The not so Great Racism in Canada Thread

[dleung]

Originally Posted by lio45

So you're able to judge the guy by the contents of his character/his writing, rather than by the color of his skin? Wow. Impressive. If only we had more Pavlovs and less dleungs, the world would be a better place

I'm not the one telling blacks to listen to some conservative just because said conservative is black

"you're getting brutalized by police in your own home because some people from your race don't have a father figure" lol

[savevp]

That last quote is a mischaracterisation of what lio has said and, frankly, I don't see a post anywhere that has directly conflated police brutality with absentee parentism as you've suggested.

A Google News search shows the usual left-leaning papers denying the correlation of this issue with impacts on crime, and right leaning newspapers doing the opposite. But the fact is, absentee fatherhood self-replicates in disparate global Black communities with different backgrounds, and it happens more often than in other racialised, impoverished communities. It's a problem in Kingston, Jamaica just as in London, Toronto, or Atlanta. — hell, over half (!!!!!) of Black children lived in single parent families in 2004 in America.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSN0419185720070614

If you don't think this is a major detriment to the social development of a young person, you're either disingenuous or an idiot. This isn't blaming Black people or deflecting blame away from police, it's an attempt to identify a cause so that society can work toward solutions.

Police brutality against Black people exists in the world, that's not plausibly deniable. But even the most woke social justice warriors, if they take their heads out of the sand, should be able to agree that there can be multiple causes for increased Black-police interaction. Racism is there - it exists, but so does a self-perpetuating environment in global Black communities where young men are frequently deprived of opportunities for proper socialisation. That's not racist, it's a fact. Hopefully, discourse will evolve to accept facts and try to solve problems using them.

[dleung]

This is the Racism thread, not the "everything else that can be blamed for black outcomes" thread.

Do you tell Mothers Against Drunk Driving that they should refocus their advocacy to seatbelts, speed limits, texting, etc?


"you're getting brutalized by police in your own home because some people from your race don't have a father figure"

Also

"said fathers are all in prison because racism, but also because THEY don't have father figures!" lol

[savevp]

I should think an attempt to identify a cause of pervasive inequality amongst racialised groups would be under the purview of a thread about racism.

Certainly moreso than inventing quotes out of thin air and then presenting them as though someone has made those insinuations in the thread.

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by Hali87

It is relative though. Some cultures/places tend to value punctuality more than others. Even within Canada, my experience is that punctuality is highly valued in Ottawa and much of Southern Ontario, somewhat less so in Vancouver or Halifax (even though one of our city's most prominent symbols is a huge clock, and one of our biggest parks is named after the guy who invented time zones)... and then even less valued in Victoria, Nelson, and Charlottetown. Which is not to say that people in Victoria don't value punctuality at all, just that they value it less than people do in most other Canadian cities.

And in many cultures, punctuality is valued less on average than it is in Canada on average. Italy, Jamaica, Belgium, Mexico - actually a lot of Catholic-dominated countries (although Jamaica itself is not very Catholic) are less obsessed with punctuality than the Canadian average.

And it's not that people simply don't value punctuality in those places, it's that relative to punctuality, they value other things more, that we tend to value less.

For example if someone has 2 meetings scheduled and the first one is clearly going to go over time, the natural inclination for many of us would be to cut the first meeting short, even if it's yielded no useful conclusion, in order to not be (too) late for the second meeting. Whereas in many other cultures they would make sure the first meeting came to a successful conclusion, show up to the second meeting markedly late, casually apologize that the last meeting took longer than expected, and that would be totally acceptable and normal to their colleague because that is simply what people are used to

And yes, some European countries are like that, and some relatively "white" parts of Canada are like that, but the infographic is referring specifically to White-American norms, not the norms of ethnically European people. There's an important distinction there.

It's sad to see the woke left lean into racist tropes like Colored People's Time.

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by dleung

This is the Racism thread, not the "everything else that can be blamed for black outcomes" thread.

*SOME* black outcomes. Very important to keep in mind that there are thriving black communities in North America, including for example the Nigerian American community and certain Caribbean American communities.

It is unfair to treat blacks as a monolith.

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by dleung

I'm not the one telling blacks to listen to some conservative just because said conservative is black

"you're getting brutalized by police in your own home because some people from your race don't have a father figure" lol

Ah, yes, when it's a Black conservative, it's just a conservative who happens to be Black.

But if it's a Black liberal, it's tHe LiVeD iN eXpErIeNcE of Blacks, the holy grail that cannot be criticized.

[vid]

https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/fatalpoliceencounters/

In a majority of these cases, it seems that the use of force was justified (the individual killed attacked the police officer—one guy rammed them with a car, another shot a cop with a crossbow) or unintentional (tasering a violent individual who succumbed due to high levels of drugs in their system). The real discussion that needs to be had is, why is is that black and indigenous people, and low income white men (and it's unfortunate that the graph doesn't break down gender and income levels, since that's important context as well), are so disproportionately likely to have violent interactions with police. There are causes that lead up to them being in those situations, and that's what needs to be discussed and solved.

[savevp]

^What I was trying to say in my earlier exchange with dleung, and why I repudiated his:

"you're getting brutalized by police in your own home because some people from your race don't have a father figure"

Also

"said fathers are all in prison because racism, but also because THEY don't have father figures!" lol

Unfortunately, a lot of the conversation right now gets shut down as racist. The suggestion that police aren't deliberately targeting (and murdering) Black people just because of their race is pretty much out of bounds in the Twitterverse-news media continuum.

There's been a sloughing off in this thread recently of blame being ascribed to hip hop culture and absentee parenthood. Hopefully the more reasonable, good-faith members of this thread will engage with this more thoroughly than has happened before. And of course the current protest movement has almost entirely ignored the potential solutions that could arise from this discussion, preferring 'defund the police,' which is at best a Band-Aid solution and more likely window dressing, or a convenient scapegoat.

[SteelTown]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/defund-the-police-painting-main-street-hamilton-1.5660701

[savevp]

^
Does anyone know if there have been other instances of protestors being charged for mischief after painting messages on the street?

I may well be wrong but I believe the only mischief charges so far have been for those who've painted over BLM/Defund the Police street painting (in the States). I know there was a large Defund the Police painted in Toronto but I don't recall anyone being charged. If that's the case, this news from Hamilton, and the pending charges against the three paint throwers in Toronto, could be a watershed moment in this movement. At least in terms of the iconoclastic aspect.

[vid]

Originally Posted by savevp

Unfortunately, a lot of the conversation right now gets shut down as racist. The suggestion that police aren't deliberately targeting (and murdering) Black people just because of their race is pretty much out of bounds in the Twitterverse-news media continuum.

Minorities are over-policed, and police do have training biases (particularly in the US, they've compared how quick officers were to draw in shooting trials with white or black dummies and they shoot faster at black ones). Simply defunding police would reduce the problem but not eliminate it, training is an important aspect too.

Originally Posted by savevp

There's been a sloughing off in this thread recently of blame being ascribed to hip hop culture and absentee parenthood.

You need to understand where that comes from though. Social housing, which a lot of minority people live in, typically only offered spaces to single mothers, so parents would actually lie that they were separated—like mine did—to get into the units, since they were newer and safer. (And then not maintained...)

My dad eventually did leave, after years of not being able to actually fully be there (since during the Harris years, housing would send people to check that my mom was a single mom with no wage earners living in the house). Once we moved out of social housing my dad found himself back in it, and as soon as they found out my brother had gotten a job, they increased the rent and demanded retroactive payments, and they couldn't afford it so they moved out. A lot of people in rent geared to income housing are dis-incentivized from finding employment due to the increase in rent it causes and the inability to find affordable housing (there is a gap between RGI housing and market housing) so they give up on finding work.

The affects minorities more, so it's definitely a factor, especially in terms of family breakup and gang participation. A new problem that feeds on the fact that those living in social housing often don't get jobs due to the negative impact it has on their ability to pay rent is home takeovers, where gangs provide those in social housing with anything they need in exchange for making the house a base of operations for criminal activity.

Originally Posted by savevp

Hopefully the more reasonable, good-faith members of this thread will engage with this more thoroughly than has happened before. And of course the current protest movement has almost entirely ignored the potential solutions that could arise from this discussion, preferring 'defund the police,' which is at best a Band-Aid solution and more likely window dressing, or a convenient scapegoat.

Defund the police is a really problematic slogan, but what it really means, is take money that is currently used to police people inappropriately, and redirect that to programs that actually do more to address the root causes of crime.

Instead of sending police to do wellness checks, send paramedics.

Instead of sending someone with combat training to talk down a suicidal person, send a therapist. Instead of charging drug users with a crime, send them to a rehabilitation facility.

Instead of charging kids with truancy and taking away their parents welfare when they don't go to school, figure out what is causing the child to avoid school and work with them and the parent to resolve or treat that issue. When kids are joining gangs, it's because they're looking for a community of people that they can be a part of, with a set of rules and a hierarchy.

Instead of policing those kids and throwing them in and out of jail, leaving them to distrust policing and reducing their employability, lets properly fund after school programming and poverty reduction initiatives that help strengthen families and connect neighbours to each other in a broader support network so that they have people to lean on and an established set of rules and hierarchy within their community that leads them to do good things instead of bad ones.

Instead of gangs selling crack to drug addicts, let's have a clinic give it to addicts for free and then as they come down, have someone trained in recovery talk to them about their options and set them on a better path in life.

But what we actually do, is when someone is behaving erratically or hasn't answered phone calls and texts for days: we send the police. Who respond to the erratic behaviour by shooting them. When someone wants to kill themselves, we send someone trained in killing people who are threatening harm. When a kid misses school, we punish them and charge their parents. When kids are joining gangs, we "treat them like an adult" and tell them that they have no place in our society. When people use drugs, we call them worthless and put them in jail when they should really be going to a hospital. All of these things make the problem worse, not better. We think we're doing the right thing, but we're actually doing the wrong thing. A lot. And then when the wrong thing doesn't work, we... spend more money so we can do the wrong thing even more? That's literally insane.

We rely on the police for a lot of things that police have no business being near. That's why they're killing so many people unnecessarily.

[Xelebes]

Originally Posted by vid

Defund the police is a really problematic slogan, but what it really means, is take money that is currently used to police people inappropriately, and redirect that to programs that actually do more to address the root causes of crime.

Instead of sending police to do wellness checks, send paramedics.

Instead of sending someone with combat training to talk down a suicidal person, send a therapist. Instead of charging drug users with a crime, send them to a rehabilitation facility.

Instead of charging kids with truancy and taking away their parents welfare when they don't go to school, figure out what is causing the child to avoid school and work with them and the parent to resolve or treat that issue. When kids are joining gangs, it's because they're looking for a community of people that they can be a part of, with a set of rules and a hierarchy.

Instead of policing those kids and throwing them in and out of jail, leaving them to distrust policing and reducing their employability, lets properly fund after school programming and poverty reduction initiatives that help strengthen families and connect neighbours to each other in a broader support network so that they have people to lean on and an established set of rules and hierarchy within their community that leads them to do good things instead of bad ones.

Instead of gangs selling crack to drug addicts, let's have a clinic give it to addicts for free and then as they come down, have someone trained in recovery talk to them about their options and set them on a better path in life.

But what we actually do, is when someone is behaving erratically or hasn't answered phone calls and texts for days: we send the police. Who respond to the erratic behaviour by shooting them. When someone wants to kill themselves, we send someone trained in killing people who are threatening harm. When a kid misses school, we punish them and charge their parents. When kids are joining gangs, we "treat them like an adult" and tell them that they have no place in our society. When people use drugs, we call them worthless and put them in jail when they should really be going to a hospital. All of these things make the problem worse, not better. We think we're doing the right thing, but we're actually doing the wrong thing. A lot. And then when the wrong thing doesn't work, we... spend more money so we can do the wrong thing even more? That's literally insane.

We rely on the police for a lot of things that police have no business being near. That's why they're killing so many people unnecessarily.

Another point of discussion is in that some places, defunding the police is not an option is some localities. The places with the most violent police in the United States are the most underfunded. That would suggest that there would need to be some uploading of responsibilities by governments to help address these problems. One of the most pernicious problems that the United States and Canada has done since the 1980s is the downloading of responsibilities onto lower levels of government.

[vid]

Originally Posted by Xelebes

Another point of discussion is in that some places, defunding the police is not an option is some localities. The places with the most violent police in the United States are the most underfunded. That would suggest that there would need to be some uploading of responsibilities by governments to help address these problems. One of the most pernicious problems that the United States and Canada has done since the 1980s is the downloading of responsibilities onto lower levels of government.

There is also the problem that, in my city at least, the police is actually a separate entity that sets its own budget and then essentially presents a bill to the municipalities it serves (currently two, but possibly three in the near future) who pay into that budget on a per-capita basis. It just isn't really an option for Thunder Bay to defund its police, because we don't control them anyway.

The paramedics are the same. Their budget and role in society is set by provincial law, the city just receives a bill. Gets to pick who is in charge of them in return for that, but still limited in how it can adjust that.

Social issues are decided by the Social Services Administration Board which is county level and, like the police and EMS, sets its own budget and then gives the municipalities in the district a bill.

Which laws the police are enforcing against people are federal (for crimes) or provincial (for property and traffic offenses) so the city can't touch that.

Healthcare is done at the district level like social housing; the Health Unit sets a budget and—you guessed it!—gives the city a bill.

The police board makes a budget, but is not elected. The SSA board makes a budget but it's not elected. The EMS board makes a budget, but is not elected. The DHU board makes a budget, but is not elected. Nearly half of the City of Thunder Bay's budget is simply sending money to agencies that operate in the gap between municipality and province, and it has virtually no say or control over that amount of money. The rest of the budget has to be built around their demands.

Gang prevention and neighbourhood capacity building are areas that the city can fund, but often turns into a conflict between them and the SSAB because it enters the realm of social work. The School Boards (which are elected and not funded by the city, but still levy a property tax) also get very touchy about this—they're often not very willing to participate in any programming that would use their schools after hours because of the "liability", and the summer break leaves many school facilities inaccessible to the community anyway. Teachers are overworked, so they almost never have interest in doing any support work outside that role, and newly graduated teachers might have time, but they lack the experience to handle kids with learning difficulties or require alternate teaching methods.

When it comes to drug use, that's another very top-down thing. A city can support and approve supervised injection sites all it wants, and our local health unit gives out over 600,000 clean needles every year (the vast majority of which go unused which is a separate discussion), it's helped reduce the spread of blood borne disease and infection in drug users but the issue still remains that they're using harmful substances with unknown additives, obtaining those drugs from criminal entities, and can't access drug treatment because it is virtually nonexistent here. The city can't solve any of those problems. And when it comes to whether or not drugs are legal, not even the province can do that.

So even the most well meaning, forward thinking cities are up against a wall here. We need change from the top, but regardless of political stripe, that's the level of government that's most resistant to change.

And all of these issues I mentioned are even worse on reserves, where in many cases, they can't even control their own budget. My work involves selling things to reserves, and usually, the billing goes to an accountant in the city and the cheques are signed not by the chief, but by an authorized trustee. A council can say it wants to invest in social services and education all it wants but if the government says no, that's the end of the discussion.

[savevp]

^Throughly informative and thought-provoking posts, thank you. Unfortunately that level of discourse is all but impossible in the context of Twitter, action news, and street protests that can degenerate into riots. It's a good thing this thread exists, if it can facilitate commentary like that.

Focusing the discussion into a deep examination of root causes, issues in policing, and actual systemic conditions suppressing minority groups is helpful and constructive. It's sad that the most visible and oft-discussed tactics, theoretically to advance this discussion, involve demanding statues are removed or vandalised.

I can appreciate that an angry, heterogenous crowd in the street won't generally engage in calm, rational discussion. But that's my beef with BLM; you don't see the leadership attempting to address these systemic issues like vid so candidly did just now. The leaders of BLM have an unprecedented platform and they're squandering it with iconoclasm, symbolic gestures, and bizarre attacks on the western nuclear family. I don't think any reasonable person on the Canadian right wing would be opposed if Toronto council were debating changes to public housing rather than new names for Dundas Street...

How much more constructive would discourse be if the leaders of the biggest voice at the table were focused on identifying problems and solutions rather than venting anger or provoking their dissenters?

[vid]

How much more constructive would discourse be if the leaders of the country's political machines listened to the people more. Literally nothing that I have ever said on this subject is something I haven't said to my city councillors, MPP and MP in the past.

And the really annoying thing is that they all get it, but they don't do anything with it. Changing the name of a street, tearing down a statue or renaming a sports team are all really noticeable things that get attention and make it look like you're doing something, but it doesn't scratch the surface of what needs to be done. And I support them all—they do need to happen—but they're not the most important things by a long shot. They're minor issues.

And instead of understanding this subtext to the protests, governments only look at the surface. Why was a statue defaced? It's not because we hate statues. It's because we hate the structurally racist policies created by the person the statue honours, and how they continue to play a foundational role in our society today. They *can't* directly target the abstract concepts that form the racist foundation of our society, so they attack the monuments to the racists that built that foundation.

That the government cannot understand this, and simply decides to make symbolic moves like renaming the street or taking down the statue instead of actually reforming the system into something that works better for everyone, is on the government, not the protestors. And once those symbols are gone, but the structural racism remains, it will actually become harder for protestors to target the minor, abstract things. We then get into the situation like you've seen in Portland and Denver, where the actual houses of power are themselves attacked. And the government can respond like the Communist Chinese and Nazis did, and just beat the people back to maintain the system, or it can respond like the Americans did in their revolution, and build something better with an understanding that you will always strive for a "more perfect" situation than the present.

The government can absolutely make significant changes to our culture contrary to the will of a majority of people. If the US could end anti-miscegenation laws despite popular approval of them at the time, our government can certainly shift the focus of community protection from reactive policing to proactive medicine.

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by vid

Defund the police is a really problematic slogan, but what it really means, is take money that is currently used to police people inappropriately, and redirect that to programs that actually do more to address the root causes of crime.

Instead of sending police to do wellness checks, send paramedics.

Instead of sending someone with combat training to talk down a suicidal person, send a therapist. Instead of charging drug users with a crime, send them to a rehabilitation facility.

Instead of charging kids with truancy and taking away their parents welfare when they don't go to school, figure out what is causing the child to avoid school and work with them and the parent to resolve or treat that issue. When kids are joining gangs, it's because they're looking for a community of people that they can be a part of, with a set of rules and a hierarchy.

Instead of policing those kids and throwing them in and out of jail, leaving them to distrust policing and reducing their employability, lets properly fund after school programming and poverty reduction initiatives that help strengthen families and connect neighbours to each other in a broader support network so that they have people to lean on and an established set of rules and hierarchy within their community that leads them to do good things instead of bad ones.

Instead of gangs selling crack to drug addicts, let's have a clinic give it to addicts for free and then as they come down, have someone trained in recovery talk to them about their options and set them on a better path in life.

But what we actually do, is when someone is behaving erratically or hasn't answered phone calls and texts for days: we send the police. Who respond to the erratic behaviour by shooting them. When someone wants to kill themselves, we send someone trained in killing people who are threatening harm. When a kid misses school, we punish them and charge their parents. When kids are joining gangs, we "treat them like an adult" and tell them that they have no place in our society. When people use drugs, we call them worthless and put them in jail when they should really be going to a hospital. All of these things make the problem worse, not better. We think we're doing the right thing, but we're actually doing the wrong thing. A lot. And then when the wrong thing doesn't work, we... spend more money so we can do the wrong thing even more? That's literally insane.

We rely on the police for a lot of things that police have no business being near. That's why they're killing so many people unnecessarily.

This is an excellent post vid, and even though I am a (progressive) conservative and you and I frequently have opposing views, there is very little in this post that I personally disagree with. These are generally sensible solutions that you are advocating.

This is a testament of how during a crisis, the best way to work towards a resolution is not to resort to name calling (greedy 1%ers, racist police), or to generally meaningless slogans (black lives matter) or to insinuations of impending anarchy and revolution, but to instead identify the real problems and find solutions that anyone, anyone will find reasonable and be prepared to work towards.

The other things that are happening (the tearing down of statues and the renaming of streets) are needlessly provocative, accomplish little and smack of mob rule. Some historical figure that you might consider an oppressor may actually have had some heroic qualities that deserved some form of veneration. My European ancestors (which aboriginals currently refer to derisively as "settlers") could be viewed in another light and in a different context as pioneers and explorers, intrepidly creating something new and exciting in a different part of the world. Which perspective is the correct perspective?? If we wholeheartedly accept the aboriginal "settler" narrative, then this means that pretty much all of North American history since the 1500s is nothing more than a shameful act of aggression and genocide, with the Europeans to blame and reparations to be made. By ignoring the native Americans however, the current history books have done the original aboriginal inhabitants of the continent a great disservice. The proper answer is that we do not tear down every statue and we do not rename every street but we do try to better incorporate the aboriginal narrative in our schools, improve understanding between our peoples, and that we find some way to redress past wrongs.

The middle way is the only way. Radicals and reactionaries on both sides will be displeased, but a rational solution can be found that will be acceptable to 90% of the people. The Indian Act needs to be abolished. Aboriginal autonomy should be enhanced, with individual reserves given the resources to look after their own needs. Aboriginal governance should lie somewhere between the municipal and provincial level (but closer to the municipal in terms of overall authority). Many reserves in the southern and more urban portions of the nation are already doing pretty well, operating hotels, casinos, shopping centres and development companies. Remote reserves are much more problematic. How do these reserves generate the income necessary to provide basic services to make them self sufficient? Expanding the size of the reserves likely wouldn't be enough. Should these reserves relocate to somewhere they have a better chance? Tough choices ahead.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by vid

Minorities are over-policed, and police do have training biases (particularly in the US, they've compared how quick officers were to draw in shooting trials with white or black dummies and they shoot faster at black ones). Simply defunding police would reduce the problem but not eliminate it, training is an important aspect too.



You need to understand where that comes from though. Social housing, which a lot of minority people live in, typically only offered spaces to single mothers, so parents would actually lie that they were separated—like mine did—to get into the units, since they were newer and safer. (And then not maintained...)

My dad eventually did leave, after years of not being able to actually fully be there (since during the Harris years, housing would send people to check that my mom was a single mom with no wage earners living in the house). Once we moved out of social housing my dad found himself back in it, and as soon as they found out my brother had gotten a job, they increased the rent and demanded retroactive payments, and they couldn't afford it so they moved out. A lot of people in rent geared to income housing are dis-incentivized from finding employment due to the increase in rent it causes and the inability to find affordable housing (there is a gap between RGI housing and market housing) so they give up on finding work.

The affects minorities more, so it's definitely a factor, especially in terms of family breakup and gang participation. A new problem that feeds on the fact that those living in social housing often don't get jobs due to the negative impact it has on their ability to pay rent is home takeovers, where gangs provide those in social housing with anything they need in exchange for making the house a base of operations for criminal activity.



Defund the police is a really problematic slogan, but what it really means, is take money that is currently used to police people inappropriately, and redirect that to programs that actually do more to address the root causes of crime.

Instead of sending police to do wellness checks, send paramedics.

Instead of sending someone with combat training to talk down a suicidal person, send a therapist. Instead of charging drug users with a crime, send them to a rehabilitation facility.

Instead of charging kids with truancy and taking away their parents welfare when they don't go to school, figure out what is causing the child to avoid school and work with them and the parent to resolve or treat that issue. When kids are joining gangs, it's because they're looking for a community of people that they can be a part of, with a set of rules and a hierarchy.

Instead of policing those kids and throwing them in and out of jail, leaving them to distrust policing and reducing their employability, lets properly fund after school programming and poverty reduction initiatives that help strengthen families and connect neighbours to each other in a broader support network so that they have people to lean on and an established set of rules and hierarchy within their community that leads them to do good things instead of bad ones.

Instead of gangs selling crack to drug addicts, let's have a clinic give it to addicts for free and then as they come down, have someone trained in recovery talk to them about their options and set them on a better path in life.

But what we actually do, is when someone is behaving erratically or hasn't answered phone calls and texts for days: we send the police. Who respond to the erratic behaviour by shooting them. When someone wants to kill themselves, we send someone trained in killing people who are threatening harm. When a kid misses school, we punish them and charge their parents. When kids are joining gangs, we "treat them like an adult" and tell them that they have no place in our society. When people use drugs, we call them worthless and put them in jail when they should really be going to a hospital. All of these things make the problem worse, not better. We think we're doing the right thing, but we're actually doing the wrong thing. A lot. And then when the wrong thing doesn't work, we... spend more money so we can do the wrong thing even more? That's literally insane.

We rely on the police for a lot of things that police have no business being near. That's why they're killing so many people unnecessarily.

You propose a lot of good ideas here. I would be supportive of all of them, though one thing to ask is if the solutions are this straightforward, why don't they get implemented? I don't think the main answer is... racism.

Part of it is that the "machine" is like the Titanic, which you can't turn around on a dime. Another of course is that the machine's natural instinct is to self-perpetuate itself.

There are other issues as well, which aren't as straightforward.

For example everyone these days keeps saying paramedics or social workers should be doing wellness checks and mental health calls, but I am not sure they and especially their unions would agree with that.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by vid

The government can absolutely make significant changes to our culture contrary to the will of a majority of people. If the US could end anti-miscegenation laws despite popular approval of them at the time, our government can certainly shift the focus of community protection from reactive policing to proactive medicine.

As others have said - great post.

On this point, is there incentive for the government to make sensible policy decisions in the direction you have stated? I'm not sure there is. What the people screaming want is immediate emotional reward, they want statues torn down, heads on pikes. Not so much structural changes to allocation of funding and changes to administration. The government can quite easily do the former, whereas the latter is more difficult and does not yield a reward for a generation.

That said, the gratification of a statue being removed or something similar is more of a sugar high. The political capital gained from such actions will be fleeting and irrelevant come election time.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by milomilo

As others have said - great post.

On this point, is there incentive for the government to make sensible policy decisions in the direction you have stated? I'm not sure there is. What the people screaming want is immediate emotional reward, they want statues torn down, heads on pikes. Not so much structural changes to allocation of funding and changes to administration. The government can quite easily do the former, whereas the latter is more difficult and does not yield a reward for a generation.

That said, the gratification of a statue being removed or something similar is more of a sugar high. The political capital gained from such actions will be fleeting and irrelevant come election time.

That's actually another really good example of how the current movement, for all its volume and spotlight, is a bit off-target and may be doomed to fail.

I know that one view is that the bombast is necessary to draw attention to the important stuff, but it does nicely set things up as you say so that governments can give people what they (seem to) want but keeping mostly to symbolism, and sidestepping the fundamental profound stuff - that's admittedly a lot tougher to tackle.