Big_Stacks said:Hey,
To answer Soul Zilla's commentary, I will make several points. First, I will say that senseless killing is an atrocity no matter the demographic membership of the perpetrator or victim(s). So, I do not condone nor defend in any way the killing of innocent people. Second, I will agree with his point that the Black community does need to behave with decorum when it comes to interactions with the police. Black folks have been educating their children for eons about this irrefutable fact, as not being respectful can lead to violence against them and death.
Now, that I have established my ideological baseline (i.e., killing innocent people is wrong and Black folks should behave politely with police), I will depart from Soul Zilla on the following point. The simple fact of the matter is that institutional racism is the reason why Blacks (and other disparaged folks) react negatively to police scrutiny. There has been a legacy of police mistreatment of minorities so, of course, there is distrust between minorities and the police. More importantly, there is documented research evidence in criminology of the following racial-ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system. Relative to Whites, statistically, Blacks tend to experience more use-of-force (including deadly) by the police (Bureau of Justice Statistics, "Police-Public Contact" Survey, 2008), and are given longer prison sentence for identical crimes (Doerner & Demuth, 2010 in Justice Quarterly). These statistics provide some explanation for why there are negative citizen-police relationships in the Black community.
Finally, as I remarked about 8 years ago, Blumer's (1958) realistic group threat theory would predict that (some) Whites would respond negatively to the election of a Black president. This occurs because there are some Whites who feel that the election of a Black president symbolizes encroachment by the lower-status group into a position more legitimately held by higher-status group members (i.e., Whites). The result, Blumer predicted, is higher incidences of racial discrimination. Not surprisingly, there has been an upswing in police shootings (and killings) of Black citizens during President Obama's presidency. Moreover, research suggests that police tend to be higher in right-wing authoritarianism (i.e., an ideology that supports obedience to authority, conventionalist thought, etc.) (Gatto, Dambrun, Kerbrat, & De Oliveira's 2010 article in European Journal of Social Psychology, and Kappeler, Sluder, & Alpert's 1998 book "Forces of deviance: Understanding the dark side of policing"), which is strongly correlated with social dominance orientation (SDO). People who are high in SDO tend to support the maintenance of the social hierarchy wherein some groups (i.e., Whites) have higher status than other groups (i.e., minorities). High SDO people also have more negative attitudes toward disparaged groups such as women, minorities, lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgendered individuals, and the disabled (see work by James Sidanius, Felecia Pratto, Shana Levin, and Lawrence Bobo on the topic) . So, the trends we are witnessing in regards to the above issues are strongly predicted by prior theory and research.
Peace,
Big Stacks from Kakalak
I'm tempted to challenge you on facts. Not the academic credentials that you flaunt promiscuously and with out abandon, please tell us how learned you are, must you repeat it ad nauseum?
Can you address posts without citing your academic credentials? I'm Sure you are who you say you are, but the discourse gets muddled real quick.
And some people become Mesmerized real quick, and here we are...
To answer Soul Zilla's commentary, I will make several points. First, I will say that senseless killing is an atrocity no matter the demographic membership of the perpetrator or victim(s). So, I do not condone nor defend in any way the killing of innocent people. Second, I will agree with his point that the Black community does need to behave with decorum when it comes to interactions with the police. Black folks have been educating their children for eons about this irrefutable fact, as not being respectful can lead to violence against them and death.
Now, that I have established my ideological baseline (i.e., killing innocent people is wrong and Black folks should behave politely with police), I will depart from Soul Zilla on the following point. The simple fact of the matter is that institutional racism is the reason why Blacks (and other disparaged folks) react negatively to police scrutiny. There has been a legacy of police mistreatment of minorities so, of course, there is distrust between minorities and the police. More importantly, there is documented research evidence in criminology of the following racial-ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system. Relative to Whites, statistically, Blacks tend to experience more use-of-force (including deadly) by the police (Bureau of Justice Statistics, "Police-Public Contact" Survey, 2008), and are given longer prison sentence for identical crimes (Doerner & Demuth, 2010 in Justice Quarterly). These statistics provide some explanation for why there are negative citizen-police relationships in the Black community.
Finally, as I remarked about 8 years ago, Blumer's (1958) realistic group threat theory would predict that (some) Whites would respond negatively to the election of a Black president. This occurs because there are some Whites who feel that the election of a Black president symbolizes encroachment by the lower-status group into a position more legitimately held by higher-status group members (i.e., Whites). The result, Blumer predicted, is higher incidences of racial discrimination. Not surprisingly, there has been an upswing in police shootings (and killings) of Black citizens during President Obama's presidency. Moreover, research suggests that police tend to be higher in right-wing authoritarianism (i.e., an ideology that supports obedience to authority, conventionalist thought, etc.) (Gatto, Dambrun, Kerbrat, & De Oliveira's 2010 article in European Journal of Social Psychology, and Kappeler, Sluder, & Alpert's 1998 book "Forces of deviance: Understanding the dark side of policing"), which is strongly correlated with social dominance orientation (SDO). People who are high in SDO tend to support the maintenance of the social hierarchy wherein some groups (i.e., Whites) have higher status than other groups (i.e., minorities). High SDO people also have more negative attitudes toward disparaged groups such as women, minorities, lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgendered individuals, and the disabled (see work by James Sidanius, Felecia Pratto, Shana Levin, and Lawrence Bobo on the topic) . So, the trends we are witnessing in regards to the above issues are strongly predicted by prior theory and research.
Peace,
Big Stacks from Kakalak
I'm tempted to challenge you on facts. Not the academic credentials that you flaunt promiscuously and with out abandon, please tell us how learned you are, must you repeat it ad nauseum?
Can you address posts without citing your academic credentials? I'm Sure you are who you say you are, but the discourse gets muddled real quick.
And some people become Mesmerized real quick, and here we are...
ude isn't ignorant - that would imply that more information would change his mind. He's just got a worldview/ideology that is, um, distinctive compared to many of us. Any more information you pour into him will likely be sorted into his worldview just fine, thanks (and unless you're a strong critical thinker, you're probably doing a bit that yourself on the issues of the day... it's a form of confirmation bias).
