Racism

[Chamomile]

...wait, who is trying to redefine racism to exclude whites?

The people who are the original subject of this conversation. Prak created this thread to defend people who try to claim that racism is not just prejudice, but specifically prejudice backed by state power, therefore making it pretty much impossible for white people to ever suffer from racism. Trying to advance the idea that racism against white people is definitionally impossible doesn't really help you to have any conversation except a conversation about how much you hate white people and want all of them to die.

[DSMatticus]

The Riots of the 60's and 70's were what allowed the racist establishment to once more put on a veil of legitimacy with the "law and order/tough on crime" bullshit that we're still dealing with today.

That is actually bullshit, because the timeline goes in the exact opposite direction you think it does. The Republican party started using "law and order" as a dog-whistle for incarcerating black people while MLK was still alive! Reagan ran for governor of California on a "law and order" platform in 1966, two years before MLK's death, and if you recall he won that election. Nixon was already running for president on a "law and order" platform when MLK was assassinated, and you'll recall he won that election too.

The reality is that the institutionalized fuckage of black people by the police force has always been a thing. The only thing that changed is that as overt racism became socially and politically unacceptable, a bunch of racist politicians came up with some code words that let the police keep locking up black people for being uppity without it being immediately obvious that they were locking up black people for being uppity. But at no point during the civil rights movement did police ever not lock up black people for being uppity. That is a fantasy history.

You can talk about how crazy it is that the Ferguson PD responded to riots in full military gear, but the Ferguson PD is still there and still militarized. They walked the streets waving assault rifles at crowds and they still have their jobs and they still have their assault rifles and they're going to do it again if they ever get the chance. Nonviolent protest has limits, and the limits are whatever you can get out of winning public opinion. In this case, that's "basically nothing" scheduled for delivery "sometime around never." The Ferguson PD has been condemned and dogpiled by everyone except the actual fucking racists and they have not budged an inch.

EDIT: Look, "burning shit to the ground" cannot be off the table. If you aren't willing to turn to violent channels when the nonviolent ones are closed, then there is no reason for the institutions you're fighting to give you a nonviolent channel with which to negotiate. The threat of massive unrest is important, because that threat is in many cases the only way for a marginalized group to buy itself a seat at the negotiating table, and a seat at the negotiating table is the only way you're going to resolve those problems nonviolently.

[violence in the media]

JFK quote relevant to the discussion.

[hyzmarca]

EDIT: Look, "burning shit to the ground" cannot be off the table. If you aren't willing to turn to violent channels when the nonviolent ones are closed, then there is no reason for the institutions you're fighting to give you a nonviolent channel with which to negotiate. The threat of massive unrest is important, because that threat is in many cases the only way for a marginalized group to buy itself a seat at the negotiating table, and a seat at the negotiating table is the only way you're going to resolve those problems nonviolently.

While that's true when dealing with completely amoral self-interest optimizers, it remains that humans aren't completely amoral self-interest optimizers. Humans have empathy. There comes a point where we see someone suffering and just can't take that shit anymore, even if we're in charge and they're out enemies.

Likewise, a threat of violence is only effective if it's credible, and if the authorities are constrained from preempting it.

When the Muslim Brotherhood got uppity in Hama, Hafez al-Assad's response was to shell the city and kill 25,000 people. It worked.


The threat of violence cannot be an effective tool for social change if the government is willing to just murder you. Because the government will just murder you.

Looking at Ferguson, how well do you think protestors with sticks and stones would do against armored cops with assault rifles? They wouldn't last very long at all.

The reason that they could be remotely effective is that they've got public sympathy and empathy. If they traded that for a threat of violence, it would just end in them losing.


There's a fine line between an underdog against the establishment and a crazy person or group of crazy people. Underdogs get public support, often widespread. Crazies don't, usually.

If you want to effect change in any situation where the other side is vastly more powerful than you, then you need to have public support, and you need for the rules to be on your side rather than theirs.

Because otherwise you find out very quickly that in the game of rock, paper, scissors, main battle tank, the tank always wins.

[DSMatticus]

You are talking about different things.

There are parts of the world that hold elections-in-fingerquotes and the winners of those elections-in-fingerquotes are Saturday night poker buddies with the military leadership and if you so much as whisper about how that seems not okay you will die. This has nothing to do with nonviolence or violence; the fact is these governments have no legitimacy, do not pretend to have any legitimacy, and cling to power solely through asymmetry in the access to military-grade force. These countries don't have MLK's or Gandhi's, because they fucking murder them. These countries do sometimes develop significant enough armed resistances to destabilize them. Sometimes that's because the rebels have their own military-grade force, and sometimes that's because the rebels just burn things down and then go back to being indistinguishable from ordinary citizens.

The United States is not one of those countries. We have a government that is (despite the best efforts of many elected officials) at least in part accountable to a voting public, and it actually does feel the need to pretend that it is legitimate and democratic. I think the instant a Ferguson police officer opened fire into a crowd of protesters with an assault rifle - even if those protesters were in the middle of burning down the Ferguson Police Department - that that would spark a level of national outrage and rioting so intense it could not be ignored and we'd actually be able to start a frank discussion about police militarization and America's favorite pastime of blue-on-black violence, a discussion that only ever really manages to get lipservice in today's world. And I think if police departments across the country had to worry about millions of dollars of property damage for murdering civilians, there'd be genuine pressure on them to listen when people say "murder less civilians."

Some specific notes:

Humans have empathy. There comes a point where we see someone suffering and just can't take that shit anymore, even if we're in charge and they're out enemies.

You fucking wish. Empathy is taught, and for a very long time our society taught that black people didn't deserve it. And we have to have problems shoved in our fucking face before we notice, and boy is it easy to ignore communities we don't live in and that the media doesn't care about. Ask yourself how many generations it's been since the fifteenth amendment, and ask yourself how you feel about where we are today, then give me some more of this empathy bullshit.

If you want to effect change in any situation where the other side is vastly more powerful than you, then you need to have public support, and you need for the rules to be on your side rather than theirs.

That is exactly the point. The Ferguson protesters have played by the rules as much as humanly possible, and they were rewarded with a smoking gun that hasn't changed a fucking thing! There have been zero proposed solutions for any of Ferguson's structural problems, among them (and I am paraphrasing an actual conclusion from the god damn report) "the Ferguson Police Department believes its responsibility is to generate revenue for the city by fining African Americans."

The social contract behind nonviolent protest is that in exchange for not hurling molotov cocktails into buildings the powers that be will genuinely allow you to work towards your goals within the system. If they won't allow you to do that, then there is no fucking point. Contract broken.