US Politics: Be Careful Out There

[Raja]

19 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

without completely erasing the injustice that has befallen others-

Do you have links as to where this has happened?

 

[Phylum of Alexandria]

10 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Yes.  That is undisputable.

But, politically, if Law Enforcement abuse of power impacts everyone it has more rhetorical impact.  It’s not nice but if you want to eliminate qualified immunity and reform law enforcement you need suburban middle class voters pushing because they see themselves threatened too.

It's also just basic human decency to acknowledge people's suffering when it's there. I'm not saying to ignore the numbers, I'm saying that they only can give us tendencies. If we cling to those tendencies too hard, we're just doing a different type of stereotyping, to the exclusion of anyone who doesn't fit the pattern.

 

[Larry of the Lawn]

25 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Yes.  That is undisputable.

But, politically, if Law Enforcement abuse of power impacts everyone it has more rhetorical impact.  It’s not nice but if you want to eliminate qualified immunity and reform law enforcement you need suburban middle class voters pushing because they see themselves threatened too.

Not all journalism needs to be about being electorally persuasive.  Sure, if you're the Democratic Party, best bet is probably to target  police violence across the board.  I think that's the best approach for most issues- universal programs.  

But I also don't see anything wrong with some journalist pointing to the mountains of data that show that black Americans particularly are subject to disproportionate levels of scrutiny, violence, and harassment by police.  The best way to reduce that on the short term is likely just getting rid of a bunch of our police or completely changing their role.  But whatever police force is left is going to keep disproportionately affecting (harming) them.  That's where stuff like implicit bias training likely comes into play.

I want to address the causes of crime, not the symptoms.  You do that by decreasing poverty and giving EASY access to a social safety net.  We have a prison problem and police problem in this country, and one group does suffer much more for it.  And I'm not about to get wishy washy or worry about hurting white feelings by saying so.  

Sure, on a policy level we can debate what's practical, but let's not start off the conversation with "don't mention the race thing ".  It's a problem and it didn't end when Derek Chauvin walked into a jail cell.  

Edited May 11, 2023 by Larry of the Lake

[Phylum of Alexandria]

On 5/11/2023 at 8:19 AM, Raja said:

Do you have links as to where this has happened?

I don't understand what you're asking. Are you doubting that white families have been victimized by police violence in any sense?

Go to any study on police violence, even one that shows an outsized effect for black communities, and you'll have data on white families who were victims.

For instance, this study found that black Americans were about 3 times more likely to die from police violence overall.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/metrics?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0229686

That difference should not be ignored, but don't forget that this trend comes from a data sample of almost 6,000 police death incidents. The rates they came up with are based on logistic regression analysis, and they don't give the exact breakdown per race, but we're still talking about thousands of white deaths at the hands of police to get to this statistic. Real families who experienced real tragedy. Like Biden did with COVID, it's possible to address the issue of racial justice without erasing the injustice experienced by people outside of that pattern. It's a problem for us all. 

Interestingly, they also found a Region-Race effect similar to what I hypothesized in my earlier comment, but it's based across different metropolitan areas rather than urban/suburban/rural.

 

Edit: I did get the breakdowns from this study. Here they are.

 

Of the included 5494 fatalities involving police from 2013–2017:

• 2353 (42.83%) of the decedents were White
• 1487 (27.07%) were Black
• 939 were Latinx (17.09%)
• 68 (3.06%) were other race/ethnicities
• 547 lacked data on race/ethnicity.

Relative rates and odds ratios are important, but I get the feeling that most people conflate those numbers with overall percentages--especially because journalists, political bloggers, and sometimes even the scientists don't make it very clear.

An important takeaway from the study was that victims in the data were about 3 times more likely to be black than white. But another important takeaway is that the largest percentage of the deaths were among white victims. If you have an uptick in police violence, there will be an increase in mourning families, most of whom will likely be white. Relative to their population sizes, though, black families have a more outsized effect of being victimized. Both are problems.

And it's a problem for every fucking family who lost someone to police murder, even if they are in that 3% Other category.

Edited May 13, 2023 by Phylum of Alexandria

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

23 minutes ago, Larry of the Lake said:

Not all journalism needs to be about being electorally persuasive.  Sure, if you're the Democratic Party, best bet is probably to target  police violence across the board.  I think that's the best approach for most issues- universal programs.  

But I also don't see anything wrong with some journalist pointing to the mountains of data that show that black Americans particularly are subject to disproportionate levels of scrutiny, violence, and harassment by police.  The best way to reduce that on the short term is likely just getting rid of a bunch of our police or completely changing their role.  But whatever police force is left is going to keep disproportionately affecting (harming) them.  That's where stuff like implicit bias training likely comes into play.

I want to address the causes of crime, not the symptoms.  You do that by decreasing poverty and giving EASY access to a social safety net.  We have a prison problem and police problem in this country, and one group does suffer much more for it.  And I'm not about to get wishy washy or worry about hurting white feelings by saying so.  

Sure, on a policy level we can debate what's practical, but let's not start off the conversation with "don't mention the race thing ".  It's a problem and it didn't end when Derek Chauvin walked into a jail cell.  

And I appreciate your point.  What I fear though is if that is the emphasis people generally hear from journalists they will not see law enforcement reform as an issue that impacts… them.  I also fear it reinforces their, mistaken, belief that law enforcement reform is something that doesn’t impact their lives because they have nothing to fear from law enforcement abuse of power.

As long as people see law enforcement reform as a niche racially  focused issue… it’s always going to be a niche racially focused issue and nothing will change.  If suburban parents see their children being threatened… change will happen.

 

Edited May 11, 2023 by Ser Scot A Ellison

[Raja]

12 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

I don't understand what you're asking.

You stated 'completely erasing the injustice that has befallen others' - I asked who is doing that?

In addition, I find this discussion regarding police violence very odd - who is not acknowledging someone's suffering? Like what on earth.

When we have communities, people of colour in this instance, clearly disproportionately affected by police violence, turning around saying 'don't forget the white families' is very strange and reads as the common refrain employed by white people stating 'don't make everything about race', which is frankly quite disappointing to read. Which people of colour are out there stating it doesn't happen to white people? If they're advocating and saying it loudly that it affects their community disproportionately, that is absolutely true.

Should I not be saying that Pregnancy related mortality among Black women are 3 times higher than white women? Me highlighting that fact, or advocating policies that specifically target a specfic community doesn't mean I suddenly don't give a fuck about maternal mortality in white women ( And those difference hold true even if you control for underlying social and economic factors)

This whole line of reasoning is nonsensical.

Edited May 11, 2023 by Raja

[Phylum of Alexandria]

3 minutes ago, Larry of the Lake said:

but let's not start off the conversation with "don't mention the race thing ".

Well, first off, I never once said anything close to "don't mention race." Please go back to my initial comment about the 2020 DNC vs the Vox article's treatment of COVID. I don't know how you can read that and think I said anything like "don't mention race." A better cartoon version of what I said would be "don't make it only about race, because it's everyone's problem to some extent."

7 minutes ago, Larry of the Lake said:

I want to address the causes of crime, not the symptoms.  You do that by decreasing poverty and giving EASY access to a social safety net. 

If you can't get a proper look at the symptoms, you won't be able to diagnose the problem, and you sure as hell won't come to an effective solution.

Just go back to that original Vox article I linked to, where they wanted to propose a Race-Place prioritization policy. At best such a system would be needlessly crude, as SES was staring the author right in the face and they chose not to acknowledge it. You'd want a system where the people who are actually at most risk would get the most accommodation, to lower the risk of chronic illness and death. If a vaccination system gave more priority points to Willow Smith and Kanye West than to Sturgill in exurban Pittsburgh, that's a bad system, one that would not effectively counter the true underlying discrepancy in health and risk. I would hope that most people would agree that this straw man example is clearly and absurdly bad, but I actually think that some people out there would say that it wouldn't be so bad.

10 minutes ago, Larry of the Lake said:

We have a prison problem and police problem in this country, and one group does suffer much more for it.  And I'm not about to get wishy washy or worry about hurting white feelings by saying so.  

I think this is partly coming from your misrepresentation of what I said. I never said ignore the disparity, just also speak to everyone affected.

Hopefully you're not saying we shouldn't speak to everyone affected, simply because one group suffers more for it.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

8 minutes ago, Raja said:

You stated 'completely erasing the injustice that has befallen others' - I asked who is doing that?

This was written in the specific context of police deaths, where I mentioned that in the 2020 DNC they couched it only as an issue of racial justice. Whereas with COVID, they mentioned the racial disparity, but also of the universal problem that it poses.

If you can acknowledge that you mischaracterized my comment, I will proceed to engage with you in good faith. If not, I'd say you're too incensed right now to have a worthwhile discussion. I don't feel like batting away straw man arguments all day.

[Raja]

12 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

As long as people see law enforcement reform as a niche racially  focused issue… it’s always going to be a niche racially focused issue and nothing will change.  If suburban parents see their children being threatened… change will happen.

This line of reasoning I can at least understand even though I don't know if it's necessarily true, but to me I don't know how one can look at the history of police violence in the US and come to the conclusion that it's a 'niche racially focused issue'.

[Raja]

1 minute ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

If you can acknowledge that you mischaracterized my comment,

I didn't mischaracterize your comment. I simply asked for a link or an explanation as to who was doing that & when, which you have now provided even though you've come up with a general statement as opposed to actually linking what specifically you were talking about.

As for engaging with me, that's totally your prerogative, that's why it's a forum.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

12 minutes ago, Raja said:

This line of reasoning I can at least understand even though I don't know if it's necessarily true, but to me I don't know how one can look at the history of police violence in the US and come to the conclusion that it's a 'niche racially focused issue'.

It isn’t.  

But if it is… perceived as such… it makes it harder to to make change.  Further, it allows Republicans to create the perception that Law Enforcement reform is actually a threat to the suburban parents needed to pressure change.  

As frustrating as it is politics is really about perception… not necessarily reality and law enforcement reform is needed… yesterday.

Edited May 11, 2023 by Ser Scot A Ellison

[Phylum of Alexandria]

3 minutes ago, Raja said:

I didn't mischaracterize your comment. I simply asked for a link or an explanation as to who was doing that & when, which you have now provided even though you've come up with a general statement as opposed to actually linking what specifically you were talking about.

I do think you've mischaracterized what I said, because my original comment about erasing people's experience of injustice came in the form of a comparison between two ways to talk about such issues. One that I thought was done well, and the other was not done well. Both of the examples pointed to racial disparities, though, so it's not like I was ever arguing to stop talking about race.

Here are those original comments:

"The Democratic Party is certainly not immune to this stuff. Interestingly enough, during the 2020 virtual Democratic National Convention, Biden and Harris described the harm from COVID much better than Vox did. They said it can potentially affect anyone, but people in poor communities will be most adversely affected, and in the US those are often communities of color.

That framing is a lot more honest about what the data says, a lot more humane about everyone affected, and a lot smarter in terms of uniting rather than dividing. 

Unfortunately, when it came to police violence, they went the strictly racial justice route. The data here are less clear as to what's going on with respect to race. Like COVID, it's relevant to note that poor communities in US cities are often communities of color, but is that more of a third-factor risk like with COVID, or something more directly tied to race? And what do the data look like in suburban and rural areas? I don't know if there's enough data on this topic to say anything with confidence, but here's what I do know: police militarization is a general problem that we all share, and framing the problem exclusively in terms of racism is an injustice to the white families who also lost someone to police violence. They should have tackled the issue like they did COVID, but they botched it.

We've gotta stop treating people like statistics, and statistics like people. It's pseudo-intellectual, morally dubious, and often counterproductive politically speaking."

[Larry of the Lawn]

23 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Well, first off, I never once said anything close to "don't mention race." Please go back to my initial comment about the 2020 DNC vs the Vox article's treatment of COVID. I don't know how you can read that and think I said anything like "don't mention race." A better cartoon version of what I said would be "don't make it only about race, because it's everyone's problem to some extent."

If you can't get a proper look at the symptoms, you won't be able to diagnose the problem, and you sure as hell won't come to an effective solution.

Just go back to that original Vox article I linked to, where they wanted to propose a Race-Place prioritization policy. At best such a system would be needlessly crude, as SES was staring the author right in the face and they chose not to acknowledge it. You'd want a system where the people who are actually at most risk would get the most accommodation, to lower the risk of chronic illness and death. If a vaccination system gave more priority points to Willow Smith and Kanye West than to Sturgill in exurban Pittsburgh, that's a bad system, one that would not effectively counter the true underlying discrepancy in health and risk. I would hope that most people would agree that this straw man example is clearly and absurdly bad, but I actually think that some people out there would say that it wouldn't be so bad.

I think this is partly coming from your misrepresentation of what I said. I never said ignore the disparity, just also speak to everyone affected.

Hopefully you're not saying we shouldn't speak to everyone affected, simply because one group suffers more for it.

First off I agree the vaccination scheme proposed by voxwas stupid.  I also think it's ridiculous to point to one dumb idea about vaccines and then imagine that this is what's happening with police violence.

The reason I characterized the police violence conversation that way, as "don't mention race", is because you're arguing against a strawman from the get go.  Where is there this race only argument in regard to police violence?  Anyone talking about racial disparities in policing already acknowledges a major issue with over policing, at least in my experience.  Additionally, this argument is bizarre because the reality is that the Democratic party has doubled down on policies that 1) increases the than decrease police violence (hiring more officers across the board, allowing COVID funding to be allocated to policing)and 2) because they e done this in other areas of criminal justice (see NYS bail reform carve outs).  If there was some push for a race only approach to criminal justice / police reform I could see your point.

Re: bolded:  no that's not what I'm saying, and maybe I'm just a shitty writer but I think that's a very strange conclusion to glean from what i wrote.  

I guess for me this just boils down to the bit about  BLM and "save the rainforests".  I've never met one rainforest preservationist who was saying "fuck all other kinds of forest".  And yet here we have that portrayal again.  If the Dems were actually pushing some kind of "police need to kill more white people to even this out" or even "police violence only affects black communities" I could see your point.  But no one is pushing for those policies.  

 

[Martell Spy]

Biden starts to throw some punches in the debt ceiling fight
The president took questions from the press and went to a GOP-held district Wednesday. His team is already eyeing more.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/10/biden-new-york-debt-ceiling-fight-00096309

Quote

 

VALHALLA, N. Y. — President Joe Biden took his debt ceiling appeal to the road on Wednesday, part of an effort to more aggressively utilize the bully pulpit as default inches closer.

Speaking just one day after an Oval Office meeting with congressional leadership led to little progress in striking a deal to ward off default as the deadline rapidly approaches, the White House’s choice of venue was deliberately chosen: a suburban GOP-held New York state district within commuting distance of Wall Street. The area also is home to a Republican lawmaker who narrowly captured a district last year that broke for Biden in 2020.

 

 

[Raja]

8 minutes ago, Larry of the Lake said:

I also think it's ridiculous to point to one dumb idea about vaccines and then imagine that this is what's happening with police violence.

The reason I characterized the police violence conversation that way, as "don't mention race", is because you're arguing against a strawman from the get go.

100% agree.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

1 minute ago, Larry of the Lake said:

The reason I characterized the police violence conversation that way, as "don't mention race", is because you're arguing against a strawman from the get go.  Where is there this race only argument in regard to police violence? 

I literally talked about the DNC 2020 argument as a specific example. And it's not an outlier; police violence these days is almost always exclusively presented as a racial justice issue on the left.

Obviously for local black communities affected by this shit, that approach makes perfect sense. My critique is not about that level. But when we get to the level of national politics, there should be a broader, more coalitional approach to the issue.

My point was that Biden handled the COVID disparity issue very deftly, while Vox didn't. Yet he didn't handle the police violence issue with the same skill. Such an approach misrepresents what the data actually say with respect to the reality of people's lives on the ground, it dismisses the pain of people who don't fit the pattern, and it doesn't make for the most effective political framing to unite around. 

8 minutes ago, Larry of the Lake said:

Re: bolded:  no that's not what I'm saying, and maybe I'm just a shitty writer but I think that's a very strange conclusion to glean from what i wrote.  

My guess with regard to your intention was really what I wrote before that sentence. That your comment was part of your "don't say race" takedown. But I'm not a mind reader, so that's why I laid out the other possible interpretation. And I did say "Hopefully."

[Phylum of Alexandria]

1 hour ago, Larry of the Lake said:

Not all journalism needs to be about being electorally persuasive.  Sure, if you're the Democratic Party, best bet is probably to target  police violence across the board.  I think that's the best approach for most issues- universal programs.  

I just wanted to actively acknowledge you conceding a point I had been trying to get at. Whether it's just the disjointed nature of comment threads or the heat of the discussion, I feel like we don't highlight or acknowledge points of agreement nearly enough.

To be honest, I'm not even really sure where it is we disagree. Maybe the perceived extent of how the issue is framed? I lean closer to an exclusively racial framing (at least since the advent of social media) at all or most levels of discourse on the left. I'm not saying that people making such arguments wouldn't concede that other people are affected if it were broached, but how arguments are framed really matter, particularly if you're trying to shed light on a growing problem that the larger public might not be immediately aware about from personal experience, and especially when you're making state or national policies.

I'm also not saying that Joe Biden is constantly making arguments like these. As I stated originally, the reason he did so in the 2020 DNC event was to placate a vocal part of his constituency, the activists who frame the matter as exclusively racial. Whatever the policies may be, most Democratic politicians need to fall in line with the social justice frameworks that are everywhere else on the left--at least in terms of rhetoric.

So, in your opinion, where does our disagreement on this matter lie? 

 

 

[Larry of the Lawn]

11 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

I just wanted to actively acknowledge you conceding a point I had been trying to get at. Whether it's just the disjointed nature of comment threads or the heat of the discussion, I feel like we don't highlight or acknowledge points of agreement nearly enough.

To be honest, I'm not even really sure where it is we disagree. Maybe the perceived extent of how the issue is framed? I lean closer to an exclusively racial framing (at least since the advent of social media) at all or most levels of discourse on the left. I'm not saying that people making such arguments wouldn't concede that other people are affected if it were broached, but how arguments are framed really matter, particularly if you're trying to shed light on a growing problem that the larger public might not be immediately aware about from personal experience, and especially when you're making state or national policies.

I'm also not saying that Joe Biden is constantly making arguments like these. As I stated originally, the reason he did so in the 2020 DNC event was to placate a vocal part of his constituency, the activists who frame the matter as exclusively racial. Whatever the policies may be, most Democratic politicians need to fall in line with the social justice frameworks that are everywhere else on the left--at least in terms of rhetoric.

So, in your opinion, where does our disagreement on this matter lie? 

 

 

My issue is your saying the race first approach to police violence is where Dems went wrong, I'm saying thats not reality.  In reality their approach, in 2020 and today, is Blue Lives Matter. 

Edit for clarity: they aren't doing anything to curb police violence, are actively doing things that increase it, and certainly aren't addressing the racial disparity .

Edited May 11, 2023 by Larry of the Lake

[Phylum of Alexandria]

1 minute ago, Larry of the Lake said:

My issue is your saying the race first approach to police violence is where Dems went wrong, I'm saying thats not reality.  In reality their approach, in 2020 and today, is Blue Lives Matter. 

Edit for clarity: they aren't doing anything to curb police violence, are actively doing things that increase it, and certainly aren't addressing the racial disparity .

Ah, so the disconnect seems to be you are focusing on policies (and maybe some messaging as well, for certain politicians), while I am focusing on making and framing arguments before we even get into policies.

As far as messaging goes, I hate to say it, but the Blue Lives Matter stuff probably works better at getting votes that would otherwise go to Republicans. Regardless, the specific issue of police militarization doesn't seem to get enough oxygen from anyone, at least from what I've witnessed.

As far as policies go, I agree, just putting more money into police forces without increased regulation will just compound the problem. 

[TrackerNeil]

5 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

As far as messaging goes, I hate to say it, but the Blue Lives Matter stuff probably works better at getting votes that would otherwise go to Republicans. Regardless, the specific issue of police militarization doesn't seem to get enough oxygen from anyone, at least from what I've witnessed.

I've heard it said that Democrats talk about facts, while Republicans tell stories, and I think there's a lot of truth to that. Since human beings love a narrative, a story is a hell of a way to get them to listen...and to agree.