yea I mentioned gypsies. Or is gypsy a derogatory term, one of the women in one of my feminist groups is Roma and referred to hersle fas a gypsy so I assumed it was acceptable.
Seriously, Europeans hate themselves some Romas.
Gypsies are a problem for which we have very little solution, especially now that all funds have been slashed.
I know a lot of Bulgarians, and a few Romanians, and they explained me the situation pretty thoroughly.
If intergrating Italians in Belgium's society isn't easy imagine what it is to integrate peoples that have been poor and marginals for centuries and on top of that had their social structure destroyed during communism. Add to that that the traditionally minded folks among them have no love for outsiders (why should they?) and don't trust them (again, with good reasons). Integrating them and raising their education and work prospect to ours isn't exactly a cakewalk. It's been done, and some mayors has had great success, it's just very expensive and ask for a very intelligent and involved person in charge for each intergration project.
And no, that's not "confirmation bia" of course they are (much) more likely to steal, beg and "get by" by any means. And every country is refused the cash to deal with its own problem, old migration wave, or even simply impoverished population.
Meanwhile their population is exploding at home. As you can imagine, they are rarely welcome, and situation in Bulgaria and romania is becoming tense.
As for America you're saying "cops shouldn't be racist" like it's the way to solve your problems.
First you're allowing that to result in many, many death because everything else that is worng with your police.
Second solving that particuliar problem is going to be huge.
You've been lied to, basically. One person can succeed by himself, but he usually won't. The American dream allow the best and luckyest to succeed, yes, and it was an improvement in Europe's ols system, where you were born into a position you could never leave, but that's only a fraction of your population. You need luck, skill and you obviously have it much harder if you don't have money to beggin with.
If you want equal opportunity for all (and therefore equal results across all races, classes,... only influenced by talent and a bit of luck) you have to do much much more.
That's why you have so many racist cops. They KNOW they have to face more and more violent black, gypsies, ... criminals depending on which group is at the bottom right now. It's normal, that the way things are set up.
I don't pay half my salary in taxes for the hell of it : we do need the money to make things remotely equitable else the poor and the migrant fall behind (the poor at least usually have a social network they can rely on in some ways). That's why Turks have already catched up a lot around here (they were part of an earlyer wave than in Germany) and that why it's bad that we cannot tax foreign companies.
That's also why I'm more than a bit angry at all the "anti racists" that are for open borders even though we don't have the funds and time to assimilate the current immigration and the "free trade" types (mostly supported by the American governement) that prevent us from taxing large companies and starve us for cash.
In America you have a Black population that have been through slavery, have been discriminated against pretty much ever since, and of course statistically they'll have issues with criminality and education statistically. Even if every white peoples had stopped being racist since the 60's they'd be in a terrible situation.
Repearing the kind of damage their society have been though (total obliteration of any social structure followed by slavery followed by discrimination and segregation followed by living in an unhelpfull country where you must pay for everything including education and healthcare) take time, lot of it, and money, lot of it too.
But no one is safe in America : don't let the white American fool themselves into thinking that "they" got it good, they don't. The very reason why racism took off in the US was to create that illusion. You must break that.
Divide by race, religion and ethnicity is a very old tactique, and not "a white invention originating in America" as I saw in some American publication, written by an author that forgot to study history or was high on American exeptionalism. It's the oldest trick in the book and was used, well, since history began I think. The Roman did it with great sucess for instance.
In America you can see that some population are permanently settling into misery and dispair, and that's very bad. You'll pay for that later, either in blood or in cash, and probably both.
Racism is a tool used to exploit both part, that what you aren't getting, it's not used to give either privilege, and the peoples at the top know it perfectly well, it's used to make peoples that have only one penny feel rich because "the other side" don't have that. You're falling for an old, old trick.
In general if someone tell you to treat someone differently based on race don't listen to him, even if it's to "battle racism". He's being wrong.
Again, not that fighting racism isn't a noble goal, but it is an even more fruitless endeavour than disarming the US I think, especially concerning subconscious prejudice. People are people after all. Focusing on better standards of life and massively reforming the police and the way they deal with things looks a lot more promising, if getting less people killed within the next decade or so is the goal.
I don't think its fruitless. Its not the sort of thing people should give up on. I think its probably still a lot better than it was 100 years ago, so its not like people aren't slowly getting better.
Not saying you shouldn't try, I didn't mean it's fruitless overall, but if you want to have less people killed, you don't want to wait another 100 years. Something like changing the way police is trained and / or monitored for example can be implemented in a much much shorter time, like a couple of years. Admitting that you have a class problem and doing something against economical inequality can be done in a shorter time also.
But all of that would just ignore the biggest factor.
Police would still overwhelmingly commit excessive violence against black people.
It's not about curing racism, a lot of it is about accountability and their being significant punishments for racist and violent behavior, as well as being fired for this like racist facebook rants and similar things.
The problem is that the higher ups are also racist and will have the backs of the officers that do this, the prosecutors will do their damnedest to not get the officer indicted, juries will favor the officer's story, judges will handle out weaker sentences (when violation like these should be met with harsher punishments than for civilians)
One problem is that our justice system is so intertwined. The dude that is charged with getting an indictment and ultimately getting a guilty verdict if that goes through for the officer, is probably good friends or on amicable terms with him. That prosecutor also needs to have a working relationship with the police in general, all of whom will have the back of this excessively violent racist cop.
It's this long chain of both racism and cronyism that perpetuates itself.
And the police aren't exactly trying to fix it. In the Brown case, 9 out of the 12 members of the grand jury were white. that's the call of the defense, prosecution and judge combined. White juries statistically show racist leanings (very heavy ones,) so that selection was just ensuring a race-based verdict. And also, in grand jury hearings, the jurors will often go with what the prosecution wants, and that prosecutor very clearly did not want an indictment.
And the Garner case, in which there was absolutely no ambiguity at all and everything was very clearly video-taped, resulted in the same thing. Evidence just doesn't matter in the minds of the system when it comes to black people and cops.
It's easyer to ask for high standards for everyone than just try to fight a concept as loosely defined as racism. If you can find a white supremacist organisation in your police, go for it, arrest them.
But if it's about bia, fight for standards. Our cops aren't "not racist" they just have an inquiry for any shot they make and go on trial any time they kill someone.