that there is or isn't systemic, institutionalized (if you prefer)
Important distinction I made is that systemic (or strucutural) racism and institutionalized racism are completely different things. Institutionalized racism can easily exist, as Jim Crow and the Apartheid are sad evidences. My point is that "systemic" or structural racism either do not exist or are useless concepts, what exists is either real (closet, veiled) racism or incompetence to deal with social consequences of past Institutionalized racism. If you say I confuse the two, you put me in the position of one who denies reality.
are you really willing to say that institutionalized racism, in South Africa of all places, isn't really the problem?
You do know that Mandela rose to power in 1994, right? And that the Apartheid system is no more? 25 years ago, a quarter of a century ago. Do you think that South Africans are so incompetent that they could not change the laws and the institutions in 25 years? Are you saying that the
laws in South Africa are racist? South Africa is clear example of a society trying to deal with the heritage of institutionalized racism. And, yes, obviously there are probably still racist whites in South Africa in positions of power (probably in an Economics sense). But, again, that is real people being bluntly racist. Try to find one South African blaming "systemic" racism for the problems they have there. The only way someone would do that is to call the real world problem that most land is owned by whites "systemic racism".
Police, in many ways, were just created to to keep black people down.
[..]
Of course they fucking do
You are missing the point, and you are wrong. This is a basic misconception . Police was not
created to keep black people down. Period. PERIOD. This is so blatantly obvious that it feels like talking about flat earth. Police was
used, either lawfully when the laws were racist (thus immoral) or
downright unlawfully, to keep black people down. The difference is enormous, and extremely important. And, nowadays, Police has a very clear and objective goal, detailed in law and codes of conduct. They are supposed to have accountability. Something is not right? Protest. The point is, you either play the social game, act as part of the social contract, or not. If you can challenge the role of police, you open the door to challenge (outside the rules of social behavior) the function of
any civilized social institution. Do you want to play that game to the ultimate level (which is the logical consequence of that)? Do you realize what
ultimate level means?
Are there contexts where I think the only option is total confrontation? Yes. Do I think this is one? No.
About stop and frisk. I know what it is. The point, again, is that people don't understand the job police has to do. They don't understand what happens if police works in an environment where, for social reasons, most crime is committed by one ethnic group. A black policeman after ten years on the job will react according to the patterns his brain learnt on his day to day experience. He will
himself stop more people from one group than from the other. You want to deal with that, deal with the cause, not with the effect. Train the police to do better profiling and or interact better or whatever you need to do. The police
job is to prevent crime. If you don't want the police doing that, fine, so say it out loud. It is a legitimate position. But don't hide it behind a supposedly anti-racist position.
Police (or bad police) is not the disease. It's the symptom.
And to say that talk about racism doesn't save a kid from drug dealers in favelas? IMO, you're certainly not going to save him if you DON'T talk about it.
I am not saying not to talk about racism. I am saying to stop to talk about ghost forms of racism. Real racism will keep kids away from school and jobs, as the social problems we inherit do as well. So we need to talk AND take action. And "action" means real world policies were "systemic racism" is at best a vague notion that can be used to generic justifications.
"At least per se?" WTF does that even mean? How representative is this episode? Keeping it current, and black people killed by cops for no reason in the US: George Floyd, Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Breonna Traylor, Tamir Rice, Amadou Diallo, Michael Brown...I really could go on, sadly. You can try to find common ground with Cali if you want, but...**spoiler alert**...he's a racist. Keep anaylizng the data, if you like, but there is a human component, and if you keep missing it, that's on you.
"At least per se" means that you are talking about specific cases -- and by the way you replied with a list of names. I will analyze the data, yes, because on the data there is a human component too, but
in scale. When people march over one case, they are taking this event as a
representative one. To pretend that is not the case is hypocrisy on a level I cannot bear.
If I happen to agree with Cali on a given subject, so be it. I fully disagree with some of his positions, and I am simply choosing not to analyze his speech to define whether he is racist or not. But his arguments are his arguments. I refuse to use moral authority in a debate. Period. I can point out hypocrisy, I understand that some things should be denounced (as racism, and if you think Cali is a racist, do call him out). But we are debating arguments, most of his points in this specific issue are defended by people
who are not racists. But, oh, since someone labelled as a racist used the same argument, that argument falls with him, right? Sorry, I won't play that game.
Where do you think I am coming from? Do you think I want to sit in my fancy neighborhood watching the world by the window, feeling momentarily safe but knowing that out there is a fucking war?
Thousands of people die by the hands of the police, here, yearly. Of all skin colors, but mostly brown and black (don't know if "brown" is a good term to use in English, the immediate translation in Portuguese is not offensive). Including children. Those are
official numbers. Who knows the scale of things in the real world. I oppose that view of "systemic" racism and correlated ideas because it
does not lead to results. It does not work. People keep dying, nothing ever changes (and, yes, political parties which sustain the idea of fighting "systemic" racism have been into power here, for long, and
nothing have changed. Actually, it only opened up the door for the fucking lunatic who is in power right now).
Newpapers here showed a picture of a police officer pointing a gun to a protester last week (excessive force for sure). A lot of people denounced it as racism. They failed to see the skin color of the policeman himself. That is how blind some people are.
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