this is a continuation of the diversity thread, by other means…
the statement that leads me to the creation of this thread is this…
a statement, can’t recall who made it, but the statement is:
black people are more violent than white people…
and that statement is given as fact… but does that statement actually
stand up under scrutiny… but more importantly, as we should in
a philosophy website, a fact often forgotten around here,
we should engage in some discussion about the overall understanding
of race, violence, criminal convictions, and our society at large…
despite the outright bigotry and prejudice of many, many members
here… in fact, I would go so far as to suggest that this website is
now a one of those websites devoted to prejudice and bigotry
where the only discussion being made is the greatness and wonder
of white people over the ‘‘violence’’ of black people…
this has become a ‘‘white is right’’ website… and nothing more…
sad, to think that, but that is the reality of todays ILP…
anyway, there are many ways to go about this white vs black debate,
one that is by its very nature, prejudiced and full of bigotry…
which is why this is the favorite topic of those who still belong
to ILP…
where to begin? as always, we should begin, at the beginning…
the original founding of this nation…
the basis of and reality of such teachings as CRT, is that this nation,
was founded on overtly racists ideas… that racism is baked into
this country in its very laws and idea’s, right from the start…
for example, within the Declaration of Independence…
is this couple of sentences…
‘‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’’
but the reality of this statement lies in the fact that ‘‘all men’’
referenced by the document, was in fact, white men, not black men
or Asian men or even women… I point out that Thomas Jefferson was
a slaveholder… and he never doubted the idea that white men, were
the only men that counted, the only ones that was worth anything…
and as far as women were concerned, they were until the 20th century,
considered to be the property of men… legally in every sense of the
word, property…
and this idea of America being racist being baked into the American
political system, also comes from the constitution, where within
this statement lies this:
‘‘any person who was not free (a slave) would be counted as three-
fifths of a free individual for the purposes of determining the congressional
representation’’
that is a direct declaration on the status of slaves… they were not considered
to be equal to whites… regardless of the reason…that was baked into
the constitution… right from the very start of the ““American experiment””
and this was the state of affairs until the Civil War… where even Lincoln,
who was not about the freeing of the slaves, but about the idea of states
rights and the union… Lincoln didn’t even think about the freeing of slaves
until the middle of the Civil War… it was the question of secession that drove
him…not slavery… and after the Civil War, this question of the freeing of
the slave was one, at best, half ass…and virtually all rights won by the
blacks during the Civil War were removed within 20 or30 years…
and we see the rise of Jim Crow laws that lasted for several decades…
both north and south…once again, the laws against equal right for blacks
were baked into the government… and the Civil rights movement of the
50’s and 60’s, brought an increase of rights to blacks but not all freedoms…
for example, laws preventing whites from marrying blacks, were in place
as late as 1967…within my lifetime… prejudice baked into the laws…
this history lesson is needed to help us understand the nature
of bigotry and prejudice in America… and we reach the modern
stage of American bigotry and prejudice…
for example, people around here, as part of their argument, say
that blacks are more violent and criminal because their conviction
rate is higher than whites… and looking at just the numbers,
helps ‘‘prove’’ that statement and yet, by understanding the
nature of prejudice and bigotry, we can see those numbers
as being unreliable… let us take the controversial practice
of ‘‘stop and frisk’’ where the police can stop you and search you
in a public place without a warrant… and this very practice
leads us to a truth… let us take a reality situation…
a crime has been committed… and we have two people walking
down a street… a black man and a white man… and a police officer
is coming the other way… and here we see the reality of prejudice
and bigotry… given the prejudice of the police, he is far more likely
to stop and frisk the black man… which is why black people are stopped
way more proportionally than white people… and this is true of
the ‘‘stop and frisk’’ policy in NY for example… Stats proved that
black people were stopped at far higher rates then whites… and
we know, as a fact, that the police would quite often plant
goods and merchandise on blacks to incriminate them…
this wasn’t a rare thing… for example, in the state of Illinois,
in capital punishment cases, it was discovered by students
of a college, that a huge percentage of death trial cases
were in fact, falsely accused and convicted…
so much in fact, that the Illinois governor had to stop
all capital punishment cases in the entire state…
and those who were convicted were in large part, minorities…
and why is that? are they way more violent than white people?
as the prejudice people around here say?
Nope, and I have an example that proves my point…
my daughter at one time, was arrested for a DUI…
we were able to, because we had the resources to,
get a very good attorney… and we were able to nullify
the arrest… and that is what happens…those with resources,
are able to nullify or get people off of convictions for crimes…
and what of the poor? they get shit… and quite often get
convicted simply because they can’t afford a lawyer…or even bail…
they are convicted solely because they can’t afford or have
the resources to fight the charges… and this far more heavily
impacts convictions rates… the poor get convicted at a far
heaver rate than white people… and thus they go to jail/prison
at a greater rate than whites… it isn’t because they are more
violent, they just can’t afford a decent lawyer… and that, more
than anything else, is the reason they are in jail/prison at a
greater rate than white people… a black man in LA, was
imprison for months because he couldn’t afford to make bail…
does that mean he is a more violent person, or more
likely to commit a crime? no, it just means he is poor,
and unable to afford justice… because as IQ45 is showing us every single day,
justice is bought and paid for… those with money, rarely if ever, go to
jail, those without resources, they go to jail/prison, for no other
reason than being poor…
I be willing to bet that the large percentage of those in prison,
are also poor people who couldn’t afford to buy justice, like
IQ45… so it isn’t the act of being violent or being a criminal,
that lands one in jail/prison, but being unable to afford justice…
being poor is far more likely to land one in prison, than anything else…
and so we reach the philosophical part of this thread…
if justice is about wealth, then do we really have justice
in this country? or is that just another lie of a society that
only values money before people… which I have defined
as nihilism… the negation/devaluing of human beings
and their values is nihilism…
and our current state/society practices nihilism all the time…
and thus, we can now explain how those around here that practices
bigotry and prejudice are really engaging in Nihilism…
for bigotry and prejudice is about the negation and devaluing
of human beings and their values… which is exactly what
prejudice and bigotry does… devalue and negate human beings…
that is the true actions of those like Sammy and humanize and UR
and MagsJ… their prejudice and bigotry is nothing more than
nihilism as it negates and dehumanizes human beings and their
values…and they are blind to their nihilism… but no real
surprise there…to be a bigot and to be prejudice as they are,
is to be blind to the possibilities of being human…
Kropotkin