The not so Great Racism in Canada Thread

[lio45]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

I'll never find it again, unfortunately, but some missus tweeted, paraphrased:

Instead of thinking, "It's a tragedy that black people have been needlessly killed by the police, but we can't allow this rioting to continue."

Try saying, "It's a tragedy that people are rioting, but we can't allow police to keep needlessly killing black people."

Love that.

Saw that and found it stupid. The "way to stop allowing police to keep needlessly killing black people" is to let blacks loot a Target in downtown Chicago in impunity?

Police kill all kinds of people by accident (still a ridiculously tiny fraction of their interventions, but nothing's perfect). Blacks are more targeted for the exact same reason men are more targeted and young people are more targeted - they commit more crime.

I'm all for having a conversation about police brutality, but riots and looting are going to sway me to the side of the argument that says that police likely needs to continue to be somewhat brutal if that's indeed the sort of people they have to deal with day in and day out, not the other way around.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by JHikka

Always get a kick out of people who are seemingly more concerned about the damage to private property than the killing of other people by police forces.

Broken window (covered by insurance) >> Human life

In every era where that's some kind of movement, you always have the fence sitters insisting the injustice the oppressed group is facing is not the real issue. No different this time.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by lio45

Saw that and found it stupid. The "way to stop allowing police to keep needlessly killing black people" is to let blacks loot a Target in downtown Chicago in impunity?

Who said anything about letting them loot?

Originally Posted by lio45

Police kill all kinds of people by accident (still a ridiculously tiny fraction of their interventions, but nothing's perfect). Blacks are more targeted for the exact same reason men are more targeted and young people are more targeted - they commit more crime.

Not this bullshit again. We have statistics on blacks getting pulled over more often and have cars searched despites having low rates of narcotics use than whites. Or blacks getting harsher sentences for the exact same crime.

Originally Posted by lio45

I'm all for having a conversation about police brutality, but riots and looting are going to sway me to the side of the argument that says that police likely needs to continue to be somewhat brutal if that's indeed the sort of people they have to deal with day in and day out, not the other way around.

Nobody is suggesting that riots sway you. What everybody hopes is that you don't use the riots as an excuse for inaction.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Is it the same though? Are Manitobans running around all year with Riel pride and waving his banners?

There are houses in Quebec flying the Patriots flag. I have a few on some of my regular paths (could take pictures eventually when I'm back home).

It's just an even more patriotic version of flying the Quebec flag.

But if you're an unilingual Anglophone going door to door to beg (in English) for money for a cause like "help finance the fight against the Quebec government on Bill 21", it does tell you you'd waste your time knocking on that one door. In that sense I guess it's a bit similar to how a black person going door to door to raise money for BLM would likely just skip the house with the Confederate flag.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Who said anything about letting them loot?



Not this bullshit again. We have statistics on blacks getting pulled over more often and have cars searched despites having low rates of narcotics use than whites. Or blacks getting harsher sentences for the exact same crime.




Nobody is suggesting that riots sway you. What everybody hopes is that you don't use the riots as an excuse for inaction.

And what do you suggest we do about the fact that we have statistics showing males getting pulled over much more often and the young getting pulled much more often?

Every time the cops pull over a 20-year-old black guy with gold chains in a brand new Escalade with oversized wheels to see what he's up to, then they MUST also find a 90 year old Asian lady driving at half the speed limit in a beige Camry and "stop and frisk" her so that they can maintain balanced quotas? Because that sounds like what you're saying.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by Acajack

That's from a year ago, though.

So what you're saying is, nothing has changed?

[esquire]

Originally Posted by JHikka

Always get a kick out of people who are seemingly more concerned about the damage to private property than the killing of other people by police forces.

It does not strike me as a difficult mental feat to be concerned about both things at the same time. If I lived in one of the Minneapolis neighbourhoods affected by riots, I'd probably be of the view that there could be other ways of accomplishing the desired goals than by laying waste to the area where my neighbours and I live and work.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by lio45

And what do you suggest we do about the fact that we have statistics showing males getting pulled over much more often and the young getting pulled much more often?

Every time the cops pull over a 20-year-old black guy with gold chains in a brand new Escalade with oversized wheels to see what he's up to, then they MUST also find a 90 year old Asian lady driving at half the speed limit in a beige Camry and "stop and frisk" her so that they can maintain balanced quotas? Because that sounds like what you're saying.

Thanks for providing a great example of implicit bias. If you're pulling over a 20-year black kid just because of how he looks, with no real probable cause, that is a racial problem.

We put on dashcams and they vastly improved police behaviour in a lot of these cases. Bodycams too. We can now see how often a given officer simply pulls over blacks for a random search. Perhaps we need to start drilling down on individual stats as part of performance reviews.

Some of this goes back to what I said: overpolicing. Less an issue in Canada than the US. But we can certainly see through stats if the stops are disproportionate because cops see a target rich environment in minority neighbourhoods, or because they are genuinely concerned about stopping crime. Personally, I think we need to start looking at force wide bonuses or penalties with targets for some of this stuff. If statistics are wildly disproportionate, may be money can fix the problem.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Thanks for providing a great example of implicit bias. If you're pulling over a 20-year black kid just because of how he looks, with no real probable cause, that is a racial problem.

Actually, it's mostly a sexism problem combined with an agism problem, with a touch of racism sprinkled on.

A 20-year-old muscular white guy with tattoos and gold chains driving a brand new Escalade with oversized gold wheels would be 10000x more likely to be pulled over for random questioning ("whose vehicle is this...?") than an elderly black woman driving at half the speed limit in an old Buick.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by lio45

And what do you suggest we do about the fact that we have statistics showing males getting pulled over much more often and the young getting pulled much more often?

Every time the cops pull over a 20-year-old black guy with gold chains in a brand new Escalade with oversized wheels to see what he's up to, then they MUST also find a 90 year old Asian lady driving at half the speed limit in a beige Camry and "stop and frisk" her so that they can maintain balanced quotas? Because that sounds like what you're saying.

Young males are more likely to be pulled over because they're more likely to be speeding or violating other traffic rules.

Young black males are not particularly more likely to be violating the road rules than a young male of another race, yet are much more likely to be pulled over. Wearing gold chains and driving an Escalade is not in and of itself a violation of anything, nor is it probable cause to be stopped on suspicion of committing another crime.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Not this bullshit again. We have statistics on blacks getting pulled over more often and have cars searched despites having low rates of narcotics use than whites. Or blacks getting harsher sentences for the exact same crime.

I wonder how many people have looked really deeply at the data with an open mind instead of just focusing on anecdotes or superficial statistics. I mostly see groupthink.

Most articles I read about this don't have compelling data one way or the other. For example, rates of police killings by race don't mean anything on their own, like lio pointed out. This doesn't prove there isn't bias but the argument is insufficient.

And if you truly have the interests of African Americans at heart it really matters to get the causal explanations right rather than merely pointing fingers.

Heather Mac Donald writes well on this subject and debunks a lot of claims of racial bias, e.g.:

https://www.city-journal.org/html/racial-profiling-myth-debunked-12244.html

(BTW she also publicly denounced the police who obviously should be punished for the George Floyd incident.)

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Young males are more likely to be pulled over because they're more likely to be speeding or violating other traffic rules.

Young black males are not particularly more likely to be violating the road rules than a young male of another race, yet are much more likely to be pulled over. Wearing gold chains and driving an Escalade is not in and of itself a violation of anything, nor is it probable cause to be stopped on suspicion of committing another crime.

You're right, but it's interesting that you would bring statistics into this.

Young black males may not be any more or even less into drugs than their young white male counterparts, but they are statistically WAY more likely to be involved in property crime and violent crime than young white males in (probably) every single metro and city in the United States.

Does that mean that racial profiling of them is OK? I am not saying that it is. Just putting that out there because it's where the 2+2=4 leads based on whay you said.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Young males are more likely to be pulled over because they're more likely to be speeding or violating other traffic rules.

Young black males are not particularly more likely to be violating the road rules than a young male of another race, yet are much more likely to be pulled over. Wearing gold chains and driving an Escalade is not in and of itself a violation of anything, nor is it probable cause to be stopped on suspicion of committing another crime.

How do you know this? Or that, for example, black males aren't just more inclined to speed and are therefore likely to be pulled over due to the speed of their vehicle and not their skin colour? That actually was the case in the NJ Turnpike data.

If you want to be open-minded and fair about police bias you've got to at least admit that there could be correlations by race that could lead to spurious accusations of bias. I will admit it's a tough issue to deal with. Nobody wants to go up in front of the media and argue about why people of one race should be arrested a lot more than people of another (e.g. police arresting whites more than Asians, which rarely gets brought up and I would not automatically is a sign that police are friendlier to Asians than white people).

[lio45]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Young males are more likely to be pulled over because they're more likely to be speeding or violating other traffic rules.

Young black males are not particularly more likely to be violating the road rules than a young male of another race, yet are much more likely to be pulled over.

I think data actually would say that young black males are more likely to commit crimes than young males of other races. (And as you are no doubt aware, the entire concept of profiling is founded on the idea of using such data and putting it to work in order to make the best possible use of finite resources.)

Wearing gold chains and driving an Escalade is not in and of itself a violation of anything, nor is it probable cause to be stopped on suspicion of committing another crime.

Sure, and similarly, being young, or male, or muscular/fit, or dressed like a thug, or in a dark alley at night, are not strictly speaking violations of anything, yet they're still obvious "risk factors" when compared to being old, or female, or in a wheelchair, or in broad daylight, and the police can't be expected to always ignore all of those if we want them to do their work.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

So what you're saying is, nothing has changed?

Honestly? Probably not very much.

Though my guess is that since the murder of George Floyd started getting significant media attention that Durham region cop would probably have thought twice about putting his knee on the area between that kid's upper back and his head.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Honestly? Probably not very much.

Though my guess is that since the murder of George Floyd started getting significant media attention that Durham region cop would probably have thought twice about putting his knee on the area between that kid's upper back and his head.

You mean neck right? You can say neck.

So these protests are helping? Even with the rioting?

[someone123]

Originally Posted by lio45

Sure, and similarly, being young, or male, or muscular/fit, or dressed like a thug, or in a dark alley at night, are not strictly speaking violations of anything, yet they're still obvious "risk factors" when compared to being old, or female, or in a wheelchair, or in broad daylight, and the police can't be expected to always ignore all of those if we want them to do their work.

But at the same time, profiling can be deeply unfair and you can be harassed a lot for no reason if you just happen to fall in the wrong group. It might be fairer to ban reliance on some of these factors for profiling in the name of fairness even if they are real. There's an attempt to do this in a bunch of areas of Canadian law.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by JHikka

These aren't race riots. Don't even know where to start with the rest of your post unfortunately.


Always get a kick out of people who are seemingly more concerned about the damage to private property than the killing of other people by police forces.

That's a false equivalency.

It stopped being about property crime vs. lives 24-48 hours after all of this began, when the body count of innocent victims of the civil unrest quickly exceeded the body count (1) of the incident people are (rightly) protesting.

Just like the Rodney King riots which claimed over 60 lives and led to 2500 people being injured.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

You mean neck right? You can say neck.

I couldn't recall if it was the upper back or the neck, and didn't want to watch the video again.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by someone123

But at the same time, profiling can be deeply unfair and you can be harassed a lot for no reason if you just happen to fall in the wrong group. It might be fairer to ban reliance on some of these factors for profiling in the name of fairness even if they are real. There's an attempt to do this in a bunch of areas of Canadian law.

Exactly. How did police ever do their jobs when everybody was white?

They should focus on behavior, not looks. There's also a deep history of police focusing on the poor and protecting the rich. When you call for help, guess who's area they show up in first?

Don't even get me started on the crimes of the rich, white or otherwise.