ChrisMaverick dotcom

BLM Good, KKK Bad…

For the record… the KKK are bad guys. Also… the Nazis are bad guys. #BLM are the good guys. I just want that to be clear.

You know… if you’d asked me ten years ago if I’d ever have to write a blog like this, I’d think you were crazy. If you’d asked me two years ago if I’d ever have to write a blog like this, I’d think you were stupid. A year ago… well… by then I’d probably say “oh god, I hope not… but I’m not so sure.” Today… I have to write a blog like this.

So obviously, I had some thoughts about this last weekend that I shared in my last couple of posts. And I’d like to say, much like 99% of the country, regardless of politics… I was pretty outraged. Except… it wasn’t 99% of the country. That’s becoming pretty clear. It turns out it’s starting to look like it’s more like 65-75% of the country. And that’s… hard to fathom…

Ok, let’s face it. There are some people out there… I dunno… lets just say 5% of Americans… who are outright racist. These are the people who actually were marching and chanting about the Jews (and the blacks and the fags). Fuck those guys! By the way, one of the best things I can say about this country right now, is that for all the horror of the last few days, I don’t really have to justify my hatred of Nazis. I can just say “fuck those guys” and move on. Most people… even the staunchest supporters of Trump, don’t think i have to justify hating the Nazis specifically. The few who do… well, fuck those guys.

But the next 20-30%. That’s who I need to address here.

Sigh…

So I wrote my two diatribes on Tuesday because, much like most of the internet, I was pretty pissed off and wanted to complain about some stuff that I found pretty horrible. I was happy to see people resharing it. Thank you for that. I was happy to see people agreeing. Thank you again. And believe it or not, even for the people who didn’t agree with me and wanted to argue with me, I was happy for them too. Jeffrey Kertis, this specifically includes you, because you were the most vocal on that post. And… while I still disagree with the vast majority of your politics on most issues, I will publicly say here that it was big of you to apologize for offending people once you realized you had.

BUT, I’ve also been drawn into several discussions since then (that’s not a complaint… I’m happy to do it) about the “moral equivalency” of the two different protest groups or what the president calls “many sides.” And the thing that I’ve had to counter most often is the idea that “But!!!! #BlackLivesMatter is a hate group too!!!! They’re just as bad as the Nazis and the KKK!!!!”

Sigh…

No… No they aren’t!

I’ve explained this a few times … to varying levels of success… in the past few days. Some people are convinced. Most probably are not. So, in the interest of having something that everyone can point to when arguing with someone in the 20-30% group who fundamentally believes that, I’m writing this. It probably won’t work… they’ll probably just tell you that I’m an asshole and my opinion doesn’t matter. But it’s worth a try. And I’m going to do this with facts. So from here on out, this is not a political issue at all. This is just the difference.

So here are some facts:

#BLM is not a hate group. Honestly, they’re barely even a “group.” #BlackLivesMatter is a political movement founded in 2013 based around a a singular premise of “police are killing too many innocent black people. Please stop killing us.” That’s it. Nothing else. That is the entirety of ideology behind the base movement. There are quite likely other ideals that various people who believe in the #BLM movement share. But that is the base idea behind it. No matter how many other things #BLM members do, good or bad, the base ideology is “please don’t kill us, mmkay?”

The Nazis are a hate group. They are a political party (actually several parties) originally founded in 1920, focused around the central ideology of scientific racism. That is, they believe that evolutionarily, socially and intellectually white people are naturally superior to everyone else and that in order to secure and protect this superiority, the best course of action is to eliminate, eradicate or remove other ethnic groups. For the purposes of their ideology, Jews aren’t white, and they would in fact be the largest historic victims of the Nazis. The original group was disbanded after WWII, and has had other incarnations that have replaced it in the years sense. No matter how many other things the Nazis do, good or bad, the base ideology of the group is “white people are superior! Everyone else get the fuck out! Or else!”

The Ku Klux Klan is a hate group. They are a fraternal terrorist organization, originally founded in 1865 with the express purpose of being a pro-slavery insurgency after the South lost the American Civil War. Their sole purpose is to spread terror amongst the African-American population in order to keep them as oppressed as possible, primarily through violence and murder. That’s it. Nothing else. That is the entirety of the ideology behind the organization. The original group was disbanded in 1871 and reorganized in 1915. No matter how many other things the KKK does, good or bad, the base ideology of the group is “Kill the Niggers!” And yes, that is how THEY phrase it.

These are not my opinions. These are the documented history of the three groups. I am not telling you which ones you can or should support or which ones you shouldn’t. Merely that this is what they stand for.

I’m not saying there are no bad people associated with #BLM. In fact, I’m sure there are. I can’t even technically say that there aren’t any good people associated with the KKK or the Nazis. But I can say the purpose of the first group is positive and the latter two groups are negative.

The reason this matters is that right now people are frequently misunderstanding what #BLM is. That comes from misinformation about it spread through at best misunderstanding born of systemic racism and at worst a directed and intentional move to disparage and oppress black people. I’m not going to go so far as to say that there aren’t left wing hate groups. There are. I’m not going to claim that there aren’t racist organizations espousing black supremacy. There are. I’m just not going to tell you the names of any of them. Why? Because the fact that you don’t know the names shows how much less of a problem they are than the groups here that you do know. The point is, #BLM isn’t one of them.

And if you have a doubt think of it this way. The KKK and the Nazis are so synonymous with hate that they are often used as insults just when you don’t like someone and you want them to look bad. They are so synonymous with hate, that those who want to disparage #BLM say stuff like “#BlackLivesMatter is just as bad as the KKK and the Nazis.” And yet… no one has ever complained “The KKK and the Nazis are just as bad as #BLM!”

Any questions?

om

269 comments for “BLM Good, KKK Bad…

  1. August 18, 2017 at 2:53 am

    So the burning of Ferguson and the calling for the deaths of officers is good? Cops being executed in their cars is good? Promoting the lie of “Hands up don’t shoot” is good? Accusing Israel of ‘genocide’ is good? You and I have VERY different definitions of good. BLM is violent thuggery, just like Anti-fa and the KKK.

    1. August 18, 2017 at 3:33 am

      First of all #BLM didn’t burn Ferguson. Ferguson was not burned in an organized event by any group that you can attribute a name to. Ferguson was burned in the spontaneous riot at the conclusion of a court decision. You don’t know which if any of the people involved were members of #BLM, which as an organized movement was in its infancy at the time. And as I said, “no matter what things, good or bad….” but again, you don’t know that anyone even purporting to be a member was involved. And membership is vague here because it’s not a group in the same way as the nazis or the KKK are which is exactly what I just wrote about. What you mean to say here is essentially “black people” because that’s the only real signifiers you have about the individuals involved in the Ferguson riots. And what you’re saying is pretty damn racist.

      Second, all of those other thing are marks of specific individuals, some of whom are associated with he #BLM movement, because, honestly, for the most part, being associated with the #BLM movement is pretty much as simple as just saying you are or chanting a mantra. That’s all it really takes. So some individuals might be for any of those things you’re saying and some aren’t. And since you don’t know any of this and you insist on saying that it’s about good, that implies that you didn’t read beyond the first sentence. And certainly not the last paragraph because I address exactly how your sentence ended And just wanted to express your opinion that #BLM is thuggish because… well you’re pretty damn racist.

      Third, yes, the burning of Ferguson was in many ways good and certainly necessary.
      http://www.chrismaverick.com/wp/2014/11/25/in-order-to-save-the-village-we-had-to-burn-it-down/

    2. August 18, 2017 at 3:36 am

      Thank you for admitting you can’t refute that BLM marchers shouted death threats, their followers killed cops, and falling back on the ‘you disagree with me, so you’re racist’ argument. I accept your concession on the points. I’ll just leave a recent article to get you up to speed. http://michellemalkin.com/2017/08/16/where-is-corporate-disavowal-of-black-lives-matter/

    3. August 18, 2017 at 3:38 am

      Thank you for admitting you are a racist who can’t read. Where is the corporate disavowal?!?!!!! It’s not a corporation!!!! Seriously if you wanted to come here just to spout racism and link to alt-left conspiracy theories we to help to prove my point….. we can do this all day.

    4. August 18, 2017 at 3:40 am

      Wal-Mart isn’t a corporation? Now that you’ve proved your inability to read and demonstrated your justification of violence on innocents, I don’t feel the need to post any more on the topic. You’ve made a fool of yourself just fine, bigot.

    5. August 18, 2017 at 3:52 am

      Ummm…. no. BLM Isn’t a corporation. There’s no one to disavow and there’s nothing for other corporations to disavow. Your argument makes about as much sense as saying “where is the corporate disavowal of save the whales?”

      Seriously, it’s great that you think I’ve made a fool of myself and I sound like a bigot. You seeked me out… we have no friends in common on Facebook, you clearly are answering there and not my blog. And you were the very first person to comment so it’s not a viral situation or friends of friends. Your page is private but prominently features a Captain America reference taken out of context that you clearly don’t actually understand being used to promote your vision of fascism and some complaints about Obamacare. So I can only assume that you look for things that reference the #BLM hashtag to come and complain about because you are a racist who likes to show up black people.

      But you know, I’m glad I look like a fool.

    6. August 18, 2017 at 4:00 am

    7. August 18, 2017 at 5:01 am

      Ok, so let’s be scientific here. If the hypothesis that black lives matter is good and KKK and Nazis are bad, then I would expect things like people who are aligned with the black lives matter movement to speak against the killings of police officers. I am aligned with the black lives matter movement. I hate, absolutely hate that kind of violence against police officers. Just like I am against unnecessary violence by police officers. What evidence is there that there was any kind of Outcry by the KKK or Nazis about the murder of Heather Heyer? The only thing about that that I saw was on the daily Stormer website before they shut down where they called her a fat slut who deserved to die because women who don’t have children are worthless drains on society.

    8. August 18, 2017 at 5:14 am

      Matthew Morris -> The simplified version of what Mav is saying (I get the sense that you need it simplified for you) is that you are comparing individuals to a movement.

      Some individuals who claim association with BLM have committed horrid acts, including murder. The average BLM associated person condemns the majority of these horrid acts (as Mav has pointed out, he condemns all the acts except for the property destruction). The organization as a whole does not publicly (or privately, but you wouldn’t know that) call for violence as one of its founding principles.

      The KKK as an organization (and other white supremacist groups) does explicitly call for violence against non-whites as a founding principle. Individual members who commit these acts aren’t defying their organization, they are directly supporting it. The KKK even applauded the murder of Heather Heyer after it happened, basically because she was a “race traitor.”

      That is the difference that you fail to understand (possibly because a black man tried to explain it to you instead of a white man).

    9. August 18, 2017 at 5:29 am

      Michael Strauss “possibly because a black man tried to explain it to you instead of a white man” Aww, isn’t your racism cute? Well I’m glad he honestly belives attacking people not involved and destroying their stuff is fine. It is refreshing to see someone cheer vandalism. And let’s not forget, the Anti-Semitism is in the BLM Platform. http://legalinsurrection.com/2016/08/if-you-are-suprised-that-blacklivesmatter-joined-war-on-israel-then-you-havent-been-paying-attention/

    10. August 18, 2017 at 5:32 am

      And yet you ignored me until addressed by a white man.

      As for the platform of which you speak you’re not linking to it. You’re linking to an adversary attributing a platform to them. I have their platform.

      It’s “please don’t kill us”

    11. August 18, 2017 at 5:38 am

      Chris Maverick I ignored you because you’ve proved (yet again) that you don’t read. If you did, there’s this thing called a ‘hyperlink’ in the article. I understand that might be difficult, you know dealing with an actual writer who cites his sources. I ignore people who refuse to read dfiffering viewpoints of all colours and creeds. Including bigots like you.

    12. August 18, 2017 at 5:43 am

      And I did read them. I even addressed them. The Malkin article I addressed directly in my response she to you and had already refuted her main point in my original article.

      The free beacon article is more about antifa than it is about BLM. They are two separate groups that you (and the author) are equating because it is convenient to do so in order to make a greater racist point. You’ll note that I never made a claim about antifa at all in the original article or even these comments til just now. Because they’re not part of my argument. They have nothing to do with BLM.

      And Michael Strauss said nothing that I hadn’t said. Other than pointing out that he was white.

    13. August 18, 2017 at 6:09 am

      You are correct, sir, there is a hyperlink in your article. That means that if you wanted the information in the hyperlink to be your supporting evidence, you should have clicked on it and then linked to that page. That is how evidence works. Instead you used a biased opinion piece and then tried to defend that as evidence by claiming it was sourced (even though it actively misrepresents its source).

      As for claiming I made a racist statement, in doing so you actually pretty much labeled yourself a racist. All I did was say, based on your actions, you appeared more willing to listen to a white man than a black man. I didn’t actually claim you were racist or even apply motive to that observation. You, however, immediately decided that I had invoked racism, which means you basically acknowledged that being willing to listen to a white man more than a black man is a racist action. Congratulations on turning my simple observation of your behavior into a condemnation of your own behavior.

    14. August 18, 2017 at 6:55 am

      Mr. Morris: FYI,

      Here’s a statement from BLM about anti-police violence (to summarize: they do not condone violence): @movement4blacklives/freedomnow-eyes-on-the-prize-96e8b9185f6c" rel="nofollow ugc">https://medium.com/@movement4blacklives/freedomnow-eyes-on-the-prize-96e8b9185f6c

      In contrast, here’s what the KKK leader said about Heather Heyer’s death (to summarize: he condones violence). http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/kkk-leader-glad-heather-heyer-death-article-1.3414189

    15. August 18, 2017 at 6:56 am

      VERY DIFFERENT.

    16. August 18, 2017 at 6:59 am

      (Although, I suspect that someone who sees someone who fought her entire life for women’s rights and someone who has sexually assaulted women his entire life as equally misogynistic, might not see this difference either.)

    17. August 18, 2017 at 10:44 am

      I care really a lot about that particular part of the
      MBL platform, which I do insist is antisemitic. But I’d really, really appreciate it if we could keep discussion of that tiny part of the platform (written by a group not identical to BLM, though certainly not unimportant in BLM) separate. There’s a lot I could point you to on how antisemitism shows up on the Left (like this article: https://newrepublic.com/article/144393/lefts-blind-spot-anti-semitism). But I say that to point out that I really care about that a lot, hoping you’ll consider my perspective as I insist it doesn’t change “BLM good; Nazis bad.” And I want to implore you to not use Jews in that way to drive a wedge between people. My life is important enough for a discussion all its own and not to be someone else’s football.

    18. August 18, 2017 at 11:23 am

      He’s like a robot. It’s terrific. He just keeps on his script no matter what anyone says. I especially love the intellectual and moral superiority + ad hom combo. Classic!

    19. August 19, 2017 at 8:55 am

      Mr. Morris: As Lieutenant Columbo would say: Oh, just one more thing. A component of actual terrorism is to make people afraid. I’ll ask you: Who at the Charlotteville rally openly carried guns? The only people I saw carrying guns (in live, non-photoshopped images) were the “alt-right” side.

  2. August 18, 2017 at 4:14 am

    For me it is really, really simple to see the difference: If BLM achieves their stated goal, fewer people are killed – and I’m happy. If the neo-nazis achieve their goal, I’m dead.

    I’m very troubled that this isn’t obvious to everyone.

    1. August 18, 2017 at 4:17 am

      Simple, and concise. And, yes, very troubling.

    2. August 18, 2017 at 4:18 am

      Yeah. I mean… I guess if your ideology is “Dmitri is dead so the world is a better place” then the other group might make sense. But then it’s kinda hard to claim moral superiority.

  3. August 18, 2017 at 5:01 am

    They are all bad guys.

    1. August 18, 2017 at 5:03 am

      No. They aren’t. Again… read the post.

    2. August 18, 2017 at 5:11 am

      If the BLM movement can wave a magic wand and get what they want instantly, is the world better or worse? How about if the KKK can do the same?

    3. August 18, 2017 at 5:12 am

      I read your post, and as usual your bias is far stronger than any insight you might provide.

      I didn’t say they were a hate group, did I? I didn’t compare them to the others? Did I? I didn’t even single them out.

      What I said is that they were all bad guys, which they are. Nothing in that statement is contradicted in the “facts” you have presented.

      All of their ideology is flawed, based on misinformation and prejudice. That’s a fact. They all use fear mongering and violence as a means of intimidation. That’s a fact. And they all use the narrative of victim hood to garner support. Again, fact.

      None of them are good for this country. None of them are even good for the people they claim to be trying to protect or empower. Hence, none of them are “good”.

      It’s been a long week, and the ridiculousness of people has kept me kind of on the outskirts of this whole thing. But, fuck it. If you people want to do this…

      I’m your huckleberry, and you ain’t no daisy.

    4. August 18, 2017 at 5:13 am

    5. August 18, 2017 at 5:16 am

      Hey Mav, Vic has blackmail material on you, right?

    6. August 18, 2017 at 5:22 am

      Ok. Things to unpack. Simply put you’re wrong.

      More intricately put. You’re wrong and here’s why:

      First of all. I don’t think you know what bias is. You think bias means “doesn’t agree with me.” Sometimes I am biased. I am not here because I didn’t talk about any of my opinions.

      My entire argument is based around the fundamental ideology of the groups as stated by the groups themselves.

      The #BLM’s ideology is “please don’t let the police kill innocent people.” Yes black people are killed with a greater frequency per capital than whites. I know you don’t believe that. You’re wrong. But it’s irrelevant. Which is why I didn’t bring it up in the post.

      The reason this is… is because Dmitri is right here. Say that I’m wrong and innocent black people aren’t being killed with greater frequency. Then the only logical answer to the ideology presented by the #BLM movement is “ok fine. We weren’t planning on killing you anyway. So whatever”. Any other response is problematic.

      In the KKK and Nazi cases it’s not that easy. The only possible responses are “you’re right. Kill us.”

      That’s a fundamental difference.

      Again… I intentionally didn’t reference OTHER left wing activist groups. Many are far more organized than BLM. Many are far more violent as a matter of ideology.

      Nor did I say that there are no violent people associated with BLM. There probably are. And there are probably nazis that run animal shelters and feed homeless orphans. None of those things are of issue. This is a post about the historic founding and ideology of the three respective groups.

      And the fundamental points I made on this are specific and accurate.

    7. August 18, 2017 at 5:24 am

      Chris Maverick Before I get into the rest of this, the title of your post is:

      BLM Good, KKK Bad…

      Whether I agree with you or not, that is a fucking opinion. Now let me read the rest of your response. And see how “wrong” I am.

    8. August 18, 2017 at 5:26 am

      So which part are you arguing against. Are you saying the ideology of “please don’t kill us” is bad or are you saying the ideology of “kill the niggers” is good?

    9. August 18, 2017 at 5:27 am

      “All of their ideology is flawed, based on misinformation and prejudice. That’s a fact.”

      I feel the need to explain to you in philosophical, logical, and scientific detail what a fact is, but it took me two different graduate level classes to perfectly understand that concept and I don’t have the time to go into that level of detail with you. So, to keep it short, you really don’t understand what a fact is based on this statement.

      But rather than dissect your lack of education on philosophical relativism, I will dissect your lack of education on BLM.

      The primary ideology of BLM is that black men are killed or assaulted by police officers in excessive numbers compared to white men (in fact, compared to any other race / gender combination). This is actually a proven fact. Simple, government produced statistics show that, when population percentage is accounted for, black men are roughly 6x as likely to be killed by a police officer than a white man.

      You claimed the ideology is flawed or based on misinformation, but that is pure fiction. The ideology is based on evidence that nobody disputes (as I said, these are statistics, which are pretty darn hard to dispute).

      That means the only real question is why black men are killed with such higher frequency that white men. There are plenty of “competing” theories (ie. strawmen that have been thrown in the way to distract from the Occam’s Razor answer), but they have all been discounted by scientific analysis. Black men are not 6x more likely to commit a crime, for example. In short, when all factors other than racism are accounted for, the numbers still show that black men are killed or assaulted by police officers in excess compared to white men. Only racism explains that differential.

      Those are the facts.

    10. August 18, 2017 at 5:29 am

      “Nor did I say that there are no violent people associated with BLM. ”

      And I didn’t get into any specifics other than how they go about their respective business.

      You said one was good, while the others are bad. I said, they are all bad. I didn’t say equally bad, I didn’t say morally on the same level. I stated that they were all bad, and gave reasons as to why.

      And I won’t debate the numbers in regards to the core tenant of BLM with you again, you are wrong, the actual number of people killed in a given year proves that, making the whole narrative of police targeting blacks a farce.

    11. August 18, 2017 at 5:32 am

      “So which part are you arguing against. Are you saying the ideology of “please don’t kill us” is bad or are you saying the ideology of “kill the niggers” is good?”

      I am saying that using fear and deception to manipulate people into following you is bad. I am saying shutting down debate based on prejudice is bad. I am saying that anything that creates division for the sake of division, is bad.

    12. August 18, 2017 at 5:33 am

      You really don’t understand the concept of percentage of population, do you? Let me try an extreme example to see if I can get you to understand a very basic statistical concept.

      Pretend there is a population of 15 people and a population of 10,000 people. Now pretend that cops killed 10 of the 15 people in the last year and 20 of the 10,000 people.

      Technically, cops killed more of the larger population than the smaller, but in terms of percentage of the population, cops killed 66% of the small population and 0.2% of the large population. Anyone with even the slightest understanding of statistics would understand that cops are killing the small population well in excess of the large one.

    13. August 18, 2017 at 5:35 am

      Except that’s not what the argument is about. It’s not what the group stands for nor what I claimed in the post.

      What I did here was make what’s called an evaluative argument. A very basic rhetorical move. I made a claim about two base concepts “good and bad” and supported them with logical facts wherein I defined the terms through example and judged between them.

      It really is a basic rhetorical move. We cover it in about week six of teaching freshman writing.

    14. August 18, 2017 at 5:36 am

      Vic Carter So an interesting question next: What would it take you to change your mind about either or both groups (BLM and KKK). If there is magically conjured perfect statistical evidence you agree with that supports the premise that Blacks are disproportionally murdered during police encounters would that be enough to have you change your mind?

      and on the KKK, what evidence is possible to get you to change your mind about them and decide their goals are correct?

      If there it is *possible* for evidence to change your mind about supporting the BLM goals but not *possible* to change your mind about supporting the KKK goals, how can you lump them together? You may (at best?) consider them misguided, but surely the *goal* of not killing black people is a laudable goal. Edited to add: and whether it is disproportionate or not *if* police kill fewer black people that is surely good.

    15. August 18, 2017 at 5:36 am

      Also, claiming that this academic analysis is biased purely based on the title is ridiculous. The title just exists to engage the audience. It isn’t any part of the conversation. Academic professionals would laugh at your naivete in this matter. I kinda hope Mav (who is an academic professional) is getting a good chuckle out of your inane comment.

    16. August 18, 2017 at 5:39 am

      Michael Strauss “This is actually a proven fact.”

      No, it isn’t. Because the numbers that you claim to have used to make your assessment, don’t exist.

      Let me educate you, so that I don’t have to do this over and over again.

      How many people do the police kill in a year? Do you know?

      Roughly 1000.

      Do you know how many of them are black?

      Roughly 400.

      Do you know how many of the people that the police kill are armed?

      About 80%

      Do you know how many people are arrested in the US on average?

      About 10 Million

      Do you know how many of them are black?

      Roughly 3 million.

      Do you know what fucking percentage 400 is of 3 million.

      That is reality. There is no debate. None. Those are literally the average numbers from the past x amount of years.

      So forgetting all other variables for a second and only going by the premise that blacks are being targeted by police and killed in far greater numbers. The most basic of crime stats, available from every source that provides them, discredits that notion by using nothing more than simple fucking math.

    17. August 18, 2017 at 5:42 am

      Chris Maverick You posted an opinion. This good, that bad. I did the same, this bad, that bad. You want to argue because you don’t think that BLM is bad, not because they are actually morally superior. You are arguing your opinion about the movement. So you are not making an evaluative argument.

    18. August 18, 2017 at 5:44 am

      ” If there is magically conjured perfect statistical evidence you agree with that supports the premise that Blacks are disproportionally murdered during police encounters would that be enough to have you change your mind?”

      There is actual evidence that discredits this notion. Is that enough to change your mind?

    19. August 18, 2017 at 5:44 am

      Maybe I’m not following your math here (no clue if your numbers are accurate, but since you believe they are, I’ll start there)

      400/1000 police deaths a year are of black people. So 40% of deaths are of Blacks.

      Of arrests: there are 10 million, only 3 million of which are black. So arrests of blacks are only 30%.

      So 30% of arrests are of black people, but 40% of deaths are of black people – so you *must* agree it is literally disproportionate. (You can make some separate argument that they deserved it, but the numbers you present here do nothing to support that assertion)

    20. August 18, 2017 at 5:45 am

      You don’t know how evaluative arguments work.

    21. August 18, 2017 at 5:45 am

      Dmitri just taught you how real statistics work. Seriously, Vic, have you ever taken a statistics course?

    22. August 18, 2017 at 5:46 am

      (and there are separate issues if the arrests and police contacts *themselves* disproportionally target blacks – but with the numbers you present, that isn’t even necessary to get into)

    23. August 18, 2017 at 5:58 am

      Chris Maverick Well, yeah I do. I was not familiar with the term, but it really isn’t that complicated. And the fact that you fall back onto that as your excuse, only proves my point in regards to this being about your opinion more than it is about anything else.

      You chose to frame your post as you did. You chose do present the information as you have. And you chose to lead your readers down a particular path.

      You did this based on your perception of the facts you have chosen to present. It was a nice little trap, designed to bait a response.

      However, we aren’t debating the “facts” that you presented. We disagree on your assessment. This good, that bad. Where I say, Both are bad.

      Nothing more.

    24. August 18, 2017 at 6:01 am

      So, Vic Carter… is your argument that the percentage of people who interact with police in a negative fashion that are killed (approx 0.1%, based on your numbers) is too small to matter?

      It is it that black people are only 30% of arrested people and 40% of those killed by police, and therefore they aren’t getting arrested / killed more than non-blacks?

      I can’t tell from your past with the numbers which you’re arguing for, and the counter-arguments are very different.

    25. August 18, 2017 at 6:06 am

      Michael Strauss Many, many years ago.

      If you are suggesting that we should start a social movement vilifying the police based on the .00whatever % chance that a black person will get shot when being arrested, as opposed to the .000whatever percentage that someone of another race will get shot, then I am here to tell you, you are out of your god damn mind.

      Step back from your ideology and think logically for just one second.

      If the argument, is that the police are hunting blacks. And that is the premise of the movement. What is more important to the narrative?

      The percentage of people killed, or the ACTUAL number of people killed? If it were 1 million, ok, then the disparities might come into play based on statistics, HOWEVER, it is not 1 million.

      It is roughly 400.

      Which means, regardless of any differences in how many blacks vs whites are killed. Both groups have less than a 10th of a percent chance of being killed by the police when being arrested.

      So you, and BLM are literally arguing over who is more ridiculously unlikely to get shot by the police.

      Do you understand. Blink once for yes, twice for no…

    26. August 18, 2017 at 6:09 am

      Erin Childs ” is your argument that the percentage of people who interact with police in a negative fashion that are killed (approx 0.1%, based on your numbers) is too small to matter?”

      I am telling you that a 99.99% chance of not being shot does not equivocate to blacks being hunted.

      So yes, the fact that their percentage, is slightly more than the percentage for whites, is completely irrelevant.

    27. August 18, 2017 at 6:16 am

      And that is an evaluative argument. And it is valid. Your argument in the other hand is weaker because you rely on both misleading and inaccurate facts and broken statistics.

      The statistics I’ll leave alone since others have already shown you the flaws in your basic math. You don’t accept them… but… whatever.

      So I’ll address the fundamental flaw in your ideological vs methodological argument and why mine works better than yours.

      What I did was say: here is #BLM. Here is their origin. Here is when they were founded. Here is why. Here is their ideology. They have no specific methodology.

      Here is the Nazis. Here is when they were founded. Here is why. Here is their ideology. Here is their methodology.

      Here is the KKK. Here is when they were founded. Here is why. Here is their ideology. Here is their methodology.

      The ideology and methodology part is important with each group.

      For #BLM, i can “become a member” (such that it is) simply by saying out loud that “I believe that black lives matter.” It really is that simple. It’s like saying that I am feminist or a liberal or a conservative or a vegetarian. Self proclamation is enough. What I do from that point is on me because there are no real rules. If I tell people I am part of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, they’ll just say “ok….” and they might judge me on that however they will. But that’s all it takes. It doesn’t matter if I am black or white, violent or pacifist, other “#BLM members” aren’t going to say “no you aren’t.”

      On the other hand the Klan and the Nazis both have specific ideologies AND methodologies. I can’t just self-proclaim. Doing so would get me rejected by the greater organized group. Not behaving by the methodologies or the ideologies would get me rejected by the greater organized group. It simply means something.

      To walk outside of this issue, it’s the difference between being a “feminist” and being a “member of NOW” or even the difference between being a “christian” and being a “catholic” or a “muslim” and being a “member of ISIS.” Hell, it’s the difference between being a “camper” and being a “Boy Scout”

      IF, I had named specific groups, like say Antifa (since the commenter above brought them up) rather than just the overall generic #BLM movement then you might be able to argue your point validly. This is why I didn’t. And why I still haven’t other than the one that was named. It would have both given ammunition to people to refute me and it would have weakened my overall argument. So I didn’t. I made a very specific point that I could argue strongly.

      By your logic, on the other hand, if I scream “Black Lives Matter!!!’ and then make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich then you could claim that “#BLM supports PB&J!!!” That may be true of some, but not others.

      That’s the difference.

    28. August 18, 2017 at 6:22 am

      Vic Carter: So, you refuse to take into account that blacks are only 13-15% of the population into account, because “only 1000” people are killed by police. So we should ignore the 250 blacks killed by police who, in a non-biased system (15% of 1000), shouldn’t be killed?

      Those 250 lives may be a non- issue to you, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t matter to everyone.

      And none of this takes into account the fear culture created by the biased dynamic.

    29. August 18, 2017 at 6:25 am

      Chris Maverick

      “The statistics I’ll leave alone since others have already shown you the flaws in your basic math.”

      400 is what percent of 3 million. Hell multiply it by 10. 4000 of 3 million. Fuck it, 100, 40000 of 3 million.

      Ignoring data does not strengthen your argument. If you want to say that no one should be killed by police, ok. It’s silly, but it is ok.

      And, once again. I said they were bad, I explained why, I did not present them as equal to the other groups. I stated how they present their ideology as well as what the other groups do. I believe they are bad, because the “movement” is pushing falsehoods for the sake of division, which is very, very bad, and IMO part of the reason there has been a rise in activity in regards to the other groups.

    30. August 18, 2017 at 6:27 am

      Btw… percentages also aren’t part of the actual #BLM ideology. The ideology really is just “please don’t kill us.” So like… even if the percentages were smaller, than the average citizen, the refute is still in essence “no, we really want to kill you.”

      Honestly, there’s no reasonable response to “please don’t kill us” other than “OK.” Like… regardless of anything else. Even if you weren’t planning on killing them or you don’t think they’re killed too often. The reasonable answer is still “ok”. And i mean that for black people, white people… whatever… anything else is to say “no your life doesn’t matter” which is the point of the name.

    31. August 18, 2017 at 6:27 am

      Erin Childs “Those 250 lives may be a non- issue to you, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t matter to everyone.”

      Did I say they didn’t matter? Of course the matter to someone. But You can not make the claim that blacks are being hunted, while ignoring the reality of just how “hunted” they actually are.

    32. August 18, 2017 at 6:29 am

      Also, while you may claim that it is statistical noise, that is because you are ignoring the larger context. Yes, killings are pretty rare. That will always be the case, even if every single police officer in the force was a card carrying Nazi. The reason is because the laws are set up that there is only so much you can get away with before facing consequences (even if that consequence is just losing a cozy job where you can freely bash in the heads of n****rs).

      However, those statistics aren’t noise, because they also directly correlate with police brutality and assaults on arrested suspects, which are MUCH, MUCH higher numbers. So, sure, maybe only a few hundred black men are being killed due to racism each year. But tens of thousands (probably hundreds of thousands) are being assaulted in some way or another due to racism. And due to the way these statistics are monitored, we can’t directly track that, but we can extrapolate those numbers from the number of people killed by police officers, because of the (I’ll say it again) direct correlation.

    33. August 18, 2017 at 6:29 am

      Chris Maverick Btw… percentages also aren’t part of the actual #BLM ideology. The ideology really is just “please don’t kill us.” So like… even if the percentages were smaller, than the average citizen, the refute is still in essence “no, we really want to kill you.”

      No, the response is, “you are no more likely than anyone else who gets arrested to be killed by the police”. And that likelihood is ridiculously slim…

    34. August 18, 2017 at 6:30 am

      Except “the Movement” isn’t pushing falsehoods. Some individuals may or may not be. That’s not part of the movement or even a significant portion of the movement.

      As opposed to the KKK and the Nazis where it is.

      Like… you’re saying things that are quantifiably untrue right now. And yet, I can’t reasonably say that “Computer Programmers push falsehoods and are therefore bad.” Or that “Bass players push falsehoods and are therefore bad.” Even though you are undoubtably members of both of those “groups”

    35. August 18, 2017 at 6:31 am

      Jesus…. Vic… pure and simple… if any stranger walks up to you on the street and says “please don’t kill me” and your response is “I am no more likely to kill you than I am anyone else” rather than “Ok” then you’re seriously being an asshole.

    36. August 18, 2017 at 6:32 am

      Michael Strauss

      “However, those statistics aren’t noise, because they also directly correlate with police brutality and assaults on arrested suspects, which are MUCH, MUCH higher numbers.”

      But that is not the premise. You are trying to move the goalpost because your opinion has been proven false by actual data.

      “Please don’t kill us”

      That is the premise.

      The answer is: ok you are no more likely to be killed than anyone else when encountering a cop. Especially if you are not armed or in the act of committing a crime.

    37. August 18, 2017 at 6:34 am

      Chris Maverick No, I am being truthful. The asshole is the guy assuming I had any intent on killing them in the first place. Why is it up to me to prove to someone that I am not going to do something I had no intention of doing.

      Did you honestly just make that fucking bullshit argument?

    38. August 18, 2017 at 6:36 am

      My opinion hasn’t been proven wrong by actual data. In fact you literally confirmed my data with your own data (congratulations on that). YOUR opinion is that the data doesn’t matter. My opinion is that the data both matters in the original context (black men are getting killed in higher percentage than all other race/gender combinations and that data can only be explained by racism) AND that it matters in a larger context which I literally mentioned in my first post in this thread.

    39. August 18, 2017 at 6:37 am

      I walk into a store:

      Hey, don’t steal that DVD player…

      Um, ok, I am no more likely to steal from you than any other shop I have visited today…

      Yes, I am the asshole in that scenario. LOL

    40. August 18, 2017 at 6:38 am

      Michael Strauss YOU HAVE NOT PROVEN THAT IT IS BECAUSE THEY ARE BLACK…

      So ridiculous…

    41. August 18, 2017 at 6:39 am

      When all other factors are taken into account, the disparity still exists. Are you familiar with Occam’s Razor?

    42. August 18, 2017 at 6:39 am

      Yes… I honestly made that argument. I mean, can you say what you said, yes… does the guy have just reason to assume you are going to kill him, maybe or maybe not…are you likely to kill him, maybe or maybe not…. does he deserve it? Maybe or maybe not…

      But the point is, if someone is worried that you are going to kill them… and that is your response then you’re being an asshole… like you’ve added nothing to the situation. The answer is “OK….” two syllables…. you’ve gone out of your way to be mean to the guy.

      And yes… if you walk into a store and someone says “please don’t steal that DVD player” the right answer is “Ok” or maybe to turn around and leave because you are offended. Hell, maybe even you tell them off and say “What makes you think I’m going to kill you, asshole.” That’s actually better than “I am no more likely to steal the DVD player than the TV” or even “I am no more likely to steal from your store than the store next door.” Like in your DEFENSE you are literally arguing something worse than the standard.

    43. August 18, 2017 at 6:40 am

      Michael Strauss Yes, but you are not taking all other factors into account.

    44. August 18, 2017 at 6:40 am

      …or, you know, any other form of logical reasoning?

    45. August 18, 2017 at 6:41 am

      You are right. I am not. The people who have studied this phenomenon scientifically are taking all other factors into account and have come to that conclusion.

    46. August 18, 2017 at 6:41 am

      As for the statistics, the question isn’t “were they killed because they were black” which he can’t prove just through statistics. Statistics can’t prove causality. It’s like a day one rule in an intro to stats class…

      They prove correlation. So yes… he has proven that “they are more likely to be killed if they are black”

    47. August 18, 2017 at 6:46 am

      Chris Maverick “But the point is, if someone is worried that you are going to kill them… and that is your response then you’re being an asshole… ”

      No, and there it is. There is the fundamental problem with just about everything you say.

      I do not have to justify myself to someone who “feels” threatened, that’s on them. I don’t have to prove that I am not going to do something. I don’t have to make anyone feel safe. That’s not my job. My job is to not do those things, because, um, not bad guy. That’s it.

      The police don’t have to say “ok, we won’t do that”. Even though they have. They don’t have to say they will try harder. Even though they have. They just have to not kill people just because they are black.

      Which, oddly enough, the VAST majority of police officers seem ok with.

      So they have literally complied, REGARDLESS of how many black people get killed. Yet the narrative is still: please don’t kill us…

      OK, you win, problem solved, how about we look into stopping blacks from killing each other…

    48. August 18, 2017 at 6:56 am

      Michael Strauss Who? Who exactly? You want to talk about facts vs opinion. You want to claim statistical relevance. Who? My claim is simple, from the most basic numbers available, the odds of me being shot, as a black man, by the police, if I get arrested, regardless of what I was doing, is less than 1%.

      I would venture to guess that if I were armed, in a bad area, committing a crime, being belligerent, etc. That percentage goes up.

      If you are saying that it doesn’t matter “how much more likely”, or how likely in general as Chris Maverick appears to be doing. Then you have undermined the whole premise of the movement.

      Blacks are being hunted. No, no they aren’t. They are slightly more likely to be shot, but they are also more likely to be committing a crime while doing so. Also they are more likely(than people who don’t get shot), to be armed. They are also more likely to be shot if they are in a large urban area, or an area of high crime.

      Blacks are being hunted is a pretty terrible thing to say. It is a terrible thing to consider, and it has been used to justify a lot of racial division in this country. It HAS been the cause of violence and it IS the central tenant of BLM.

      And, it is 100% a false statement based on any metric you can find, simply because police do not actually kill that many people, OF ANY RACE, on average and when they do 80 FUCKING percent of the people who get shot are armed and committing a crime.

      That is not hunting.

    49. August 18, 2017 at 7:01 am

      And I didn’t bring up any of that in this argument. Again you’re trying to extend it in order to have something to disagree with. And I’m humoring you BECAUSE I DO support BLM over KKK. I am in no way ashamed to admit that.

      But the point of the post is literally the difference in the base ideologies. I was pretty clear on that in the post. You’re refuting it not because I was non-factual… I wasn’t. There is not a single objective fact in my post that is wrong. I didn’t bring up stats. I didn’t bring up individual cases. I did that on purpose. You’re refuting it because you don’t like the group.

      But now that we’re here… even if we accept that “this isn’t the police’s job” (and I’m not honestly willing to grant you that. But it’s a side point that goes into Foucault’s discipline and punish and the very nature of justice vs protection and peace keeping in the nation state) it doesn’t matter. Because their job isn’t to exacerbate a situation either. In fact it is specifically to defuse.

      Saying NOTHING to the request “please don’t kill me” is better. Saying “ok is better”. Even saying “I’m not going to kill you you worthless fucking nigger” is qualitatively (not necessarily quantifiably) better than “I’m no more likely to kill you than anyone else” which sort of flaws your argument here.

    50. August 18, 2017 at 7:07 am

      So that is my basis for BLM is bad. Which was my initial argument/critique. I refuted your presented assessment, nothing more. The basis of their ideology is in fact BAD. It has caused issue and division because it is based on a lie.

      So yes, they are all bad. That is my evaluative argument. Police do not kill a lot of blacks, and they do not kill more blacks than any other race are the facts I am using.

      “Because their job isn’t to exacerbate a situation either. In fact it is specifically to defuse. ”

      They have not. Which again goes to my point about BLM and how their rhetoric is harmful. The police already comply with that request, in fact they have been doing so for quite some time.

    51. August 18, 2017 at 7:11 am

      Look, you can’t say:

      Blacks are X% more likely to be killed while ignoring the fact that everyone, including blacks is ~99.9% unlikely to be killed and use that as a basis for vilification.

      OK, well, I mean, you CAN do that. And that is what has happened. It does not however prove any point you are trying to make about race in this country.

    52. August 18, 2017 at 7:14 am

      That’s not an evaluative argument. Your logic is faulty. Again, you might as well be saying all #BLM members like peanut butter and jelly just because i do. And that’s not true. Nor can I say all computer programmers play bass, just because you do. I can’t even say most computer programmers play bass. I can’t even say all computer programmers know Java, even though most modern computer programmers likely do. In fact, I can’t even say that all computer scientists are programmers.

      What I can say is that all computer programmers program computers. Because that is definitional in the makeup of a computer programmer.

    53. August 18, 2017 at 7:20 am

      Chris Maverick And I can say BLM is bad because the premise of their movement is based on a lie. I am making an evaluation of the movement and basing it on a fact about the movement.

      The premise of the movement.

      “a singular premise of “police are killing too many innocent black people. Please stop killing us.” That’s it. Nothing else”

      Is a lie. And has been used to justify many things. It has created division, and it continues to do so.

      So I can say BLM is “bad” because the premise of their movement is a lie(repeated for effect). The fact that you don’t agree with the idea that their founding premise is does not change the basis of my argument, which is in fact evaluative.

    54. August 18, 2017 at 7:22 am

      Vic Carter You wrote: “If you are suggesting that we should start a social movement vilifying the police based on the .00whatever % chance that a black person will get shot when being arrested, as opposed to the .000whatever percentage that someone of another race will get shot, then I am here to tell you, you are out of your god damn mind.”

      Based on your numbers you presented roughly 100 more blacks are killed by police each year than you statistically indicates should happen. You argue that since in absolutes so few people are killed by police, this shouldn’t matter.
      Then you can have an argument over wheather or not 100 black lives matter.
      The BLM movement would presumably counter that those 100 lives *do* matter (as presumably do the other 300 killed by police in what you would claim is a proportionate number).

    55. August 18, 2017 at 7:26 am

      Dmitri Schoeman I am arguing that the premise of BLM is a lie. That blacks are not being hunted by the police. That some black people get shot by some police. So the central premise of the movement overstates the problem to such an extent as to be more harmful than beneficial to either the police or blacks.

      I made no assessment of what lives do and do not matter, or how many. I stated that BLM is “bad” because their central premise is based on false information.

      Nothing more.

    56. August 18, 2017 at 7:26 am

      Bottom line: They won what they were fighting for before they ever actually started fighting…

    57. August 18, 2017 at 7:30 am

      Even if the fundamental premise of the group is a lie (which you haven’t proven because of complex misunderstanding of statistics) that doesn’t matter. Because statistics don’t matter to the argument. Which is why I didn’t include them.

      If I create a group with the fundamental ideology “water buffalo are killing too many poets. Please stop killing poets.” Your logic, such that it is, is till valid. There is no single recorded case, that I am aware of at least, of a water buffalo killing a poet.

      That’s irrelevant. Your refute of “but water buffalo don’t kill poets” is not an equivocation of “and so Poet Lives Matter is as bad as the KKK.”

      NOW… if Poet Lives Matter incorporated with official rules and created a website that said “Water Buffalo are killing too many poets So kill all the water buffalo” you’d have a point. But they didn’t. That isn’t part of the movement. EVEN if my friend Les Kay (who I’m tagging because I know he has read this, from Likes and he happens to be a poet) goes on a wild spree, shooting water buffalo, that is still not a reflection on my Poet Lives Matter movement because my movement never endorsed the killing of water buffalo… only (in this case) meaningless pleas of poets not to be killed.

      And again… all of that actually extends beyond my argument which was merely a history lesson.

    58. August 18, 2017 at 7:33 am

      Vic Carter “I stated that BLM is “bad” because their central premise is based on false information.”

      But you *do* agree that, based on your numbers, Blacks are killed in significantly higher percentages than whites in contrasted to arrest rates, right? You just aren’t prepared to say it is a problem?

    59. August 18, 2017 at 7:38 am

      Chris Maverick But that is not what we are arguing. We are not arguing whether or not Black lives actually matter. You presented their premise as the reason for your assessment that they are “good”.

      No?

      ” the base ideology is “please don’t kill us, mmkay?”

      I made a counter argument. Saying they were bad because of the effects their movement has had. Based on the premise that.

      “you are not being killed/hunted any more than anyone else”

      These things are not actually mutually exclusive. As your reasoning for them being “good” is based on the idea that not wanting to be killed by police is good. My reasoning, that basing a movement on such a divisive subject, especially when it is not supported by the actual number of people being killed, is also true.

      Isn’t that kind of the point of this type of argument?

    60. August 18, 2017 at 7:41 am

      Dmitri Schoeman Where do you see that? Specifically where being black is the reason that this happens? And the numbers are not THAT disparate.

    61. August 18, 2017 at 7:44 am

      Dmitri Schoeman And Dmitri, I am not discounting what you are saying. We are actually getting somewhere IMO, I am just following through with the idea that the disparities are not simply based on race.

    62. August 18, 2017 at 7:45 am

      I’m just stuck on this main point: your data that you believe shows blacks make up 30% of arrestees but 40% of deaths. Surely that indicates a discrepancy to you in the risks that Blacks face. Claiming the absolute risk is low is just as silly as saying hospitals don’t need to worry about spreading MRSA since most people in hospitals die of other things.

      The difference between 30% and 40% is *huge* from a math standpoint. (You’d have to get rid of *25%* of the existing black deaths to drop the 40% down to the 30% where it “should” be just accepting your numbers)

      As I indicated in an earlier point, you could try to present data that the black men being killed somehow deserve it, but the data you presented does not offer any such explanation.

    63. August 18, 2017 at 7:53 am

      Save the Buffalo!

    64. August 18, 2017 at 7:56 am

      Dmitri Schoeman My claim here is that 40% represents such a small percentage of blacks who are arrested and that the fact that ~80% of the blacks that get shot are armed and actually committing a crime.

      I say approximately 80% because that is the how many of the roughly 1000 people in general who are shot that meet the armed/crime criteria. Regardless, based on the available data, at least half, if not more are not “innocent”, or killed simply because they are black.

      Anymore than the white or latino people who are killed(a percentage of which is armed) are killed because of race.

      Also, none of this takes into account where the arrests occur, which goes to the point of specific areas being more likely to produce such a discrepancy.

      My question remains. Even if all 1000 people killed were black. Hell 10000 people. Based on the number of black arrests and encounters with police. What percentage of black deaths constitutes being hunted? What factors support the claim that they in more danger?

      If a black person has a 1% chance of getting shot and a white person has a .7% chance of being shot., Are you suggesting that requires a shift in policy when the total number of people being shot who are “innocent” is approximately 1000?

    65. August 18, 2017 at 7:59 am

      “If a black person has a 1% chance of getting shot and a white person has a .7% chance of being shot., Are you suggesting that requires a shift in policy ”

      Yes. Plain and simple, yes.

    66. August 18, 2017 at 8:00 am

      Dmitri Schoeman And therefore we disagree.

    67. August 18, 2017 at 8:04 am

      Not specifically directed at Vic, but I was taking a shorthand in the math and comparing number of Blacks killed to overall percent of people killed – which is not actually correct since they are skewing the aggregate results so much higher. I really need to compare to *non* Black deaths.

      Based on Vic’s numbers:
      600 non-black deaths
      400 black deaths

      7 milllion non-black arrests a year
      3 million black arrests a year

      If blacks were killed on the same percent of arrests as non-blacks, we’d expect to see:
      600/7 million * 3 million = 257 black deaths a year.

      Instead we see 400 a year. So actually the rate of Blacks dying during arrests is 64% higher than it should be. Or, 143 dead people.

      I’m going to throw my hat in and say their lives matter.

    68. August 18, 2017 at 8:08 am

      Vic Carter I understand we disagree, but at least I understand that you don’t see it as a problem that blacks are being disproportionately killed. Before I thought your premise was they aren’t being disproportionately killed.

      We just disagree if it is a problem or not.

      hm, ok. Now that I stopped for a moment to think about it, that makes it worse. I’d rather you believed that the numbers showed they aren’t being killed more often. You thinking it is ok that they are killed often is actually more depressing for me.

    69. August 18, 2017 at 8:11 am

      Dmitri Schoeman You did not account for armed criminals in that assessment. Doesn’t that change the numbers?

    70. August 18, 2017 at 8:14 am

      An advocacy site. But I’d suggest that if Vic Carter is going for nuance here, he’d be well served to have more precise numbers.

      https://mappingpoliceviolence.org

    71. August 18, 2017 at 8:16 am

      Vic says: “I made a counter argument. Saying they were bad because of the effects their movement has had. Based on the premise that.

      “you are not being killed/hunted any more than anyone else”

      These things are not actually mutually exclusive. As your reasoning for them being “good” is based on the idea that not wanting to be killed by police is good. My reasoning, that basing a movement on such a divisive subject, especially when it is not supported by the actual number of people being killed, is also true.

      Isn’t that kind of the point of this type of argument?”

      Umm…. MAYBE. Sort of …. Not really… let me try to explain where you’re falling apart here.

      So here’s the key… going to your first point:

      “But that is not what we are arguing. We are not arguing whether or not Black lives actually matter. You presented their premise as the reason for your assessment that they are “good”.”

      Right… we’re not… except you sort of are. MY argument, throughout the initial post was specific and focused. I did that on purpose.

      If I had been doing this as an exercise with my students, I’d ask them something like: “Ok, class, please state your thesis in a tweet” In other words, I’d ask them to present their main argument in 140 characters or less.

      Mine is “BLM is better than the KKK or the Nazis because it was founded on protection of lives and the others were founded on racial discrimination.”

      BOOM! 139 characters, because I fucking rock!

      That’s is the crux of my argument. I have told you my evaluative claim (BLM is better than the KKK and the Nazis) and provided you with a preview of the argument that I am making it with (the three historical ideologies). Literally nothing else maters to the argument as I have framed it.

      I will admit, I did NOT prove that “wanting to not be killed is good.” I took that as a given, which you can actually do under a reasonable person principle. You can, for the most part, assume that no person regardless of ideology wants to be killed.

      I did not prove that black people actually were being killed by the police. By the same token, I didn’t prove that they were ever slaves. I didn’t prove that white people weren’t actually evolutionarily superior. None of that actually mattered to my argument. All that matters for the purposes of my argument are that “this is the ideology the groups were founded under.

      And I’m right. Historically. I’m just right. You can try to argue those basic points, but you’d objectively wrong. So you didn’t.

      And I knew that… which is why I framed the argument that way.

      So instead, your counter argument is “But they’re not being killed more”

      There are two problems here. First, is that you’re using statistics wrong. This has come up before. This is what Michael Strauss, Erin Childs and Dmitri Schoeman are attempting to show you. Statistical significance is a specific concept. It’s a thing. It’s mathematically provable. And you’re just doing it wrong.

      I didn’t bother to take that step. Because it was immaterial to my argument. IF this had been your post, unrelated to mine, you could make an evaluative claim that said something like “BLM is a hypocritical movement because it is based around a premise that is statistically invalid and uses that to support violent actions.” (BOOM, 139 characters again, I’m on fucking fire here.) Strauss, Erin and Dmitri would then have counted argued you the same way they are, but pointing out flaws in your statistical reasoning.

      BUT, you didn’t promote that as a standalone premise. You specifically positioned yourself as a counterargument to me. Your actual thesis is something more like “Mav is wrong; BLM is bad because statistics don’t prove Mav’s theory that BLM is non-violent or that they are killed more than white people.” (BOOM! 140 characters on the dot, fucking hat trick, hell yeah!!!)

      This falls down because you ended up arguing against a straw man that wasn’t me, not really refuting my actual claims and still presenting your statistical evidence in a faulty way.

    72. August 18, 2017 at 8:18 am

      And for the record, I don’t think 309 people being killed is an acceptable number, given that policing can be used to de-escalate situations.

    73. August 18, 2017 at 8:25 am

      Vic Carter Do you have any data suggesting how many blacks vs whites are armed in such encounters? If so, you didn’t present it. But you also seem to be operating under the premise that if someone killed by police is armed then, by definition, it was justified. I live in SC which allows for pretty easy gun carry – so I’m not sure I’d even be willing to accept that there is *any* relevance to a person having a gun and the justification of them getting killed. You would need to present evidence that they are actively doing *something* to threaten the officer’s life with that gun, not that they simply possess one.

    74. August 18, 2017 at 8:25 am

      Chris Maverick Except my initial argument or assessment was not against you specifically.

      “They are all bad”.

      I didn’t make a claim as to who was worse. Or whether or not black people were being killed by police.

      I questioned the premise of the movement and the results of using that premise as the basis for action. Hence, they are all bad.

      There is nothing ambiguous about that.

    75. August 18, 2017 at 8:34 am

      Dmitri Schoeman What I am saying is that being armed is a factor, just as the race of the person in question. Just as the city in which these things occur. The crime rate, the circumstance.

      Suppose the number if exactly 400. How many proven cases of police brutality occurred during the same time frame? Wouldn’t that number affect the percentages? How many news stories are there lambasting the police for shooting a drug dealer? A murderer? And armed robber?

      What you, and BLM are doing is taking the raw number of blacks who are killed and assigning relevance to race over all other factors, and using THAT to determine that blacks are X amount more likely. You are suggesting that being black is the primary reason for the difference. Which may or may not be true. In either case it is relevant to the idea that they are X amount more likely to be shot.

      What I am saying, is that taking all of that into account, not matter what the reasoning. When a black person encounters the cops(understand that arrests do not equal encounters), based on the raw data. The percentage of blacks who do not end up shot is greater than 99%.

      So I ask you, what does it mean to be hunted by the police if 99% of the time you do not end up dead, regardless of race?

    76. August 18, 2017 at 8:52 am

      Your initial argument is directly in response to my historical one. You have by definition framed it on context of me.

    77. August 18, 2017 at 9:03 am

      Vic Carter You are the one who picked the threshold of ‘being hunted by the police’ I’m not sure why you picked that as the strawman to argue against. I’ve looked at the website for it, and went back through my brain to see if I remember hearing that as one of their complaints and I just don’t see it. They *do* argue against extrajudicial killings – and I’m with them on that. Can you please show me where on their platform they claim they are being ‘hunted by the police’ or why that is what I’m supposed to defend?

    78. August 18, 2017 at 9:07 am

      Chris Maverick “They are all bad guys”?

      That is my assessment of the groups. I am not arguing with you here, I am simply stating that this is my assessment.

      “No. They aren’t. Again… read the post.”

      That was your response.

      Except your post does not actually disprove my initial assessment. Especially considering the fact that I purposefully did not attempt to assign any level of equivalence to the “goodness” or “badness” of the groups. Again, on purpose.

      You made an argument as to why you believe BLM to be good as compared to the other groups being bad. Centered on the core ideology and actions of each group.

      I did the same thing, with the only real difference being that I do not see their central premise as being “good”. Not because I think black people deserve to die. But rather because I do not see them as any more likely to die when encountering police as anyone else.

      You see significance in how much of the 1% of people who get arrested pie that get shot are black, I do not.

      Not because I do not understand statistics, anymore than my claims are based on me thinking I am an expert in regards to the subject.

      I am actually stepping away from statistics as the raw data is such that we can actually see who is being killed as well as why. Or at the very least, what factors are present when it happens.

      ~1000 people. We could realistically look at each case individually and learn all sorts of things about police shootings. But that is not what has happened.

      What has happened is people have vilified LEO’s as a whole and created an atmosphere of mistrust based on a very small percentage of instances.

      I disagree with THAT and I think it harmful. So seeing as BLM’s central premise is THAT, I see BLM as bad.

    79. August 18, 2017 at 9:10 am

      The thing you don’t get is context frames. Ignoring the logical and statistical failings of your argument… you didn’t write a generic post. You made a statement in reference to mine. That forces you into my context.

    80. August 18, 2017 at 9:12 am

      Chris what is your goal here?

      You posted an opinion piece. I responded with my opinion. I am not sure what your goal is in regards to this engagement.

      I have not made a counter blog post. I simply jumped into this fray.

      What would you like to see come out of this on my end?

    81. August 18, 2017 at 9:14 am

      No. I posted an evaluative piece based on historic evidence. There’s a difference. I kept my opinions to a minimum after the point where I said I was going to.

      The purposes of doing it are explained in other comments below. I can’t do it again because there’s too much to reply to and I have other things to do today too.

    82. August 18, 2017 at 10:32 am

      Vic Carter What are your sources for those numbers? This article states that the data on police killings are incredibly poor. There is a great deal of incentive for police departments to under report killings or serious injuries. http://www.newsweek.com/how-many-americans-do-cops-kill-each-year-480712

    83. August 18, 2017 at 10:39 am

      CDC, various media sources, citing CDC numbers, FBI, etc. And I agree, there is no way of really knowing the exact number. However, that does not discount the available data outright, which is used by both sides of this argument to bolster their position.

      It’s not FOX or some other biased source if that is what you are asking.

    84. August 18, 2017 at 10:40 am

      Hell the article posted above supports the numbers used.

      https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/

    85. August 18, 2017 at 10:41 am
    86. August 18, 2017 at 11:11 am

      Vic Carter I think training police officers in de-escalation techniques, body cameras for transparency, and citizen review boards are policy solutions that can be implemented to help reduce the overall number of police killings for everyone. The goal (not necessarily achievable), after all, is not to have the police kill anyone since we have a justice system to dole out punishment.

    87. August 18, 2017 at 11:13 am

      Dana Siler And there is nothing wrong with that as a goal, so long as the actual issue is kept in perspective and not overblown for political gain.

    88. August 18, 2017 at 12:35 pm

      Ok. I just really read all the stats here. I was only skimming them before, because as I said repeatedly, they aren’t really a part of my argument…. and frankly I trusted Erin, Dmitri and Michael to get them right. Which they did. Also hi Dana.

      Now that I’ve had a chance to go through them I can say a real problem here. And Vic, you’re really not going to like it…. ignoring the racial aspect or the specifics of the conversation…. you’re getting a failing grade in basic statistical analysis here. I mean it… and I’m not an expert. I usually outsource mine to Stephanie Siler when I need them done. Because she is an expert… but I do know the base concepts and you’re just simply doing them wrong. And I expect you like your “results” because you think they confirm your hypothesis. They don’t. Strauss told you several times that you’re numbers support HIS claim…. not yours. He’s right.

      Here are the points you’re missing:

      1) you aren’t normalizing population sizes. (There are more non black people in america than black people)
      2) you aren’t comparing the right numbers.
      3) you don’t seem to understand the difference between correlation and causation. Namely, statistics can never really prove the latter. For anything. They can support hypotheses about causation when complex bi directional studies are set up. You don’t know how to do that. Hell, I don’t know how to do that. Which again, is why I trust steph. But even then, they just support, not proves…. because statistics are about correlation and not causation
      4) I don’t think you realize that statistical significance is a thing…like it’s not just enough to say 99.99% of black men won’t be killed by police and 99.999% of white men won’t and that’s “basically the same” even if your math was right. Once you actually determine the actual percentages, you have to do a regressions analysis to determine significance. It can’t just “feel right”. Significance means something.
      5) because you screwed up #2, you can’t just do number #4. What you actually want is to prepare the deaths per crimes per arrests per population of black people vs the same stat for white people and then p-test the significance between those two numbers. And that will tell you the significance. It’s not just enough to say it “feels the same” the way you are…. it’s like an actual mathematical concept that means something.

    89. August 18, 2017 at 12:50 pm

      Sigh…

      How many black people are killed by police vs how many black people are arrested by police?

      I am not, nor have I ever been trying to disprove that statistically X is true in regards to black people.

      If 1 out of every 100 black people gets punched in the face every time they walk past a random cop, it is entirely possible that you as one of the 100, might get punched in the face every time you walk by a cop. Giving you a 100% punched in the face chance, during the times that you walked past a cop previously. That is not to say that you will have a 100% chance in the future, it simply states that up until this point you have been punched in the face 100% of the time.

      So while, up to this point, 1% of the black people who walked past random cops got punched, you happen to have had it happen 100% of the time. If you walked past a cop 50 times, and you got punched 25 of that 50, you would have been punched 50% of the time.

      So to this point, on average, when 1000 people are killed by the cops, roughly 400 of them are black. So ~40% of the people who get killed by the cops are black on average.

      That does not mean it will always be 40%, only that over the past X amount of years, that has been the average amount of black people shot by the cops.

      That infers nothing about why, it is simply a statement of what happens year over year on average.

      Same goes for the number of arrests/encounters. Roughly 3 million per year.

      All I have said is that 400 is a very small percentage of 3 million. Which is true.

      So making a claim, that the police are more likely to shoot black people than arrest them, makes no sense.

      400 vs 3 million. No matter how you slice that, no matter how it relates to disparities based on whatever variable you choose.

      The cops are less likely to shoot people, than to simply arrest them.

    90. August 18, 2017 at 12:52 pm

      And I’m saying stats don’t work like that. Like there’s a reason people get college degrees in statistics rather than just using 4th grad long division.

    91. August 18, 2017 at 1:13 pm

      In 2016 did more people get killed or did more people get arrested?

    92. August 18, 2017 at 1:14 pm

      Simple question.

    93. August 18, 2017 at 1:23 pm

      I imagine arrested. I didn’t check. Just guessing.

      The reason I didn’t bother to check is that I see where you’re going and it doesn’t matter because the question isn’t just simple. It’s irrelevant because THAT’S NOT HOW STATISTICS WORK!

    94. August 18, 2017 at 1:23 pm

      Chris, you savage!

    95. August 18, 2017 at 1:39 pm

      Except the whole premise of your position in regards to BLM is that their movement is predicated on the idea that blacks are being killed by police at such a rate as to make drastic action necessary.

      Which is false.

      Unless you have numbers showing police to have killed more blacks than they arrested.

      I believe the problem is overstated based on the average number of arrests vs the number of blacks being shot.

      Just as I would say there is a serious problem if say, 1 million black people were shot vs 2 million arrests. At that point, it makes no difference how many blacks vs whites get shot, 1/3 of the encounters ending with someone shot is a serious issue. More serious than less than 1%.

      No statistics degree necessary to make that assessment.

      Black people are being hunted. That has been a mantra of BLM and their supporters.

      Reality, disproportionate or not, to whatever degree, using whatever stat you like does not support that idea.

      Not because I say so. Not because I hate liberals, or think academics have too much time on their hands.

      But because in encountering police, in situations that end in either arrest or death.

      Everyone is far more likely to end up in jail, than in the ground.

      And that ignores random encounters, that is simply arrests vs death.

      Is my position clear? Or would you like to try another means of insult?

    96. August 18, 2017 at 1:47 pm

      Okay, Vic, using all of your own numbers, I’m also going to do some basic math. (Sadly, I did it in Excel earlier and am on my phone now, so I won’t be showing all of my work.)

      The numbers you are not taking into account are the actual numbers of black and not-black people in the population. According to the 2010 census, approximately 13% of Americans are black. When you use that and calculate based on total population of US, you can then so things like say “what % of black people are arrested or killed and what % of not-black people are arrested or killed”, and answer it using the numbers you provide.

      I’ve forgotten the exact % for arrests, but the comparison is that blacks are almost 3 times as likely to be arrested as not-blacks.

      For killed by police, I remember the percents… Blacks have a 0.001% chance of being killed by a cop, but not-blacks have a 0.0002% chance… which is 5 times less.

      Now, I get it… You don’t think that 0.001 and 0.0002 are numbers big enough to care about. And I can’t convince you that they are. But the important distinction is that one is 5 times bigger than the other.

      Would you rather be fined $10 or $50?

    97. August 18, 2017 at 1:53 pm

      That depends on the chances of me being fined in the first place, doesn’t it?

    98. August 18, 2017 at 1:54 pm

      Or at the very least, that chance should be relevant in a discussion of how often people get fined.

    99. August 18, 2017 at 2:05 pm

      Ok fine…. lets do this. No insults. Really pay attention though, ok? Is that fair? Like I won’t curse at you or insult you. I’m really just going to point out why your argument is wrong. But you have to actually listen:

      “Except the whole premise of your position in regards to BLM is that their movement is predicated on the idea that blacks are being killed by police at such a rate as to make drastic action necessary. Which is false.”

      No it’s not. You made that up. I never said that. I intentionally left out statistics. I didn’t say anything about rate. I said specifically:

      “#BlackLivesMatter is a political movement founded in 2013 based around a a singular premise of “police are killing too many innocent black people. Please stop killing us.” ”

      “too many” is the only thing even approaching statistics that I used. That’s not a defined mathematical term. Even if the number was 1… If one single innocent black guy was killed by police and we knew for a fact he was the only one, they could still make the rhetorical claim that “too many are being killed. Please stop killing us.”

      You invoked statistics to prove that it wasn’t too many. Too many has no mathematical definition. So instead you tried to prove that there wasn’t a statistically significant chance that a black man would be killed by the police. That is an entirely different question. And wholly unrelated to the statement that I made.

      Again, take race out of it. I might very well make this claim “People should vaccinate their children because too many people die of measles.” How many people die of measles in the US? One in the last 4 years. That’s too many.

      What you’re trying to prove is that the chance of dying of measles is insignificant (overstated) and therefore not worth vaccinating over. That’s a different statement.

      “Just as I would say there is a serious problem if say, 1 million black people were shot vs 2 million arrests. At that point, it makes no difference how many blacks vs whites get shot, 1/3 of the encounters ending with someone shot is a serious issue. More serious than less than 1%.”

      The key point here is that you’re saying “I would say” that’s why significance matters. for YOUR argument you need actual statistics. You’ve just arbitrarily decided that 1/3 is important to you as opposed to .01% not being. But you just decided. You don’t get to do that (neither do I) because statistical significance is a thing. Which is why I left it out.

      To move to the other example. I don’t know if you’re significantly less likely to die of measles if you are vaccinated than if you’re not (actually I do happen to know you are… but ignoring that). It takes an actual analysis to make that statement. But I do know that I can say “1 person every four years is too many.” Which is what I said in my argument. Yours requires math. Mine doesn’t.

      “No statistics degree necessary to make that assessment.”

      Yes it is… or if not a degree an understanding of significance. Basically in your example you said 1/3 was a serious issue. Ok… What about if it was 1/4? Would you say let it go? 1/5? 10% where is the magic number? And the answer is, you are just sort of deciding what the magic number is that is acceptable to you. But that’s not how it works. What you actually do is find out what the number is for one population and you regress it against the other populations to and then compare those regressions to find out if one is an outlier greater than a mathematically defined ratio. You can’t just do this with basic arithmetic.

      “Black people are being hunted. That has been a mantra of BLM and their supporters.”

      I didn’t say that. It appears nowhere in my article. It’s something you heard and you added. That’s not part of my argument so it doesn’t actually counter it. And it wouldn’t matter because even if you determined that 98% of black arrests culminated in death, you still don’t know if that’s statistically significant until you know what percentage of what arrests, mexican arrests, chinese arrests, etc result in death. And before you can even do that you have to know what percentage of those populations is arrested in the first place compared to reported crime and what percentage of reported crime is occurs in accordance to the population as a percentage of the population whole. It’s not a simple math problem which is why it doesn’t actually work the way you are claiming.

      All you are proving is that 400/3,000,000 is a number that is smaller than 1/3. And yes, that is true. But it doesn’t actually prove your point. It doesn’t show there is no correlation and it certainly doesn’t show no causation (which once again, is actually impossible to do with just statistics)

      There. No insults. Just facts on how the math works.

    100. August 18, 2017 at 3:14 pm

      I decided to compare some FBI statistics so we could discuss verified numbers.

      Total arrests (2015): 8,248,709
      White arrests (2015): 5,573,212
      Black arrests (2015): 2,197,140

      White deaths (2015): 497
      Black deaths (2015): 259

      First I will start with your favorite numbers.

      Deaths per arrest (White): 0.000089
      Deaths per arrest (Black): 0.000117

      Yep. They are small numbers. But one seems notably bigger than the other. I did a simple ratio to determine how much bigger.

      Ratio of White Deaths to Black Deaths
      73 : 100

      A black individual is 37% more likely to shot while getting arrested than a white individual.

      Assuming that black people and white people are arrested in direct relationship to percentage of crimes they commit, that is only a slightly horrifying number.

      Now determining actual crime committed vs. arrests made is difficult, but there are some statistics that can give hints towards that. One such study involves consensual searches during traffic stops performed in 14 different police agencies in the states of NC, IL, CT, and RI. In all four states, officers were between 1.5x and 5x as likely to perform a consensual search on a black person than on a white person.

      The results of those searches were that in all but one example (RI State Police), the percentage of black people found with contraband was between 60% and 100% of white people. On average, excluding the one outlier, the rate was 79% (even including the outlier it was only 86%).

      When you apply both of those statistics, compared to how often they actually have contraband, police search black individuals 3.18x more than white individuals. It is a reasonable extrapolation that they also arrest black people about 3x as often as white people, compared to how often black people actually commit crimes.

      Another rather compelling stat is the curfew and loitering violations arrests from 2015.

      Total arrests: 33,700
      White: 17,782
      Black: 15,053

      White population: ~200 million
      Black population: ~40 million

      Blacks are being arrested for this crime at roughly 5x the rate of whites.

      In conclusion, even accepting your view that deaths caused by police officers should be compared to arrest statistics (a very questionable comparison since people like Tamir Rice wouldn’t have been arrested if the police officer hadn’t screwed up), black individuals are still killed roughly 40% more often in arrest situations and, compared to how often they actually commit crimes, black individuals appear to be arrested roughly 3x – 5x as often as white individuals.

      That means, compared to crimes they commit, black people are between 4.2x and 7x as likely to be killed by a police officer than a white person.

    101. August 19, 2017 at 8:15 am

      Vic: yes, these statistics do show that black people are statistically significantly more likely than white people to be killed by cops. But that’s really only part of the story. We can’t forget about nonlethal violence and unwarranted arrests that can destroy people’s job prospects and essentially their lives. Also, another key part of the black lives matter movement is to try to hold police officers accountable for their killings and other violent behaviors, which very very rarely happens. This pressure to hold police accountable will keep everybody safer.

    102. August 19, 2017 at 1:01 pm

      Having just read this thread, the main takeaway I have is that the 143 or however many more black people killed by police that wouldn’t have been had the ratios of kills to arrests been the same for blacks as for whites, is, to Vic, insignificant, because it is such a small percentage of total arrests.

      So Vic is saying that to him, 143 black lives are insignificant, which is saying exactly that 143 black lives don’t matter. So Vic, BLM is a direct response to you, and people who think like you.

    103. August 21, 2017 at 5:56 am

      Chris Maverick Busy weekend…

      “If one single innocent black guy was killed by police and we knew for a fact he was the only one, they could still make the rhetorical claim that “too many are being killed. Please stop killing us.”

      You could have stopped right there. The post was titled “BLM Good, KKK Bad…” It wasn’t about numbers, which is why:

      My response was, “they are all bad guys”.

      Nothing in your post proves the title to be true. That is your opinion. You believe that one is good and the other is bad. I disagree. You used their founding principles as the basis for your assessment.

      “For the record… the KKK are bad guys. Also… the Nazis are bad guys. #BLM are the good guys. I just want that to be clear.”

      That is, as stated above, an opinion.

      You wrote an op-ed, I responded with a counter opinion(all of 5 words), and you decided to tell me that I was wrong. Then you attempted to use semantics to present your opinion as something else, the truth. I disputed that with a counter argument. Explaining exactly what I found distasteful in regards to BLM and the damage I feel it has caused. No ambiguity there. Yet you persisted in trying to convince me that I was wrong, even though you were making a claim that was wholly subjective in nature.

      “What you’re trying to prove is that the chance of dying of measles is insignificant (overstated) and therefore not worth vaccinating over. That’s a different statement. ”

      No. What I said(I don’t need to prove anything, nothing either of us stated was actually false), was that BLM is predicated on a lie. The idea that black people are in imminent danger from the police.

      Regardless of what is stated as their founding principle. The movement has been used to push the idea that blacks are being hunted, that the police are out of control, and that immediate action must be taken.

      This has been used to create social unrest, justify violence, and divide our country further through racism. That is not saying that all BLM members are bad, or that they all want the same thing, or that black lives don’t matter. But the movement is just as destructive as any other hate group as it uses race as a justification for action. That’s racist. The fact that they are a minority does not eliminate their responsibility. Lot’s of divisive movements started small. They are a danger, and they have no more place in our society than the KKK or the fucking Nazi’s.

      “The key point here is that you’re saying “I would say” that’s why significance matters. for YOUR argument you need actual statistics. You’ve just arbitrarily decided that 1/3 is important to you as opposed to .01% not being. But you just decided. ”

      Yes, and you arbitrarily decided that BLM Good, KKK Bad. I didn’t respond to you to profess my knowledge of statistics. I made a statement of opinion in response to your statement of opinion. I then backed up my opinion with data in regards to the actual number of people who encounter the police vs those that are killed. YOU and the rest of the crew decided that was not allowed. That you somehow needed to prove me wrong, yet you ignored pretty much every aspect of my position. My point in regards to the 1 Million vs 400, was that 1 million people dying is a lot. 400 is not AS COMPARED TO THE TOTAL WHO GET ARRESTED. I could have made an argument based on black on black deaths, or the likelihood of a black person being hit by a car, whatever. I didn’t. I spoke directly to the premise of the movement and presented real numbers as support.

      “But I do know that I can say “1 person every four years is too many.” Which is what I said in my argument. Yours requires math. Mine doesn’t.”

      My argument was, “no it isn’t too many”. That doesn’t require any more math than yours. It’s a subjective as well.

      I don’t recall any numbers in “they are all bad”. Or in my initial assessment of the group. YOU decided that wasn’t good enoungh, and as such I introduced the average year after year numbers into the mix as support of my opinion. To which you decided to change the argument, by making it about the frequency of one group over another.

      “And before you can even do that you have to know what percentage of those populations is arrested in the first place compared to reported crime and what percentage of reported crime is occurs in accordance to the population as a percentage of the population whole. It’s not a simple math problem which is why it doesn’t actually work the way you are claiming. ”

      I would need to do that if I were making the point about one groups deaths vs another. However when looking at black people as a singular group, and BLM as a group who’s premise is please don’t kill us, how many Mexicans get shot is irrelevant. If you wanted to do that type of breakdown, there are a lot of other factors other than race that would have to be considered.

      But that’s not what was said. That wasn’t the point. And you know this.

      “police are killing too many innocent black people. Please stop killing us.”

      That is what you presented as the foundation of BLM. Does that say, “too many blacks vs whites”? Does that say “too many blacks per reported crime”? No. It is a generalized statement in regards to black people being killed by cops. It is purposefully vague as to obfuscate the truth about the current situation between police and black people.

      In discussing that statement. How many black people encounter police vs how many get shot is exteremely relevant. In fact, it’s about the only stat that IS relevant to their formation. How many IS “too many”. If you believe 1 is “too many”, that is a valid opinion. So is “more black people get killed by other black people than by police”, or “more black people get killed in car accidents than by police”.

      If it is to be addressed, the frequency with which it occurs is kind of important. UNLESS, it happens so infrequently as to not justify the movement. There aren’t many people who would say that one life isn’t “too many” when it comes to innocents being killed. But I would guess there aren’t too many people who think that .000X% of the time equates to the national crisis that has been presented.

      “There. No insults. Just facts on how the math works.”

    104. August 21, 2017 at 5:59 am

      Michael Strauss

      “Blacks are being arrested for this crime at roughly 5x the rate of whites.”

      Where? Under what circumstance? How often are the conflicts mutual?

      You can’t say “black people” as if that is the primary factor. I MIGHT be, but there would have to be a whole lot more analysis to make that assessment and rule out everything else involved in the disparity to say that being black is the reason that a slightly larger percentage of a relatively small number of black suspects get killed as opposed to anyone else.

    105. August 21, 2017 at 6:05 am

      Stephanie Siler

      ” Also, another key part of the black lives matter movement is to try to hold police officers accountable for their killings and other violent behaviors, which very very rarely happens.”

      Police killing innocents “very rarely happens”. So using that as the basis of a social movement which is causing more social unrest is not a “good” thing. Especially in regards to the black community. They are the biggest danger to themselves, not the police.

      “Statistically more significant” is precisely why I used the raw data. That approach to analyzing these issues is extremely disingenuous and misleading as that could mean many things to many people.

      400 vs 3 Million is straightforward. That is roughly how serious the problem is. Some people will still think that “too many”. Some won’t. But at least it presents the argument from a very clear position. Which IMO makes addressing the actual problem a lot easier.

    106. August 21, 2017 at 6:07 am

      Aaron Solochek

      “So Vic is saying that to him, 143 black lives are insignificant, which is saying exactly that 143 black lives don’t matter. So Vic, BLM is a direct response to you, and people who think like you.”

      No, I am saying that 143 black lives does not constitute a crisis. Especially when considering the actual number of non police related black homicides.

    107. August 21, 2017 at 6:11 am

      Do you even have reading comprehension skills? You focused entirely on one statement in a post that clearly and mathematically debunks your “slightly larger percentage” theory.

      However, since that is the only statement you objected to, I will assume you agree with everything else I said. Therefore, you agree that, compared to arrests, blacks are killed nearly 40% more than whites. That is far from a “slightly” larger percentage (I would happily prove this by cutting your paycheck by 40% and seeing if you consider that difference “slight”).

      You also clearly agree with my entire point about traffic searches and how that can be extrapolated to arrests. Therefore, you also acknowledge that the real rate is closer to 4x as much. The only part you are objecting to is the high-end value of the range. Fine. I’m happy to ignore that for now, since the low end is still frighteningly disparate.

    108. August 21, 2017 at 6:14 am

      “You wrote an op-ed, I responded with a counter opinion(all of 5 words), and you decided to tell me that I was wrong.”

      Yes, because when you respond to a 1000 word op-ed, that is filled with supporting evidence, with a five word opinion that has no supporting evidence, you are pretty much, by definition, wrong. Of course, from what I have seen, repeatedly, you simply don’t understand how to properly present or analyze evidence, so I’m not sure you would have had much of a better chance of being right even if you had responded in kind.

    109. August 21, 2017 at 6:19 am

      Stephanie: ” Also, another key part of the black lives matter movement is to try to hold police officers accountable for their killings and other violent behaviors, which very very rarely happens.”

      Vic: “Police killing innocents “very rarely happens”. So using that as the basis of a social movement which is causing more social unrest is not a “good” thing. Especially in regards to the black community. They are the biggest danger to themselves, not the police.”

      Users helps us all. Learn reading comprehension skills, Vic.

      That clause “which very very rarely happens” is modifying the full phrase of “to try to hold police officers accountable for their killings and other violent behaviors.” It is NOT modifying “their killings and other violent behaviors.”

      In simple English, she said that police are rarely held accountable for their bad acts. Your entire response either shows that you can’t read or that you are willing to twist someone else’s words to try to “win a point.”

    110. August 21, 2017 at 6:26 am

      Michael Strauss When pressed, I did in fact present evidence. The basis of his assessment was his opinion of the founding principles, the basis of mine was the same exact thing.

      “That clause “which very very rarely happens” is modifying the full phrase of “to try to hold police officers accountable for their killings and other violent behaviors.” It is NOT modifying “their killings and other violent behaviors.”

      No, it is a clarification of the point. She said they are rarely held accountable, I said that they are rarely in a position where accountability is in question. We weren’t debating actual numbers.

      My comprehension is just fine, you disagree, therefore you are dismissing my position.

    111. August 21, 2017 at 6:29 am

      We don’t agree on the basis of BLM. We don’t agree on the impact.

      That’s ok. But to make the claim that they are justified as being true and that as a movement they are good is no more valid than any counter argument, especially when considering the available information.

      I am not trying to convince anyone of anything. My position was questioned, I clarified, nothing more.

    112. August 21, 2017 at 6:37 am

      Vic: “400 vs 3 Million is straightforward. That is roughly how serious the problem is. Some people will still think that “too many”. Some won’t. But at least it presents the argument from a very clear position. Which IMO makes addressing the actual problem a lot easier.”

      No, you aren’t presenting straightforward numbers. You are trying to hide the meaningful problem in statistical noise by using irrelevant numbers.

      It is the job of police officers to kill roughly 250 – 300 black people a year. Literally, if they are correctly doing their job, roughly that many black people will be killed by police officers. And, that is okay, because we as a society deem that killing those people is better for society in general.

      The problem is that the police are actually killing roughly 400 black people a year. Those are the meaningful numbers: number of expected kills vs. number of actual kills.

      And the fact that police officers are killing black people roughly 40% more than they should means they are failing at their job spectacularly.

      For comparison, imagine your job is to make food for a restaurant. You make food to order, so you are supposed to make precisely the meals that everyone asks for. But, for some reason, by the end of the year, even though only 300 people ordered tiramisu, you made 400. Even though you made potentially millions of meals, your boss will be angry at you for making 100 extra orders of tiramisu for absolutely no reason. You wasted food. You wasted time. You wasted money.

      The job of police officers is similar. It is their job to kill people occasionally (very very rarely). There are very specific circumstances when they are supposed to do it and ONLY those circumstances. However, when it comes to black people, they are killing at other times as well and that is a problem, even if they are doing all of their other jobs (writing citations, arresting people, taking reports, walking patrols, etc.) correctly.

    113. August 21, 2017 at 6:40 am

      Again, you are assigning race as the primary reason those people were killed.

      It is a variable, without further clarification you are making the assessment that all of those particular deaths are attributed to race. Which may or may not be true.

    114. August 21, 2017 at 6:41 am

      Every single time a police officer kills a person (of any color) inappropriately, they are supposed to be held accountable. If even one police officer wasn’t being held accountable for such an act it would represent a problem. The fact that the VAST majority of police officers who inappropriately kill black people aren’t being held accountable is more than a problem. It represents a crisis.

    115. August 21, 2017 at 6:46 am

      Michael Strauss Again, you are changing the argument.

      Now it is about accountability. And you are still ignoring other factors making the assumption that being black was a primary factor. You are defining accountability, seemingly as proof of guilt/misconduct. Which is only one possible outcome.

    116. August 21, 2017 at 6:51 am

      Vic, again…. I don’t think you understand what you’re arguing. I know you think that’s an insult. It’s not. This isn’t an “opinion piece” It’s arguably an evaluative piece or a definitional piece. That’s it. I didn’t use stats. I didn’t need them. You added those in.

      Here’s the key argument that I made:

      BLM is founded on the principle that too many black people are being killed. They would like it to be less.

      Too many is not a statistic. It could just as easily be a million or 1. So long as the number isn’t 0, it can be less. We know the number isn’t zero. And so the statement I made is unequivocally true.

      That’s it.

      Now, their statement of “too many” is an opinion. One could argue with BLM (not me) by making the counter claim “It’s not too many… it’s not even enough! Kill more black people!” This is essentially the argument the KKK is making.

      In this case, the KKK makes more sense than you because they are countering BLM with an equally opinion based argument. You’re trying to counter my historic argument, which is simply true. With a stat based one… and your stats are bad. Which has REPEATEDLY been pointed out to you. Hell, you just told Steph that she was doing them wrong because you’re simply right… and SHE TEACHES THEM. You’re just losing here.

      Now, where my opinion comes in, you did sort of note: I said “BLM is good and KKK is bad” in the title based under the simple idea that I decided it was an unstated given that we can claim “wanting people not to die is good” and “wanting people to die is bad.” Yes, that part is an opinion. I didn’t prove it. I didn’t validate it. But it’s not a statistical opinion, so you aren’t actually countering it, even if your stats were right… which again… THEY AREN’T. What you COULD do, is present a philosophical argument that more people dying is a good thing. Or that it isn’t necessarily bad to thin the herd. That would counter what I said… Of course, everyone would say “dude, are you arguing for genocide? Because that sounds awfully racist” and you’d have to answer yes.

      instead, your fundamental argument is based around the fact that “only 400 out of 3million black people die. And in the grand scheme of things. That doesn’t matter because those numbers are insignificant. If it were 1/3 you’d have a point. Stop bitching.”

      The problem is that DOESN’T actually prove what you think it does. First, again, as has REPEATEDLY BEEN POINTED OUT TO YOU…. you’re doing statistics wrong. You chose two arbitrary numbers that don’t actually mean what you think they mean. Second, as Strauss has repeatedly pointed out to you, even if you used those numbers, your math is bad… it would still show that black people are statistically more likely to be killed by police than white people by a statistically significant margin…. which is the exact opposite of what you’re trying to prove. Your cherry picked numbers DON’T SUPPORT YOUR POINT.

      And even if you could get the numbers right. You’d still be poorly refuting my article. Because the truth value of BLM’s premise is completely irrelevant. Imagine I had said this:

      “Flat Earth Society Good. KKK Bad” – The flat earth society is based around the fundamental belief that the world is flat. The KKK is based around the fundamental belief that we should kill black people. Therefore, the Flat Earth Society are better people than the KKK.

      That is structurally the same argument as I made about BLM. Now…. you COULD make the counter claim that “But this is dumb… because the Earth is round. So the FES isn’t good!” Except, that your counter claim doesn’t ACTUALLY dispute me. Because I never said the earth was flat. I said the FES believes that. So what you’d actually need to prove in order to refute me is that believing the earth is flat is worse than killing black people.

      Instead, you’re not doing either. You’re trying to calculate the surface area of the Earth. Which is wholly irrelevant to either thing. What you mean to be doing is a geometric proof that shows the earth to a spherical object in 3-dimensional space… but that’s hard. So you’re trying to claim that your proof of surface area is good enough. But it isn’t it doesn’t even refute the FES. It just proves that you can calculate surface area. And no one is debating that.

    117. August 21, 2017 at 6:58 am

      Wow. Dude. Vic did you seriously just accuse someone else of changing the argument?!?!?

    118. August 21, 2017 at 7:08 am

      Vic Carter what I (and researchers in general) mean by “statistically significant” in this case is that the probability that black people are killed by cops at the same rate (per arrest) as white people is very small. So they are unlikely to be the same rate. I ran a chi-square test using the death/arrest rate numbers that Strauss gave above. There is only a .026% chance that the rates for blacks and whites is the same. (In psychology, our criteria for calling something significant is probability equals 5%, so this is much lower than that.) So, I would conclude that black people are statistically significantly more likely to be killed by cops than white people. True, this is a low rate. However if it’s you or one of your loved ones, you might disagree.

    119. August 21, 2017 at 7:11 am

      Chris Maverick What was my argument?

      “They are all bad”.

      What was my reasoning?

      “What I said is that they were all bad guys, which they are. Nothing in that statement is contradicted in the “facts” you have presented.

      All of their ideology is flawed, based on misinformation and prejudice. That’s a fact. They all use fear mongering and violence as a means of intimidation. That’s a fact. And they all use the narrative of victim hood to garner support. Again, fact.

      None of them are good for this country. None of them are even good for the people they claim to be trying to protect or empower. Hence, none of them are “good”.”

      No stats, no numbers. I disagree with their ideology, ALL of their ideologies. That is a direct response to the position presented in your post, one good, the other bad.

      And I am not arguing the process of statistical analysis. That is what you have done. What I did was present raw(albeit average) numbers in regards to the scope of the “problem”.

      Overstatement of a problem is not a good means to finding a solution. And can often times actually make the situation worse(which has been the case in regards to BLM and the premise that the police are the enemy of black people). That’s bad. It creates an atmosphere of mistrust, which is extremely dangerous considering how many black homicides there are in this country. A higher number than the amount attributed to the police.

      You are so hell bent on discounting my “stats”, you have ignored my initial response, and subsequently my point.

      Movements based on race, regardless of the initial intent are divisive by nature. Not inclusive. That’s “bad”.

      You said they were good. The basis of that assessment was their founding principle in comparison to the founding principles of other groups that are “bad”.

      I did not dispute that as their foundation. Or the foundation of the other groups. I am not arguing that the KKK or the Nazis are “good”.

      I am not even arguing that the premise of “don’t kill us” is “bad”.

      BLM good, KKK bad.

      That is the position taken in your post.

      I disagree. But I am not arguing to what degree, or even in defense of one group over another.

    120. August 21, 2017 at 7:13 am

      Your inability to read context is mind boggling. I wasn’t changing the subject, I was clarifying why your supposed refutation of Stephanie was completely meaningless.

    121. August 21, 2017 at 7:18 am

      “None of them are even good for the people they claim to be trying to protect or empower.”

      The very existence of BLM has greatly increased the quality and quantity of investigations into police officers killing or shooting black people. It has also greatly increased the consequences of such shootings when their are inappropriate. That alone is good for the people that BLM are trying to protect.

    122. August 21, 2017 at 7:21 am

      Vic. The problem is you have a belief. That’s fine. What you’re trying to do is argue your belief and use the data you have both statistical and sociological to back your beliefs.

      The problem here is that you’re literally doing both wrong. Like you’re making errors that are 101 level wrong for stats and cultural theory. The two things that Steph and I teach.

      Then you’re trying to argue that the problem is we’re all making faulty arguments based on opinion and trying to explain basic argument composition to me. The other thing that I actually teach.

      It’s not that there aren’t counter arguments. There are. You’re just making egocentric claims. A common mistake. This post was designed to refute those egocentric claims. So you’re sort of falling into a trap by doing it harder. Exacerbated by the fact that you’re doing it wrong.

    123. August 21, 2017 at 7:22 am

      Stephanie Siler All of which is perfectly logical and valid. My issue is with the assessment that being black is the reason for the disparity.

      They people who are killed 5 times more are in fact black. But that is not all that they are. Is it? That is not the only circumstance in regards to their death? Is it?

      So back to the original point. BLM good, KKK bad. Assigning race as the reason why those people were killed does not tell the whole story, thus IMO it is not a justification for social outrage, but it has proven to be an overriding factor in how people address these instances. How people discuss and debate the problem.

      THAT is bad.

      We could break down the numbers in countless ways. We could come to many different conclusions based on what numbers we used and how we presented them(context). Correct?

      A birds eye view(400 vs 3,000,000,000), is not disregarding the multitude of ways in which the data could be interpreted. However it is a valid starting point when assessing the validity of a movement predicated on the idea that police should stop killing black people.

      OK, they kill black people. They also kill other people. Why does this happen? Is it all racially motivated? Do demographics play any part?

      How deep should we go considering the number of encounters vs the number of deaths. Those are all relevant questions.

      Questions that I feel are important when starting a movement based on race.

      If 200 of the 400 are from one city, doesn’t that change the assessment of the nation as a whole? What if all 400 are from 4 cities? They aren’t, but my point remains the same. Scope of a problem is important in addressing that problem.

      And a generalization of the problem, as has been done groups such as this are bad. It’s dangerous.

      That’s it.

    124. August 21, 2017 at 7:23 am

      Michael Strauss
      “The very existence of BLM has greatly increased the quality and quantity of investigations into police officers killing or shooting black people. It has also greatly increased the consequences of such shootings when their are inappropriate. That alone is good for the people that BLM are trying to protect.”

      If that were the only effect, I might agree, it isn’t.

    125. August 21, 2017 at 7:25 am

      Chris Maverick OK Chris, based on nothing more than your opinion and your assessment of mine(no matter how faulty that assessment may be), I’m wrong. I am not going to debate who can pee farthest.

    126. August 21, 2017 at 7:31 am

      Dude. The only part of this that is opinion is that “wanting to kill people is bad. Not wanting people to die is good”. That’s literally the only thing I said not supported by fact.

      All of your evidence is claims that BLM has a faulty understanding of reality that led them to form. They may or may not. Hence my flat earth example.

      But even if you could prove that. It still doesn’t refute my claim. And it’s worse because you’re NOT proving the earth is round. In fact. You’re sort of inadvertently backing the claim that it’s flat because your math is faulty.

    127. August 21, 2017 at 7:33 am

      Vic: “Those are all relevant questions.”

      Those are all relevant questions to you, because you don’t know the answers. That doesn’t mean the answers aren’t well researched and documented. It just means that you are uneducated on the topic.

      We know that the problem of police officers killing and assaulting black people in higher numbers is consistent throughout the country. We know the problem also stays consistent regardless of income level and social status of the black person. We know that the problem is consistent across all types police interactions, whether or not the black person is armed, and whether or not the black person is eventually found guilty of a crime.

      The evidence is overwhelming. You just haven’t seen it, therefore you are claiming it doesn’t exist or that it hasn’t been studied carefully enough. There is no kind way to say this. You are provably wrong.

      Those questions have been asked, countless times. The answers have been uncovered, countless times. The answers are consistent. When ALL other factors are taken into account, black people are assaulted and killed by police officers in excess of white people.

      There is no debate that you can reasonably give other than “I choose to believe otherwise, despite all evidence.”

  4. August 18, 2017 at 6:50 am

    “All Lives Matter” is inclusive of “Black Lives Matter”. And if lives matter, then you will be horrified by “police shooting nonthreatening people” regardless of race. And if that’s the case, when you see people upset about a black person being needlessly shot by police, and you insist on saying, “All lives matter”, your next statement will NEVER be, “so stop protesting”, your next statement will ALWAYS be something along the lines of “so how can we work together to reduce or eliminate those situations where people are needlessly killed by a police officer?”. If you think a life matters, its needless end will bother you, BY FUCKING DEFINITION of the word “matters”.

    And when challenged, and you should expect to be because you are addressing people who feel threatened, about whether the cop would have shot a white person in Philando Castile’s position, you have the choice of two answers: “Yes I do! You may not agree with me, and I understand that, but it’s still important that we work together to stop this”, or “No, you’re right, there is something special about race that is making the violence worse that needs to be addressed”.

    Also, and I can’t stress this enough, if you expect people to listen to you, you need to be willing to listen to them. And if you expect people to change their minds, you need to be willing to have your mind changed. Otherwise, you are treating them as inferiors, not equals.

    1. August 18, 2017 at 6:52 am

      As to that last point. If the shoe fits…

    2. August 18, 2017 at 7:00 am

      Michael Strauss, your comment is ambiguous, would you mind clarifying?

    3. August 18, 2017 at 7:09 am

      Not really. I was just being snarky and ambiguous fits my mood pretty well right now.

    4. August 18, 2017 at 10:49 am

      So I’m just going to give you credit for believing truth in advertising for the name “all lives matter” — Would you estimate that about 40% of the killings they mobilize in the streets for regarding blacks who were killed (to borrow Vic’s numbers above of percent of police killings by race)?

    5. August 18, 2017 at 10:55 am

      Before this gets totally out of hand….

      I *think* Jeff was using “All Lives Matter” ironically… that is to say “If you really believe that All Lives Matter, then shouldn’t you also believe…”

    6. August 18, 2017 at 11:02 am

      Let’s just say I was providing some criteria for deciding if someone is sincere when they say that (spoiler alert: they aren’t).

  5. August 18, 2017 at 7:16 am

    “There is nothing more humiliating than to have to defend the truth.” – Alain Finkielkraut

    More power to you my friend.

    1. August 18, 2017 at 7:37 am

      Thank you mutely.

  6. August 18, 2017 at 7:36 am

    Chris Maverick Do you sample conservative or right-wing media? I think you really ought to if you want a sense of the particular enemy you are facing. The reason I ask is that you seem pretty naive if you think a post like yours could do anything to make a dent in anyone who consumes information from that source.

    Your first commenter gave a pithy summary of the consensus view in that world. I’m almost glad it appeared because it immediately exposed the naivete I perceived. On right-wing media, BLM is a violent, anti-police movement of thugs. It is a virulent ideology responsible for the massacre of police officers in Dallas. It immediately gets lumped together with Antifa — construed as window-smashing, fire-setting radicals, the New Black Panthers, perhaps Nation of Islam or the Muslim Brotherhood, as a shorthand tag for ultra-left-wing movement, all assumed to be violent. It is almost like the 1960s hippie-bashing.

    The interesting thing to me also is that at this point, that picture is not even something you have to argue for in right-wing land. It is just taken for granted. It is in the “common ground” of the discourse, the background everybody shares and knows everybody else shares. All they have to say now is “Of course BLM and Antifa will be there [and you know what that means folks]”, and that is all they have to do to conjure up the well-prepared demonized images of rioters and police shooters (today’s Willie Hortons) and the like.

    And I am not referring to the overtly racist right-wing-land of white nationalists, alt-right trolls or what have you. This is basically the view of mainstream conservatives and Fox-watching Republicans — people who are “in the cult” as I think of it. It’s there even among Trump-hating conservatives, for example at National Review.

    I don’t think you can really undermine such a deep-seated view with some neutral facts or logic. (Yes its good to appeal to facts and logic, where they can be found, but they are kind of impotent for changing minds). You would need to break the whole interlocking picture and the highly motivated psychological underpinnings.

    1. August 18, 2017 at 7:38 am

      I can’t speak for Chris, but I post similar things not because I really think it will change anyone’s mind, but because silence is unacceptable in the face of oppression.

    2. August 18, 2017 at 7:42 am

      I find that things like this are about getting to the onlookers who are still salvageable, and then expanding the center from there.

      The fact that “please don’t kill us” is controversial is mind boggling, but it putting out there again a little more fleshed out is worthwhile if it opens up a few more eyes.

    3. August 18, 2017 at 7:45 am

      The claim that all BLM stands for is “please don’t kill us” is not one the holder of the right-wing picture will just accept. It misrepresents the disagreement to put it that way. I don’t say it is wrong, it just does not advance any discussion.

    4. August 18, 2017 at 7:54 am

      Oh, yes… I totally do… quite frequently in fact. I agree with you, it’s essential. It’s also why I never block anyone. I allow them to come here and make their arguments.

      And I don’t even remotely think I can change their minds. It’s not my goal. I wrote about that explicitly here: http://www.chrismaverick.com/wp/2017/01/26/all-facts-are-alternative-some-are-more-alternative-than-others/

      The question I am often asked, then is “why do it” and basically, there are two reasons. Both of which I have mentioned a few times, but usually in comments, so they’re harder to link to.

      First, I think it’s valuable for helping to set the minds of those who DON’T have as staunch opinions. Here I’m going to tag Liz Winslow because I know she won’t mind. Liz has vastly different politics than I do. She’d be the first to say she’s conservative. BUT she is also open minded. And she said right on the Kaepernick post from the other day (http://www.chrismaverick.com/wp/2017/08/15/the-lie-of-the-anthem-and-the-flag/) and in fact, as the very first comment that she was one of the people who had the gut reaction to be against the anthem kneel protest. But after reading people’s arguments and thinking it through for herself, she changed her mind.

      I want to be a part of that. And that happens by letting other people argue against me. If I can have an idiot come in here and spout racist hate…. so long as I have a retort for every point, some random person who I don’t know, who stumbles across my blog for the first time (like Melanie Petronio above) might come across and say “I’d never thought of that… your point really does seem smarter than the idiot’s! Thank you for sharing.” and that’s absolutely a net good thing in my mind.

      But second, ignoring that, there’s a much more personal reason I do it. One that I’ve shared before, and I know it’s one of Stephanie Siler’s favorite stories, I expect that she’d agree that me telling her is one of the reasons SHE has tried to be more active.

      A couple years ago, on Facebook I came across a cousin of mine making a homophobic post (he wouldn’t see it that way but I did). The post was liked and commented on by DOZENS of members of his church. There were a ton of comments about how right and insightful it was. I read them all, and was outraged. I therefore spent the next several hours arguing against a whole congregation. Basically me arguing for LGBTQ rights against about 50 people, mostly whom I didn’t know, and a couple who were related to me. And it got ugly in some cases. But my only real point was “you’re calling yourselves christians, but what you’re saying is deeply and personally offensive to me, and I’m straight. This is horrible and oppressive to anyone who is queer.”

      After i did this for literally about 4 or 5 hours, I got a personal direct message from some 15yo kid, who I don’t know. It said “Hi, you don’t know me, but I go to your cousin’s church. I just want you to know that I’m gay. No one in my family knows. No one in my church knows. And I go there every Sunday and I hear people say what a sinner I am. And today is the first time I have ever seen anyone stand up against them. It is also the first day in a couple of years that I’ve not wanted to kill myself just because of stuff I hear them say. So thank you. Thank you so much.”

      If that happens even one time in 1000 internet arguments that I have… even if I never have someone write me to thank me again, then it’s all worth it.

    5. August 18, 2017 at 8:07 am

      Chris Maverick I think that’s all admirable. Once in a while I’ve been tempted into adopting infinitely patient explainer/persuader in what is clearly a fruitless debate — sometimes just for my own practice.

      I guess what got me is more that your approach here doesn’t even seem to be dealing with the issue, given “BLM”‘s function as as a signifier in right-wing land.

    6. August 18, 2017 at 8:30 am

      Well, this was a little different. This was a response to me being asked 4 or 5 times in the last three days (both on line and in real life) how is BLM any different from the KKK. And it occurred to me that others might be having that problem.

      So what I did was write what I considered to be a clear easy to answer, easy to link to or cut and paste from explanation of their base ideologies and histories.

      Despite how it feels in the comments, I was going out the way to keep moral judgement of BLM out of it. The idea is that even if you are totally against BLM because you do think that it is a movement all about killing police and burning cities, you could still hopefully use the point that “BLM was founded with this ideology, and KKK/Nazis were founded with this one which is different.” Which is basically where Jeffrey Kertis is sort of meeting in his comment below. Even though I disagree with the point that I think he is probably trying to make (haven’t gotten to it yet… there’s a lot going on here), it’s important to at least have people able to get to that base level of understanding between BLM and THE FUCKING NAZIS because like… I can’t believe we live in a time where that is not just immediately obvious.

    7. August 18, 2017 at 8:39 am

      Ok I just don’t think that’s much of an argument against the right wing view. One might argue the Weather Underground or the Red Brigades or the Irish Republican Army or the tiny Symbionese Liberation Army were founded in pursuit of good ends, yet stil regard any or all as bad organizations. For most of us, good ends don’t justify evil means.

    8. August 18, 2017 at 8:46 am

      one could argue that, yes. I felt no need to help anyone counter-argue me. ?

    9. August 18, 2017 at 9:04 am

      I just want to tag my friends Lauren Stacey and Doug Wash. Check out Chris MaMaverick’s blog.

  7. August 18, 2017 at 8:09 am

    Chris Maverick, do you feel that the killings by police are the result of malice or racism or errors in judgement and/or lack of training? Do you feel a police officer is justified to use deadly force if his life if threatened? Do you believe that an officer my fear more for his life in an area where other shootings have occurred vs an area with relatively little crime? What policy does blm advocate to solve this problem?

    1. August 18, 2017 at 10:40 am

      I cannot speak for Chris Maverick, but I feel that, for the sake of transparency, every police/ citizen encounter should be video taped. There should be citizen review boards for cases where there might have been misconduct. I think killings have a range of reasons, depending on the cop — sometimes malice/racism and sometimes bad judgement. This is why oversight is so important. When there is gross evidence of misconduct, cops have to face consequences.

    2. August 18, 2017 at 10:41 am

      Dana: I agree with all of that.

    3. August 18, 2017 at 10:48 am

      Training officers in de-escalation techniques would also be good policy.

  8. August 18, 2017 at 8:15 am

    I will agree with your premise, the stated goal of BLM is good, and they are nowhere near as bad as KKK, Nazis, Antics, or the black panthers. But do you not think extremist acts done in the name of BLM but not endorsed by BLM have hurt the brand significantly? Such as police shootings, rioting, and looting. Do you feel BLM has done enough to denounce those things?

    1. August 18, 2017 at 9:48 am

      I’m answering both of your comments together because they’re really the same thing (and I expect you basically just thought of more later) and as you can probably see there is WAY too much traffic going on here to devote two threads instead of just one.

      Answering all of them is complicated. And I’ve written about a lot of it before. So you’re welcome to peruse the site. But that’s hard. So let me try to give you a general overview.

      There are two kinds of questions you seem to be asking me. Do I think something is “right” as in do I have a problem with it with my personal moral code, and do I think things are a “good” as in do I think this is the right course for society or an action group (be they KKK or BLM) to take. For me those questions often line up but sometimes they don’t. So it’s hard to answer them rapid fire.

      And it’s confusing to read stuff I write because sometimes I’m writing as ME and sometimes I’m writing as a cultural theorist. And I try to make that clear, but quite honestly, it bleeds through. I’m a human being and they do interact.

      I (Me, MAV personally) am against the idea of a police officer using force first. I am PERSONALLY of the opinion that if if a policeman feels threatened that sucks, and it’s part of the job, but until you physically see a gun in hand and pointed at you, you shouldn’t shoot. Hell, I’m actually kind of OK if we make the rule “until the assailant shoots at you.” Yes, I am aware that this will result in more dead police officer. Yes I am personally ok with that. I will without hesitation say that I am ok with 100 cops being shot by bad guys than I am with with one Tamir Rice being shot by cops. That is how I feel.

      Now this conflates with the BLM movement in many ways. But the key thing I think you really want me to address is “am I ok with BLM performing violence.” and the answer there is SOMETIMES. And then it gets complex because I HAVE to mix MY PERSONAL beliefs with my theoretical beliefs on what is best for the social good. And here is where I will disagree with a lot of people here, probably… people you will probably assume are likely going to be 100% on my side because I mean… they’re reading my shit.

      I am AGAINST punching Nazis. I don’t care people do it. But I am against it as a matter of course. And I’m ok with saying “arrest those people who punched that Nazi.” And in fact, I think maybe its a good thing for people who punched Nazis to be arrested and then get out and punch more Nazis and repeat. I wouldn’t do it personally. But I understand. That said, I’m not sure it creates the social good that the Nazi punchers want. And here I will address Antifa, since you keep bringing them up… even though I don’t. I’m not a fan. I don’t think their methods cause the change they want. Partly because I don’t think they’re necessarily as informed or well thought out as they should be. But also. because I think their violence plays right into the ideas of the nazis. You can’t terrorize the nazis. They WANT to be punched. Why do you think Spencer keeps going out there to speak in front of BLM rallies. He knows full well that someone is going to sock him, a respectable looking white man in a suit, in the face and that riles up his base because “Look at those savages, punching the poor white man.” He is specifically trying to start a race war. That is his goal. So punching Spencer really just escalate that.

      Is it a good idea to have a race war against the nazis? Maybe… that’s a different issue that is a much more complicated one than I will get into in this comment.

      On the other hand, I am 100% on board with the burning of Ferguson. So much so that I wrote the article I linked to (http://www.chrismaverick.com/wp/2014/11/25/in-order-to-save-the-village-we-had-to-burn-it-down/) while it was literally still on fire. That was a riot that brought attention the plight of people that would have otherwise been forgotten. It was horrible. It was a last ditch effort. But it was the only play and it ultimately accomplished good. And it sucks to have to make decisions like that.

      So they’re complicated questions with no simple answers. And without introspection, they probably seem pretty random.

    2. August 18, 2017 at 9:50 am

      So, two things:
      1) Since we can agree that the stated goal of BLM vs white supremacists is very different, we should be able to agree that counter-violence statements from a group whose goal is violence should be treated with less respect than similar statements from other groups.

      2) The leaders of BLM, and most of the people who consider themselves part of the movement, agree that violence against those police officers who are simply doing their jobs to the best of their ability is harmful: http://time.com/4400330/st-paul-protests-philando-castile-black-lives-matter/

    3. August 18, 2017 at 9:51 am

      Oh…. and to answer that specific question… since Jeff Mink also brings it up… “I’m against the random shooting of police officers” as are most BLM members… which you can sort of tell by the fact that it happens way less than the the other way around.

  9. August 18, 2017 at 8:32 am

    All movements have assholes in them. Some movements are founded on the goal of being assholes.

    1. August 18, 2017 at 10:53 am

      Assholes are more central to the neo nazi movement than to my last bowel movement.

  10. Melanie Petronio
    August 18, 2017 at 10:09 am

    Thank you for this! It was clear, concise and written without prejudice or hate towards anyone. Just facts!

    1. August 18, 2017 at 6:17 am

      Thank you, Melanie. You’re welcome.

  11. August 18, 2017 at 4:02 pm

    5 murdered cops down in Dallas beg to differ…

    1. August 18, 2017 at 4:41 pm

      And by that logic since the vast majority of murderers in the history of the United States have been Christians, Christians are a hate group.

    2. August 18, 2017 at 4:48 pm

      Sorry, Jeff. When you use faulty logic on this thread, you get smacked down by someone who has spent roughly a decade studying the topic.

    3. August 18, 2017 at 4:50 pm

      Since I’m not a Christian, I guess they are. So I guess we’re in agreement that BLM is a violent group.

    4. August 18, 2017 at 4:52 pm

      No dude. Just no.

    5. August 18, 2017 at 4:54 pm

      Also by that logic, since U.S. military members have committed at least 5 murders in total (actually thousands more than that), every member of the U.S. military is also part of a hate group.

    6. August 18, 2017 at 4:56 pm

      And men are by far the most likely to murder.

      Also postal employees are a hate group.

      And husbands. This is just dumb.

    7. August 18, 2017 at 4:56 pm

      Listen fanboy, I’m sure Mr. Maverick is more than capable of fighting his own battles. Let the grownups talk.
      BTW, I kind of see why you’re single…

    8. August 18, 2017 at 4:59 pm

      So since communism has been responsible for over 100 deaths throughout history, and BLM marches with antifa alot, well you see where I’m going with this if we want to play the six-degrees-of-seperation game.

    9. August 18, 2017 at 5:00 pm

      A personal attack, a meaningless insult, “let the grownups talk”, poor logic skills, a strawman argument…

      All you need to do is make up some statistics out of whole cloth and I’ll get a Facebook bingo

    10. August 18, 2017 at 5:02 pm

      First, you made the initial “logical” jump, not us. So, you aren’t following our logic, you are following yours (and badly). Second, you really need to work on your analogies. Even assuming you somehow meant it metaphorically (“metaphor” is a noun, in case you need to look the word up), six-degrees-of-separation doesn’t even vaguely apply to this conversation.

    11. August 18, 2017 at 5:03 pm

      Personal attacks and insults are all someone who thinks that Bionic Commando is a good game deserves. Now what did I tell you about the adults discussing grownup things?

    12. August 18, 2017 at 5:09 pm

      Mr Maverick uses his blog as a public forum for discussion and has complete faith in Mr Strauss to fill in for him while he is busy at the bar.

      You’re welcome to play dude. But don’t go trying to troll and then set the rules.

    13. August 18, 2017 at 5:18 pm

      That is your problem with my previous post? The fact that I listed Bionic Commando as my favorite game?

      It has been a long day filled with conversations with lots of remarkably petty people, but congratulations, you beat them all by a mile.

      I mean come on, if you are going to criticize that post, put some real effort into it.

      Where to begin? How about the fact that I put Super Mario Bros. 3 at the 9 spot? I am practically spitting on one of the most highly acclaimed games ever made.

      Or you could have noticed that I listed Mega Man 3 but not Mega Man 2. Any fan of Mega Man (or NES games in general) will tell you that the latter is the best game in the series.

      Then there is Goonies II. This is a game that doesn’t even pretend to have anything to do with the movie Goonies. Heck, it has a frickin’ mermaid in the game at one point.

      But, no, your objection is Bionic Commando, a game that, while relatively obscure, managed to get a remake (Bionic Commando Rearmed) on the XBox and PS3 and that remake was so good it got a sequel.

      Seriously, get your priorities straight. And if you really are going to be so petty as to criticize my personal list of favorite NES games, actually show that you know something… anything… about the topic before doing so.

    14. August 18, 2017 at 5:23 pm

      “So good it got it got a sequel”

      You know what else got a sequel?

      Sharknado.

      And I make strawman arguments…?

    15. August 18, 2017 at 5:23 pm

      Oh, and before I forget, based on the logic you previously espoused about communism, republics (you know, like the United States… I know what you are thinking: “We are a democracy.”… sorry, no, you failed civics as well as logic apparently) are also a hate group.

    16. August 18, 2017 at 5:25 pm

      86 on Metracritic… just saying.

    17. August 18, 2017 at 5:26 pm

      No, progressives think America is a democracy.

      But let me guess. Real communism has never really been tried, right?

    18. August 18, 2017 at 5:29 pm

      Who gives a fuck if real communism has ever been really tried? You are the one who mentioned communism in the first place, not me or Mr. Maverick. Hiding some red leanings there, are you? Do you secretly read Marxist literature when the lights go low? Were you disappointed when you found out that communism was a red herring in the movie Clue?

    19. August 18, 2017 at 6:06 pm

      It seems that you have fled. That is a shame, since I read some of your posts in the shockingly racist FireMikeTomlin group you are a part of. It seems that you have a problem with black players and black coaches. I wonder if that attitude might bias your opinion on the BLM movement. I also wonder if you might be in support of KKK. You don’t seem to have any unkind words for that organization. Just food for thought….

    20. August 18, 2017 at 6:15 pm

      Wow. Worst trolling ever. I’m almost embarrassed for him.

    21. August 21, 2017 at 5:21 am

      im embarrassed he served and represented this country with an IQ like that. its a wonder he survived combat.

      LOL

    22. August 21, 2017 at 5:24 am

      Bwahahahah!!!!

  12. August 19, 2017 at 12:31 pm

    The All Lives Matter motto was spewed in retort to Black Lives Matter; therefore, there is a social context. The mere thought of a black person saying that black people matter drove racists so crazy and made them so egotistical that they felt the need to put black people in their place by saying, “No! You don’t matter more than anyone else. Sit the fuck down.” There is a social context that goes beyond a simple phrase.

  13. August 19, 2017 at 3:00 pm

    This thread is very handy for adding to my Block list. It’s also good for other reasons.

  14. August 20, 2017 at 4:04 am

    http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/cops-slain-florida-didn-chance-return-fire-article-1.3426707

    Take a look at this article and tell me if you think that all of this violence has been for the greater good. Make sure you look at the photos.

    1. August 20, 2017 at 4:26 am

      Mav already answered this in a reply to you last Friday. “Oh…. and to answer that specific question… since Jeff Mink also brings it up… ‘I’m against the random shooting of police officers’ as are most BLM members… which you can sort of tell by the fact that it happens way less than the the other way around.'”

    2. August 20, 2017 at 4:30 am

      That wasn’t my question. “Is getting people angry at police worth these mens lives?”

    3. August 20, 2017 at 5:45 am

      H. Jameel Al Khafiz is correct. I said “no… I am against the killing of police”

      But your clarification question is a nonstarter. You’re just deciding that BLM is responsible for this. But there is no evidence they are. It wasn’t at a rally. It’s not even a terror investigation. It is simply a random story about a random black man killing two random police officers. By your logic I could find any random story about a white guy killing some one and blame it on Knights of Columbus.

    4. August 20, 2017 at 6:04 am

      Ok then, lets move to the hypothetical. Suppose his facebook page was filled with anti police sayings and he shared several anti- police posts from blm. How would you answer?

    5. August 20, 2017 at 7:37 am

      Let’s not move to the hypothetical.

    6. August 20, 2017 at 7:40 am

      Yeah. Hypotheticals. That’s a losing argument.

      But I’ll even play the game briefly just to show you the ludicrousness of it.

      The columbine shooters’ web pages were filled with lots of fan posts about professional wrestling and grand theft auto. They were big fans of both. They also had a thing for trench coats.

      You are in effect arguing that WWE, Rockstar Games and London Fog fashion are responsible for Columbine. Which, btw is what some people tried to argue when it happened.

      And it was stupid then too.

  15. August 20, 2017 at 4:36 am

    Chris Maverick you made the claim that you are ok with 100 cops being shot by bad guys before one Tamir Rice being shot. And first let me say, it was a tragedy. And also an avoidable tragedy. Avoidable because a number of people, the dispatchers primarily, but also the police and Tamir himself could have prevented the situation. When I read about the causes, I’m reminded of the safety training I take when visiting a shipyard. People die on the job. People get crushed by falling objects, electrocuted by live circuits they thought were off, killed in explosions, or suffocate in confined spaces. None of these deaths are intentional, but they happen through a series of mistakes made by multiple people. I see that shooting as similar. Nobody intended to shoot an innocent kid. The cops got bad information and made a decision. Had the kid had a real gun and shot someone else in the park would you be ok with that? These police officers have a tough job and this violence is putting them even more on edge. So more people will die not less. And I think even your initial statement itself was outrageous. These cops are fathers, husbands, sons, and come from all races, yet you appear to value their lives less than street criminals who would invariably thrive under policies you advocate.

    My distaste for BLM came a year ago. I found a small blurb in the newspaper about the shooting death of the daughter of Olympic sprinter Tyson Gay. And it really affected me because she was the same age as my daughter. And I thought, “Why are people protesting so much when a guy gets shot by the police, yet not a peep when this innocent girl gets shot.” It really smacks of people using tragedy for political opportunity. Street violence takes many more lives than MALICIOUS police shootings (I’m going to ignore accidental ones since training, not street protests are the only way to solve that). Rather than me say a bunch of stuff and be called racist, I will just post a point of view I largely agree with

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/08/24/i-was-a-civil-rights-activist-in-the-1960s-but-its-hard-for-me-to-get-behind-black-lives-matter/

    1. August 20, 2017 at 6:01 am

      How could Tamir Rice have prevented his shooting?

    2. August 20, 2017 at 6:08 am

      Toy guns have an orange end to the barrel to distinguish it from a real gun. That end was removed. He also brandished that gun in the park to have the police arrive. He did not deserve to be shot, but his actions were partly responsible.

      http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/12/indisputable_images_of_tamir_r.html

    3. August 20, 2017 at 6:10 am

      Just in case any lurkers didn’t know –Tamir Rice was 12 years old when he was killed by police.

    4. August 20, 2017 at 6:11 am

      Jeffrey, do you see that you’re blaming a 12 year old child for being shot by the police?

    5. August 20, 2017 at 6:15 am

      Ok. Those are two separate issues. And what it smacks of is white privilege. I know you don’t get that. And you’re probably confused right now since no one in either example is white. So let me explain.

      BLM’s primary cause is protesting police violence. I explained as such in my article. You might not care about this issue. But that’s what they’re for. Trinity Gay was killed by two random men who aren’t cops.

      You’re saying that your distaste against BLM is because they won’t protest the thing that you care more about because it’s more likely to affect you (well your daughter). That’s basically selfish. It’s not that you shouldn’t worry about your kid. But you’re totally saying you don’t like BLM because they worry about someone else.

      My mother has MS… what you’re saying is I should hate the American Heart and Lung Association because they’re devoting all these resources to heart and lung health research and not doing anything about multiple sclerosis. That is the same argument.

      As for Tamil Rice in specific. They should have waited. Sure he could have had a real gun. He also could have not had one. He DIDN’T have one. The 911 call says “I think it’s fake”. The park was abandoned. So the cops did not get bad information and make bad decision. They got good information and made a bad decision. This cop in particular was fired from a prior police dept for being judged a danger because he was too quick to want to use his gun. In the Tamir Rice case, they didn’t even wait for the car to come to a complete stop. The simple truth is “he wanted to shoot the kid.”

      I can go into details about body cameras and police oversight and citizen review and likelihood of crime with more and less of it. But you don’t seem particularly interested in it. Dana Siler talked about it already on this post. The truth is NO. You aren’t more likely to have people dying. You’re just not. This is well established in other countries which do a much better job at this. America is behind on this simply because we want to be. We don’t care enough to do anything about it.

      BLM is just a group of people begging for someone to do something about it. Nothing less. Your “distaste” for them is because they are worried about “black” lives and you aren’t black. If they had started out as “all lives matter” then you probably wouldn’t have complained. But as is abundantly clear to most people in the massive stats discussion above. There’s a serious problem of greater killing of black men from police than your average citizen.

      At the end of the day policemen are individuals who have decided to take the job of stepping in front of a bullet to protect me from danger. That is their primary function. It is dangerous and I applaud them for it. However at the end of the day Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, Alton Brown, and even favorite shipping boy of antiBLMers, Michael Brown were all killed while they weren’t a danger to anyone. This is not minority report. Killing people for pre-crime is bad. They are also fathers and sons, etc. but they did NOT take a job to step in front of bullets for me. And yet, currently in America, statistically, a black man is more likely to be killed by a policeman than the other way around. That’s a problem.

    6. August 20, 2017 at 6:20 am

      Yeah. Wow as Lacy and Jameel are saying that sound REALLY RACIST. Again seriously. He was a child with a plastic toy. Even if you were right you’re in effect arguing that a CHILD playing cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians or whatever game that literally millions upon million of CHILDREN have been playing in parks for literally hundreds of years should be on the lookout because some cop might feel threatened.

    7. August 20, 2017 at 6:24 am

      Here’s the thing, Tamir Rice did not get shot because he actually had a gun (he did, albeit a toy gun). He got shot because it was _reported_ that he had one, and the cop shot him before Tamir had time to even follow any orders. The gun wasn’t even visible at the time the cops arrived and the only thing Tamir had done in the span of time where police were actually present was walk vaguely toward where the police car would stop, and a cop would immediately jump out and shoot him within seconds.

      So to say that the officers were justified is to say that if someone says you have a gun, it’s justified for the police to shoot you without seeing a gun or you making any threatening moves. The report alone is enough to justify your death.

      Same thing happened with John Crawford. Someone called the police and claimed he was brandishing an assault rifle and pointing it at people in a Wal-Mart, when he was actually just minding his own business carrying a piece of store merchandise. Police rounded the corner and shot, again no time for Crawford to respond to orders or even realize he was being spoken to. In an open carry state where his carrying a big scary gun, even if it had been real, would not have automatically been a crime. No charges against the police, nor the caller who gave the false report.

      All charges were even dropped when 7-year-old Aiyana Jones was killed in a no-knock raid on the WRONG HOUSE. She was just a kid sleeping in her pajamas in her living room with her grandmother.

      And the difference between the shooting of Trinity Gay and these shootings (which are just the ones I am most familiar with the circumstances) is because when Trinity Gay was shot, nobody denied it was a murder, three people were arrested for it, and charged. The outrage about innocent and unarmed black people being shot by police is not simply that someone was killed, but that nobody is held accountable for bad police decisions which lead to these deaths.

      Police may have a hard job but they also wield a lot of deadly power in their authority and should be held to a higher standard than “oops! shot another defenseless human who wasn’t committing a crime! Such a shame!”

    8. August 20, 2017 at 6:39 am

      Please read what I said more closely. But let me clarify:

      The boy was doing something that many boys do. No argument. I am not claiming he deserved to be shot. I am not claiming he was at fault. I am only saying that carrying the gun was a contributing factor, meaning the accident could have been avoided had he not done that. There were also many other contributing factors: the dispatcher did not relay that the caller thought the gun was a toy. The cops did shoot too fast without fully understanding the threat. And I think the right result was achieved here. The cop was fired. He deserved to be. There are many people who are not fit to be cops. They panic, they make poor judgements. They deserve to be removed from the force. But I don’t believe they set out to kill people.

    9. August 20, 2017 at 6:44 am

      And this is the problem. The narrative isn’t “These are tragic accidents, how can we prevent them”, it is ” police are shooting us because they are bad people”. And I agree with Dana, cameras, training, community outreach are great solutions. Anti police rhetoric is not

    10. August 20, 2017 at 6:52 am

      No…. I got it… I understand what you said. I’m saying all of that doesn’t matter. You’re in effect doing what Trump did. Saying there is “blame on many sides…. many sides…”

      What I’m saying is exactly what Jessi said. It doesn’t matter if the cops got bad information. It doesn’t matter if Tamir Rice even had a real gun. They jumped out of a moving vehicle to shoot what turned out to be an unarmed child.

      Since you’re asking me what *I* (MAV SPECIFICALLY) thinks should have happened. They should have driven up and told him to freeze and put his hands in the air. IF he then pulled out his gun and shot one of the cops then the other one should have shot him. This is specifically why there are two of them. Of course, this couldn’t happen because HE DIDN’T ACTUALLY HAVE A GUN.

      So the only things that could have happened in my case is that 1) Tamir Rice freezes and he puts his hands in the air. And Tamir Rice is alive today. 2) Tamir Rice, (a confused 12 year old boy) turns around and runs because two cops just jumped out at him and the cops chase him and maybe he gets away and maybe he doesn’t but it doesn’t matter because no one gets shot because he has no gun and Tamir Rice is still alive today.

      Either of those are better. In my situation, at the end of the day, the worst case scenario is that you end up with a dead cop. And yeah, that sucks. But to your earlier point… you said it is outrageous that I feel this way. And fine… you don’t agree. But since you are so intent on trying to take race out of it… Yes, I am without a doubt saying that I prefer 100 dead policeman to one dead unarmed 12 year old. Yes… I just do… I’m sorry you think I’m a bad person because I am pro-live-unarmed-12-year-olds.

      as to your other comment:

      “And this is the problem. The narrative isn’t “These are tragic accidents, how can we prevent them”, it is ” police are shooting us because they are bad people”. ”

      No…. The problem is that the narrative IS “You’re shooting too many innocent black people. Please stop shooting us.” YOU are HEARING “police are shooting us because they are bad people.” That’s the “white privilege” thing that you keep saying you think doesn’t exist. You hearing the thing that bothers you because you aren’t affected by the thing that they’re complaining about.

      And by the way… in this case specifically… Tamir Rice. Yeah, I’m perfectly willing to say that that cop shout that poor kid because “the cop was a bad person.” And it turns out, that’s the case in a lot of these cases… Which is why Dana argued for those things in the first place.

    11. August 20, 2017 at 6:52 am

      And maybe the wording of accident analysis is lost on many, but when we look at contributing factors we list ways to prevent an accident without trying to assign blame, even is blame can be inferred.

    12. August 20, 2017 at 6:55 am

      So because some cops are bad people, you are against them all? I Hope you see the irony in that.

    13. August 20, 2017 at 6:58 am

      “The cops did shoot too fast without fully understanding the threat. And I think the right result was achieved here. The cop was fired. He deserved to be.”

      Should be noted that he was not actually fired for shooting Tamir Rice, though. He was fired for lying on his application. So, no, he was not held accountable for shooting a 12-year-old without warning.

    14. August 20, 2017 at 7:01 am

      Jeffrey Kertis No one is against all cops. The idea is to implement policies that are known to decrease ALL deaths by police. These policies will benefit black people most since they are disproportionately affected.

    15. August 20, 2017 at 7:01 am

      Let me ask you this. And this goes back up to the stats analysis in Vic Carter’s comments above…. are you trying to argue that white people are just as likely to be killed by police as black men? Because they aren’t. Hell….. not even black women are as likely to be killed by police as black men. Black men are statistically MUCH more likely to be killed by police in this country than anyone else.

      That’s a big deal… why? Because 1)it’s not fair. It’s indicative of a problem that needs to be worked on. 2) because I’m a black guy who doesn’t even own a gun and kinda wants to not be shot for no apparent reason.

      Again… I’m not saying all cops are bad people. YOU brought that in… I’m not saying I’m against cops. I’m actually very very very pro-cop… I said that a long time ago… Anyone who voluntarily takes the job of “go outside, patrol the streets and be willing to get shot on my behalf” gets my gratitude. I’m all for it.

      The only statement I… or the #BLM movement is making is “please don’t shoot me!” Like… That’s my only request here. Why is the answer to “please don’t shoot me” anything other than “Ok.” Like even if I were secretly planning to shoot you… If you said that, I’d still like and say “Ok.”

      And yet, every time black people say “please don’t shoot me” you seem to come back with “Yeah, but…”

    16. August 20, 2017 at 7:04 am

      Because “please don’t shoot me” is not a solution. It would be like me going to a shipyard and saying “please don’t drop a steel beam on me”. Instead, I ensure cranes are rigged properly, safety barriers are set etc.

    17. August 20, 2017 at 7:05 am

      And yes, Jessi is correct on why Loehmann was fired… I wrote about it here: http://www.chrismaverick.com/wp/2017/05/30/blacklivesmatter-but-not-as-much-as-a-good-resume/

    18. August 20, 2017 at 7:08 am

      I think that reason was to avoid a long battle with the union and a drawn out media circus.

    19. August 20, 2017 at 7:12 am

      Chris Maverick, so let’s say that black men are shot at a higher rate than white men by police. I don’t know for sure either way. Then the question is why? Do you think people are more likely to be shot in Mt Lebanon or Mt Oliver? Do you believe non compliance with police directives is a contributing factor? There are other possible explanations besides racism. I can’t say for sure because I don’t know.

    20. August 20, 2017 at 7:13 am

      I don’t even know if the sample size is large enough to be statistically significant.

    21. August 20, 2017 at 7:13 am

      “Because “please don’t shoot me” is not a solution. It would be like me going to a shipyard and saying “please don’t drop a steel beam on me”. Instead, I ensure cranes are rigged properly, safety barriers are set etc.”

      Bingo!!! Dude, you’re almost getting it!!!!

      No one said “Please don’t shoot me” is a solution. It’s a request. It’s asking for people to work to make sure they don’t shoot you. It’s asking for the things Dana has been talking about…

      Now, take your example. If you come to my construction site and say “please don’t drop a steel beam on me” I say “you’re good dude. I have this crane secured. We had the safety inspector in here yesterday. We’re working to be as safe as we can. But, since you’re here, make sure you grab one of those hard hats over there… just in case.” No one ever says “Fuck you, what about all the people who drop steel beams on cranes? You ever think about that, asshole? And no, we don’t want to put up safety barriers because you ought to have the sense to respect the crane. Now get the fuck out…. oh shit, did I just drop a pipe on you? ehhh…. accidents happen… I mean, its only fourth time this month. And it’s 20th… so think about the 16 days we didn’t drop a pipe on someone!”

      Because that’s the difference here. YOU are saying that you’re more worried about the cranes than you are about the people waking around beneath them. Only in the case of police and cops, there are no safety barriers… its more like the crane just kinda follows me around.

    22. August 20, 2017 at 7:14 am

      If you’re asking the statistics question I encourage you to read the other thread. I’m not going to rehash it here. But the short answer is yes… they are statistically more likely to be shot. By a factor of like 6x.

    23. August 20, 2017 at 7:23 am

      Whether I personally believe there is a problem is irrelavent because you and millions of Americans believe there is. So we should work to address it in a manner that is fair to the lives of police and protects are communities. I don’t believe that this should be an eye for an eye situation, yet this is what we have been seeing. I am trying to apply a logical solution to an emotional problem. Yes there are things we can do, as Dana Siler said, and I agree with all of them. But groups like BLM would be better served by building bridges with police forces rather than burning them. Communities have to look at these unfortunate incidents as learning opportunities to prevent this from happening again rather than inciting more rage. You will never get what you seek any other way.

    24. August 20, 2017 at 7:27 am

      Ok. Again. You’re close.

      What you’re missing is the things you’re saying is what BLM does. They are calling for attention and asking for help. But instead of listening to that call you are focused on telling them they’re wrong because they’re black. The group doesn’t advocate violence. I’ve pointed that out repeatedly. Your counter is to point out the incidents where something violent happened.

      Like you even forwarded the link to the two cops getting shot in Florida. Which had nothing to do with BLM at all. The only relevance is that the shooter happened to be black. He wasn’t protesting. BLM wasn’t mentioned in the article.

    25. August 20, 2017 at 7:44 am

      I forwarded the article not because the shooter was black, but because one of the victims was. We worry about Nazis who may inspire violence, but what if this guy was inspired to violence by anti police rhetoric? You even previously said that I am trying to take race out of this, which I am. You are much more focused on race than me.

      As I said earlier, BLM as a group does not advocate violence, but in many cases extremists who do have used BLM as a justification, BLM has not strongly denounced this, and BLM does march side by side with people who do advocate violence. And because of this I think their message has not been effective. I would even go as far as saying it helped trump to get elected.

    26. August 20, 2017 at 7:45 am

      So your argument is “if black lives matter, then why are black people killing each other?”

    27. August 20, 2017 at 7:47 am

      No

    28. August 20, 2017 at 7:48 am

      But it is a good question

    29. August 20, 2017 at 7:48 am

      No it’s not a good question. It’s a massively racist question.

    30. August 20, 2017 at 7:49 am

      You started this thread asking why 20 or 30 percent of white people don’t see BLM as being much different than the Nazis.

    31. August 20, 2017 at 7:49 am

      It is a good question for you to ask not me

    32. August 20, 2017 at 8:03 am

      Black-on-black crime happens at the same rate as white-on-white crime, Jeffrey.

    33. August 20, 2017 at 8:04 am

      I didn’t ask. I just stated it. And for the record I actually totally just made those numbers up (which I admitted). It’s probably the weakest part of my argument, though no one ever questioned it.

      I actually know why it is… but that’s a sociology/cultural theory argument. This article was just about historic ideology. Nothing more. I actually paid very careful attention to what I was doing in order to focus it.

      I could get into the causes of tribalism and indentity politics and cultural hegemony and all the things that go into causing systemic racism to happen. But that’s a book… not a Facebook post and people would have been bored by it and I wouldn’t have gotten the reach that I did with this. Which is what I was going for.

      So I met my goal.

      You on the other hand aren’t countering the main thesis of the argument. It’s because you really can’t. I made a simple statement that’s pretty irrefutable. “#BLM is fundamentally based on the idea that people would not like to be killed” and “KKK is fundamentally based on the idea of killing people.” That’s it.

      Because you can’t really refute that claim you’re doing what’s called strawmanning. You’re adding additional claims to my argument that you think you can refute. Most of them I have answers for. Which I have done. But it doesn’t actually matter, because even if I didn’t have answers for them. I never said those things.

      Really, your best claim was the crane example. And I turned that around quite simply to show you why the logic you’re using against #BLM is faulty.

      But lets return to your “But people do it on their behalf” argument. And the problem is it doesn’t matter. Again, I return to the Columbine example. It doesn’t matter what the Columbine shooters believed or were into. That was not the fault of the WWE, Rockstar Games or London Fog.

      I’ll look at another one. John Hinkley Jr., a white man, shot president Reagan on behalf of Jodie Foster. Jodie Foster never asked him to. Jodie Foster was not pro-president killing. Jodie Foster didn’t actually have a damn thing to do with the situation. Stephanie Siler is a huge Jodie Foster fan. She did not shoot president Reagan. And I’ve not done a survey or anything, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the vast majority of Jodie Foster fans have never shot a US President.

      BUT, by your logic anyone who says Silence of the Lambs is their favorite movie is immediately suspect.

    34. August 20, 2017 at 8:06 am

      To H. Jameel Al Khafiz’s point, actually whites kill whites slightly more than blacks kill blacks.

      https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-09-29/race-and-homicide-in-america-by-the-numbers

    35. August 20, 2017 at 8:10 am

      Oh, word? I stand corrected.

    36. August 20, 2017 at 8:11 am

      Probably not to a statistically significant amount. But you know apparently no one cares about that.

    37. August 20, 2017 at 8:43 am

      Chris Maverick, I have already stated that I agree with your original but narrow premise. Yes the stated purpose of BLM is good while that of the Nazis is bad. But you also asked why 20 to 30 percent of whites don’t see it that way. You believe the burning of Ferguson was justified. Do you think that 20 to 30 percent does FROM THEIR PERSPECTIVE? In the last post, I changed my perspective. I asked “Could a black person rightly expect justice walking into a courthouse with a confederate statue in front?” I said no, and believed it was harmful to our country. And changed my view. So ask yourself, could a white person who has never had a bad run in with police view the riots in Baltimore and be sympathetic to the cause of BLM? Compare it to the civil rights movement of the 60 s with a nonviolent approach that Americans like me could easily see who the good guys were.

    38. August 20, 2017 at 9:06 am

      Do you realize that a whole lot of white Americans back in the 60s thought that MLK was a bad guy?

    39. August 20, 2017 at 10:25 am

      Right… as Jameel just said. I understand your viewpoint.

      And yes, I understand where you’re going with “well here’s why White people think that BLM is a hate group.” I just wasn’t talking about that here. Sometimes I do. Hell, I’ve linked to posts in the comments here where I have.

      But I understand why white people think that. In fact, I can probably explain it way better than you can. Beyond that, I know the sociocultural factors that go into making you think that. Cultural Hegemony, Cultural Backlash, Intersectionality between issues of culture, race and gender. Conflicting factors of systemic racism with classism through capitalist and marxist structures and economic, social and cultural norms. Patriarchal norms established from the move to agricultural society from hunter gathering thousands of years ago. Gender and sex being commonly misunderstood and building out from all of that. Natural human psychological tendency towards fear of “The Other.” Socialized human tendency in hierarchical societies to maintain that structure through the establishment of lower castes to insure the maintenance of your own caste. Cultural and textual structures that reflect and sometimes enhance these problems. I spend every day of my life thinking about these issues. It’s not simple. It’s not easy. And I don’t expect it to just go away.

      But I never said it was. I never said it was your fault. All I said was “here are the differences between these three groups. Use it to explain when anyone ever questions you on it. They probably won’t listen. But here you go so you can try anyway.”

      Those are the only claims I made there…. actually, I made one more. I said I was publicly accepting YOUR apology. You specifically. I even commended you for having the courage to make it.

      So that’s it. I made just those claims…. “Here is what BLM means. Please don’t kill us.” And you didn’t listen to that. Instead, you jumped to justifying why they were bad. You jumped to why it shouldn’t exist by pointing to things that sort of seem related in your mind, but actually aren’t.

      Your insistence on adding to that is exactly what places you in that 20-30% group. I mean, yes, that’s better than being in the top 5% group where I was placing you before. But it still places you in that group.

      You want to take race out of it. But you can’t. And here is why. (You even answered the question yourself.) You get very upset when black people say “please don’t kill us” but you are not at all upset about construction workers asking for better safety regulations. That’s the difference you need to ponder. No one ever ever ever complains when construction workers, or chemical factory workers, or teachers, or COPS ask for better protection from the dangers of their jobs. If someone asks for better safety regulation at a construction site. The answer is “we will send an investigator to look into it and see what we can do.” It is not victim blaming. These are people asking for better protection from the dangers of their LIVES. And your gut reaction is to say “never mind that… But what about the 3 (out of tens or hundreds of thousands) black people who have killed police in the name of BLM at rallies? And what about about these other black people who are murdering police in unrelated incidents? And what about all the black people who murder each other? And really, don’t you think Tamir Rice was partly to blame?”

    40. August 20, 2017 at 11:18 am

      For the record, Tamir Rice is not to blame. He is a 12 year old boy doing something tthat a 12 year old boy would do. He could not have understood the inherent dangers in his actions. The police were to blame. The officer panicked. He was wrong. But I do not believe that he committed a crime.

      My reaction isn’t to say”never mind these peoples lives”. I am saying that they are approaching a problem with many parallels to a worker safety problem with raw emotion. And I think that they are hurting their cause by doing so. I don’t view them as morally bad, but I view the implementation as counterproductive.

    41. August 20, 2017 at 11:24 am

      I read of one BLM group who organized a BBQ between the police and the community. I think this is a great idea and would be very supportive of BLM if they did this everywhere.

    42. August 20, 2017 at 11:26 am

      And the point of this post is if your reaction to the statement “black lives matter” is anything other than “yes” or “ok” then you are part of the problem.

      You wouldn’t do that for an non race issue. “Mining conditions are awful. Please give us protection. Miner’s lives matter”

      Hell. There is like one major school shooting every year or two. And our reaction is to put up metal detectors, install security guards, and give every teacher active shooter training. Because “student lives matter”

      Hundreds of black men are shot by police every year. And the reaction is “yes but…”

      Like I said in an earlier thread if a random person walks up to you on the street and says “please don’t shoot me” and your answer is anything but “ok” then you’re being an asshole.

      If someone walks up to you and says “please don’t shoot me” and you say “but…” then pretty much anything that comes next is a problem. That’s what you’re doing now.

    43. August 20, 2017 at 11:28 am

      “I read of one BLM group who organized a BBQ between the police and the community. I think this is a great idea and would be very supportive of BLM if they did this everywhere.”

      Dude. BLM literally does stuff like that all the time. There are events like that every weekend if not every single day. Hell H. Jameel Al Khafiz just told you he was at a rally for BLM YESTERDAY in the city you live in!!!! But you aren’t focused on that. You’re focused on the few incidents where violence happened.

    44. August 20, 2017 at 12:11 pm

      Because that’s what makes the news.

    45. August 20, 2017 at 1:24 pm

      Ok. So. Several hundred black men shot by police. Peaceful rally to protest it goes off without incident. I post an article saying “hey here’s this misunderstood thing that is happening” and your take away is “but the important thing is some cops were shot in an unrelated incident”.

      This is the problem that the BLM movement seeks to address.

    46. August 20, 2017 at 1:27 pm

      Ir very simply “hey, when were shot can we be on the news so maybe it happens less? We matter”

    47. August 20, 2017 at 2:26 pm

      Forget the police shootings. I was referring to the incidents in Ferguson and Baltimore. I believe it counters the message. I saw your article on Ferguson, but I respectfully disagree.

    48. August 20, 2017 at 2:41 pm

      I get that you disagree. You’re wrong. Lots of people agree with you. They’re wrong too. This isn’t an opinion thing. It’s a sociology and history thing.

      The reason is you don’t actually understand the cultural history you’re trying cling to. You even said it earlier “it’d be different if they were doing the peaceful protests like MLK did in the 60s.”

      That’s ignorance. In the 60s MLK was a target of the FBI. He was beaten and thrown I jail. Every notable protest in the civil rights era was illegal. Most of them were far more violent than the ones you see today. WAY more people died than have today. And in very brutal ways. Those who didn’t die were often beaten by the police, shot with fire hoses or lynched by the klan. There were black panthers and Nation of Islam who made what you think of as the “BLM hate group” look like choir children. And the two most popular civil rights leaders… the only two you probably know the name of, GOT shot for their troubles. MLK did a lot for civil rights. But his greatest contribution by far was getting shot in the fucking head.

      All of that mattered. That was the civil rights movement in a nutshell. So yeah…. it’s not what you think. They just don’t teach you that in grade school because it kinda makes white people not look so good. It’s distasteful. So instead you hear a couple speeches and a sanitized version of “MLK was assassinated” and “everyone lived happily ever after. ”

      That’s NOT what happened.

      Cultural Change comes through pain. Disruption. And often death. It is slow and painful.

      As I pointed out. There was a peaceful BLM march in the city you live in yesterday. You didn’t know anything about it. It didn’t affect your life at all. And you won’t remember it.

      You sure as fuck remember ferguson though.

  16. August 20, 2017 at 6:06 am

    “BLM doesn’t start riots. They’re in the business of stopping them.”
    https://www.facebook.com/qwrrty/posts/10159299607535193

  17. August 20, 2017 at 7:34 am

    Trolling on this thread seems like tag team wrestling.

    Crap, I’m losing. I’m just going to distract the ref for a second, throw an illegal eye gouge, and then tag in my partner who is fresh.

  18. August 20, 2017 at 8:15 am

    You know, I was at a march and rally in Homewood yesterday. We shouted “BLACK LIVES MATTER” many times. You know what I didn’t hear? I didn’t hear a single shout, mention, or whisper that anyone should kill the police.

  19. August 20, 2017 at 8:16 am

    Not to be callous, but his thread embodies one of the big issues going on. It’s exhausting. It’s exhausting the the readers. It’s exhausting to those discussing. It’s frustrating, trying to communicate and making sure you are understood the way you want to be. It’s mentally draining and taxing and I’ve got other things to occupy my brain with and…. One shouldn’t feel tl;dr, but it will happen.
    I do commend the civility for most of this. I cannot say that too often.

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