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[nenjin]

It's stuff like this that creates fodder for the right wing to go "See, it's all bullshit." The radical left has done a bang up job trying to match the crazy rhetoric of the repugnant right. It's a somewhat smaller hammer helping drive the wedge deeper. With the winds blowing the way they are, it's driving more people into Trump's camp than the other direction I think. Trump says affordable housing is a big nah because it fucks up people's property values? The other side says "white people just give up what you have now." They're both trying to move the status quo but Trump's the more subtle manipulation, because the other's side is far less realistic and in some ways, immediately unjust by American standards.

Like if you're not down with the full on revolutionary-speak about kicking people out of homes then the movement doesn't want you on their side.

The progressive left has become more and more like this. See: Parts of the LGBTQ movement, etc... The attitude that you can never be radical enough to meet the test drives their part of the narrative to places like this. And given a choice, some people that were in the middle would rather hold the progressive left in contempt than condemn the slightly less immediately shitty right. In some ways the progressive left is just lashing out mindlessly, and all the right has to do is stand there with its arms folded smugly and say just go "See?" Chaotic Neutral Vs. Lawful Evil? People gonna go LE.

[Reelya]

In some ways the progressive left is just lashing out mindlessly, and all the right has to do is stand there with its arms folded smugly and say just go "See?" Chaotic Neutral Vs. Lawful Evil? People gonna go LE.

I guess my thesis here is that it isn't mindless. The lashing out is what keeps fringe movements both pure, and fringe, at the same time. I wouldn't say it's necessarily deliberate on a conscious level, but it's one of those mechanisms by which groups perpetuate themselves as a group. I'd actually call them the radical left here, perhaps because here we don't really use the term "progressive" in the way you Americans do. If you said someone was progressive in Australian politics it would generally mean center left, or even the social liberal wing of our center right party. But anyway, these types of mechanisms that shed the "non-believers" are actually central to how ideological groups perpetuate themselves.

Note the important word is perpetuate *themselves* and not actually solving the issue which they claim is the reason they exist. If your ideas are so radical that they never get implemented then you can keep requesting donations forever. If you win, the group by definition becomes obsolete. Think PETA for example and how utterly useless PETAs tactics are at doing things such as ending pet ownership and how many animals they literally kill. PETA ultimately exists to perpetuate PETA, and all PETA "activities" are effectively make-work to make out that PETA does something that you should be donating to. The hardcore of BLM would be the same: the same faces are in charge as long as they keep it radicalized and make unrealistic demands. If politicians start actually listening to them, that's the biggest threat to their existence, and that's when they double-down on crazy shit.

[Jimmy]

BLM is gaining traction here in Australia. Specifically, the Australian Aboriginals face many hardships. A few bullet points include:

• Aboriginal children are 70% more likely to be malnourished
• Aboriginal children are 30% more likely to fail to finish high school
• Aboriginal children are 80% more likely to commit suicide
• Aboriginal adults are 100% more likely to be unemployed
• Aboriginal women are 350% more likely to be victims of domestic violence
• Aboriginal women are 300% more likely to be victims of sexual violence

Hopefully we can get some real discussion of these real issues that actually matter, instead of protests about statues of historical figures.

[Reelya]

Those are in fact the core issues for Aboriginal Australians. The deaths in custody is what the media focus on however, because that's a very simplified way of framing the narrative, with clear heroes and villains and a simple solution: "just don't kill them".

However they've had multiple royal commissions into those deaths over the last 30+ years and the death rate for Aboriginal Australians in custody is actually, surprise, lower than for white people in custody. That's because the people who are managing those prisons are completely aware that if a black person dies in custody that's going to be national news, i.e. they're totally on top of that, whereas if you're white and die in custody, well when's the last time you even heard about something like that? it happens overall more frequently than black ones but they don't get reported. White people who die in custody in Australia apparently aren't newsworthy, a quirk of how the media narrative works here, and the prison authorities are aware of that, so they clearly over-focus on preventing the ones that are going to be the PR disaster if the occur.

The focus on the death in custody thing is therefore a massive societal cop-out to avoid having to deal with all the problems you listed, which would actually require the entire society to look inwards, whereas the narrow "death in custody" thing allows us to assign blame for one profession for the whole problem. A black person dies in custody and we all tut-tut and say "someone" should do something about that. Someone who isn't us, basically. So the media fixation on that one thing actually serves to sweep those bigger problems you mentioned under the rug, by focusing on the idea that law enforcement are just big meanies, and that's the entire problem.

And that brings up another question. Is the focus on the role of the police overly narrow? Are they to some extent being used as a scapegoat for problems that are in fact the responsibility of society as a whole. It's a convenient cop-out to just say get rid of the police and therefore all problems for black people would go away. While it's obviously horrible that some cops kill black people, the vast majority of black people who are killed are not killed by police, and there may not be a specific reason to think that would get any better without police around.

[TD1]

I wonder how many black people black gangs murder...

[Reelya]

Yeah it's a dent in problems in general. But for the specific race gaps it probably won't do anything directly. Australia has basically no police shootings and none of the militarized police stuff but we have the race poverty thing just as strong. De-escalation of police in the USA is a good thing however don't be at all surprised if that happens and at the end result black people aren't in fact any better off relative to white people.

[Doomblade187]

Police reform will primarily yield economic benefits by reducing our incarceration rate, which is a major economic drain on minority communities.

[Iduno]

https://twitter.com/kassidymariee03/status/1294559481624289281

They also blocked off a bridge and slashed the tires of everyone on it, whether or not they were involved in protests.

[Maximum Spin]

I wonder how many black people black gangs murder...

A minimum of 2600 black people in 2018, the most recent year for which full data is available, were killed by blacks; this is 8/9 of the black homicide victims in this table. Presumably, black gangs are responsible for some unknown fraction of this, but as gang violence is generally reported to be the main source of violence in urban environments with high black populations, it seems fair to estimate more than 50%. Most of the obvious sources of uncertainty in the table militate toward a greater proportion of gang-related black-on-black violence; for example, it excludes cases of multiple victims and multiple perpetrators, both of which are more common in gang violence; for another example, it only includes (obviously) cases in which the offender is known, which is significantly less common in gang violence than in gang-unrelated violence (because snitches get stitches).
The vast, overwhelming majority of homicide is intraracial; the largest source of interracial homicide appears to be black/latino gang beefs. (The two don't tend to get along.)

[Rolan7]

What's the conclusion you draw from all that? 
I'm not seeing the relevance of the original question to the thread, yet.

[nenjin]

The overall point that gets made, because I've had these kinds of numbers brought to me before, is that we need to worry less about police violence and murder against Black people and way more about the violence that they commit in their own communities.

Other lines of reasoning are: "Who are they to talk about murder with crime rates like that."

(When comparing the # of white people killed by blacks to black people killed by whites or whites killed by whites): "Seems like they kill everyone more than they get killed by others."

Etc...

The meta point that always gets missed by people that bring this up to me....is that there is a huge difference between citizens killing each other, and organs of government killing people. In my mind, in the social contract, the obligation of public servants to not violate people's rights is HIGHER than the obligation of a citizens to not violate each other's rights. If cops were killing people at the rate black people kill each other, we'd have no society. So you nip that shit in the bud early.

The other point is that, obviously, high crime blacks, gangs etc..., don't represent overall black people any more than neo-nazis or the KKK don't represent overall white people. But since neither side is willing to back down on that assertion.....

[Rolan7]

Mmhm, but if you assume they're doing that, they get to jump on you for making assumptions.  So much for the tolerant left, etc.  Which is why they just state a bunch of technically true facts, and only imply the conclusions.

At this point I think the best response is to ask what they're trying to say.  Don't assume, make *them* say it out loud.  It's a lot more effective for them to imply than to actually take a position.

[Egan_BW]

"I'm just sayin" *waggles eyebrows* "it's interesting is all" *waggles eyebrows* "I mean I don't really have a position, just showing you the data" *waggles eyebrows* "so that you can draw your own conclusions"

[nenjin]

Oh yeah, I've tried that route. They don't want to come to point blank conclusions or statements because the optics of it. It's so goddamn intellectually dishonest. What gets me is the guy I primarily get this from likes to quote Buddhist wisdom: "The Buddah would say the best position is to take no position." It's pretty goddamn slimy.

[Maximum Spin]

The conclusion I draw from it is "a minimum 2600 black people were killed in 2018 by black perpetrators". I don't know what to tell you, man, somebody asked a question so I got the data. I didn't even bother to compare it against other numbers, but it's probably fewer than died of heart disease (citation: if homicide became the #1 killer of any racial demographic, you would've HEARD ABOUT IT).

If pressed to make a political point out of this, the best I would have to offer is "defunding the police is likely to result in more dead black people than fewer, so we should focus on realistic reforms instead". Which is pretty ironic since I'm an anarchist and don't want to pay for police in the first place. A close second could be "legalise drugs and prostitution so there's less for gangs to kill each other over", which at least I could get on board with.

I get that what you're describing is probably a thing (I don't really get into internet political arguments so I don't have firsthand knowledge), but assuming that your enemies have a monopoly on the data is dangerously close to assuming that they're right?

What gets me is the guy I primarily get this from likes to quote Buddhist wisdom: "The Buddah would say the best position is to take no position." It's pretty goddamn slimy.

(Man, don't bring that up, I'm also a Chan Buddhist so it only makes the optics worse! Although I don't think the Buddha would actually say that.)