zlacker

>>mwseib+(OP)
"I’ve heard some suggest that the recurrent problem of racial bias in our criminal justice system proves that only protests and direct action can bring about change, and that voting and participation in electoral politics is a waste of time. I couldn’t disagree more. The point of protest is to raise public awareness... But eventually, aspirations have to be translated into specific laws and institutional practices — and in a democracy, that only happens when we elect government officials who are responsive to our demands."

Laws are just a consequence of an actual cultural change, and can only succeed (and not precede) the conversion of hearts and minds. Voting and democracy should not become a device to placate the dissatisfied masses into silence, make them lineup for ballot, to choose a lesser evil who, in most likelihood, will turn out to be a egotistical power-seeker. We shouldn't conflate voting with "will of the people."

>>kajumi+5o
> Voting and democracy should not become a device to placate the dissatisfied masses into silence, make them lineup for ballot, to choose a lesser evil who, in most likelihood, will turn out to be a egotistical power-seeker.

What else should you expect when people are limited to only two political parties? It could be worse with only one political party.

>>austin+ru
I think the real problem is that those two political parties represent factions of the population with incompatible values.

We don't need more political parties, we need solutions to manage the incompatibility.

>>Press2+Yx
There was nothing incompatible about our values regarding what we saw in that video. The idea that there was a political divide about this incident is a myth. Even the openly racist people I know were saying it was fucked up.

>>Consul+ly
Yeah, pretty much everyone was on the same page about that. What was incredibly and predictably divisive is burning down cities as a response to it, and naturally the American media have been spending a lot of effort fanning those flames.

>>makomk+oa1
The worst part is not going to be the brutality that is coming when police/military put a stop to this. That will be horrific, but temporary.

Six months from now, is the average white American small business owner going to be more or less likely to hire a black person? That's the fucked up shit that is going to last another decade. That's the stuff that maintains generational poverty. And there's a thousand other subtle, unspoken things like that which are going to broaden our divide.

>>Consul+Sd1
As far as I can tell, the people burning everything down aren't even particularly likely to be black, efforts to spin this as some kind of necessary fight back against racism by people who've been suffering not withstanding. The folks cheering it on and advocating for this to their audiences definitely aren't - they're largely white, middle-class techies and journos and other well-off educated folks who aren't worried about their own communities burning.

The real pain - at least on the inter-generational poverty and deprivation side - is that in six months, the average American small business isn't going to exist in heavily-black neighbourhoods, and that probably won't change much in six years, and other businesses are probably going to be pretty thin on the ground there too. Apparently some places never recovered what they lost in the sixties race riots.

Though I expect that the consequences of the police actions to stop this will also be anything but temporary. It seems to take years of careful work to rebuild trust between police and the community they serve, and to restructure policing to be less hostile and dangerous.

>>makomk+6h1
I agree with you that it seems the people sparking the looting/fires/etc seem to be mostly white. I just don't think that will matter in the minds of the average person who barely watches the news. To the extent that they are watching anything, they will see tons of videos of black people committing crimes on social media.

>>Consul+fi1
What makes you believe that the looters are mostly white? I mean, the people you are talking against, they have all the video evidence they need of black people and others looting and causing destruction that they need. What do you have?

I'd really like to see some. I've been having some cognitive dissonance lately. Some portions of the media are telling me that the looters are white supremacists, but unless there are substantial amount of black/brown white supremacists in this country, the video evidence says otherwise...