We've been here before

[dmp]

Sometimes current events are the impetus needed to create  action - especially with a congress that has great difficulty compromising.  Trying to kick it down the road to maintain the status quo is the best political technique I'll grant you, if you want less government regulation.  But with 14 shootings in the current administration (that's the number I heard recently) the sweeping under the rug can only go on so long I think.
And I wouldn't focus solely on a review of gun control - that is not my point - but include  education and substantial condemnation of hatred. There is plenty of coded speak by prominent figures that encourages hatred - then we have a  wing nut trying to start a race war, like this shooting. Look at Trumps recent comments on Mexicans... incredible. 

 

[JohnRoberts]

Sometimes current events are the impetus needed to create  action - especially with a congress that has great difficulty compromising.  Trying to kick it down the road to maintain the status quo is the best political technique I'll grant you, if you want less government regulation.  But with 14 shootings in the current administration (that's the number I heard recently) the sweeping under the rug can only go on so long I think.
And I wouldn't focus solely on a review of gun control - that is not my point - but include  education and substantial condemnation of hatred. There is plenty of coded speak by prominent figures that encourages hatred - then we have a  wing nut trying to start a race war, like this shooting. Look at Trumps recent comments on Mexicans... incredible.

Sometimes I have trouble following, but I have been critical of the president and other leaders for the lack of support for police. Partisan actors view everything through a lens of racism as this generates some political benefit in this environment.  When found incorrect after full investigation we rarely hear apologies.

The kind of gun violence I am concerned about, for just one example is Chicago. Where from Jan 1 to Jun 26 there have been 1,195 shooting victims.  I don't want congress or the President to fix this. I want Rahm Emanuel (mayor) and local government there to do better.

There's an old political axiom "never let a crisis go to waste" and I suspect the funeral this weekend will get a lot of media attention, and multiple people trying to attach their agendas to it, to try to use that energy.

Governance needs to be thoughtful, not emotional or reactive. 

JR

PS:  Trump is just another fringe candidate and he will disappear soon after cashing in some free publicity chips,  like he did after the last few times.  The republicans have far too many actual candidates. I don't know whether they see some unusual opportunity this time, or what. The republican side is kind of a mess  and it will be hard to break out of the pack with that many viable candidates.

 

[dmp]

I have been critical of the president and other leaders for the lack of support for police. Partisan actors view everything through a lens of racism as this generates some political benefit in this environment.

I think it is important to realize how people have been treated and the acceptance of hatred in the mainstream. Case in point - Dylan Roof calls black people rapists and opens fire. Donald Trump calls Mexican Immigrants rapists in a speech announcing his Presidential bid. It's stunning. Trump is not some fringe wacko - he is an extremely wealthy and powerful person in America. I don't think he is a serious presidential candidate - more like a Ted Nugent - voicing the views of the most disgusting side of the Republican party that is tacitly accepted by the mainstream candidates. 
It would be good to pay attention to the stories of law-abiding people who live in poor, high crime neighborhoods, who describe years of police stops and searches.  I appreciate leaders who stand up for the disadvantaged & oppressed, not just the privileged & powerful.
At the same time, a balance needs to be found, as crime is reported to be climbing rapidly in cities like Baltimore.

 

[pucho812]

I don't think anyone accepted roof's ramblings of hate nor did anyone accept trumps ramblings either. There was a huge reaction to what trump said concerning mexicans to the point univision decided we will no longer carry the miss universe pageant.  But if you ask me rather then whine and moan about trump the best that can be done is prove him wrong and show him up. But I guess that would require too much work on some peoples parts.  I don't think there needs to be a balance at all.  I think it's the balance that everyone has been trying to go for that gets us into messes.  Let trump say what he wants, who says you have to support him or even listen for that matter? It's not different then the recent talks of the northern virginia battle flag,  or the gay marriage issue, it's all a distraction from the real issues. 

 

[JohnRoberts]

I have been critical of the president and other leaders for the lack of support for police. Partisan actors view everything through a lens of racism as this generates some political benefit in this environment.

I think it is important to realize how people have been treated and the acceptance of hatred in the mainstream. Case in point - Dylan Roof calls black people rapists and opens fire.

Dylan Roof is being held on 9 charges of murder. I don't think his behavior was accepted by anybody,

Donald Trump calls Mexican Immigrants rapists in a speech announcing his Presidential bid.

Yes Trump is embarrassing while he was hopefully talking about illegal criminal immigrants, he seems to have smeared all mexicans in the process. The current administration has a pretty bad record of how it deals with known criminal illegals, sometimes just releasing them to break the laws and hurt US citizens again. 

It's stunning. Trump is not some fringe wacko - he is an extremely wealthy and powerful person in America.

Opinions vary... Trump is a wealthy fringe whacko... His campaign is self aggrandizing to promote his brand (I bet he claims his campaign as a business expense).  His statements are mostly just silly hyperbole. He claims to be a superior businessman while putting his own businesses into bankruptcy a half dozen times or more. Not my idea of a business leader to take seriously. His claim about his ability to create jobs just begs to be coupled with his "you're fired" cliche sound bite. He will probably end up tarnishing the value of his brand  this time around for not engaging his brain before opening his mouth.

I don't think he is a serious presidential candidate - more like a Ted Nugent - voicing the views of the most disgusting side of the Republican party that is tacitly accepted by the mainstream candidates. 

He isn't serious, but is espousing right of center conservative themes that gain traction in primaries. He will not win, but he will pull the real candidates right toward him,  exactly like Bernie Sanders who will never win the democratic primary but is pulling Hillary to her left. Everybody wants to be in the middle come the actual election day, but if you don't first win the primary you don't get to play on game day.

It would be good to pay attention to the stories of law-abiding people who live in poor, high crime neighborhoods, who describe years of police stops and searches.  I appreciate leaders who stand up for the disadvantaged & oppressed, not just the privileged & powerful.

You can't have it both ways. For the police to be effective against crime they have to investigate any suspicious behavior. The record in NYC for the new liberal mayor's relaxed stop and frisk policy is too early to tell. I see mixed data when I try to research it with increased police activity in some sectors. If you want less crime, and who doesn't, that takes effective police. If the public is messaged to distrust the police, that makes it harder for them to help those very same people. 

The police are not the bad guys. This cultural bias that causes people to resist, fight back, and even run away from police (maybe some video game behavior?), is what causes the vast majority of bad outcomes. Just say "yes sir" and cooperate if stopped. The modern culture with anti-police sentiment coming from the very top politically is dangerous IMO. Not dangerous for me, but dangerous for the police and citizens they try to protect.   

At the same time, a balance needs to be found, as crime is reported to be climbing rapidly in cities like Baltimore.

Ya think... Baltimore is just the most recent poster boy for the failures of bad local governance. Blaming the police there is not how to get them to step up and keep risking  their lives only to receive  more abuse.  Again another unfortunate incident that the media has blown up to be a national story and problem.  The sad part is this will hurt Baltimore even more than they were hurting before, as the political class there tries to gain some currency from flogging this as a black or a blue issue..

Look at the public and victims response in Charleston. Finally something we can be proud of.

JR

 

[DaveP]

The police are not the bad guys. This cultural bias that causes people to resist, fight back, and even run away from police (maybe some video game behavior?), is what causes the vast majority of bad outcomes. Just say "yes sir" and cooperate if stopped. The modern culture with anti-police sentiment coming from the very top politically is dangerous IMO. Not dangerous for me, but dangerous for the police and citizens they try to protect.   

This is very good advice and it always surprises me when people don't take it. 

DaveP

 

[ruairioflaherty]

The police are not the bad guys. This cultural bias that causes people to resist, fight back, and even run away from police (maybe some video game behavior?), is what causes the vast majority of bad outcomes. Just say "yes sir" and cooperate if stopped. The modern culture with anti-police sentiment coming from the very top politically is dangerous IMO. Not dangerous for me, but dangerous for the police and citizens they try to protect.   

This is very good advice and it always surprises me when people don't take it. 

DaveP

I wish it was that simple.  If you are white and middle aged the police are not the bad guys.  My black friends have a different experience. 

I was stopped and frisked once in London because of the way I looked, walking down the street in the middle of the day on the Tottenham Court Road.  Being Irish didn't help.  My friend and I were separated, quizzed about why we were in London (gigs). My friend had a nice watch with no strap in his pocket, a going away gift from a job he held since his teens.  This caused much consternation and it dragged on and on.

Of course only a small percentage of the police force cause an issue, the problem is that they carry weapons, and can act with impunity.

Chris Rock has spoken several times about what it means to be a black man driving a nice car - according to this he's been stopped 3 times already this year - http://www.mediaite.com/online/chris-rock-stopped-by-police-3-times-so-far-this-year-—-and-he-has-the-selfies-to-prove-it/

 

[DaveP]

I was stopped and frisked once in London because of the way I looked, walking down the street in the middle of the day on the Tottenham Court Road.  Being Irish didn't help.  My friend and I were separated, quizzed about why we were in London (gigs). My friend had a nice watch with no strap in his pocket, a going away gift from a job he held since his teens.  This caused much consternation and it dragged on and on.

Ruairi,

There are two sides to this, I once took my young family to Southend-on-sea  on the train, we innocently got in the carriage and sat down only to find it was being terrorised by a bunch of young thugs from London, they were half drunk and pissing on the floor of the carriage, I was furious but could do nothing on my own with my wife and kids there.  Finally at the next stop some police got on and cleared them out, I said to one "I have never been so glad to see a policeman".  He said "I wish more people felt like that".  So from their side the situation is reversed, they get all the stick for enforcing the law.

It's not until you've been in that kind of helpless situation that you realise what it would be like without them, even though they are obviously far from perfect from what you say.

best
DaveP

PS What on earth do you look like?

 

[JohnRoberts]

The police are not the bad guys. This cultural bias that causes people to resist, fight back, and even run away from police (maybe some video game behavior?), is what causes the vast majority of bad outcomes. Just say "yes sir" and cooperate if stopped. The modern culture with anti-police sentiment coming from the very top politically is dangerous IMO. Not dangerous for me, but dangerous for the police and citizens they try to protect.   

This is very good advice and it always surprises me when people don't take it. 

DaveP

I wish it was that simple.  If you are white and middle aged the police are not the bad guys.  My black friends have a different experience. 

I'm sure they do...

I was stopped and frisked once in London because of the way I looked, walking down the street in the middle of the day on the Tottenham Court Road.  Being Irish didn't help.  My friend and I were separated, quizzed about why we were in London (gigs). My friend had a nice watch with no strap in his pocket, a going away gift from a job he held since his teens.  This caused much consternation and it dragged on and on.

You didn't say when this happened, did you look like an IRA operative?  Nowadays there are more than Irish trying to blow up London, but they are likely to be well photographed.

Of course only a small percentage of the police force cause an issue, the problem is that they carry weapons, and can act with impunity.

Yes only a tiny fraction are responsible for misbehavior (like any professional group). Yes, most carry weapons, No they do not act with impunity. They generally get the benefit of the doubt from prosecutors because of the difficulty making life or death decisions in only split seconds. Nowadays the ASSumption is that all misbehave. We could have a similar discussion about bad lawyers, or bad dentists, or bad accountants, even bad design engineers??

Chris Rock has spoken several times about what it means to be a black man driving a nice car - according to this he's been stopped 3 times already this year - http://www.mediaite.com/online/chris-rock-stopped-by-police-3-times-so-far-this-year-—-and-he-has-the-selfies-to-prove-it/

I'm sure Chris is capitalizing on that for his humor, and probably driving a nice car in a wealthy neighborhood.
=========
While I do not offer this as a full explanation it is a significant data IMO.

http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-black-americans-commit-crime/19439 for more info

It’s true that around 13 per cent of Americans are black, according to the latest estimates from the US Census Bureau.

And yes, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, black offenders committed 52 per cent of homicides recorded in the data between 1980 and 2008. Only 45 per cent of the offenders were white. Homicide is a broader category than “murder” but let’s not split hairs.

Blacks were disproportionately likely to commit homicide and to be the victims. In 2008 the offending rate for blacks was seven times higher than for whites and the victimisation rate was six times higher.

As we found yesterday, 93 per cent of black victims were killed by blacks and 84 per cent of white victims were killed by whites.

Alternative statistics from the FBI are more up to date but include many crimes where the killer’s race is not recorded. These numbers tell a similar story.

In 2013, the FBI has black criminals carrying out 38 per cent of murders, compared to 31.1 per cent for whites. The offender’s race was “unknown” in 29.1 per cent of cases.

What about violent crime more generally? FBI arrest rates are one way into this. Over the last three years of data – 2011 to 2013 – 38.5 per cent of people arrested for murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault were black.

Clearly, these figures are problematic. We’re talking about arrests not convictions, and high black arrest rates could be taken as evidence that the police are racist. But academics have noted that the proportion of black suspects arrested by the police tends to match closely the proportion of offenders identified as black by victims in the National Crime Victimization Survey.

This doesn’t support the idea that the police are unfairly discriminating against the black population when they make arrests.

This high correlation does not mean causation.. i.e. they didn't commit crime because they were black, but there are other factors that also correlate with high crime like poverty, family status. education, etc. I grew up in a single parent home after my father died of cancer, but I did not turn to crime. In fact today my mother would be charged with child abuse for leaving us to fend for ourselves after school while she worked a full time job to support us.

I doubt the police profile or use statistical analysis but just operating from their recent past experience I would expect a bias that correlates to the actual numbers.  Often they are given descriptions of the perps by the victims of the crimes, including race. 

More wealth and more police can help reduce crime. There is more that we can do but an anti-business and anti-police climate does not seem productive to me.

JR

 

[ruairioflaherty]

I was stopped and frisked once in London because of the way I looked, walking down the street in the middle of the day on the Tottenham Court Road.  Being Irish didn't help.  My friend and I were separated, quizzed about why we were in London (gigs). My friend had a nice watch with no strap in his pocket, a going away gift from a job he held since his teens.  This caused much consternation and it dragged on and on.

Ruairi,

There are two sides to this, I once took my young family to Southend-on-sea  on the train, we innocently got in the carriage and sat down only to find it was being terrorised by a bunch of young thugs from London, they were half drunk and pissing on the floor of the carriage, I was furious but could do nothing on my own with my wife and kids there.  Finally at the next stop some police got on and cleared them out, I said to one "I have never been so glad to see a policeman".  He said "I wish more people felt like that".  So from their side the situation is reversed, they get all the stick for enforcing the law.

It's not until you've been in that kind of helpless situation that you realise what it would be like without them, even though they are obviously far from perfect from what you say.

best
DaveP

PS What on earth do you look like?

Of course Dave, the Police broadly do an excellent job.  I've seen that first hand in Ireland, France and here in the U.S.  Recently my young neighbor died in sad circumstances here in L.A.  The police were kind, sensitive and thorough while working in my yard for the day.

I've been first one on the scene at a car wreck and again the police were excellent.  A good friend in Ireland is on the force and has told me many stories. 

My point was that it's not black and white (pardon the unintentional pun).  My experience of the police is different to that of my black friends, one of whom is a multi millionaire Grammy winner. 

Civilized society needs policing, and they need to be held to account for their work.

 

[ruairioflaherty]

The police are not the bad guys. This cultural bias that causes people to resist, fight back, and even run away from police (maybe some video game behavior?), is what causes the vast majority of bad outcomes. Just say "yes sir" and cooperate if stopped. The modern culture with anti-police sentiment coming from the very top politically is dangerous IMO. Not dangerous for me, but dangerous for the police and citizens they try to protect.   

This is very good advice and it always surprises me when people don't take it. 

DaveP

I wish it was that simple.  If you are white and middle aged the police are not the bad guys.  My black friends have a different experience. 

I'm sure they do...

I was stopped and frisked once in London because of the way I looked, walking down the street in the middle of the day on the Tottenham Court Road.  Being Irish didn't help.  My friend and I were separated, quizzed about why we were in London (gigs). My friend had a nice watch with no strap in his pocket, a going away gift from a job he held since his teens.  This caused much consternation and it dragged on and on.

You didn't say when this happened, did you look like an IRA operative?  Nowadays there are more than Irish trying to blow up London, but they are likely to be well photographed.

Of course only a small percentage of the police force cause an issue, the problem is that they carry weapons, and can act with impunity.

Yes only a tiny fraction are responsible for misbehavior (like any professional group). Yes, most carry weapons, No they do not act with impunity. They generally get the benefit of the doubt from prosecutors because of the difficulty making life or death decisions in only split seconds. Nowadays the ASSumption is that all misbehave. We could have a similar discussion about bad lawyers, or bad dentists, or bad accountants, even bad design engineers??

Chris Rock has spoken several times about what it means to be a black man driving a nice car - according to this he's been stopped 3 times already this year - http://www.mediaite.com/online/chris-rock-stopped-by-police-3-times-so-far-this-year-—-and-he-has-the-selfies-to-prove-it/

I'm sure Chris is capitalizing on that for his humor, and probably driving a nice car in a wealthy neighborhood.
=========
While I do not offer this as a full explanation it is a significant data IMO.

http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-black-americans-commit-crime/19439 for more info

It’s true that around 13 per cent of Americans are black, according to the latest estimates from the US Census Bureau.

And yes, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, black offenders committed 52 per cent of homicides recorded in the data between 1980 and 2008. Only 45 per cent of the offenders were white. Homicide is a broader category than “murder” but let’s not split hairs.

Blacks were disproportionately likely to commit homicide and to be the victims. In 2008 the offending rate for blacks was seven times higher than for whites and the victimisation rate was six times higher.

As we found yesterday, 93 per cent of black victims were killed by blacks and 84 per cent of white victims were killed by whites.

Alternative statistics from the FBI are more up to date but include many crimes where the killer’s race is not recorded. These numbers tell a similar story.

In 2013, the FBI has black criminals carrying out 38 per cent of murders, compared to 31.1 per cent for whites. The offender’s race was “unknown” in 29.1 per cent of cases.

What about violent crime more generally? FBI arrest rates are one way into this. Over the last three years of data – 2011 to 2013 – 38.5 per cent of people arrested for murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault were black.

Clearly, these figures are problematic. We’re talking about arrests not convictions, and high black arrest rates could be taken as evidence that the police are racist. But academics have noted that the proportion of black suspects arrested by the police tends to match closely the proportion of offenders identified as black by victims in the National Crime Victimization Survey.

This doesn’t support the idea that the police are unfairly discriminating against the black population when they make arrests.

This high correlation does not mean causation.. i.e. they didn't commit crime because they were black, but there are other factors that also correlate with high crime like poverty, family status. education, etc. I grew up in a single parent home after my father died of cancer, but I did not turn to crime. In fact today my mother would be charged with child abuse for leaving us to fend for ourselves after school while she worked a full time job to support us.

I doubt the police profile or use statistical analysis but just operating from their recent past experience I would expect a bias that correlates to the actual numbers.  Often they are given descriptions of the perps by the victims of the crimes, including race. 

More wealth and more police can help reduce crime. There is more that we can do but an anti-business and anti-police climate does not seem productive to me.

JR

Great post John.  I'm short on time (and brainpower) to write a good reply.  Poverty is definitely a driver of crime.

I think the general public would be less anti-police if the police distanced themselves more clearly from lapses in standards.  There seems to be a closing of ranks when things go wrong and that leads to the public tarring all with the same brush.

Perhaps body cams will help keep things in check?  And maybe they can help show how hard some of their work is too.

I think things will find a balance, for years police have had all of the power and acted broadly without oversight.  Cell phone cameras are changing that and we are seeing some truly despicable abuses of power but we are also seeing some real heroics.  RIght now the swing is towards questioning police activity and motives but in time I thing we will find a balance.

 

[mattiasNYC]

I was stopped and frisked once in London because of the way I looked, walking down the street in the middle of the day on the Tottenham Court Road.  Being Irish didn't help.  My friend and I were separated, quizzed about why we were in London (gigs). My friend had a nice watch with no strap in his pocket, a going away gift from a job he held since his teens.  This caused much consternation and it dragged on and on.

Ruairi,

There are two sides to this, I once took my young family to Southend-on-sea  on the train, we innocently got in the carriage and sat down only to find it was being terrorised by a bunch of young thugs from London, they were half drunk and pissing on the floor of the carriage, I was furious but could do nothing on my own with my wife and kids there.  Finally at the next stop some police got on and cleared them out, I said to one "I have never been so glad to see a policeman".  He said "I wish more people felt like that".  So from their side the situation is reversed, they get all the stick for enforcing the law.

It's not until you've been in that kind of helpless situation that you realise what it would be like without them, even though they are obviously far from perfect from what you say.

best
DaveP

PS What on earth do you look like?

Apples and Oranges anyone? How on earth do the two situations even begin to compare?

And saying that there's a fairly large amount of corrupt, inept and/or racist police officers doesn't equal saying there shouldn't be any police at all.

 

[mattiasNYC]

You can't have it both ways. For the police to be effective against crime they have to investigate any suspicious behavior. The record in NYC for the new liberal mayor's relaxed stop and frisk policy is too early to tell.

Sorry John, but this is a line of reasoning that's just garbage. There's a certain section of society that cheer on stop-and-frisk as if it's somehow a really effective means to thwart crime, yet they have no statistic basis for that statement. The reality is that it sounds good and it's a no-loss proposition for those that support it, i.e. not non-whites in poor neighborhoods.

Stop-and-frisk is if not unconstitutional immoral not to mention ineffective. It's horse crap. At best. “suspicious behavior” really = less good neighborhood + non-white.

I see mixed data when I try to research it with increased police activity in some sectors.

Because it doesn't work as “advertised”.

If you want less crime, and who doesn't, that takes effective police.

There's “effective”, and then there's “just”. You could thwart crime by shooting suspects on sight, yet somehow that wouldn't be quite “kosher”, despite being effective.

If the public is messaged to distrust the police, that makes it harder for them to help those very same people. 

The police are not the bad guys. This cultural bias that causes people to resist, fight back, and even run away from police (maybe some video game behavior?), is what causes the vast majority of bad outcomes. Just say "yes sir" and cooperate if stopped.

Do you have a source for that or are you just guessing? And what is this “culture” you're talking about? Considering the thread topic I'm betting I'm sure I know what you're referring to.

How many people have to be abused or killed by the police before people get to resist the police?

The notion that you can just say “yes sir” cooperate and everything will be fine is just so ludicrous it's beyond comprehension that people peddle it. Look up the Central Park Jogger case for a great example of how lives are ruined for decades because they did just what you say they should. They respected the police and the legal system and got put away for decades. Lives. Ruined.

The modern culture with anti-police sentiment coming from the very top politically is dangerous IMO.

See, to a lot of people what's dangerous is getting treated worse because of your skin color, getting choked to death after trying to tell a not caring police officer you're choking, getting shot multiple times in the back while running away, getting shot while being a child holding a b-b gun, being tackled by a police officer for no reason while riding a bike, getting illegally anal probed, and on and on and on ….. and it is what leads to an anti-police sentiment,  not Bill DeBlasio's hurting the seemingly oversensitive police's feelings by not bowing down to them and giving them 100% support for any and all actions they take regardless of what they entail.....

By the way, DeBlasio works for me too, not just police officers. He's supposed to represent everyone including people choked to death by the police.

There is more that we can do but an anti-business and anti-police climate does not seem productive to me.

Huh? You've had a pro-business climate for a long time, and the incarceration rate (per capita) in the US is outdone by one country, period. A lack of police enforcement and ability to put people behind bars doesn't seem to be a problem.

Yet the solution is more capitalism and more police? Sounds like "head in the sand" to me.

 

[DaveP]

Mathias,

I cannot comment on the American experience of policing because they have guns and the UK police do not and there are so many other differences in the countries too.  However, some of this may have resonance in the US.

There are black areas of London and other big cities where gang culture is all pervading.  The hardest thing a single black mum has to do, is to try and keep her son out of these gangs when he becomes a teenager or before that!  Guns are not available to them generally (though some do manage to get one or two converted replicas) but knives are available and these gangs attack each other fairly regularly.  Community leaders have urged the police to tackle this knife crime issue, the way they do this is by having regular amnesties where knives can be handed in (no questions asked) and by stop and search.  There have obviously been too many cases where stop and search has been abused, no doubt about that.  Have you got a better idea?

There are also cultural issues that factor in.  The Asian community is very family based and great pressure is put on children to do well in education.  Things are not the same in the black community unfortunately because there are proportionally more absent fathers, so the single mothers have a really hard time to bring up their kids.  I don't know why that is, any ideas?

Having said that, my impression is that black families are on the whole better integrated into British society  than the Muslim population where there is sometimes a kind of self-imposed apartheid.  The black population is mostly "Christian" which may explain some of that.  These are the impressions that I have gathered over the last 45 years of immigration into the UK, if I am wrong on some of this, then maybe Sahib will put me right.  I have chosen my words very carefully so please don't try to make them mean something else.

I don't know whether any of this corresponds to the American experience or not.  In the UK, the police are just drawn from the ordinary population, they are not all college graduates but they do a difficult job for us and deserve some respect for that.  If there were no police we would be back to the days of the wild west and we would all need guns then.

DaveP

 

[sahib]

Not that matters but actually I am not from an Asian background. In fact I probably have as much Greek blood as Turkish as my parents are/were originally from Trabzon, North East of Turkey which was the home to the Pontus Roman Empire before Ottomans got their hands on it,

Nevertheless however, coming from a pre-dominantly muslim population (though Turkey is constitutionally secular) I agree with Dave  to a degree that a certain generation of muslim population in Britain is still not integrated with British life as much as  we would all like to. They are still very withdrawn. This is generally the older population. However, they will not bite back at you if you said hello.

The young population is  generally split into three groups (as it is always the case even in dominantly  muslim societies).

The group which practices the religion in their daily life and continues the tradition to which their parents originally belonged, will be selective in integrating.  For example you will not see them in arts in general.

The group which generally does not practice the ritual part of the religion, but still has the traditional values  follows a secular life and  is well integrated in every part of the daily life.  I am one of them and pretty much all of my Turkish and Asian friends are the same.

The group, which belongs to the youngest generation  appears to be well integrated and even in some cases in the extreme in social life ,  but in reality  not worked out exactly where they stand.  Unfortunately this group is the most vulnerable and fell prey to radicalisation and terror groups. 

 

[JohnRoberts]

You can't have it both ways. For the police to be effective against crime they have to investigate any suspicious behavior. The record in NYC for the new liberal mayor's relaxed stop and frisk policy is too early to tell.

Sorry John, but this is a line of reasoning that's just garbage. There's a certain section of society that cheer on stop-and-frisk as if it's somehow a really effective means to thwart crime, yet they have no statistic basis for that statement. The reality is that it sounds good and it's a no-loss proposition for those that support it, i.e. not non-whites in poor neighborhoods.

Mayor Bloomberg credited it for a reduction in gun violence.

Stop-and-frisk is if not unconstitutional immoral not to mention ineffective. It's horse crap. At best. “suspicious behavior” really = less good neighborhood + non-white.

In fact the courts have found that NYC police have violated constitutional protections regarding searches without just cause, and class action lawsuits are moving in the courts waiting on a settlement.

I agree that this is one of those too-easy answers for a complex problem.  In fact getting guns off the streets is a little similar to the same knee jerk thinking that we need to get guns out of the hands of private citizens. 

I have given some thought about how to neutralize guns (mostly for stabilizing war zones, but perhaps for a few cities too). Some way to sniff for gunpowder so that loaded weapons could be detected from a distance using a non-invasive chemical sniffer (while this may violate search protections too). Another more explosive strategy is to come up with a variant gunpowder that is destabilized by very specific radio frequency energy. Imagine ammunition that simply blows up in the presence of the specific RF field.

I don't think the constitution protects against criminals being blown up by their own gun.  ;D

Sorry I don't mean to make light of this a difficult issue. 

I see mixed data when I try to research it with increased police activity in some sectors.

It would be nice to have a simple bar chart to map gun violence vs. stop and frisk, but as often happens in economics, there are too many variables in the equation for a simple comparison.

Because it doesn't work as “advertised”.

If you want less crime, and who doesn't, that takes effective police.

There's “effective”, and then there's “just”. You could thwart crime by shooting suspects on sight, yet somehow that wouldn't be quite “kosher”, despite being effective.

Indeed one more data point that needs to be inspected in the context of this discussion is the push to incarcerate criminals to take them off the street to improve public safety . Over the last few decades since the '80s, we have built so many new prisons that now something like 1% of our population is behind bars.  The crime statistics reveal that this has worked after a fashion but at a tremendous cost? 

A number of these inmates are tangled up by drug laws and MS has a good program to divert such criminals into a rehab vs incarceration program, but nationwide there are many in jail that probably shouldn't. That said there are great many that can not be easily rehabilitated so incarceration is the lesser evil.

I can imagine a near future where non-violent prisoners do not go to jail costing us taxpayers tens of thousands a year, but instead get hooked up to a super ankle bracelet for a modified house arrest. For now this is science fiction but the technology is not, and probably cheaper than putting them up at the gray bar hotel.

If the public is messaged to distrust the police, that makes it harder for them to help those very same people. 

The police are not the bad guys. This cultural bias that causes people to resist, fight back, and even run away from police (maybe some video game behavior?), is what causes the vast majority of bad outcomes. Just say "yes sir" and cooperate if stopped.

Do you have a source for that or are you just guessing? And what is this “culture” you're talking about? Considering the thread topic I'm betting I'm sure I know what you're referring to.

Just life experience... I have had multiple encounters with the men in blue, and I have personally found that being polite and respectful leads to better outcomes. But I am white so must get a free pass.

The culture I am talking about is deep mistrust of the police, which leads to rationalizations like running away may be a better option than stopping when told to stop. Now some people who run away already have outstanding warrants, so make a different calculation. In my judgement honest law abiding citizens should not be afraid of their police who are literally there to protect them. As i have said several times, body cameras on police (which kind of invades their privacy) will go a long way to gather real evidence about everyday police interactions. The cameras will help police better document interactions.

How many people have to be abused or killed by the police before people get to resist the police?

I don't think we are even close to such a situation, while the media has strung together a handful of cases to feed this media story. I can not imagine a situation where resisting the police as an individual ever makes sense. If we perceive a pattern of bad behavior there is recourse via the courts and indirect methods.

The notion that you can just say “yes sir” cooperate and everything will be fine is just so ludicrous it's beyond comprehension that people peddle it. Look up the Central Park Jogger case for a great example of how lives are ruined for decades because they did just what you say they should. They respected the police and the legal system and got put away for decades. Lives. Ruined.

Stuff happens, and despite the checks and balances built into the justice system mistakes are made. Modern use of DNA evidence, applied a couple decades later when the actual rapist admitted to the crime, could have been helpful. it is interesting that those innocent youths were convicted in two different jury trials, 4 of the 5 appealed and the convictions were upheld, so this is more than police prejudice. Settlements of $42 million have already been made, but they are suing for another $52 million.

The modern culture with anti-police sentiment coming from the very top politically is dangerous IMO.

See, to a lot of people what's dangerous is getting treated worse because of your skin color,

Prejudice is part of the human condition, and even black police officer encounter more black criminals so it's hard to expect them to ignore personal experience. 

getting choked to death after trying to tell a not caring police officer you're choking,

"The handcuffs are too tight", and similar complaints are normal in such interactions. #1 why are cops arresting someone for a tax crime (selling single cigarettes outside a store), and #2 why did he resist against several officers for such a petty beef?

getting shot multiple times in the back while running away,

The incident I recall, the miscreant was running away because he was wanted for child support. It was not a good decisions to run away, nor was it a good idea to shoot him in the back.

getting shot while being a child holding a b-b gun,

This falls under the category of split second life or death decision making. IIRC that bb gun was lacking the orange tip marking required by the dept of commerce on toy guns since 1992, of course a BB gun could be lethal in some extreme scenario. Hesitation by a police officer when a weapon is pointed at them could be the last thing they do.  There have been a couple police assignations in NYC recently.

being tackled by a police officer for no reason while riding a bike,

I don't recognize this case. I bet the police officer thought he had a reason, probably something like being routinely ignored by bike messengers (just speculation). 

getting illegally anal probed,

I do remember one sensational case (a long time ago) involving a billy stick, stuck up somewhere it doesn't ever belong. .  No excuse for that, obvious abuse of power. 

and on and on and on ….. and it is what leads to an anti-police sentiment, 

A relative small number of cases compared to all the professional interactions that occur.

not Bill DeBlasio's hurting the seemingly oversensitive police's feelings by not bowing down to them and giving them 100% support for any and all actions they take regardless of what they entail.....

Since he is their top boss's boss he has a special relationship with the police force. Instead of supporting his police force he has publicly embarrassed them  with comments like he warned his children to look out for the police. In fact he probably gave them the similar advice to mine (treat them with respect).  He campaigned on an anti-police agenda so is playing to his political base.

By the way, DeBlasio works for me too, not just police officers. He's supposed to represent everyone including people choked to death by the police.

I thought Bloomberg was too liberal. My opinions about DeBlasio are not for public consumption. I seem to recall London having a similar ultra liberal mayor for a while. Maybe it's something about large cities.

There is more that we can do but an anti-business and anti-police climate does not seem productive to me.

Huh? You've had a pro-business climate for a long time, and the incarceration rate (per capita) in the US is outdone by one country, period. A lack of police enforcement and ability to put people behind bars doesn't seem to be a problem.

Yet the solution is more capitalism and more police? Sounds like "head in the sand" to me.

I have already addressed the incarceration rate above.  We have had a pro-BIG-business climate for too long, Now we have an anti-all-business climate.  I would favor a pro-small-business policy to create jobs and employment in poverty stricken areas.

Please refrain from the pejorative characterizations. While I am not thin skinned, I have to resist responding in kind which would just diminish any real exchange of information. 

JR

 

[mattiasNYC]

Mathias,

I cannot comment on the American experience of policing because they have guns and the UK police do not and there are so many other differences in the countries too.  However, some of this may have resonance in the US.

There are black areas of London and other big cities where gang culture is all pervading.  The hardest thing a single black mum has to do, is to try and keep her son out of these gangs when he becomes a teenager or before that!  Guns are not available to them generally (though some do manage to get one or two converted replicas) but knives are available and these gangs attack each other fairly regularly.  Community leaders have urged the police to tackle this knife crime issue, the way they do this is by having regular amnesties where knives can be handed in (no questions asked) and by stop and search.  There have obviously been too many cases where stop and search has been abused, no doubt about that.  Have you got a better idea?

If you're going to go down that road you'll reap what you sow, that was my point. If the argument is “black communities have gangs, gangs have knives, we need to get rid of knives, we need to stop and frisk black people”, then what you are doing is racial profiling and curtailing the liberty of not being stopped and searched by the police because of your skin color. You, as an admittedly only presumably white person, probably don't intuitively “feel” the problem, but black people do.

And so what you reap is resentment against an inherently racist policy.

Have I got a better idea? Well, first of all, if you're not improving things using one program then you can stop it, particularly if you're reaping dislike for those enforcing it (the police). Then you can look for other solutions which are typically found when looking at the causes for the problems (rather than trying to treat symptoms).

There are also cultural issues that factor in.  The Asian community is very family based and great pressure is put on children to do well in education.  Things are not the same in the black community unfortunately because there are proportionally more absent fathers, so the single mothers have a really hard time to bring up their kids.  I don't know why that is, any ideas?

Poverty and class are somewhat difficult issues. In the US a problem is that a lot of people have been brainwashed into thinking that just because this or that individual pulled themselves out of poverty, or “rose in class”, everyone can. But that's not how the system works. If everyone made the optimal decision at every given time people still wouldn't all end up being millionaires, because that's not how the system works. And it's the mechanisms that prevent that hypothetical from working that in practice ensures this type of segregation.

Now, that blacks are disproportionately found in some socio-economic demographics is surely due to the results of slavery. This isn't to say that it is current racism that prevents them from pulling out of this 'space', but rather a financial issue. The slaves had very little wealth when they were freed, and for the longest time the black population actually was held back, when it comes to business, due to racism. If you have money it's easier to make more money, measured as an absolute, and not as a ratio. That's where the problem lies. It'd be the exact same if you have a large poor area with white people. It isn't that they're white that holds them back, it's poverty and all that comes with it.

Having said that, my impression is that black families are on the whole better integrated into British society  than the Muslim population where there is sometimes a kind of self-imposed apartheid.  The black population is mostly "Christian" which may explain some of that.  These are the impressions that I have gathered over the last 45 years of immigration into the UK, if I am wrong on some of this, then maybe Sahib will put me right.  I have chosen my words very carefully so please don't try to make them mean something else.

I don't know whether any of this corresponds to the American experience or not.  In the UK, the police are just drawn from the ordinary population, they are not all college graduates but they do a difficult job for us and deserve some respect for that.  If there were no police we would be back to the days of the wild west and we would all need guns then.

DaveP

Well, as an atheist I don't find anything rational in believing in a god, so I question the subsequent rationality of segregation along religious affiliation. In addition to that the very concept of race is a social construct, not derived from a biological “fact”. The classification of “races” the way we do it for other species can't be done for humans, which in turn makes it meaningless. Yet we do it. All the time. And that's why people segregate themselves from each other. Two in my opinion irrational and quite frankly somewhat dumb reasons.

As for “the wild west” it's ironically borderline what some advocate in a veiled language; meaning that people shouldn't be helped so much by the government but instead just work themselves to survive. Yet at the same time those “that have” are adamant that whatever mechanisms led to their wealth are preserved (as well as the wealth) using government tools to do so. In one sense I find it ironic.

 

[mattiasNYC]

Mayor Bloomberg credited it for a reduction in gun violence.

He's the mayor, what did you expect him to say?

In fact the courts have found that NYC police have violated constitutional protections regarding searches without just cause, and class action lawsuits are moving in the courts waiting on a settlement.

I agree that this is one of those too-easy answers for a complex problem.  In fact getting guns off the streets is a little similar to the same knee jerk thinking that we need to get guns out of the hands of private citizens. 

I have given some thought about how to neutralize guns (mostly for stabilizing war zones, but perhaps for a few cities too). Some way to sniff for gunpowder so that loaded weapons could be detected from a distance using a non-invasive chemical sniffer (while this may violate search protections too). Another more explosive strategy is to come up with a variant gunpowder that is destabilized by very specific radio frequency energy. Imagine ammunition that simply blows up in the presence of the specific RF field.

I don't think the constitution protects against criminals being blown up by their own gun.  ;D

Sorry I don't mean to make light of this a difficult issue. 

I actually like that you think about a technical solution to the problem, and I can see the merits of your reasoning (as well as the issues you mentioned). I think it's a path worth pursuing.

I see mixed data when I try to research it with increased police activity in some sectors.
----------
It would be nice to have a simple bar chart to map gun violence vs. stop and frisk, but as often happens in economics, there are too many variables in the equation for a simple comparison.

From everything I've read on stop-and-frisk, the benefits were very very meager. The amount of weapons found were in a sense pathetic, and the city had already started to see a drop in crime rates in some of the parts of the city where stop-and-frisk would be enacted, i.e. the drop wasn't due to the policy.

Indeed one more data point that needs to be inspected in the context of this discussion is the push to incarcerate criminals to take them off the street to improve public safety . Over the last few decades since the '80s, we have built so many new prisons that now something like 1% of our population is behind bars.  The crime statistics reveal that this has worked after a fashion but at a tremendous cost? 

A number of these inmates are tangled up by drug laws and MS has a good program to divert such criminals into a rehab vs incarceration program, but nationwide there are many in jail that probably shouldn't. That said there are great many that can not be easily rehabilitated so incarceration is the lesser evil.

I can imagine a near future where non-violent prisoners do not go to jail costing us taxpayers tens of thousands a year, but instead get hooked up to a super ankle bracelet for a modified house arrest. For now this is science fiction but the technology is not, and probably cheaper than putting them up at the gray bar hotel.

I think the US system of locking people up so frequently is just nonsense. Getting tossed in jail for having weed on you is a world away from being a psychopathic homocidal maniac that can't be treated. Yet they end up in prison together. When the lesser criminals get out their lives are in shambles. The disparity between classes is thus just amplified. It's hardly a way to deal with the problems.

And on that note I'll just point out that there is statistics that show that blacks do get harsher punishments for the same crimes compared to whites. It's probably not due to a stated policy and in that sense not institutional, but due to people having the view that some people are a problem whereas others are an exception.

Just life experience... I have had multiple encounters with the men in blue, and I have personally found that being polite and respectful leads to better outcomes. But I am white so must get a free pass.

The culture I am talking about is deep mistrust of the police, which leads to rationalizations like running away may be a better option than stopping when told to stop. Now some people who run away already have outstanding warrants, so make a different calculation. In my judgement honest law abiding citizens should not be afraid of their police who are literally there to protect them. As i have said several times, body cameras on police (which kind of invades their privacy) will go a long way to gather real evidence about everyday police interactions. The cameras will help police better document interactions.

And I think that having cameras on the police, in their vehicles, and on the public, in general will help. But the response to the video of the choked to death man in Staten Island, and the man shot in the back, was fairly unsurprising. Amidst the legitimate outrage there were all the people questioning what happened before, and if we really know “the whole story”. We will never know the whole story, so when is there really sufficient evidence for some people?

How many people have to be abused or killed by the police before people get to resist the police?

I don't think we are even close to such a situation, while the media has strung together a handful of cases to feed this media story. I can not imagine a situation where resisting the police as an individual ever makes sense. If we perceive a pattern of bad behavior there is recourse via the courts and indirect methods.

Except more than a few people feel that such recourse does in fact not exist. I mentioned the Central Park Jogger case. How many years behind bars is reasonable before you make the call to try to escape the police instead? I'm middle class in a nice neighborhood, and so are you. If you're black in a crappy neighborhood, do you really think your view is the same?

Stuff happens, and despite the checks and balances built into the justice system mistakes are made. Modern use of DNA evidence, applied a couple decades later when the actual rapist admitted to the crime, could have been helpful. it is interesting that those innocent youths were convicted in two different jury trials, 4 of the 5 appealed and the convictions were upheld, so this is more than police prejudice. Settlements of $42 million have already been made, but they are suing for another $52 million.

Yes, but the point is that it all started with a crappy police department. We all know that people are biased and if you're sitting with a group of black kids that confessed even if it was under duress then that's good enough. It's a different issue if you start at the other end of things by having a high bar before taking action. Stop-and-frisk is the exact same problem in that the bar is so low it doesn't even exist. If you look a certain way you get stopped. Period.

There was a really good series of articles in the Village Voice on one of the Brooklyn precincts where the policy was to arrest people who hadn't committed crimes, then release them. By doing so the arrests were up and somehow statistically it looked better politically. One officer recorded a roll call and leaked it. The police department sent officers to his house and made him disappear for three days by putting him in an insane asylum! That and forced “vacation” or whatever. That's how bad things have been here. The stats say one thing, reality another. That's why I keep saying that it's hard for “us” to comprehend the mindset of others without seeing it from their actual perspective.

Prejudice is part of the human condition, and even black police officer encounter more black criminals so it's hard to expect them to ignore personal experience. 

If you have a city of 50/50 black/white people and you stop far more blacks during stop-and-frisk, then give them harsher punishments for the same crimes, then relative to the population they'll be disproportionately represented in crime-stats. And that in turn warrants the continued disparity in treatment.

A relative small number of cases compared to all the professional interactions that occur.

It seems that regardless of the number of cases there will never ever be a sufficient one that points to a larger problem. All isolated issues.

Since he is their top boss's boss he has a special relationship with the police force. Instead of supporting his police force he has publicly embarrassed them  with comments like he warned his children to look out for the police. In fact he probably gave them the similar advice to mine (treat them with respect).  He campaigned on an anti-police agenda so is playing to his political base.

Here's what he said: “What parents have done for decades who have children of color, especially young men of color, is train them to be very careful when they have a connection with a police officer," de Blasio said.

"It's different for a white child. That's just the reality in this country," de Blasio went on. "And with Dante, very early on with my son, we said, look, if a police officer stops you, do everything he tells you to do, don't move suddenly, don't reach for your cell phone, because we knew, sadly, there's a greater chance it might be misinterpreted if it was a young man of color”

NYPD history isn't pretty. A duck is a duck. Sometimes it makes sense to call it that. Rather than act like children the police could reform.

What do you think he should have said? “Nope, sorry, there's no issue with police brutality or with racism.” Would that have been true? Would that have helped?

I have already addressed the incarceration rate above.  We have had a pro-BIG-business climate for too long, Now we have an anti-all-business climate.  I would favor a pro-small-business policy to create jobs and employment in poverty stricken areas.

Please refrain from the pejorative characterizations. While I am not thin skinned, I have to resist responding in kind which would just diminish any real exchange of information. 

JR

Not sure what was pejorative about it.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Mathias,

I cannot comment on the American experience of policing because they have guns and the UK police do not and there are so many other differences in the countries too.  However, some of this may have resonance in the US.

There are black areas of London and other big cities where gang culture is all pervading.  The hardest thing a single black mum has to do, is to try and keep her son out of these gangs when he becomes a teenager or before that!  Guns are not available to them generally (though some do manage to get one or two converted replicas) but knives are available and these gangs attack each other fairly regularly.  Community leaders have urged the police to tackle this knife crime issue, the way they do this is by having regular amnesties where knives can be handed in (no questions asked) and by stop and search.  There have obviously been too many cases where stop and search has been abused, no doubt about that.  Have you got a better idea?

If you're going to go down that road you'll reap what you sow, that was my point. If the argument is “black communities have gangs, gangs have knives, we need to get rid of knives, we need to stop and frisk black people”, then what you are doing is racial profiling and curtailing the liberty of not being stopped and searched by the police because of your skin color. You, as an admittedly only presumably white person, probably don't intuitively “feel” the problem, but black people do.

And so what you reap is resentment against an inherently racist policy.

Have I got a better idea? Well, first of all, if you're not improving things using one program then you can stop it, particularly if you're reaping dislike for those enforcing it (the police). Then you can look for other solutions which are typically found when looking at the causes for the problems (rather than trying to treat symptoms).

In my judgement this blue vs black or white-blue vs black is a polticial-media construct to draw energy from high profile incidents.  The common theme for these police incidents seems to be economic as much as or more than race. But race is easier to assign blame than poor economic status. (While some are quick to assign blame for that too). The church shooting in SC is clearly white-black while in my judgement not representative of mainstream sentiment.

I have heard very little media uproar about the two white escaped prisoners shot by (white?) NY state police (one killed).  Looking at the economics, I'm not sure the second one should have made it back to prison alive, but it looks like police acting professionally.

SCOTUS just approved use of the lethal injection drug FWIW,

There are also cultural issues that factor in.  The Asian community is very family based and great pressure is put on children to do well in education.  Things are not the same in the black community unfortunately because there are proportionally more absent fathers, so the single mothers have a really hard time to bring up their kids.  I don't know why that is, any ideas?

Poverty and class are somewhat difficult issues. In the US a problem is that a lot of people have been brainwashed into thinking that just because this or that individual pulled themselves out of poverty, or “rose in class”, everyone can. But that's not how the system works. If everyone made the optimal decision at every given time people still wouldn't all end up being millionaires, because that's not how the system works. And it's the mechanisms that prevent that hypothetical from working that in practice ensures this type of segregation.

It is not the system at blame for every individual not rising to the very top. Think about it everybody can't get a gig playing in the NBA or produce a hit record. Just like everything else in nature there is a Gaussian distribution of intelligence and talent. Then overlaying that is how these individuals use or don't use that talent they were given. Under ideal and equal conditions, some will be lucky to rise to digging ditches with a shovel, some get to drive the back hoe, and some go on to buy their own back hoes, all from the same start. but different individuals creating more or less value.. 

When I was a young puke I was made to do house work to earn my allowance, and routinely mowed yards in the neighborhood or shoveled snow from neighbor's driveways (not on MS) to make a few bucks. Then as I got older I had a paper route for a few years that probably didn't even earn minimum wage, but I learned all about customer service and  responsibility. Later through progressively harder jobs that paid better in exchange for creating more value I developed a work ethic and some skills.  I was lucky to have one good parent. I fear than many today do not have even that. As the twig is bent so grows the tree, and many have been conditioned to be dependent on government largess and not to do it for themselves, by themselves. More than half the people can not be above average, but most can do a lot better than they are.

One example where government help could hurt those it tries to help, is raising the minimum wage to uneconomic levels. This will just eliminate more of these entry level jobs, making it harder for young kids to get on the employment ladder to work their way up.  A parallel problem in Europe is that strict laws making it hard to fire workers, discourages hiring new inexperienced workers because if they don't work out, you are stuck with them for the duration.  Workers need to be paid fairly for the value they create, but flipping burgers in most markets is not worth $15/hr.  Being able to fire bad workers helps more people than it hurts.

Now, that blacks are disproportionately found in some socio-economic demographics is surely due to the results of slavery. This isn't to say that it is current racism that prevents them from pulling out of this 'space', but rather a financial issue. The slaves had very little wealth when they were freed, and for the longest time the black population actually was held back, when it comes to business, due to racism.

It is exactly arguments like this that program people to feel like victims that can not succeed, so why try. The government just needs to give them more assistance.  : This is insidious for the unintended damage it does.   

If you have money it's easier to make more money, measured as an absolute, and not as a ratio. That's where the problem lies. It'd be the exact same if you have a large poor area with white people. It isn't that they're white that holds them back, it's poverty and all that comes with it.

More of the victim mentality. There are many stories of individuals who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps (black and white). Most of the people I know that I consider wealthy, earned that wealth the old fashioned way. by working hard and smart.

The concentration of wealth today is not a simple "rich get richer" story but a consequence of the internet and globalization.  Even a few decades ago it would be impossible for somebody to get rich off a social media concept like Facebook, and look at all the others before and since who tried and failed because of inferior execution. Today with globalization and automation et al. it is possible to invent a gadget and market it internationally starting with very little capital. Of course no one is counting all those who try and fail. Those who succeed and do so spectacularly, their success is envied.  Lebron James got to where he got based on raw talent and hard work.

Having said that, my impression is that black families are on the whole better integrated into British society  than the Muslim population where there is sometimes a kind of self-imposed apartheid.  The black population is mostly "Christian" which may explain some of that.  These are the impressions that I have gathered over the last 45 years of immigration into the UK, if I am wrong on some of this, then maybe Sahib will put me right.  I have chosen my words very carefully so please don't try to make them mean something else.

I don't know whether any of this corresponds to the American experience or not.  In the UK, the police are just drawn from the ordinary population, they are not all college graduates but they do a difficult job for us and deserve some respect for that.  If there were no police we would be back to the days of the wild west and we would all need guns then.

DaveP

Well, as an atheist I don't find anything rational in believing in a god, so I question the subsequent rationality of segregation along religious affiliation. In addition to that the very concept of race is a social construct, not derived from a biological “fact”. The classification of “races” the way we do it for other species can't be done for humans, which in turn makes it meaningless. Yet we do it. All the time. And that's why people segregate themselves from each other. Two in my opinion irrational and quite frankly somewhat dumb reasons.

As for “the wild west” it's ironically borderline what some advocate in a veiled language; meaning that people shouldn't be helped so much by the government but instead just work themselves to survive. Yet at the same time those “that have” are adamant that whatever mechanisms led to their wealth are preserved (as well as the wealth) using government tools to do so. In one sense I find it ironic.

it seems like I am repeating myself and I need to take a break to do some real work.

more later I'm sure... ;D

JR

 

[DaveP]

Now, that blacks are disproportionately found in some socio-economic demographics is surely due to the results of slavery. This isn't to say that it is current racism that prevents them from pulling out of this 'space', but rather a financial issue. The slaves had very little wealth when they were freed, and for the longest time the black population actually was held back, when it comes to business, due to racism. If you have money it's easier to make more money, measured as an absolute, and not as a ratio. That's where the problem lies. It'd be the exact same if you have a large poor area with white people. It isn't that they're white that holds them back, it's poverty and all that comes with it.

I don't buy this argument for the UK for the following reasons:-

We did not have any slaves in the UK, those that were freed after abolition in 1829 were in the West Indies.  Very many of the descendants of these men volunteered to fight in the last two world wars, it seems extremely unlikely that they would have done this if they had still hated Britain for what it had done to their ancestors.  After the last war, boatloads of West Indians came to Britain to work, they were hard working family men who did not have it easy.  I find it hard to believe that they brought much damage over with them, but I know that they found racial prejudice over here over housing.  Because we lost so much of our housing stock during the war, there were not enough houses to go around (a situation that has continued to the present day).  The white population resented the blacks taking their jobs on lower pay.  This was orchestrated by large organisations like British Rail to keep wage costs down, then when black migration eased they recruited in the Punjab instead.

None of this happened with the consent of the British people, it was done by successive governments to control the trade unions.  So I don't believe black problems are due to slavery, because the original migrants did not have those issues at the time. There is a better argument that it might be due to racialism, but it is not duplicated in the Asian population to the same degree.  There does seem to be a problem with some young black men though, my personal opinion is that they are very sensitive to self-esteem issues,  I found this when I worked in the Congo in Africa, they would beg me to get them wrist watches for "Likumu" which means being seen as the big guy, I told them I didn't wear a watch and refused to go along with this.  I have seen black men in the UK go for big uneconomical cars that I would never consider myself for the same reason.

US black music was responsible for bringing the races together during the 60's, just ask the old Stax guys about the reception they got in the UK.  Unfortunately rap music has had the opposite effect as it seems to be about anger and again being the top guy (Likumu).

Black girls in the UK seem to do better in school than the boys and unfortunately they have the temptation of the gangs to give them instant street credibility  (Likumu) if they drop out.  Its the third generation of these migrants who have these problems,  some of them seem to need certain brands of very expensive trainers before they can set foot in the street, so it can't be a financial poverty issue, but more like an educational poverty.  I still don't understand why so many young black men father children then walk away, they were not like that in Africa, family was all important to them.

DaveP