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Comment by manfredo | Hacker News Reader

On average the police kill ~80 unarmed people each year, of any race [1]. By comparison, 40 million people are unemployed as a result of the pandemic and lockdown. Certainly, the impact of someone unjustly killed is vastly larger than that of someone laid off or furloughed. But is it 500,000 times greater? These are different issues. They aren't equivalent, but they're comparable at least. Pointing out the inconsistency here isn't "sticking one's head in the sand of relativism."

1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/polic...

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They are not only protesting the killing of unarmed black people, but all aspects of the structural bias of American police and the justice system against blacks. These biases affect much more than the extreme cases of the killing of unarmed black people.

There is _far_ more harm in unjust policing than is counted in deaths per year.

Same for coronavirus and for economic hardship.

Who do you think the economic hardship of coronavirus affects the most?

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/05/30/8654130...

And far more harm than just one year's worth. We've seen 400 years of structural anti-black racism here, with no end in sight. The USA has had more than 240 years to fix that. If people are finding the timing of the current protest inconvenient, well, they've had their whole lives to fix the problem. They shouldn't blame the protesters for their own lack of action.

I'll note that in 1964, people were calling civil rights protests "unwise and untimely". [1] Somehow it's never the right moment for justice. Anybody suggesting an indefinite delay should be aware that their arguments are indistinguishable from those of people for whom "later" actually means "never". If people really want to end these protests now, instead of arguing for delay they should quickly enact deep structural changes.

[1]https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham....

>We've seen 400 years of structural anti-black racism here, with no end in sight.

The idea that 400 years of structural racism can be proven seems highly doubtful to me. Do you really have 400 years worth of evidence of literal outright racism? How can we hope to inspire change with rhetoric like this? This is the equivalent of simply screaming louder to get a point across. Highly ineffective unless annoying them into submission is your goal.

>The idea that 400 years of structural racism can be proven seems highly doubtful to me.

We had slavery in America from 1619 until 1865. Jim Crow and segregation for 100 years after that. The Civil Rights Act, and related laws, eliminated much of the legal basis for institutional racism. But as we all know, that didn't eliminate racism. Safe to say, there's plenty of racism left in this country. Especially in institutions like the police. That's 401 years.

ETA: That's focusing purely on the black population. If you count what was directed against the native populations, you can go back even further.

I'm not sure how much "structural" racism actually exists in the US at this point. There are no doubt pockets and they should be rooted out.

Personal racism exists and will probably never go away. It would be nice if it did.

I do think people get profiled and hassled because other people who look like that have done XXX and cops see a possible pattern. This isn't fair to innocent people at all but I suspect this has been what is happening rather than anything "structural".

I learned this firsthand like 20 years ago when I grew long hair and a beard John Lennon style for maybe 8 months. I was very quickly pulled over, hassled and searched (very rudely I might add) on made up charges by a rural cop. This did open my eyes to maybe a small part of what black America goes through in dealing with cops. I cut my hair back to military style, shaved, and it was back to letting me off with a warning and have a nice day.

I feel like this kind of thing is a good part of antagonism but I don't see it as "structural". More many cops (including minority cops as far as that goes) not liking certain types of people. They need to serve the community imo and it would be better for everyone.

I think the Amy Cooper/Christian Cooper incident from a few weeks ago was the most important 'teachable moment' that we've had in years. I am somewhat disappointed that it was overshadowed by protests against police brutality, because I thought it was a very 'teachable moment' that illustrated the type of racism that still exists behind a facade of tolerance.

Police abuse is sort of a separate issue relating to training and accountability. While it is very definitely fueled by racism and classism, I feel like it is an issue that affects all races, albeit blacks more because of long standing economic and cultural issues. The 'warrior cop' mentality affects us all, and is something that has been slowly improving in many large cities.

"Personal racism" is tough. Racism is a broad term for many things. If my neighbor plays their stereo too loud and they're white, I might call them 'white trash' in private conversation, and depending on their race I might adopt a different epithet. That isn't to say I would deny them opportunity or hate them because of their race, just that their race is a convenient attachment point for my general dislike of them. Now I'm not saying that is good or excusable, but I think it is a different thing than denying someone rights or opportunities because of their color, or making assumptions about them based on their background.

When people of color don't feel safe to walk the streets of their own neighborhood because a Karen can report them as suspicious and the authorities take that seriously and escalate the situation, there very definitely is systemic, structural racism at play. If this were just happening to blacks who appeared 'urban' you might have a point, but it affects even well dressed black people and there are countless stories backing that up. Hell, ten years ago an aquaintence was profiled because her dark Italian skin made her appear Mexican to some stupid AZ cops.

I am a long haired white guy who has also been bald, so I get what you're saying. For years I could guarantee I would have the last open seat on a plane next to me, I'm assuming because of the way I look. That doesn't negate the experiences of people of color, it just adds another facet to the way people can prejudge you. If anything, it should illustrate how bad things could be if you weren't white.

Maybe I'm not understanding the term "structural". To me the word indicates institutions officially set up to behave in a racial manner, i.e segregation. Obviously we don't have much or any of that anymore. But I agree racism and profiling (which I think of as a separate issue... note, I do think it's an "issue") exist. I just balk at the use of the term "structural". Structural is rounding up Muslims in Western China. Structural is passing a law that says if you are black you can't come in. We don't do structural anymore. Which isn't to say we don't have racism or racial problems or classism or profiling or injustice, obviously we do.

Unlike the average San Francisco resident I've actually spent a lot of time around blacks and black communities so this isn't theoretical one dimensional abstract signaling of the type that is unfortunately too common lately.

The issue is deep and not nearly as simple as one sided "structural racism social injustice". A lot of it comes down to culture and how people feel about proper behavior. Along with contempt for cultures that don't have the same values. And willingness to engage in violent behavior.

But I don't deny black Americans have a rough time with the police and I do think we should do something about that. Maybe that is what is meant by "structural" in which case I agree, no argument.

I'm not sure what to do about people not liking each others culture though. I expect the bigots are the ones missing out, but I don't know if we can legal that problem away.

Something doesn't have to be encoded in law to be structural. If a cop racially profiles a black man and harasses him and his boss doesn't discipline him, that's structural. The structure has failed to provide the right outcome.

I don't agree. "Structural" indicates a structure or framework (in this case the legal system) independent of individual actors.

A cop and his boss acting badly may be systemic. It isn't structural.

Would you be content with replacing "structural racism" with "systemic racism" in that case?

Those are examples of individual racism. You cannot make a law that erases individual racism. You can make one that erases structural. If a department of cops are individually racist and therefore have the effect of profiling people regularly, there is simply no law that can prevent that.

That's a different definition to what is commonly accepted.

Structural racism is often called systematic or institutional racism[0]. It doesn't have to be deliberate, but instead is something that perpetuates reduced status of a racial minority by the way laws or institutions are structured.

A commonly used example is the difference in laws and sentencing between crack and powered cocaine. The 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act created a mandatory minimum sentence on 5 years for 5 grams of crack cocaine, but the same Act made the 5 year minimum sentence apply to 500g of powered cocaine[1].

This doesn't appear to have been deliberately racist, and instead it was mostly in response to media hype about crack. But it had the result of meaning blacks were much more likely to be sentenced to prison for minor drug offences.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism

[1] https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/crack-vrs-po...

I don't think "structural" can usefully include only things that explicitly say, "Hey, we're racists, and here's the racist thing we're doing." That became taboo during the 1960s, so all but a white fringe stopped. But the attitudes and policy choices didn't magical end when people stopped being honest about their goals. They just became hidden. See the Southern Strategy, and especially Lee Atwater's quote here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy#Evolution_(1...

I don't disagree with your point on racism existing.

I personally believe profiling is not the same as racism, both have clear definitions. Both also sweep up innocent people and lump them in with miscreants who "look like that" so it's not something to go to the mat over. I basically agree.

What I don't agree with is your over the top rhetoric.

"We've seen 400 years of structural anti-black racism here, with no end in sight. The USA has had more than 240 years to fix that."

This disregards John Brown, the civil war, the civil rights act, affirmative action and a multitude of programs policies and attempts to bring justice and some measure of equality of opportunity to the minority. It also ignores the widespread support of the current protests and paints America with an overly broad brush of racism. In short, it does exactly what racists are accused of doing. I realize you likely read this kind of thing in a book. That doesn't make it any better nor more fair or accurate.

When you say "structural" and attempt to equate profiling with slavery or segregation, both of which were structural in an attempt to imply we are exactly the same place legally and in terms of opportunity, and how the system treats minorities when we manifestly are not, it's offensive, inaccurate and it raise hackles.

I really didn't want to get deep into this, and I'm not debating, but I think this point needs to be raised because there is entirely too much hot and shallow speech about lately and it detracts from the core point.

"That doesn't negate the experiences of people of color, it just adds another facet to the way people can prejudge you. If anything, it should illustrate how bad things could be if you weren't white."

Yep that was exactly my point and why I related the story. I learned that people really are profiled and harassed based on their looks or certain assumptions about them. It really does happen.

> It really does happen.

But not in any structured way, but rather in random human behavior that we might never be able to correct, right?

It is pretty clear that you and the parent's author aren't using the same definition of "systemic".

It is very difficult to devise reasonable plans of action when the core terms in the dispute are ill-defined. There also seems to be a current of thought that any attempt to clarify or analyze the situation is an attempt to diminish the grievances. This anti-intellectualism coupled with the chaos and violence of a mob is frightening.

Instead of expecting every commenter to live up to your standard of evidence - lest the entire movement be labelled an anti-intellectual mob - why don't you go get educated yourself?

Here's a movie, Thirteenth, which VERY CLEARLY defines and examines structural racism in the criminal justice system in the US, and how it evolved directly from the systems of slavery and its sequel, Jim Crow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krfcq5pF8u8

This analysis and conversation has been building for literally decades. It's like showing up for the fifth week of an algebraic geometry class and calling it 'anti-intellectual' because you can't be bothered to pick up Euclid...

I did not say either interpretation of "systemic" was wrong, just that they were not identical. Both interpretations can be used to have meaningful discussions but only if it is clear which definition is being used first.

And thanks for proving my point that some people view any attempt to analyze the situation as an attempt to diminish the grievances.

I said nothing about 'diminishing grievances.' I was responding to a) calling the protestors an anti-intellectual violent mob, and b) an apparent ignorance of the basic terms of the discussion. Again, go educate yourself.

Why did you assume that my comments about the violent mob was in reference to peaceful protestors? I was clearly talking about the looters and vandals that have used the legitimate protests to shield their activities. Is it that hard to discern the meaning of "violent mob"?

Your willingness to jump yet again to the conclusion that I was attempting to dismiss legitimate grievances is frustrating and again an example of the behavior I was trying to call out.

Examine your defensiveness. Where's it coming from? Why are you angrily splitting hairs over phrasing and putting words in my mouth, instead of engaging with my core point: that you should actually put in a bit of effort and go learn about this stuff?

Angrily? Defensive?

When I pointed out that "systemic racism" means different things to different people and that lack of agreement on that point made it difficult to have a meaningful discussion, you told me to "Go educate myself" and proceeded to lecture me about my ignorance regarding the criminal justice system.

How did you determine I was ignorant about anything? I happen to agree that our criminal justice system has some deep problems, so you just attacked a potential ally.

It seems to me that you jumped to the unwarranted conclusion that I had challenged some assertion about "system racism'. But by doing so you illustrated my point that it was difficult to have a discussion when terms are so ill-defined and that it was even more difficult to do so when people assumed that any attempt to clarify and understand the meaning behind the words was some attempt to minimize or diminish the grievances.

Your reaction was exactly the behavior that I was pointing out as making it difficult to discuss these issues.

You are upset that I am "splitting hairs over phrasing" and that is an example of what I would call "anti-intellectualism". The meaning of words is supremely important if we are to find common ground and be able to work rationally towards addressing the legitimate grievances being expressed in the protests.

> structural racism

I think "structural racism" is one of the biggest branding failures of the whole movement.

To begin with, it uses the word "racism" to refer to something unintentional, when it normally implies intentionality. That needlessly makes people defensive. So then they want to deny that it's happening rather than admit there is a problem, which is the first step to solving it. Before even step one you've already lost.

Then the definition comes out as something like, structures that produce a racial disparity. But before controlling for confounders that's just everything. There are a slew of factors that correlate with race -- income, culture, in some cases biology (e.g. for Vitamin D). If lower income people get worse outcomes then all else equal, black people will get worse outcomes as a result of lower incomes. Which implies a poverty problem in those cases rather than a racism problem, which means you need anti-poverty solutions.

If you try to insist on a racism frame there, all you're doing is making enemies out of lower income white people who might've been your allies against the actual root cause which affects them too. And you make it all too easy for opponents to reveal the confounders and show that the "racism" isn't there, even though the problem is still there, because the problem wasn't "racism" (as it's commonly understood) to begin with.

It's easier to actually solve the problems if you stop having to constantly fight with people over calling it that.

"Structural racism" is not a branding failure, it's an academic term that has been used for a long time and it only takes a minute or so to explain to anybody willing to listen. People don't become defensive because of the word "racism", people become defensive when they're told that behavior that used to be okay is no longer okay, and that they have to change. People don't like being told they're wrong no matter which words you use.

Your poverty example strikes me as disingenuous because poverty for black people is considerably worse than poverty for white people, even when you control for the big confounders, precisely because of racism. Which means that anti-poverty measures can be a great thing but they will not by themselves be sufficient to level the playing field.

It's funny how it's always --other-- people who are getting defensive, who will refuse to listen, who are lost before the arguments have even been expressed. You're fighting on behalf of a demographic that doesn't exist: people who aren't racist but are unwilling to listen for 2 minutes to an explanation of systemic racism. I bet you just dislike the concept of systemic racism yourself and you're using hypothetical alienation of ignorant poor white people as a cover.

If you think one single word is all that lies in the way, feel free to pick a different one and start using it. But once you actually do the anti-racist work, you'll find that isn't really the problem. It's that white people generally become irrational and defensive whenever race comes up. See DiAngelo's "White Fragility" for more on this. Her 2011 academic paper on this is here: https://libjournal.uncg.edu/ijcp/article/viewFile/249/116

A pretty clear example is what happened with the phrase "Black Lives Matter". It doesn't involve the R word. And yet, it sends a lot of white people into a rage. Literally, as here, where the menacing white man is shouting: “Black Lives Matter? Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!” https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10223827665665524&se...

And it's not just that guy. For many, there is no acceptable way to point our racial injustice. The only acceptable level of protest is one so quiet that it is entirely unseen, unheard. MLK addressed this in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" if you want to read more.

> It's that white people generally become irrational and defensive whenever race comes up.

It's more that white people become defensive when you accuse them of racism. Which, when racism means intentionally hating black people, you can understand -- they know whether or not they hate black people and then you're accusing them of something they know isn't true.

Having to explain that it means something else in this context is just handicapping yourself from the start for no reason. Call it structural injustice or something.

> A pretty clear example is what happened with the phrase "Black Lives Matter". It doesn't involve the R word. And yet, it sends a lot of white people into a rage.

In this case the phrase is the name of a group. Now the group is holding mass protests after everyone has been told to stay home because of a virus pandemic. There is a non-frivolous argument that doing that right now could end up killing a lot of people. That has the potential to piss people off completely regardless of what is being protested.

You can certainly find examples of people saying nasty things against the lockdown protesters and trivializing their concerns -- and that even had a reason to be happening specifically now and not a year ago or a year from now. (King's "later is never" doesn't really apply to a temporary public health issue which can't be used as an indefinite excuse.)

But the phrase itself was kind of an own-goal to begin with. The best way to hear the trouble is to compare it to "Blue Lives Matter" -- the tone deaf response that raises the question, compared to what? The original has the same problem, you just don't hear it when it's your team.

The phrase taken literally states something so uncontroversial that it carries the implication it has to be relative to something else in order to mean anything. So people hear "Black Lives Matter More Than ___" and are invited to fill in the blank with something important to them and then get upset.

It was also just waiting for opponents to claim the middle and respond with All Lives Matter, which makes you sound like jerks because they're being inclusive and you're implicitly saying you only care about black people.

Good messaging is hard.

> For many, there is no acceptable way to point our racial injustice.

It seems to me that calling it "racial injustice" rather than "injustice" is not adding anything useful. If there is an injustice not related to race, should we ignore it? Does the racial injustice have some uniqueness to it that requires it to be addressed separately and using some unusual methods not suitable to ordinary injustice?

When you look at something like police brutality, it disproportionately affects black people. But what does a solution have to do with race? If we address police brutality in general, does that not solve the problem? Does that not make it easier to build a larger coalition?

More than twice as many white people are shot by police as black people. This is proportionally not as many. But what does that mean? You bring that proportion of white people in, the ones suffering the same as you, and now your coalition is three times as large. But you have to set your sights on the injustice and not just the "racial" injustice.

> It seems to me that calling it "racial injustice" rather than "injustice" is not adding anything useful.

Yes, it seems that way to a lot of white people, especially ones who haven't studied the topic. But there are deep historical roots here, and white bias is a major cause of the problem. Continuing to erase that means the problems will continue to remain unsolved.

If you'd like to learn more, I'd suggest Kendi's How to be an Anti-Racist. For the historical roots, Kendi's history of racist ideas, Stamped from the Beginning is fascinating, too. To understand the white pattern of reaction and erasure here, DiAngelo's, White Fragility is a good resource (as is her 2011 paper by the same name).

If you think you can solve these problems via focus on just a generic injustice, feel free to take a swing at it. But I don't think white armchair critique of anti-racist activists is helpful. And I haven't for some years: https://www.facebook.com/williamp/posts/10105565800812373

> I cut my hair back to military style, shaved, and it was back to letting me off with a warning and have a nice day.

You said this experience opened your eyes, yet you say structural racism doesn't exist. That was literally structural racism. Do you not agree? This is called white privilege; a black person can't change their skin color, but you can cut your hair.

> I'm not sure how much "structural" racism actually exists in the US at this point. There are no doubt pockets and they should be rooted out.

Well if you're "not sure", they why are you posting your own narrative without becoming sure? It's like if I said, "I'm not sure how cars work, but here's a theory that sounds good to me: it involves lasers and hamster wheels, and so I will now believe it."

This is the one of the biggest issues in America, would you consider attempting to GET sure about it?

Perhaps you should ask for clarity. Here, I'll go:

Structural [institutional] racism never left the US. That's what millions of people are protesting right now. It's not some vague notion.

Here are a few off the top of my head:

- Drug laws that target blacks (crack sentences are 10x longer than cocaine)

- Wealth accumulation that holds back black families (not getting loans means not getting houses means not passing wealth down to children; the GI bill that rejected nearly all black applicants and was primarily responsible for middle-class Boomer wealth accumulation)

- Education (poorer zip codes get less funding and end up less educated and poorer, a vicious cycle)

- Job applications (black sounding names get rejected more frequently)

- The vast sentencing disparity between whites and blacks committing the same crimes (blacks are guilty till innocent, and shot for being black in the wrong place or misdemeanours (jogging, selling loose cigarettes), whites are "good kids" who don't deserve to have their lives ruined by a felony rape)

All are structural, institutional racism that are alive and well today.

Do you think I am way off base, or do you reject what I'm describing as factually incorrect or politically motivated? Or anything other than examples of structural racism. I personally don't know anyone who believes structural racism doesn't exist so I'm in a totally different world here...

I understand you have your personal suspicions. I used to have similar thoughts. But please understand a) this is a well-studied topic, and b) a major component of America's endemic racism is white minimization, deflection, and denial, something made possible by pervasive white ignorance.

As an example, you might read Loewen's "Sundown Towns". He covers the Nadir, the post-reconstruction period that includes events like the Tulsa Massacre. He demonstrates pretty convincingly that white-led ethnic cleansing was widespread across the US. Through a variety of historical records, including extensive use of census data, he demonstrates that in town after town, all across the country, white people violently drove out any black people and then used violence to keep them out. And then they quietly erased that history, despite keeping otherwise extensive historical records.

Was any of this covered in my high school or college education? No. That's even though it demonstrably took place in towns all around where I grew up. That a lot of suburban growth was driven by racism. That wealth distribution was driven by racism. That made it easy for me to think that racism was this thing that happened long ago or far away. When instead I grew up soaking in its structural effects.

If these were random accidents, you might just have a point, but they are neither random, nor accidental in the cases in question.

Where are you getting 80 from? The link says 1,043 in the past year. Did you mean 80 per month?

1,000+ includes all people killed by police, most of them armed. You need to filter for unarmed killings. Hover over "weapon" and click unarmed. It's 350 from 2015 to the present.

The time I was arrested at a protest, I was charged with carrying a sharpened stick (aka, protest sign). I didn't even have that, though... It was a lie in the report.

The police regularly distort their reporting. There is no centralized collecting of police violence statistics, in large part because they have organized against the collection of those statistics. The 1,000+ number will be far less subject to manipulation.

Here's some additional reporting. The 2014 Tampa Bay Times project to track police violence found 827 people shot in a year. In Florida alone. They spent a huge amount of effort on the reporting because the statistics were sometimes not collected and usually not trustworthy where they were.

https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2017/investigations/f...

They said 80 unarmed, meaning the rest of the 1043 were armed.

another ~140 were armed with "toy weapons", such as the infamous shooting of Tamir Rice. But it's unclear whether that should go into the category of "unarmed" since this is still a threat perceived by police. Here is an image of Rice's toy gun: https://www.cleveland.com/resizer/CbjnPy-8-HkfIl1ApQ431f_Dlh...

Weirdly, hundreds of people were wandering around state capitols with much more dangerous looking weapons, and no cop shot them on site. It's almost like going by "perceived threat" (as determined after the fact by cops) is a giant hole that allows racial bias free reign.

In Rice's case, police were responding to reports of shots fired in the vicinity. By comparison, the protestors in Michigan (presumably this is what you were referring to) were attending a planned protest in a state with legal open carry.

While it's fair to say that bias was a factor in Rice's shooting, and I'd agree, pointing to open carry protests as evidence of this may not be the most effective line of argument. Especially since armed Black demonstrators carried out their own demonstrations not long afterward: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/07/michigan-law...

They were not responding to "reports of shots fired."

Police were responding to:

> "There's a guy in here with a pistol," the man tells a police dispatcher during the call. "It's probably fake, but he's like, pointing it at everybody."

You've made me challenge my preconceptions. Thanks for your reasonable and researched response.

referring to legal open carry, California changed the gun laws after the Back Panthers did the same back in the 60s.

The problem with systematic racism is the "percieved threat" part. When I have that racisit bias, I obviously will percieve a black person more as a threat than a white one. I may not even be aware of it, and facing ones own biases is a hard thing even more so for such serious things as racism and police brutality. When this bias is combined with the kind of training US police is getting, it a given to end up where the US ended up.

The only nice thing is, it also shows where to sart to remedy theissues. Once the police and the poluation accepted to see the issues.

Racial bias is absolutely disgusting. Nothing about the color of a person's skin or their family lineage could ever give indication of the actions they're likely to take. Culture on the other hand, which by definition includes behavior, can be a pretty good indicator. Either way, the room for error grows as the time taken to make a judgement decreases and unfortunately in the situations police find themselves in they have very little time for consideration.

The problem is that police often determine people’s ‘culture’ by the color of their skin.

Is there a better way to determine it before making verbal contact?

I don’t know, but determining it by the color of someone’s skin is clearly racism by anyone’s definition.

right. I was just wondering if there are actually other options available. I don't think there are.

Seems like one option would be to discard the notion that we should attempt to categorize someone’s ‘culture’ without speaking to them, especially if you are assessing whether or not to use violence against them.

That just sounds like racism with extra steps.

Why should they shift that risk onto the public? Why are they lauded as heroes when they err on the side of killing innocents? Why shouldn't they be the ones to die instead of the people they've miscategorized as threats? Why are their lives worth more?

These guys didn't get shot either, coincidence?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EZxuXBLXQAAGxMC?format=jpg&name=...

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/08/13/16/2B554932000005...

https://preview.redd.it/zr7cp4ggz5351.jpg?width=960&crop=sma...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dWRuf2t4wY

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