Would you have preferred if he'd gotten on a megaphone and said, "GO BACK TO AFRICA"? I was with you for the most part until you decided to deride the guy's "courage". It's 50 on 1. Muttering his bigotry isn't cowardly, it's practical.

Are you suggesting that this one man would have likely incited this peaceful protest into a lynch mob had he a megaphone? No, there were cops everywhere. This man wasn't muttering for his personal safety, he was afraid of looking like an idiot - which he managed to do anyways, on a much smaller scale.

Bigot dude is also welcome to leave the country if he doesn't like people peaceably assembling.

Discrimination is still discrimination. I receive sexist comments at work on nearly a daily basis. Do I say anything.. no. Because I don't waste my time dealing with idiots. Shrug it off and move on. People's attitudes will change with time. Slowly, but surely...

um, i think when he said it 'didnt matter' he meant that racism IS dead and so rallies against it are pointless, thus THE RALLIES didn't matter. maybe he shouldnt have said 'go back to africa' and it was probably one of those things where you say it and then youre like, 'damnit, the fuck was that (insert own name)?'

Personally, if the black pride rally was in response to a recent racism flare up then fine, have your rally. But if it is christmas time and you just out of nowhere decide, 'hey, let's have an anti racism parade' it gets on my nerves, not because i dislike their cause, but because they COULD be going down to a soup kitchen and helping people who are actually less fortunate as i do. I actually remember seeing a rally in downtown Jenks last year, and I started talking to one of the guys in the group. he seemed nice and everything was cool, but then he mentioned how 'he was happy that most people DO support their cause, and how most saw through the bullshit ones like them faggots'

i flipped him off and walked away, which given the circumstances probably looked REALLY BAD on my part :P but tolerance is a road which few can say they strive for 100%... in some ways i may be intolerant to things im not completely aware of like the bosox foundation, or canadiens. still, this guy ay of just had a minute of stupidity, and frankly i dont think he needs to be crucified for it. And as far as rallies go:
go ahead and do it, but if you get in my way when im walking through, im going to rip open your chest, insert my throbbing cock into your heart and rape your near-death body until only my semen runs through your veins. Happy Holidays mother fuckers

The big problem is the black community chooses people Michael Brown to rally around, who are not great examples of the real issue. The "I Can't Breathe" guy is much better (can't remember his name, sorry) as a symbol than Michael Brown was.

Also, rioting doesn't help.

A demonstration is not a riot, and YJ specified that this was a demonstration, Chaqa. As for rallying around Michael Brown, they aren't. It's a general call for less police brutality and institutional racism. It's the white community that is making this about Michael Brown because it's easier for them.

JamesYanik
Saying "Go back to Africa" in this context makes him a terrible person, I don't give a shit about rationalizations. There is no fucking way that isn't a horrible and racist thing to say. Saying it by accident is not a thing I can imagine someone doing.
Saying that racism is dead is stupid and/or horrible, and it's hard to tell which one at first sight. He was clearly defending a prior horrible statement, so I'm going to go with evil in this case.
And it was about a recent racism flare-up, so your point about that is invalid.

It's really nice of you to help out at soup kitchens, and it would be nice if more people did it, yeah. That's sort of tangential though.

Pick your issue and work towards making the world better. Sometimes working in soup kitchens does the trick--personal action with tangible results. Sometimes protesting in the street is more effective--personal action with a hope to influence decision-makers. It's all good.

I wasn't saying these were riots, but there were massive riots in Ferguson that didn't help matters, and these were all about Michael Brown.

I don't see why it needs to be a race issue, though. It's a general police brutality and militarization issue. Make them all wear body cameras, simple.

It's a race issue because certain communities are being targeted a lot more than others. Yes to making the police wear body cameras, though.

@Chaqa ...

The riots in Ferguson were not riots until the Missouri state government and local police decided to arm themselves and attack the protestors and media in the area. There are a hundred riots that you could point to in this country to say "protestors are evil" and all of that, but the situation in Ferguson is not one of them.

It is an issue of police brutality and an issue of race. It's both. The police brutality part is quite clear. As for race, it is obvious that black youth in this country are far more likely to be sent to prison in their 20s and even before. In Chicago, the most segregated city in the United States, there are black neighborhoods and white neighborhoods, and before you contest me on that, go and see it for yourself. They don't show that part to tourists. The incarceration rate in West Garfield Park, a black neighborhood with the highest incarceration rate of any neighborhood in the city, is 40 times higher than Clearing, which has the highest incarceration rate of any white neighborhood in the city. North Lawndale's population in Chicago is over 98% non-white and their unemployment rate averages out at around 30%. South Lawndale, which sits directly (you guessed it) south of North Lawndale, is around 61% non-white, pretty close to the white/non-white ratio of the entire city of Chicago (45/55), has about a 12% unemployment rate. These districts are separated by West Ogden Avenue and some railroad tracks. They aren't different areas, yet they are different worlds. That's a race problem.

I've pointed out different neighborhoods like this to people that live in Lake Forest, which is a little bit over 30 miles outside of the city, as an example of the dichotomy between their quaint little town, which is 98.5% white and sits right in the center of the 13th-richest zip code in the nation, and the inner city. Everyone who disagrees, which is probably upwards of three quarters of the people I talk with, tell me that it's always been that way and because of that there's nothing we can do. That's why I talk about North Lawndale, because it hasn't always been that way. It was a Jewish neighborhood for the longest time, and they invited non-white people to move in during Jim Crow, when Chicago and NYC were the great escape cities from the South. Once lenders realized that they could take advantage of the mass exodus of sorts, they started exploiting non-whites around the city, and at its peak 85% of black buyers in Chicago bought their homes on contract.

As a result, North Lawndale is 92% black today (over 98% non-white), it's population dropped from over 100,000 in the 1940s when this story began to about 36,000 today, and its homicide rate is 45 per 100,000. That's triple the rate of the city as a whole, and the rate of the city as a whole is already triple the rate of the nation as a whole. That's just one of a hundred stats you could pull on black neighborhoods in Chicago and around the country that on their own are far too significant not to be a race problem.

Sorry bo, I don't know what riots you were watching, but I watched the livestreams. Right after the verdict was announced, shit went crazy in Ferguson, and it was most definitely not because there was a police presence, since the state troopers had been there for weeks.

Also, your entire post is not about police brutality. You mention high rates of crime and incarceration in black neighborhoods, but past your first few sentences, you never mention police again. Just that the all-black neighborhood is more crime-filled than the "normal" (follows the general breakdown) neighborhood. I don't see how that relates to police brutality.

Also, don't forget that the vast majority of Chicago murders are black-on-black, so that's not really a racism issue, is it?

Chaqa, yes it is. It is white people who are responsible for these murders. They are responsible for the situation that causes the murders, at least. That makes it a racism issue.

The situation was created by people long dead. I don't think it's fair to hold people accountable for the actions of their grandparents.

No, but it's not fair to talk about black-on-black murder as a non-race issue. It is fair to hold dead people accountable to their actions, if you know what I mean.

I also blame that guy from Jersey Shore for all of society's ills.

If black-on-black murder is white people's problem, then I give up.

It's not white people's problem, it's their fault. Not any specific ones at this point, mostly just some ones that are dead. But you had been implying that it was their own fault or something, which is wrong.

"The situation was created by people long dead. I don't think it's fair to hold people accountable for the actions of their grandparents."

We should be paying out reparations for slavery. You are oversimplifying things - emancipation and the eventual death of slaveowners did not cancel out slavery. You and I were born with an unfair advantage in this country because our ancestors weren't slaves and our ancestors never had to worry about getting lynched for looking at the wrong person. When the slaves were "freed," they had to deal with a hundred years of Jim Crow, and when they either fled Jim Crow or it legally ended, they had to deal with housing segregation and the income gap that was perpetuated by the last 500 years of injustice, and that still goes on today. White people in the USA don't have that on their shoulders at birth. Those dead people are still having a huge effect on this country, so why should we simply forget what they did?

"Right after the verdict was announced, shit went crazy in Ferguson, and it was most definitely not because there was a police presence, since the state troopers had been there for weeks"

You started watching a month or two late I guess. The police militarized days after the death of Mike Brown. They tear gassed media who were reporting from the designated media areas within a week of his death because there was too much press for their liking. The non-indictment (not verdict - there will never be a verdict) came much later.

"Just that the all-black neighborhood is more crime-filled than the "normal" (follows the general breakdown) neighborhood."

The black neighborhoods are impoverished, have fewer options for educating themselves, and have high rates of households headed by single parents. The income gap is roughly the same as it was in 1970. White families are roughly 20 times as wealthy than black families. Patrick Sharkey noted in his study of black and white youth between 1955 and 1970 that 4% of white kids grew up in poor neighborhoods while 62% of black kids grew up in poor neighborhoods, and the same study a generation later showed minimal change. He also showed that a black family living on a $100,000/year income lived in the same neighborhoods as white people did making $30,000/year. Thus, we're sustaining poverty.

How? I already wrote on that. Higher unemployment rates, poor-man's education, high incarceration rates, and a stunningly high amount of white flight to places like Lake Forest where they are sheltered from the problems of the real world with their green paper bubble.

You are clearly aware that poverty and crime are closely correlated. That's indisputable.

There is a degree of truth to what you say. The circular reasoning that says that because crime rates in black neighborhoods are higher, there are more interactions between police and black residents, and as a result, the stunningly high degree of brutal police action against blacks is not a race issue; rather, there are simply more opportunities because black crime is higher. It's a circle, and it's not wrong.

This view omits facts, though. We are seeing an epidemic of young unarmed blacks killed by police today, and the numbers in the past few years are comparable to the numbers of blacks lynched in the 1920s. Not only that, though - this "epidemic" is not taking place when black crime is high, but when it is low. As such, again, you aren't wrong - the issues in Chicago are somewhat unrelated to police brutality. However, the number of murders in Chicago in 2013 was the lowest since 1965. Why, then, is black-on-black murder, as it's been called here, so prominent and consistent? Because sustaining poverty sustains crime, and sustained crime increases instances of brutality - patience dwindles but crime does not.

Thinking about it this way. What you say is true - many problems that affect black neighborhoods and predominantly non-white communities grow out of the conditions in those communities. That's not the end of the discussion, though. It's just the beginning. The next piece is to realize that these conditions stem from slavery and Jim Crow because those caused housing segregation and the income gap, both of which still survive today and need to be addressed.

Guns owned by black people don't kill black people. Black people kill black people.

Sorry to make light of this, but someone who pulls the trigger makes the decision. There may be problems that are exacerbated by any societal or economic structure, but the blame game is a dangerous and slippery slope.

@ Chaqa

"I don't think it's fair to hold people accountable for the actions of their grandparents."

Especially when my maternal great-great-great grandfather was a Union infantryman who was wounded in action in the Battle of Shiloh, fighting to preserve the United States and, consequently, the rights of all men irrespective of color. My paternal ancestors got here after the Civil War and settled well north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Consequently, I am in no mood to listen to any "white privilege" rants/arguments. I know FAR too many underprivileged white males from poor families who nevertheless put themselves through school and made a good life for themselves.
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That being said, here's my opinion:

Police militarization is a huge problem in the United States While neither the Brown nor the Garner case directly highlighted the issue, the response to the protests certainly did. There is absolutely no reason for the police to have armored vehicles, automatic weapons, and "tactical" military-style gear/kit.

I believe law enforcement agencies should only be allowed to maintain SWAT teams and up-armored vehicles if their population is above a certain threshold. I see no need for paramilitary SWAT teams when a group of lightly armed and armored police officers can safely handle alI but the most serious shootouts. In a case of mass civil disobedience, the National Guard should be called. There is no longer a distinct line between civilian police and the military, and this is a problem.

Is racism a problem in the United States? That's a trickier question.

If the "United States" is defined as the 300 million people that live here, then yes, racism is a problem. But racism is a problem everywhere if that is the case. As long as people of different skin colors exist, there will be ignorant people who judge based on that trait alone. This is an unavoidable part of human nature, and I don't think anyone will reasonably dispute that individual racists will always exist in some way, shape, or form.

If the "United States" is defined as an institution of justice or a system of mutually beneficial laws and law enforcement, then I would say that the race issue has been blown far out of proportion. As bo_sox pointed out, in many areas black people face much higher rates of crime and incarceration. But what the statistics don't show is whether or not black people are *committing* more crimes than white people. Well, why do people commit crimes?

A) Money -- Black people are generally less well-off than other races. Many crimes are probably committed out of financial desperation. Why are black people less well-off? I could reasonably argue that it is merely the lingering effects of *past* discrimination, not necessarily present discrimination. Depending on how you look at it, blacks have only been first-class citizens for roughly 40 years, after centuries of oppression. One does not recover an entire race in four decades. I believe that time (even in the absence of affirmative action) will gradually heal this woe.

B) "Thug" culture -- Cops catch bad guys. If they catch a lot of bad guys that wear certain clothes or drive certain cars (regardless of race; thugs everywhere and of every color dress the same), of course they're going to profile. That's not racist per se, it's good police work. Black youths are bombarded by a "fuck the police" culture, propagated by professional race-baiters that try and brainwash them into thinking that the law is racist and cops are racist and white guys are racist. And we wonder why their crime rates are so high? If your clothes are walking probable cause and your car is rolling probable cause, don't be surprised when the cop stops you and searches your shit citing "probable cause". Not saying it's right, but I am saying that the black community as a whole is *very* complicit in this mess. Also, it's not "black" culture. It's criminal culture.
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Furthermore, the black community is fixating on the wrong issue. Michael Brown fought the law and the law won. Eric Garner was killed without justification; that's an entirely different case and the outcome was nothing less than a travesty of justice.

Both men pale in comparison to the number of black bodies that have been piling up on inner city streets. "Black Lives Matter"? I agree, but do black lives matter equally? I think all lives matter equally, but the black community seems to care a hell of a lot more about a black guy who was justifiably killed by a police officer (Brown case) than about the thousands of black guys killed by other black guys every year.

"We should be paying out reparations for slavery."

OK sure. Then let's make someone pay reparations for the Babylonian Captivity, the Sacking of Jerusalem, the Crusades, the wars of Genghis Khan, the Spanish Inquisition, etc., etc.

Of my ancestors, one branch is Cherokee, one is Italian immigrants (~1920 arrival), one is Pennsylvania Dutch, and one is Scots-Irish/German. I don't have any ancestors even remotely involved with slavery, so the simple idea of reparations is laughable.

I'm not saying there is no effect from the past, or that there aren't race issues. But I don't think police brutality is only a race issue, it's a larger problem. Police are trained in an "us vs. them" mentality, think that everything is a conflict, and are using post-1980s "war on drugs"/"gangwar" type tactics.

Go watch an old cop show like Adam-12 or Chips. The police weren't like this back then.

Excellent point on the culture and race-baiters, Gunfighter. Al Sharpton does not help anything anymore. He's just interested in money and advancing his image.

Lest not forget, racism is the by product of a ancient primitive defense mechanism in which our minds stereotype our world to better protect ourselves. It derives from past experiences and the lessons taught by our parents. For example if a dog bites a young child, that child will stereotype dogs as violent and aggressive inciting a sense of fear when that child comes in contact with another dog. Likewise, if a child hears their parent express a racist attitude or stereotype about a minority group then that child will grow to also do that. "Mom said black people will rob me" turns into white people crossing the street at night to be on the opposite side of the street as a black person. What I am trying to get at is that racism will never and can never be eradicated. But it can be combated and lessened. I personally think that can be done by integrating primary education. I was raised very racist, white racist grandparents and white racist parents. Then I attended school at a predominantly black high school and learned that the stereotypes taught to me by my parents and grandparents were completely wrong. I met black kids who had a stronger work ethic than me, Hispanic kids with a grander understanding of English than me, I met a few stereotypical people but that opened my eyes; there are lazy white people, white people who can barely speak English, white people who commit terrible crimes. Being subjected to the "other side" shattered the stereotypes imbued on me by my family. I think that if that were done then over time racism can be combated. But again, everything takes time.

I suppose old YJ is pretty happy with the 2 non-black police officers that were executed in New York.

Yeahl...racism is alive and fucking well in the US....and....here a hint, old pal of mine...the fucking "African Americans" are hardly innocent.

Yes....racism sucks....but all you retarded fucktards that think racism is a Whiute problem need to get your fucking heads out of Al SHarpton's cavernous asshole.

@krellin- KRELLIN!! You are still here! Long time no see.

Chaqa, it's not about the guilt of your ancestors, it's about the fact that history has made life generally better for one group of people than another. Anyone with any concept of fairness or justice should feel obligated to try to close that gap.

I think *most* people agree that we should be set up to help those who are *trying* to succeed, contribute to society, and be law-abiding citizens.

The problem is that many of those with the most wealth and power *don't have to try any more* so they simply rig the system in their favor to perpetuate their positions.

How we improve is a matter of much debate.

Sorry ghug, no. I don't have any debt to them, and neither do 90%+ of the living people in the US. Those who harmed them are long dead, the Jim Crow perpetuators are long dead.