winters epilogue
Senior Lurker
I didn't say other minorities aren't treated poorly, and by no means did I mean to imply that. (There was a video recently of some white woman telling a Native American to go back to her country, and you can be rest-assured that COVID-19 hasn't done much positive for this country's relation to our asian population. We clearly have some idiots here.) Also, on a related note, I am not implying that white people don't have problems here, or anywhere else.
Inequality, especially in terms of wealth—which I'll be getting to shortly—affects this whole country, and there are people suffering regardless of race.
Yup, these statistics are important to note, and I don't think enough of the far-left acknowledges them, but this is not a binary issue.
Remember, the black community didn't choose George Floyd as a martyr. Dude fucked up, he was being arrested—that's not what people are protesting. They're protesting the police brutality in all aspects of policing.
There was a study done across ten police departments in Texas, Florida and California that found a constant disparity in how often police would go hands on against a person if they were black rather than white. (E.g., the study found that in New York City, they found that cops were 18% more likely to push suspects into a wall, 16% more likely to put them in handcuffs in a situation where they weren’t being arrested, 18% more likely to push them to the ground, 25% more likely to use pepper spray or a baton, 19% more likely to draw their guns, and 24% more likely to point a gun at them.)
This kind of shit instills distrust and fear, and even if none of the police officers were racist, an entire racial group is already on-edge because of what they've experienced, which makes for an untenable situation.
These protests are about reform because there are broken systems. (In some states, it takes more hours of training to become a barber in this country than a police officer. Given the near-impossible job the police have, that's fucking insane.)
Yes, you called it, I do want to highlight poverty: Income inequality in this country is already quite vast, and the racial wealth gap is particularly drastic. From a report on the racial wealth divide:
41 times more wealth. Even if that number is off by 10, by 20, in doesn't matter how many "tons of programs and opportunities to leave poverty," because they'll only be able to grow so much.
While that wealth gap doesn't explain or justify everything, it sure helps put into perspective why the black community is responsible for so much crime.
There was a football player here, Colin Kaepernick, who famously took a knee during the "The Star-Spangled Banner" throughout the football season to protest the oppression against different races. That's a peaceful as a protest goes, and he was mocked and ridiculed endlessly, and nothing changed.
I'm not trying to paint every action that's happened over the past few weeks in some pretty light, but I can't pretend that I don't see a reason why minorities here are so fed up with the status-quo.
Being bombarded with these news from other countries must be obnoxious—I get that—but a lot of reform has to happen here, and it's not simply a matter of people acting too offended or aggressive.
Last edited:
