Music Talk Board

My opinion is basically the same as my opinion on the other cases.

Yeah the victim is at fault but that doesn't mean the police response was at all okay. I agree with the camera suggestion, but there are some fundamental changes that need to be made in our "police culture", especially the "let's intimidate the public and put ourselves in these positions just cause" and the "shoot now let the lawyers deal with it later" attitudes.

By "police culture" I'm assuming you mean the culture within the criminal justice system, and not some weird analog to "rape culture"? I agree that some attitudes need changing, but it really is the corrupt ones who are thinking like that, and efforts have been made since the beginning of time to fight corruption. If you think about it, our police are probably less corrupt now than they were at any point in the past, so at least we're sorta improving. We just need to keep cracking down.

Sorry I'm late. Yeah I was mostly referring the culture within the criminal justice system. The way cops are taught to behave, the being overly focused on violence and intimidation, the judicial system being too "forgiving" of injustices committed by the police, etc.

BUT

I think there is "police culture" that somewhat parallels "rape culture". Especially if you're white and in a safe area, you are taught that the police officer is your friend and that they can do no wrong, which is in part what allows them to get away with such injustices and why you have people donating money to officer wilson. Then there's that whole "don't break the law if you don't want to get shot" attitude and the whole "goddamn thugs who cares if police shoot them" mentality as well.

Examples of police culture on social media:



This one raises the valid point of "good" cops doing their job and unfortunately dying/being harmed, but in the context of the point it's trying to make it's complete bullshit.



Of course you'll call the cops (doesn't mean they will respond in a timely manner or that they won't pull some other shit in the process >_>) but that's not the point at all. This deliberately ignores everything wrong with the police in order to glorify them. For many people, calling the cops doesn't really help them. They won't call a crackhead; they'll just lose faith and not call anybody.



Here they cherrypick examples of 'protesters' doing bad shit, label the whole thing as a terrorist movement, and conveniently ignore the militarised police using violence to break up protesters and journalists.



Then of course after all of that they think posting this image will take them off of everyone's shitlist lol. Before they continue posting images of cartoon monkeys looting and putting 'Ferguson protests' under them.



etc.

Your images aren't displaying for me for some reason.

Me either.

Edited fucked up another again but I'll get to it.

Found these two great ones too which really show how racism and xenophobia shapes American public opinion (dominated by well-off, mostly but not exclusively white people).

Ah yes, Diversity is a code word for genocide. And I bet they think Obamacare is the holocaust.

I had a brilliant conversation with a guy on another forum who claimed that he was moving to Arizona to get away from the social ills of society: diversity and immigration. He also drew attention to "alternative" lifestyles- namely transgender people.

I was like 'come on that's dumb' and he exploded into this rant about how America belongs exclusively to anglo-saxon Christians who believe that men are men and women are women and everyone else can go to hell.

He deleted it but this is my real life too lol.

(12-09-2014, 07:13 AM)carlcockatoo Wrote: [ -> ]Found these two great ones too which really show how racism and xenophobia shapes American public opinion (dominated by well-off, mostly but not exclusively white people).

I suspect the majority of Americans would find the captions in those pictures to be bullshit.

You seem to have this idea that the majority agree with the attitude around your location, when most people pretty much don't have an attitude like that at all.

(12-10-2014, 02:28 AM)crazysam23 Wrote: [ -> ]I suspect the majority of Americans would find the captions in those pictures to be bullshit.

You seem to have this idea that the majority agree with the attitude around your location, when most people pretty much don't have an attitude like that at all.

I don't think that.

However I think saying 'only an extremely small percentage of Americans actually think this nobody here thinks that' is equally false. Let's not pretend that there aren't entitled white people here. I'm not saying that that's the majority of them, but I can' say it's just a small minority either. It's a very powerful group regardless of how much of the population they compose.

I would say a majority (a majority, not necessarily the majority) have this weird anti-Palestinian xenophobic thing going on. I have yet to meet anyone that wasn't Arab or Muslim (with a few exceptions like myself) who isn't all like 'defend Israel Palestinians are terrorists!'.

My area is particularly fucked up, and with my post on that anglo-saxon rant I can finally explain why. My area is several times worse than your typical rich suburb because people move here for ideological reasons. They read shit like 'this area is really conservative and supports real american values' because it is marketed that way, so what you get is a mix of political extremists, who when only around people just like them, think they are 'normal'. That's why I go on other forums dealing with Arizona and I see thread after thread of 'I am a straight white Christian. Will I fit in in this area? I live in New England and am tired of the social ills that are diversity and immigration. nah your area is close to Mexico and has therefore been destroyed by illegals nevermind thanks though' (this particular person was from rural Massachusetts lmao).

Even if most people aren't as blatantly fucked up, racially charged or xenophobic attitudes do shape collective public opinion, even if's subconscious. It's shaped historic trends like white flight and it explains current tensions, which isn't just a tiny minority of America or any country really.

Maybe a majority aren't the ones posting this shit on social media but there are a lot of people who will read it, and while they won't outright agree with it, they might still feel a natural aversion to a screenshot of a Muslim that says 'ferguson' under it, and partially agree with the intent of it whether they outright admit it or not. Similarly there are definitely people (not just a tiny percentage) of people who will see a screenshot of 'illegals' crossing the border and think to themselves 'goddamn mexicans' even if they aren't the ones saying it publicly. That's how you learn so much about people on the internet.

tl;dr- It doesn't matter if only a small percentage are actively saying all this fucked up shit, it does shape public opinion in subtle ways.