Sterling's rap sheet is severely damning, and it doesn't really look good for the public discourse. But, I just have to say...
...when you say shit like this, you sound far less intelligent than you actually are.
From our perspective, he looks like a criminal and a "thug." From the perspectives emerging from his community, we get a totally different story. Let's not condemn an individual human based on a paper trail that, as you've already said, a disproportionate number of blacks in neighborhoods like this all have. Sterling wasn't unique. So unless you're advocating a widespread extermination policy of law enforcement toward black men with rap sheets of twenty items or more, I'd say we should save our applause for something other than police brutality.
tl;dr - don't be arg.
Gonna have to pull a "No, you!" on this. He doesn't have a blase "rap sheet of twenty items" and he wasn't "just selling CDs". He was pedophile, with 6 accounts of assault/battery, two weapons charges, and "public intimidation". Most certainly would have been more if he wasn't locked up for long periods of time. Then what is he doing when out, when the cops were called this time? Illegally carrying and another episode of public intimidation and more broadly, almost an exact repeat of the 2009 incident. It's more amazing he hasn't been shot prior to this incident, if not by the police than by one of those other "disproportionate number of blacks in neighborhoods like this".
I'm not saying he is "unique". I'm not saying let's go find every guy with 10+ things on his record or whatever or shoot him. But you have a violent and aggressive man here, who is threatening people, who has attacked people repeatedly in the past, carrying weapons repeatedly he isn't allowed too, and struggling with officers repeatedly. He gets zero benefit of the doubt unless you have an agenda. The world is also objectively better without him.
The majority black community he was in was better off without him, even if they don't think so or won't say so.
This isn't Eric Garner selling some loosies. This isn't Philando Castile with a busted taillight and a dimebag. I don't give a shit what his homies are saying. Just like there is a Thin Blue Line, there's a Thin Black Line in such communities - to their own detriment I might add. I highly doubt all those assault and battery charges are against whites.
The narrative you are creating is broken. In most cases, they aren't being handed the reigns "again" because these nations didn't exist prior to colonization. In most cases, a modern African nation is the conglomeration of numerous ethnicities, cultures and religions. The borders are a European product and served European needs. Now, these heterogenous societies are compelled to govern through a modern nation state, typically grounded in external (European) governance systems.
What happened to Diversity is a Strength
©? I'm also curious as to what a functioning (certainly modern) alternative to European governance system is. I don't know of any. Even Europeans had the equivalent of totemic chiefdoms or whatever you want to call it if you go back far enough.
Furthermore, via neocolonialism, multinational corporations hold massive sway in many resource rich developing (or should I say "mis-developed") nations. In many cases multi-national corporations have more power than the governments of developing countries. Resources are sucked out of mis-developed countries and imported to developed countries, benefiting an elite minority in the mis-developed country, while devastating the majority. For example, look at the way that sweatshops can come in and exploit a region for its laborers only to leave for another country when a better opportunity arises. Now all those workers are left unemployed and desperate and the economy is broken. At the same time, these companies often function within tax havens and avoid having to give back to the countries they are exploiting. Add in a lack of accountability, a lack of education, disease and lack of basic resources, and you have the perfect recipe for exploitation and a dearth of successful resistance.
The problems is much more the sweatshops leaving than staying, although sometimes sweatshops leave because of dogooders. Colonizers provided education. African nations are often rich in natural resources. China has poured quite a bit of money into the continent in the last decade or so. Some countries are doing better than others though. Wonder why...maybe there are population differences. Now obviously it would, as you said, require more country-by-country detailed analysis, but this whole "ermagerd mutlinationals und muh colonialism" is quite a hamfisted analysis to say the least. Other analyses lay quite a bit of blame on the doorstep of charities, which either dump piles of free goods into a society putting locals out of work, or which merely go to the corrupt warboss in the area.
I like how you list 3 guys who "aren't European" but 2 were educated in either the US or Europe and one of those was American. I'm sure that had no effect whatsoever. 1 guy is all it takes though amirite?
There are no levels to civilization.
There are objective levels of material and arguably levels of ethical achievement, and that is what is usually referred to when referring to levels of civilization.
stats here show unarmed whites and blacks being shot at pretty much the same rate
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-2016/
Which shows a significant amount of restraint by cops considering the proportional liklihood of danger from blacks. Young black males anyway, not all of them.
