Damn it, Baltimore

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Re: Damn it, Baltimore

Postby Crimson847 » Thu Apr 30, 2015 11:39 am

I want you to know that I only clicked that link because I respect you, ShuaiGuy. DailyKos isn't quite as grating to read as Drudge Report or RedState, but it's up there.

In any case, the "dominant white response" is always going to be fairly simplistic and tone-deaf, much like the dominant black response, Asian response, Hispanic response, and so forth. As a rule, 80-90% of people have deeply stupid views about any given political issue, including police militarization. Furthermore, unless you conduct extensive in-person interviews of a statistically relevant sample of the group in question, the picture you're getting is filtered through media and the Internet. Both mediums encourage bullshit to float readily to the top.

Mostly, though, that article made me wish for a 21st century Dr. King. Not a terribly productive impulse, but it's really all I've got at the moment.
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Re: Damn it, Baltimore

Postby gisambards » Thu Apr 30, 2015 11:42 am

ShuaiGuy wrote:http://m.dailykos.com/story/2015/04/28/1380944/-The-Dominant-White-Response-to-Baltimore-Shows-Why-Black-Residents-are-Justified-in-their-Anger

Tum tee tum


There are elements of that article that are frankly ridiculous. Poverty and lack of education are obviously issues that need dealing with. I support that, and I support protests in favour of that. But I am not racist and not ignorant simply because I refuse to support the violence in Baltimore - when you start harming innocents, I will not support you.

Also:
the article wrote:communities torn apart by the War on Drugs

That is bullshit, and police-blaming. Those communities are torn apart in part by the poverty and lack of education politicians should be dealing with, but in large part by the guys dealing those drugs.
If this guy is saying it's the police response to drug dealers that's causing societies ills more than the drug dealers themselves, then I think that shows a bias against police that means anything he writes on the subject is too unreliable.
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Re: Damn it, Baltimore

Postby DamianaRaven » Thu Apr 30, 2015 11:51 am

ShuaiGuy wrote:Tum tee tum


This is an incredibly powerful piece of journalism. I wish I'd noped on the comments, but otherwise I'm very glad I read it and would recommend that others do so as well. Thank you for sharing.
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Re: Damn it, Baltimore

Postby Learned Nand » Thu Apr 30, 2015 11:54 am

I agree that the DailyKOS article was identity politics nonsense, but the bit about communities being torn apart by the War on Drugs is not entirely unreasonable. The issue isn't primarily police response to drug dealers, but government response to drug use, which is to deprive you of your property and throw you in prison. This, if anything, makes the problem worse: now that you have no possibility of employment and have spent the last several years of your life with criminals, are you expected to stop using drugs? American drug policy has been absolutely terrible, and has lead us to have the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world. We have more prisoners than China, which has 4 times as many people and jails people for political dissidence.

I really cannot impress upon you how terrible American drug policy is. While Reagan was calling for harsher sentencing for drug offenses, he was allowing Nicaraguan drug cartels to sell crack in America so that they could fund their fight against the communists. There's civil forfeiture, in which the police take any money they want from you and you have to prove you didn't do anything wrong to get it back. You can be kicked out of government housing if you're so much as accused of drug use, even if you're never actually charged with it. It's a mess.
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Re: Damn it, Baltimore

Postby gisambards » Thu Apr 30, 2015 12:11 pm

aviel wrote:I agree that the DailyKOS article was identity politics nonsense, but the bit about communities being torn apart by the War on Drugs is not entirely unreasonable. The issue isn't primarily police response to drug dealers, but government response to drug use, which is to deprive you of your property and throw you in prison. This, if anything, makes the problem worse: now that you have no possibility of employment and have spent the last several years of your life with criminals, are you expected to stop using drugs? American drug policy has been absolutely terrible, and has lead us to have the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world. We have more prisoners than China, which has 4 times as many people and jails people for political dissidence.


I agree - the US government has handled anti-drugs policy poorly. But as someone who has lived in areas with these kinds of issues (albeit without the racial element) I can't abide these out-of-touch liberals that imply the drug dealers are totally blameless, and it's all the authorities' fault. The authorities are at fault, certainly, but it should not be forgotten that most hard drug dealers are not good guys failed by the system, but often genuinely nasty people.
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Re: Damn it, Baltimore

Postby Learned Nand » Thu Apr 30, 2015 12:12 pm

gisambards wrote:I can't abide these out-of-touch liberals that imply the drug dealers are totally blameless, and it's all the authorities' fault.

I don't think anybody has said this.
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Re: Damn it, Baltimore

Postby Crimson847 » Thu Apr 30, 2015 10:05 pm

gisambards wrote:There are elements of that article that are frankly ridiculous. Poverty and lack of education are obviously issues that need dealing with. I support that, and I support protests in favour of that. But I am not racist and not ignorant simply because I refuse to support the violence in Baltimore - when you start harming innocents, I will not support you.


I tend to agree with the idea that whites who excuse such actions because racism are displaying paternalism, not compassion. Compassion involves accepting a person as an equal, which includes both understanding their circumstances AND believing on a deep level in that person's potential as a human being. Arguing that black people can't be expected to behave morally because they've been treated immorally is the sort of logic we generally apply to children, not adults that we respect.

That is bullshit, and police-blaming. Those communities are torn apart in part by the poverty and lack of education politicians should be dealing with, but in large part by the guys dealing those drugs.
If this guy is saying it's the police response to drug dealers that's causing societies ills more than the drug dealers themselves, then I think that shows a bias against police that means anything he writes on the subject is too unreliable.


I view that as politician-blaming moreso than police-blaming. The police don't make the laws. They have some discretion when it comes to enforcement, but I imagine there would be substantial fallout if a given police department decided to, say, stop enforcing drug prohibition altogether.

As to the question of whether drug dealers or cops cause more damage, that doesn't necessarily matter. The usual argument is that the damage done by BOTH sides is largely due to drug policy. Without prohibition, there's no more DEA and no more drug raids, but there's also quite a bit less profit to be made by street gangs and dealers. Both sides derive their funding and their power from the War on Drugs.
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Re: Damn it, Baltimore

Postby Absentia » Thu Apr 30, 2015 10:14 pm

gisambards wrote:I agree - the US government has handled anti-drugs policy poorly. But as someone who has lived in areas with these kinds of issues (albeit without the racial element) I can't abide these out-of-touch liberals that imply the drug dealers are totally blameless, and it's all the authorities' fault. The authorities are at fault, certainly, but it should not be forgotten that most hard drug dealers are not good guys failed by the system, but often genuinely nasty people.


Drug dealers are nasty people in large part because the drug trade is criminalized, not the other way around. The black market has that effect on people. They have to look out for themselves because there's no legal authority to protect them, and the lack of oversight means nobody has an incentive to play fair. On top of that, the need to avoid the authorities encourages them to do all kinds of nasty stuff: bribery, intimidation, even murder.

In short, if selling crack were like selling hamburgers the free market would push the shadiest guys out because nobody would want to deal with them.
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Re: Damn it, Baltimore

Postby gisambards » Thu Apr 30, 2015 10:34 pm

I apologise for the overly blunt nature of my last couple of posts - having researched it a bit more, I can see how there are astonishingly huge issues with US drug policy that could be doing huge amounts of damage to poorer parts of the country. Chalk that up to me seeing it in British terms - our drug policy has the occasional flaw, but is for the most part positive and it would be ridiculous to accuse it of societal damage - I definitely acknowledge that that's not so much the case in the US.

However, I still stand by my assertion that that DailyKos article is drivel.

Absentia wrote:Drug dealers are nasty people in large part because the drug trade is criminalized, not the other way around. The black market has that effect on people. They have to look out for themselves because there's no legal authority to protect them, and the lack of oversight means nobody has an incentive to play fair. On top of that, the need to avoid the authorities encourages them to do all kinds of nasty stuff: bribery, intimidation, even murder.

In short, if selling crack were like selling hamburgers the free market would push the shadiest guys out because nobody would want to deal with them.


Do you know what most drugs do to people? Do you think the kind of person willing to sell heroin to people is a bad person because heroin is illegal, or because they're the kind of person willing to sell that poison to people?
While I acknowledge that a lot of drugs pushers are simply disaffected youths who have been failed by the system, born into poverty and with no other immediate options, most of these don't go into it as a full-time job - they're usually moral enough to not get too heavily involved (and that doesn't necessarily mean they're saints, it just means they've got at the very least some semblance of compassion). The ones who actively make a career out of selling drugs - they're bad people. They just are. They're selling addictive, dangerous chemicals to people who they know will keep buying them, and will ultimately die because of it. They're prioritising their finances over the lives of other people. It's not being poor that does that. It's being a bad person.
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Re: Damn it, Baltimore

Postby OrangeEyebrows » Thu Apr 30, 2015 11:03 pm

Got to go with Gis on this one. Heroin and crack are a nightmare. There isn't really a meth culture in the UK (or wasn't, back in the day) but I'd put it in the same bracket. These people aren't selling a little pot to students to go along with the pizza. They're working to make people poison themselves to death.
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Re: Damn it, Baltimore

Postby DamianaRaven » Fri May 01, 2015 12:00 am

Crimson847 wrote:As to the question of whether drug dealers or cops cause more damage, that doesn't necessarily matter.


Something tells me you don't live anywhere near a crack house. If you did, I suspect it would matter quite a bit. I'm still feeling a bit raw about this, with opinions that will NOT be popular, so I'm gonna think on this for a while before posting at any length. In the meantime, should we really be trying to make philosophical decisions about what does/doesn't or should/shouldn't matter about this situation? I have to question whether or not that's altogether respectful toward the citizens of Baltimore and black people as a race and culture. Do we even have any black members or Baltimore residents in this community? If so, I'd very much like to hear their thoughts and opinions on this situation.
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Re: Damn it, Baltimore

Postby OrangeEyebrows » Fri May 01, 2015 12:09 am

Look, crack dealers are shitheads. They ruin lives. They deserve to be arrested and locked up. I speak from experience here.

They don't deserve to be killed.

That's really all we need to agree on. Certain types of criminals suck. They should be dealt with by law enforcement. Said dealing-with should involve the minimum of force and violence possible. End of.
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Re: Damn it, Baltimore

Postby Tesseracts » Fri May 01, 2015 12:17 am

I only know of one black member who is currently active, and they're not somebody who usually gets into politics.

As for drug dealing, I think there is a correlation between being a criminal and actually being a bad person. It takes a certain kind of person to get involved with the dregs of society. However, I don't believe someone is bad only because they sell drugs. I hold the rather unpopular opinion that a drug like heroin can be legalized without destroying society, with tight regulations. I understand that heroin hurts people, but so does a lot of legal trade. Alcohol most certainly hurts people. If most people who sell drugs are immoral people, I believe that has more to do with the status of that activity as highly illegal than it has to do with the substance itself.
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Re: Damn it, Baltimore

Postby Absentia » Fri May 01, 2015 12:24 am

gisambards wrote:Do you know what most drugs do to people? Do you think the kind of person willing to sell heroin to people is a bad person because heroin is illegal, or because they're the kind of person willing to sell that poison to people?


I'm pretty clear on what drugs do to people, yes. But we're not talking about the difference between "people doing heroin" and "people not doing heroin". People who want to do heroin can do it whether it's legal or not. The choice is between "people doing heroin" and "spending a lot of money to throw people in jail, creating a culture of crime and distrust in poor communities, and people still doing heroin anyway".

You can make moral judgments about "what kind of person" sells drugs all you like, but you can't argue with economics: as long as there's a demand, there's going to be a supply, and right now the suppliers are pernicious and violent for reasons directly correlated to how hard we're working to throw them in prison.
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Re: Damn it, Baltimore

Postby MisterKrinkle » Fri May 01, 2015 12:51 am

Tesseracts wrote:I think there is a correlation between being a criminal and actually being a bad person. It takes a certain kind of person to get involved with the dregs of society.

Hmm? Did somebody call for me?

Now I have quite a bit of personal experience with the dregs I'll throw in my two cents. In my experience a lot of people who do drugs have little regard for themselves, and this branches out into their relationships with other people. Combine that with knowing the right person and life long poverty and you have a recipe for dealing. You take an eighteen year old who's always been poor and ask him if he wants to make 600$ a day slinging drugs he'll take that opportunity. When some people see a dealer rolling around in a car with new clothes & other stereotypical shit they don't see somebody taking advantage of others, they see somebody who's doing good. Is it their fault for not seeing any other options?

With that said, I pretty much agree with Orange on treatment of dealers. I've been friends/acquaintances with people who have sold a variety of drugs, and while they might not have been the greatest of people, they were still people who didn't deserve to be killed. And quite a few of them weren't indiscriminately violent. I think Orange's quote is fairly applicable here. Just trying to throw in a smidgen of empathy.
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