It’s Martin Luther King day here in the US. I thought I’d celebrate it with an open thread, and with a passage from King’s Where Do We Go From Here (1967), which takes on an added relevance in light of a lot that has happened in the last year or so.
Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a … mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn. … Loose and easy language about equality, resonant resolutions about brotherhood fall pleasantly on the ear, but for the Negro there is a credibility gap he cannot overlook. He remembers that with each modest advance the white population promptly raises the argument that the Negro has come far enough. Each step forward accents an ever-present tendency to backlash.
NOTE: As is always the case with these open threads: No MRAs, no Trolls.
H/T — A Riot Is the Language of the Unheard’: 9 MLK Quotes the Mainstream Media Won’t Cite, by Kali Holloway on AlterNet
Probably a bit frivolous after the quote above, but now I feel like I can mention the Poe pop-up book restoration without derailing a thread:
Facebook album (You don’t need a FB account to view it.)
Also I am going out of town for a few days to visit family, so I will be following this thread a bit sporadically ’til I get back.
I feel bad for having to pump this again, but I’m still way down in my fundraiser to be able to move to my new place on the 1st. https://www.gofundme.com/sephirajo Please consider giving if you can or at least share the link and the love. <3
Also, Nequam, I WANT THAT BOOK OMG. 😀 That is so cool.
I can’t reccomend this episode of Best of the Left about Martin Luther King highly enough. It contains different clips from the man himself as well as commentary that is enlightening (I think) , especially if your main source of learning about him was a US school. It’s one of my favorite episodes of all time.
http://www.bestoftheleft.com/_894_dispelling_the_selective_memory_of_dr_martin_luther_king
Ok, so since this is an open thread I’ll bring it up here: Making a Murderer. (Spoilers for half of the first episode incoming.)
I’ve been recommended this documentary series by a number of people and I was already curious about it, so I sat down to watch it yesterday. I got about 20-30 minutes in before I had to stop because it was making me angry. I expected it would, but I expected it would be the story making me angry, and not the story-telling.
First, they present conjecture as fact. They repeatedly state that the police sketch was drawn from this guy’s mugshot, when there’s no evidence to support that other than the sketch looking similar to the mugshot. The artist says that he never saw the mugshot until after he drew the sketch, and he has no motive to frame this guy.
Second, they downplay the guy’s previous behavior. He threw a cat on a fire, which they attribute to his being young and foolish and hanging with the wrong crowd, but he was an adult and about to be a father (possibly already a father as well–I didn’t catch the birth order), so the age defense (which isn’t much of a defense to start with when it comes to animal cruelty) is BS. And then they downplay his running a woman off the road with his car, actually hitting her car to force her off the road, then threatening her with a gun. They defend this by pointing out that it wasn’t loaded and that he wasn’t taught how to deal with conflict as a child. He was an adult. You don’t deal with someone spreading gossip about you by threatening their life.
They kept interviewing these relatives who talked about how gentle the guy is and how there’s no way he’s capable of rape, but it’s clear he’s got a cruel, violent streak. And they keep talking about how the whole town had it out for this family because they owned a junkyard instead of farming like the rest of the town, which doesn’t make much sense. Don’t get me wrong; I know that people can be weird and petty like that, but maybe it has more to do with the actual reasons people were giving, like how the kids in that family were troublemakers and that the family kept to themselves, rather than some jealousy over their status?
I had to turn it off. It was clear that the filmmakers had a bias and I just can’t stand when opinions and assumptions are stated as fact. Also, he was proven not guilty by forensic DNA evidence if I understand correctly, so why do they even need to downplay his past? Even if he did all those things and worse, he wasn’t guilty of the rape. Unless you’re trying to paint a picture of a man who wouldn’t hurt a fly who was hardened by prison and turned into a violent criminal (which I understand is what this series is trying to do), in which case you’re flat out lying.
Sorry, I just needed to vent.
We have quite a few science bods on here, so what do people think of this?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-two-most-dangerous-numbers-in-the-universe-are-threatening-the-end-of-physics-a6814826.html
As to the general point (we’ve reached the limit of understanding) I see it like this. My dog is really clever, but she can’t count past 5; her brain just doesn’t have the wiring. There’s a similar limit to our wiring. We won’t get over that hurdle unless we significantly evolve. It may then be that stuff like how the universe began etc is so obvious a 3 year old would intuitively understand it.
As the the second point (the universe is finely tuned), I suspect our universe is just one of billions (whether in a multiverse or from a series of abortive big bangs) and by definition we could only evolve in one where the numbers were suitable for a liveable universe to come into being.
@booburry
Thanks! I’ll definitely listen to that later.
@kupo
Agreed. Although I watched several episodes without becoming superangry at the directors, I managed to do so by becoming detached from the storytelling and looking at the story behind it. But there are a lot more problems like this. While there are many doubts about Avery’s guilt in the main (i.e. the murder and rape) case, and a lot of problems with the way the proceedings have developed, the directors completely run with the story his defenders have put together (to be sure: not totally without reason), which, as the series progresses, amounts to a wild conspiracy theory for which they themselves have no proof whatsoever. I don’t get why the two lawyers have to allege conspiracy, when they could simply argue that too many errors have been made during the investigation to clearly establish guilt. (Maybe I’m missing something here? The lawyers here can surely enlighten me?)
The problem in this series, as in the first season of Serial, to me is that they want to tell personal stories to make a point about the justice system, but then fail to actually talk about the systemic failures. Therefore, much of the discussion revolves around the person at the center of the case, i.e. the guilt or innocence of Syed and Avery, when the point should be whether because of racism in one case, classism in the other, the system was biased in a way that didn’t allow for the assumption of innocence. And it isn’t like the trial of Avery was a clear cut case; the Jury, in the beginning, voted predominantly not guilty.
Of course we can’t decide whether these guys are guilty or not – if we could decide that, there wouldn’t be a problem. The point should be: has the system failed these defendants because of intrinsic problems and what should be done about it?
@ kupo & bernardo
It’s pretty much axiomatic in the legal profession that journalists (with a few exceptions, like Joshua Rosenberg) are incapable of reporting legal proceedings accurately.
Some of the issues are addressed here:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/18/we-must-choose-our-words-carefully-when-covering-complex-legal-cases
@ Bernardo
As to why the lawyers may have taken that tack (haven’t seen the programme so just going by your report) –
If you say ‘these errors led to a miscarriage of justice’, then the issue becomes ‘were there any errors?’
If you say ‘these irregularities were the result of a conspiracy’ then the issue may become ‘was there a conspiracy?’ and you hope the assertion there were irregularities is taken at face value.
You’re basically hoping the court will then adopt the “never ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence” approach and find ‘there was no conspiracy, the irregularities were just down to errors’ (which still gets you the result you wanted).
Not sure that’s a particularly good strategy though; the court can easily say ‘no conspiracy, not even any errors’.
@Alan
The documentary is basically saying because the guy threatened the sheriff’s wife with a gun and her friend was working the night the woman who was beaten and raped was brought in, they pinned it all on him. The defense attorney had the gall to claim that because his eye color was different there’s no way the descriptions match so clearly it was a conspiracy. It’s like she’s completely unaware of how small details like colors become distorted by trauma. (Fun anecdote: I had an extremely vivid memory of the car that hit me when I was 14. I was 100% wrong about what color it was even though I remembered it so clearly.)
The strive for equality is gonna be complicated. Often people cite stats as to blacks committing much higher crime rates but
A: These are often FBI ARREST stats; DOJ stats tell a different story. John Horse did a video on the matter https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eefSVy9CrRg
B: The relationship between policing and the community isn’t that simple. Just what does intensive police profiling and presence within a community do for it? It could be argued that this is detrimental to social cohesion.
I’m relatively clueless on it all, and any informative stats or perspectives would be appreciated.
I got catcalled at a transit station the other day. I was wearing a calf length down coat and a winter hat. I wasn’t wearing any makeup.
I’ll have to remember this story next time someone claims women get harassed because they tempt men by looking too sexy.
@Alan @kupo
The series goes on to establish a stronger motive for the whole Sheriffs’ Department to try to pin it on Avery: just weeks before the murder, several high-ranking members of the department had been depositioned in a civil suit that Avery brought against the Sheriffs’ department and several named individuals for a large sum (IIRC, 3.something million) because of the wrongful conviction in the first trial. So they insinuate that in order to bring down this civil suit and avoid huge fines, the Sheriffs took the opportunity to implicate him in an even more heinous crime.
I get the reasoning you mention, Alan, but it seems very risky. The lawyers themselves talk at one point about how difficult it is to bring a jury to believe that a whole police department could plant evidence, give false statements under oath, ignore the real perpetrator and conspire against an innocent person, even if the motive might be realtively strong. If you develop a conspiracy theory of such magnitude, I can easily see that backfire.
@ kupo
That is a pretty poor point to hang a conspiracy on, eye witness identification is notorious for being the most unreliable form of evidence there is.
Of course, a lawyer will point out any discrepancies, that does help undermine the ID.
But on the flip side it’s common to challenge accurate descriptions as being *too* good to be true.
In the case as you describe, if I wanted I allege conspiracy, I’d rather be in a position where the ID was spot on. I’d then ask the jury to think about the eye colour of the workmates they see everyday. I’d use the fact that they almost certainly wouldn’t know to suggest the witness must have got her information as to the defendant’s appearance from somewhere else (i.e. the police trying to frame him) rather than her own observation .
This month, Scholastic actually published a children’s book in which George Washington’s “happy slaves” make him a birthday cake. The book has now been pulled.
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-35342658
This year, the MLK Day holiday weekend coincides with the anniversary of my father’s death, which means I’m remembering a story Dad told us when he thought we were young enough to understand why racism was evil.
Dad grew up in the South, and while he was raised to say “colored” rather than any of the more despicable racial slurs, that’s because his parents took a more genteel approach to their racism. I don’t know much about how Dad saw PoC growing up, but in his university days, a friend of his was visited by the KKK. Full-blown invasion kind of visit – a cross burning on the front lawn, and cigarettes stubbed out in the head of Dad’s friend’s daughter. Dad was horrified, just as my sister and I were horrified at the telling many years later. The more he looked around, the more he realized that the genteel racism (and what we’d call microaggressions today) helped make that kind of domestic terrorism possible. Later on in his life, he joined PFLAG and marched with others in support of gay rights, for much the same reasons.
I don’t claim to be perfect, but I know that Dad’s story of his friend has helped me over the years to recognize the attitudes (in others and in myself) that lead to that kind of horror. Thank you, Dad.
@ Bernardo
I represented some people in a conspiracy case where the defendants had actually minuted the meeting where they planned it!
Talk about organised crime.
But yeah, police conspiracies are hard for juries to swallow. It’s like the Apollo hoax thing; too many people would have to be in on it for it to be believable.
ETA: if you want to go down that route you’re better trying to find one individual who would be in a position to skew the investigation generally and pin it on him.
@wwth
I’m sure they’ll come up with some other excuse. Maybe the man was just very lonely, boo hoo? Or very horny, boo hoo?
@Alan
I think the strongest indication for police wrongdoing is that some key evidence for Avery’s guilt only turned up after seven searches of the defendant’s house, and then it was discovered by members of the Sheriff’s department who were a) supposed to play only a role in technical assistance (because of the civil lawsuit) during the investigation and b) didn’t sign in a book that was kept as documentation who was at the scene.
I mean, there is something seriously off about the whole investigation, that’s clear. I just don’t follow the conspiracy theory without more substantial proof.
@wwth
That’s awful. And yeah, people will come up with all kinds of excuses to not acknoledge that that shit is about power.
@ Bernardo
I don’t know enough about the case in the documentary to comment specifically but all sorts of weird things happen during investigations.
I had a case where there were all sorts of suspicions about other people being involved because the murder weapon was not found at the scene.
Months later it turned out the paramedics who first responded had accidentally packed it away in their kit when they were clearing up.
I think things like “CSI” have given the public an inaccurate impression as to how organised crime scene investigations are.
Exactly. Some of the evidence was handled by FBI, the other police department would have to be in on it at least partly, and so on. They try to pin it on two guys, but it quickly expands from there.
Honestly, if we can’t explain it under our current model it’s far more likely we’ll develop a new model than that we’ll be eternally stuck with a model making completely nonsense predictions. We’ve updated our understanding of particle physics many times.
I’m not generally especially fond of any argument from probability about how unlikely our universe is. I don’t think anyone has shown a vigorous proof that there is no other combination of physical constants that would permit humanlike life, and anyways we don’t know the probability distribution.
CPphazor:
One thing that proponents of the higher crime rates for black always seem to neglect is that these higher crime rates are intra-racial and the rates are mostly as a result of over policing in black neighborhoods. If the police are looking for crimes only in your neighborhoods, a lot more of your people are going to get nabbed for it, in those neighborhoods. (Paradoxically, it does not have the added effect of making your neighborhood safer.)
Another thing people like that fail to mention is, simply by sheer force of numbers, white people commit more overall crime. Beware of people who like to say black people are committing most of the crime in America. That’s just sheer bullshit. A population of just some 13.5% can in no way be responsible for most of anything. Compare a population of less than 40 million black people to a population of some 250 million white people and you will have some idea of the BS being bandied about.
There are some statistics out there comparing all these numbers. From what I understand the number of black people actually being convicted of crimes is fairly minuscule to the number of white people committing crimes and most are the same people with repeat offenses, as people fail to take into account that there are actually women and children in these community. Women and kids who are not criminals. So it can’t be ALL black people, as our population consists of more than black men aged 25-35, which is who you know they’re talking about.
Check: Timwise.org for more stats. He really makes an effort to break down the numbers and refute these rather lazy, self serving arguments that such people enjoy making.
I’m sure no one will be surprised that the “all lives matter” crowd is appropriating King on Twitter and arguing that he’d totally be on their side. http://jezebel.com/you-only-get-one-shot-at-life-so-definitely-tweet-abou-1753562911
TIL, MLK would be a tea partier if he were alive today! I could not roll my eyes harder right now.
“All lives matter” is the “What about teh menz” of racially-based extrajudicial murder.