferguson, specifically, are worse drivers than white drivers in Ferguson than you need to provide evidence for that. That's how debate works.

The amount of traffic offences committed is hugely disparate between whites and blacks in Ferguson. We already went over that. Also, you're forgetting that you're the one here who's making a proposition. If you want to be an asshole with your "ooh, that's how debate works" bullshit, then I'm going to have to produce a long list of claims you've made without providing any evidence other than "meh, looks kinda racist to me". My proposal, therefore, is that you stop being an asshole about it - it will only make your case harder.

Can you even provide a possible reason why blacks in Ferguson would be such horrifically bad drivers as to be twice as likely to get pulled over than whites there? That's some pretty awful driving. Why?

I've already done so. In future posts, if you're going to keep demanding that I say the same things over and over, I'm not going to co-operate.

Moving - We would expect twice as many black stops than white stops, we see four times the number. Part (or all) of that could be attributed to DWB. It could also be that Ferguson's black drivers are just statistically more likely to commit traffic offences. It could make sense, since American whites are generally richer, and are thus somewhat less likely to engage in certain risky behaviours. That said, we don't have enough data to tell for sure.

Even if it is a small fraction, it's a fraction which I have demonstrated can only be explained by racism. Thus, statistically proven racism. Even if we're talking 5%, that's a 5% which proves that there is racism in Ferguson.

No, 5% is not a statistically significant value. That's the whole point. You've proven that any disparities fall well within a reasonable margin of error.

I'm not accusing Ferguson cops of being members of the KKK. That was an analogy, the point of which is that racism against one group of people does not require racism against any other. Hispanics don't have a deep history of racism in America. Asians do, but it's still different. Racism against blacks is very different from other forms of racism.

It's very different from any other recent accusations of racism among the police force. The fact that you incessantly bring up the "deep history of racism" in a discussion about institutionalised racism is frankly becoming annoying. It's irrelevant to this discussion.

Once again, I never claimed that 100% of the disparity is caused by racism. I just claimed that the racism in Ferguson is statistically provable.

No, you claimed that institutionalised racism in Ferguson is statistically provable. Nobody disputes the fact that racist individuals exist in Ferguson, and that a few of them may be on the police force.

[Equipment] I actually got the opposite reaction from the amount of equipment violations. The cliche racist cop in Georgia pulling someone over for being black says that his lights are out. It just struck me as stereotypical.

The only way you can be stopped for an equipment violation is if you're committing an equipment violation. Unless you have some data to prove that white people in Ferguson are just as likely to commit those but are let off the hook, I don't see how this could be racist. Again, the simple fact that the poor people of Ferguson are mostly black seems to fit in much better here. Not because it's stereotypical, but because car maintenance costs money, and a notable characteristic of being poor is not having much money.

Agreed.

Okay, so your already tiny fraction just became even tinier. Even if we assume that all of the unexplained disparities are due to racism, we're looking at a completely insignificant figure.

Now you're just grasping at straws. You're blatantly ignoring half of my point. Their second largest source of funding is fines. By all accounts, the fines are for stupid things like jaywalking. The town is drowning in fines. In fact, the more we discuss this the more I start to think that the riots are about money, as much as everything else. You can't give out that many fines. It's Draconian.

I answered this once already, and you seem to have seen that, so I'm going to ignore your re-statement.

We're talking about a city whose second largest source of funds is fines, which also has an above-average poverty rate and a disproportionate amount of blacks among the poor section of the population [...]

Earlier this year, in the series Guilty and Charged, NPR's investigations unit found that the practices in Ferguson are common across the country.

Oh, okay, so you dislike how your courts work. No worries, just don't call it racism when it isn't that.

A system which disproportionately affects a particular minority is racist. That's the definition of institutionalized racism.

No, it's not.

I doubt that this institutionalized racism is racially motivated

I'm speechless. Institutionalised racism is not racially motivated.

Ladies and gentlemen, what we have here is a man so blindly stuck in his argument that he's willing to claim that racism isn't racist, just so that he can carry on calling it racism.

Saying I don't have any evidence extra loudly doesn't make it true.

That's true. Luckily, I've provided ample rebuttals to your claimed evidence.

You sound like an angry noob in the upper fora.

no u

I've provided you with evidence that several things in Ferguson are racially motivated.

Well, you sure tried to. Unfortunately, your evidence pointed in the opposite direction.

You've been able to explain some of them

Where "some" means "98%".

but your position on two of them is basically "I can't give a good reason for this, but it's not racism." That's not how logical arguments work.

lol. Taking my claim, misrepresenting it, and plopping it back at me. I could've sworn I read about this somewhere related to how logical arguments work...

No, you see, the problem here isn't that it's not racism. The problem here is that it's not statistically provable institutionalised racism.

Unless those 'several racist individuals' are the only ones who pull people over for the reasons mentioned, your argument makes little statistical sense.

What? That doesn't even make sense. Why wouldn't there be a fair amount of non-racist cops who stop everyone according to appropriate merits, and then a few who do so more than they should?

One of them also suggests racism.

No, you're just seeing what you want to see, and for some reason you appear to be convinced that I need to disprove your unfalsifiable hypothesis.

Once again, saying I don't have any proof very loudly is not the same as demonstrating that I don't have any proof. You've failed to do that.

Once again, it is not my job to prove your unfalsifiable hypotheses and negatives.

Are you telling me that isn't suspicious at all to you?

I don't know what I could possibly be suspicious of. All of your points are easily explained without invoking a big bad racist white man conspiracy. Historical factors, education, economic disparity, attitude, and crime statistics simply fit reality better.

[citation needed]

Please don't use terms you don't understand. Putting a [citation needed] on a conclusion of a long post just makes you look silly.

[Rushy]

I doubt that this institutionalized racism is racially motivated

I know Pizza already commented on this, but seriously, what the hell does this even mean?

[Fortuna]

More black people are arrested or confronted in neighborhoods that have a higher percentage of black people than any other race. What a shocker.

[Densoro]

Again, we are talking about institutionalised racism. Social attitudes are skewed - I already acknowledged that, but it's entirely irrelevant to this conversation.

Because the beliefs of the people who make up institutions have no impact on the institutions themselves, right? All ignorance and bias disappears and you become a by-the-book automaton devoid of any personal flaws which might impact how you and those around you perform your jobs.

No, see, societal racism is not actually separate from institutional racism. You call 'irrelevant' just because some overlap happens, but there's no such thing as institutional racism without overlap because institutions operate within society. If that wasn't the case, then institutional racism would just up and spring out of nowhere, which isn't exactly cool with the laws of cause and effect. The forms of racism are connected, and that is not grounds for dismissing them -- it's grounds for looking at the subject more complexly.

Correct. That's why I called the notion an unfalsifiable hypothesis. Because it's a hypothesis that's not falsifiable. Do you recall the reason why I said that? Oh, that's right - it's the exact same reason which you now seem to think somehow invalidates my statement.

Just because there are currently limited statistics, that doesn't mean it's impossible to falsify. It means that the statistics are one-sided which is the point I'm making in the first place. If somebody has a monopoly on information, then you can't beat them with the information they have a monopoly on because they have a monopoly on it. However, in the Darren Wilson case, these same people fudged their numbers multiple times. First, he said he got punched twice. Then he said it was ten times. Somehow after ten punches from 'demon Hulk Hogan,' his face was just a little rosy. First, Brown was 35 feet from the car when he died. Then it comes out they were about 100 feet off. During the trial, they appealed to a statute 29 years dead to excuse Wilson's behavior. They can't keep up with their own laws, yet they're going to put this down in official statistics as a justified shooting, so the sources will support him in spite of all these flaws and more. That's why I say statistics are a rigged game. You can get away with referencing a law from the 70s, since removed, and nobody even bats an eye.

In light of this, the deaths of black people at police hands (a statistic thought to be flawed -- due to underreporting) seem much less infallible. Maybe Mike Brown was a one-off case. Or maybe Aiyana Jones got the exact same treatment. Same for Cameron Tillman (who, notice, they write off as a 'freak accident.' Characterizing it as 'just one instance,' just like I said). Despite the open-carry laws in Cleveland, an officer got out of his car and immediately shot Tamir Rice for waving around a BB gun. John Crawford III died under similar circumstances. Hell, Omar Edwards was mistaken as a criminal by a fellow cop and killed without a chance to diffuse the situation. To compare, twice as many white people are killed through legal intervention -- even though there's five times as many of us in the country.

And shit, these statistics are just referring to the people they've killed. Dymond Milburn, a middle-schooler, was mistaken for a prostitute and beaten; actress Daniele Watts was given a lighter version of the same treatment. Have any of you ever been mistaken for a sex worker and taken into police custody? Me either. Black people who are still alive continue to speak about their lived experiences, but they get shut down because these 'freak accidents' aren't recorded statistically as failures on the part of the police force. The officers are rarely given more than a slap on the wrist unless they shoot a white family's dog. The same prosecutor who pardoned Darren Wilson's fatal shooting felt the need to bring a black cop up on felony charges for using his baton. The amount of ass-covering the institution grants cops seems to change based on the race of the officers and/or the victims.

Meantime, James Holmes, the Dark Knight shooter? Taken alive. Eric Frein? Taken alive. You see a white guy waving a gun around in public like Tamir Rice was doing -- with the exception that it was a real gun -- and after trying to talk him down, they shoot just once and take him alive. What did any of these openly violent people do right that Tamir Rice and John Crawford did wrong to get so enthusiastically gunned down by our famously objective police force?

That was really long but it addresses multiple points of yours, so don't freak out when you see there's blocks I'm not directly replying to.

Please explain why you hold this belief. You assume that police officers are incapable of admitting to having made mistakes despite ample evidence to the contrary.

lol 'ew huffington post is gross i won't even waste my time with it
/links a search where the most prominent hits are HuffPo and others accusing police of making mistakes, rather than police directly saying they fucked up'

Of course. That's true by definition. They have had an impact on people's equality of opportunity in the past. Nowadays, it's an equality of outcomes thing.

Another dismissal based in false dichotomy. Inequality of one generation's outcomes limits the equality of the next generation's opportunities. Separating them is logically self-defeating. The line between the two types of equality doesn't exist as much as capitalists like to pretend for exactly this reason.

Again: not something I denied and not the subject of this discussion. Making true statements about things which are irrelevant doesn't make your case any more convincing.

"Brown people are systematically cheated by the system but lol that's not racism."

No - you're just either dishonest or misinformed and act as if we're talking about "racism", when we're talking about institutionalised racism - specifically, Tausami's claim that institutionalised racism is statistically provable. If you'd like to start a discussion about social attitudes, historical factors, or anything other than institutional racism and the statistic provability/falsifiability thereof, feel free to. However, these points are completely irrelevant to this specific discussion.

Again implying that none of those things are connected to the racist way the system has shaken out. I know I'm addressing this twice but I wanna make sure to highlight that this is what I'm talking about in the first paragraph of this post too.