i mean, rusty, you realize that your philosophy now has you excusing murder because of the vague, amorphous link to the wealth and power discrepancy in America.
We were pretty clearly talking on a macro scale, and I presented a theory for why a black American may be statistically more likely to commit murder. An explanation for and understanding of the variance in murder rate is not the same thing as "excusing murder".
And do you really think the link from racist government policy to black poverty to black crime is "vague"? I'd again urge you again to read Color of Law and share your thoughts.
don't you think it makes more sense to acknowledge the negative effects of the wealth and power discrepancy, work to change the discrepancy, and still hold individuals accountable for their own actions regardless of the color of their skin?
I mean yeah I think that's more productive than "excusing murder" but as I mentioned that's not what I'm doing.
The white stereotype you listed was a criticism of White America's eagerness to call the police on black people for innocuous things. My view is that I agree -- it's bad when that happens. That shouldn't happen, and when people do that, they deserve criticism.
For the sake of the argument that racial stereotypes are bad, I brought up a stereotype of black people being violent, which you were quick to dismiss because White America is the true underlying cause of disproportionate black violence in the macro. But getting to the underlying cause of the stereotype isn't even considered when we criticize BBQ Becky. The analysis just ends with her bad act of calling the police. We don't care if she was motivated by an underlying statistically accurate perception of the demographics of violent crime. She did something bad, end of story.
And in my view, the treatment of BBQ Becky (as an individual)
should end there because individuals have the agency to
not unnecessarily call the police (or commit murder), notwithstanding whatever broad underlying forces that might tacitly encourage them to. And if we acknowledge that individuals have that agency, then I think the logical next step is to hold individuals responsible only for their
own actions and not the actions of others.
To be clear, I also think the individuals who instituted bad policies should be held accountable for their own bad acts (of instituting the policy), and that voters should be held accountable for their own bad acts (of putting those people in office). I think the responsibility becomes more tenuous the further down the line things get from the actual bad consequence.
And I'm sorry but I'm not going to read Color of the Law. I'm fairly certain I understand the arguments and acknowledge that systemic racism and bias have disproportionately affected broad swaths of black people for generations which have all sorts of negative effects (including Black violence). I just don't hold you or I accountable for it.
We agree on quite a bit, but I'm worried we're never going to come to an agreement on this individual/group responsibility dynamic. I keep thinking the impasse has to be some semantical thing. One of these days I hope we figure it out.
