I always found it interesting that the railroad company associated with Plessy v. Ferguson, like many different companies of the time and until Brown v. Board, actually preferred integration to segregation for the simple reason that integration was more economical under the capitalist system. Had the State of Louisiana not passed the Separate Cars Act, the railroad would have happily kept the trains integrated so as to increase their profits.
The most honest Ancestry.com commercial would be, “Your ancestors were all European peasants who never accomplished anything notable their entire lives. You will carry on that same legacy.”
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It’s also because they don’t have jobs that expose them to risk in the same way that police do.
They literally rescue people from burning buildings and cats from trees.
They aren’t taking calls involving violent domestic disputes with both parties wielding guns. If that was part of anyone’s job description, they’d fuck up (all of us being, unfortunately, fallible) and people wouldn’t like them so much.
It’s much the same reason that people hate other professions, like lawyers. The best thing that can happen is you get what (you think) you deserve: there’s a winner, there’s a loser, at best it’s zero sum. A doctor heals you by definition, a firefighter saves you by definition. A cop, hopefully and in the most noble achievement of the work, prevents you from hurting yourself or others or finds the person that hurts you and arrests them gently: it’s zero sum—at best.
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Make sure to add that the European peasants often came from some terribly oppressed situations, but then immediately became the oppressors as soon as they get the chance. Humans#1.
I mean, it’s hard to say that a poll is untrue, but it would seem that white dems are way too afraid of police (or are perhaps reporting fear when it is just about not trusting police not to hurt others), and black people not enough.
Yeah, I mean, Jim Crow Laws and State-Enforced Slavery are pretty obviously anti-capitalist. Equating capitalism with racism is like equating free speech with sedition laws.
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I just read the first 20 pages of this, and it’s striking how unwittingly the author undermines his thesis that police reform is a fool’s errand. He gives a laundry list of reforms, and proceeds to talk about how weak and ineffectual they were, and how little they accomplished in terms of meaningfully improving peoples’ lives. He concludes from that discussion that meaningful reform is not possible. That’s a bit like saying the first three medicines I took, which by the way could scarcely even be described as medicinal, for my cough didn’t work, therefore cough medicine doesn’t work, and I shouldn’t look for a medicine that might actually work. The very fact that the previously instituted reforms were so obviously bad makes it more likely that better/smarter/more socially and culturally attuned reforms could work!
His major gripe with body cameras is that some cops don’t turn them on. Fire those cops! This isn’t difficult.
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I might add, this is also why dumb kids hate teachers. Nobody likes being told to sit still and eat their vegetables, and dumb kids are much less likely to see how that might help them down the road
I probably came off as pretty aggressive but, and I know @skydiver8 will feel me here, I just really hate it when people try to hitch their ideological barrows to unrelated issues. One of the most egregious examples I remember is when I went to the Iraq War protest here in Adelaide and one of the speakers got up and started banging on about unionism or something. I was like sorry, what the fuck does this have to do with not starting a war?
It seems pretty clear to me that a cursory glance at history reveals virtually no link between racism and degrees of capitalism vs socialism. For example, America is vastly more neoliberal than it was circa the New Deal but it is also (present-day racism notwithstanding) vastly less racist, as well as less homophobic and so forth. The countries which were behind the Iron Curtain in Europe are hugely more racist (and more homophobic, etc) than those in capitalist Western Europe, it’s not even close. Just as two examples. Saying “we can’t improve problem A unless we simultaneously solve problem B” is a great way to muddy the waters on solving problem A imo.
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wow…I’m actually shocked by this. Carlsbad isn’t exactly a well-integrated socialist haven.
https://twitter.com/KUSINews/status/1269033289525821440?s=20
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For a good time, try arguing with the exact same people that the numerous failed attempts at socialism constitute evidence that transitioning to socialism is impossible.
Cognitive dissonance is a harsh mistress.
Black Lives Matter protest in the central square of Adelaide today, this is partly a solidarity protest and partly about similar issues here. This assembly would have been illegal due to ongoing COVID restrictions, but the government granted an exemption. I wasn’t there, one reason for which is because this is where I get my news and none of you guys told me it was happening, so I feel like that’s kind of on you.
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I’ve said this before, but it’s inspiring af to see people across the globe turn out in solidarity for this.
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A petition that circled here from UC employees had like 6 paragraphs total. 3 of them were about BLM, George Floyd and the black community and 3 of them were about boycotting Israel and genocide in Palestine.
Now I don’t have to defend Israel (I moved away from my family and friends to live in near isolation so my son will have the possibility of not serving in the Israeli army), but I really think I can support BLM without advocating for the academic and financial boycott of a foreign country.
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We don’t really give a shit what happens in any other country if they even exist anyways.
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Slaves would run away from British Honduras (Belize) through the jungle to get to Spanish territory, where slavery was illegal. England abolished slavery in Belize in 1838. I guess as the leading slaver - that means finally giving up on it makes them a leader in abolishing slavery in Mason’s argle bargle brain?
@microbet - FYI there’s a protest tomorrow in RB.
I’m planning on going if the shooting pain in my groin doesn’t hobble me too much. Probably no marching though. I’m hoping there’s a stationary period at first. I believe this is the RB police station.
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Cops aren’t working folk, they’re violent agents of capital. Which, beyond being the problem with cop unions, is the problem with cops in practice now in the first place.
It seems pretty clear to me that our current form of capitalism is heavily dependent on white supremacy. Capitalism took black humans and turned them into free labor. Capitalism dictated that America invade or overthrow every black or brown country that tried self-determination and keeping the value of its natural resources among the people instead of privatizing them and selling them cheap to a multinational. Where do you think the term “banana republic” came from? You couldn’t get away with that in a society that didn’t inherently decide white lives and white comfort justified any horror visited on black and brown lives.
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