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Originally Posted by GoldenRivet
First, i'd like to point out that the young man was not shot, though i understand you are probably not implying that
Second, is there really a trend indicating the rise of police shootings?
When i wanted to buy a Jeep Wrangler, i never used to see them on the road. The day after i bought one, i was waving left and right at dozens of other Jeep Wrangler drivers on every outing i went on.
I would venture to guess that while the percentage of police shootings has probably remained roughly the same the last say - 10 years - the media has learned that front paging the crap out of police shootings they can turn it into the next national moment. Greater exposure creates the idea that such things are happening with greater frequency.
Imagine if the US Media reported every single small plane crash and made a media day of each. If that were the case they would have a new crash of any given severity to report every few days. Suddenly, the perception is that small planes are falling from the sky left and right... what is not conveyed in such a style of reporting is the hundreds of thousands of flight hours which took place during that crash prone 8 or 9 hours.
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Valid point, valid point. You've also got the internet which harvests every single news story, no matter where it goes in the national and international media, the internet will find it and the relevent parties who decide that it is for their interest will publish it within their circle and that will increase its exposure.
The problem is, is that you can't have a force which has the stated objective 'Protect and Serve' consider the people that it's meant to protect as the enemy. You can understand why such a mindset might have crept in, but it has to be quashed, otherwise if you get into a situation where the police are no longer trusted to act fair and neutral then you might as well just disband them and go for mob rule because people will just take the law into their own hands anyway. Obviously some people will do this anyway in certain areas, but it's when it creeps into other sections of society that it becomes dangerous.
I'm not saying that all the police are bad, it's the same in the UK, it's the bad eggs that get all the attention, but it's like weeds in a garden, if you don't dig them out, if you don't pull them up by the roots then it just chokes the rest of the plant life around it and it whithers and dies.
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How would you like a middle of the road perspective?
you are dealing with 5 segments of race in America, not 2. everybody thinks there are 2 sides to the story... well there are 5 where blacks and whites are concerned in America
1. whites
2. under achieving whites
3. blacks
4. under achieving blacks
5. other
1. Whites raise their kids to respect folks, even if they are different, they punish their kids for spitting our racial slurs, they work hard, live in a nice house, drive a nice car, successfully pursue higher education, they work along side of blacks every day. and nobody really has a problem.
2. under achieving whites sit around and collect welfare checks, what little money they do bring home from whatever job they work this month they blow on bud lite, tattoos, pickup truck accessories and lord knows what else. They consider blacks lazy and the root of the problem.
3. Blacks raise their kids to respect folks, even if they are different, they punish their kids for spitting out racial slurs, they work hard, live in a nice house, drive a nice car, successfully pursue higher education, they work hard along side of whites every day. and nobody really has a problem.
4. under achieving blacks sit around and collect welfare checks, what little money they do bring home from whatever job they work this month they blow on colt 45 malt liquor, tattoos, spinning rims and lord knows what else. they consider whites to be in control of the world and the root of the problem.
5. other... the Jesse Jackson's and the - i dunno - Bill O'riellys. the profiteer off the entire situation and nothing gets accomplished and it seems like the worse things are, the more attention these guys get and the worse everything seems to get.
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That's a pretty fair assessment. Obviously you can't generalise too much, there's plenty of folks out there, black and white, who are in the under achieving section but are working hard to try and get out. Also there are plenty of white folks who have lots of money who consider blacks to be lazy and the source of the problem. Probably more so than wealthy blacks who consider whites to be the problem. So it splinters up a bit more than a five point lay-out, but I do see where you're coming from.
The question perhaps to ask is, is the situation getting worse? And depending on the answer to that, how do we stop it from either being or
seeming to be that way?
