#207: Turning Back from the Brink

This was a single hour-plus exhortation (some might call it a rant) on one of Sam’s biggest peeves: identity politics.

Preface: Sam says very explicitly that he is certain that racism, institutional and unstated, has led to the systematic oppression of black people in this country since it started, and he does not deny that the problem has yet to be completely fixed. But, he says, looking for instances of racism where they don’t necessarily exist may cause more harm than good to the black community, and to the country in general.

Sam is also very sceptical of "woke” people who think that police protection is a luxury for the privileged and that "defunding the police" is actually an option. These people may be assuaging their liberal guilt by such a pose, but they will send the rest of us rushing into the arms of a law-and-order president. They do not understand the violence and depravity that is possible in a society with no police force.

There are about 10,000,000 arrests--i.e. cop-citizen encounters--per year in the US. Of these, about 1,000 deaths result. Roughly 25% of those are black, 50% white. This sounds high compared to the 13% black population, but it is low compared to, say, the 50% of the murders in this country committed by black people.

The Ferguson effect is a potentially negative downside to the recent riots: namely, there will be less policing in black neighborhoods after an explosion of moral outrage, regardless of how legitimate that outrage is. This will be to the detriment of the residents in terms of law enforcement there. However, I'll point out that Sam does not acknowledge that those residents may decide it is worth the trade-off, if it reduces any racist behavior of the police. For instance, in Milwaukee, blacks are more likely to be murdered than whites. But they may be willing to live with those odds if they no longer think they are being targeted by the cops.

Here's an unrelated fun fact: whites are three times more likely than blacks to commit suicide by cop.

Sam spends some time making the point that cops are not superheroes: they are ordinary people with insufficient training. Anytime someone chooses to resist arrest, it immediately becomes perceived by the police as a struggle for the gun. And the way that often ends is by the use of lethal force.

Sam also points out that it is almost certainly true that the people who killed George Floyd did not intend to kill him--not with all the witnesses & cameras rolling around them.

One other thing he grants is that police have responded badly to the protests recently: they come in baton swinging against peaceful marchers, but they stand idly by during looting and rioting. And his is concerned that these actions are not going to provoke an improvement in anything except Trump‘s approval rating.