For years now we've heard "well what about all of the blacks killing blacks in Chicago" reply to anything to deal with Black Lives Matter and/or any time a shooting involving an officer and a black male is questioned.

 

One man's opinion on why the argument is ignorant.

 

1. Crimes occur locally. Crimes occur where people live. Black people often live with black people. White people almost always live with white people. Just like the majority of crimes against white people are committed by OTHER white people it's logical to assume that would be true with blacks.

 

2. "Why aren't the black community leaders doing anything about it instead of getting on TV?"

 

First, the community leaders in the black community are often ministers, mayors, council members, and other positions of authority. They're not Jesse Jackson and Rev Al. Too many people hold these two up as "black leaders" as a way to change the argument and divert attention. The TRUE leaders of the black community ARE working on how to solve the issue. Obviously, it's not easy. However, it's insulting to those men and women to say they're not doing anything just because YOU don't see it on TV.

 

3. When white people use the knee-jerk response of "Chicago...." it's 100% insulting and of a nature to suggest second-class citizenship. It's saying "hey, don't worry about the problems with unlawful killings by white officers. YOU take care of your OWN problems."

 

Why? Why would we tell them they are not worthy of justice UNTIL they get their own 'hood in order? Is there a test that they have to take before justice can prevail in the cases where a bad shooting takes place?

 

4. Let's say you ignore 1 through 3. Why in the world would we NOT expect better out of those who are sworn to protect and serve? You're trying to equate criminals and police officers. We SHOULD expect officers to be better than those criminals. Why do we lower the bar? It's insulting to police officers. They see themselves as better than criminals and they have a MUCH higher bar that THEY set for themselves.

 

5. Lastly, the argument you're trying to make is one on a macro level. The family of Philando Castile is looking at this on a ONE HUMAN BEING level. It doesn't matter what other blacks or even what other bad officers are doing. THIS ONE is all they care about. Too often we immediately try to discredit the deceased with this lame Chicago argument. 100% irrelevant to this particular family or any family who loses a loved one.

 

 

Quit trying to pick a side. People fail. Police officers OCCASIONALLY fail. You cry about BLM using generalizations and YET you do the exact same thing in a different manner. Quit generalizing and picking sides. Sometimes the black folks are right. Sometimes the police are right. I don't have a

side other than "right." We waste so much time trying to support "our side" that we do not get anything solved.

 

Consider 1 through 5 the next time you want to drop the Chicago argument on someone.

 

I look forward to those that disagree. Let's have some intelligent discussion.

Edited July 11, 201610 yr by Clyde

Post of the Year.

Clyde, everyone deserves justice. And everyone needs to help hold other people accountable. I don't mean blacks holding blacks or whites holding white, or strangers. You hold your children, father, mothers, friends. The people you can influence you do. There is too much turning the other way. Men need to step up and raise kids the right way and take back our society from those who have no morals. Is is going to happen overnight.. No. But someone has to draw the line in the sand and say it stops here and now. Not my kids, my family, my friends. Too many kids running around with no one holding them accountable until they break the law, get killed or kill someone else. Guess what society, having kid after kid out of wedlock has never been a good idea.. You make 'em you stay in raise 'em. Fix that you fix a whole lot of issues. For the record I'm addressing all humans.

Chicago isn't a fair example. Homicides are accepted as a daily part of life in Chicago. It's when homicides occur in other places people come out of the woodwork.

I don't think I've seen anyone on here suggest that justice not be served in any case of police shooting. What we've done is ask that the truth be allowed to come out before rushing to judgement because when that happens sometimes the scenario presented (Michael Brown) is different then what the evidence shows.

 

I point to Chicago as an example of the hypocrisy of the BLM. If their name is accurate why aren't they marching every day in to parts of cities where black lives seem to have little value to other blacks?

"Men need to step up and raise kids the right way and take back our society from those who have no morals. "

 

I believe this is at the core. I challenge each of you to watch the news and see how many fathers are in front of the cameras talking about the death of their sons...it's primarily the mothers, so it begs the question of "where" ?

 

It is a systemic issue within families that has created a systemic response by law enforcement. The number of "alleged" wrongful deaths at he hands of law enforcement is relatively small compared to the number of "alleged" wrongful deaths at the hands of each other within communities.

@Clyde: I'll bite, you make reference a couple different times to the police being, at a minimum, wrong in their choices in these situations. I get what you're going for, I just don't buy what you're selling.

 

"It's saying "hey, don't worry about the problems with unlawful killings by white officers."

 

"Why in the world would we NOT expect better out of those who are sworn to protect and serve?"

 

I'm the first to have strong suspicions of law enforcement. I believe the militarization of the civilian law enforcement has created at least some of our curent situation....but I do believe in due process, even if I might think it's a "bad cop" issue.

 

Hate groups take full advantage of situations and people when they are vulnerable and susceptible to the message....Social media has escalated the current situations without due process....This is not American values...it's mob rules mentality and those that refuse to look at the entire picture become pawns in the process of divisive behavior.

The problem with shutting people down who say these things is that you are also shutting down dialogue. There is not enough communication between blacks and whites as it is. Whether legitimate or not, these are concerns that are voiced by many in the white community. They need to be discussed rather than thrown aside as an affront.

The problem with shutting people down who say these things is that you are also shutting down dialogue. There is not enough communication between blacks and whites as it is. Whether legitimate or not, these are concerns that are voiced by many in the white community. They need to be discussed rather than thrown aside as an affront.

 

I thought the first post discussed the concerns directly and specifically.

Thank you!

Chicago isn't a fair example. .

 

Yet it's mentioned EVERY time.

"Men need to step up and raise kids the right way and take back our society from those who have no morals. "

 

I believe this is at the core. I challenge each of you to watch the news and see how many fathers are in front of the cameras talking about the death of their sons...it's primarily the mothers, so it begs the question of "where" ?

 

It is a systemic issue within families that has created a systemic response by law enforcement. The number of "alleged" wrongful deaths at he hands of law enforcement is relatively small compared to the number of "alleged" wrongful deaths at the hands of each other within communities.

@Clyde: I'll bite, you make reference a couple different times to the police being, at a minimum, wrong in their choices in these situations. I get what you're going for, I just don't buy what you're selling.

 

"It's saying "hey, don't worry about the problems with unlawful killings by white officers."

 

"Why in the world would we NOT expect better out of those who are sworn to protect and serve?"

 

I'm the first to have strong suspicions of law enforcement. I believe the militarization of the civilian law enforcement has created at least some of our curent situation....but I do believe in due process, even if I might think it's a "bad cop" issue.

 

Hate groups take full advantage of situations and people when they are vulnerable and susceptible to the message....Social media has escalated the current situations without due process....This is not American values...it's mob rules mentality and those that refuse to look at the entire picture become pawns in the process of divisive behavior.

 

I'm not sure where you are disagreeing.

The problem with shutting people down who say these things is that you are also shutting down dialogue. There is not enough communication between blacks and whites as it is. Whether legitimate or not, these are concerns that are voiced by many in the white community. They need to be discussed rather than thrown aside as an affront.

 

We agree on dialogue.

 

However, IMO the "well Chicago..." argument is FULLY shutting down dialogue.

Chicago is somewhat unique. But in some ways it is not.

 

It is unique in the that it had a chance to champion racial integration in housing before the 60s but instead it basically went the other direction and isolated the growing lower income black community - many of whom were coming from the South as automation was removing the need of labor on the farms.

 

It was Valerie Jarrett's grandfather who was the champion for what could have been a monumental approach. But he was rebuffed. I think these type of events have formed some of the key racial attitudes that come from Chicago and certainly led to the current 'two worlds' of Chicago.

 

Four Generations in the Projects - NYTimes.com

 

The most memorialized liberal of all was Robert R. Taylor, the first black chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority; the Robert Taylor Homes are Chicago's (and America's) biggest project, 28 16-story brick buildings laid out in a narrow two-mile strip, housing more than 25,000 people.

 

Robert Taylor lost the great battle of his public career, as liberals often do in Chicago. When the Truman Administration's Federal Housing Act of 1949 provided funds for the construction of 800,000 new units of public housing, Democratic Chicago got its fair share of them. Taylor quickly produced a list of the sites where he intended to build. Most of them were on vacant terrain in white neighborhoods.

At the time, black migrants from the rural South, pushed off the land by the development of machines that could pick cotton and pulled to Chicago by the booming unskilled labor market there, had been coming to town at a rate of more than a thousand a month. As the poorest people in Chicago, the black migrants were the most obvious candidates for billets in the new housing projects. Taylor's list of sites was received as a master plan for neighborhood racial integration on a grand scale.

 

But Robert Taylor's list engendered a furious response from the neighborhood "improvement associations" of white Chicago. In 1950, the City Council rejected most of his sites and approved its own list, which put almost all the new public housing in black neighborhoods, on land to be made available by tearing down existing slums. Humiliated and bitter, Taylor resigned as chairman. Ten years later, the Robert Taylor Homes rose on the former site of one of the poorest tenement neighborhoods in black Chicago -- just the kind of place where Taylor didn't want new public housing to be built. Taylor and his executive secretary at the Chicago Housing Authority, Elizabeth Wood, had dreamed that black and white tenants would live side by side in the new projects; the Robert Taylor Homes have always been essentially all black. The monument to Robert Taylor's memory encapsulates exactly the principles he found repellent, and fought against for years.

 

Knowing what her grandfather tired to do but could not may explain any resentment from Jarrett.

 

Another well-known Chicagoan was Frank Marshall Davis. He mentored the young Obama upon his return from Indonesia during Obama's teen years. Davis was known to be bitter about race issues. He channeled this into anti-establishment endeavors. And his angst with white America may influence some of the current administrations attitudes.

 

But when one looks at Davis's past you find he was likely in Tulsa during the 'Tulsa Riots'. The Tulsa Riots are a dark chapter in race relations for sure but rarely get noticed in the race issues of the past. But during the Tulsa riots a black neighborhood know as the Negro Wall Street was destroyed and literally had some bombs dropped from WWI vintage airplanes onto this vibrant black community.

I'm not sure where you are disagreeing.

 

I disagree with your assertions that the killings are unlawful and that we should expect better....the statements.

 

We don't know that they are unlawful, because we have tried them in the court of social media.

 

I do expect better of those that are sworn to protect and serve, but I'm also a realist and have a general mistrust for law enforcement based on my personal life experiences...

I disagree with your assertions that the killings are unlawful and that we should expect better....the statements.

 

We don't know that they are unlawful, because we have tried them in the court of social media.

 

I do expect better of those that are sworn to protect and serve, but I'm also a realist and have a general mistrust for law enforcement based on my personal life experiences...

 

To be clear I do not know if either of these two is unlawful. I do know that unlawful (South Carolina) or questionable occur. Those are the ones I'm addressing.

 

Heading to the beach so we can resume later.