I saw a darkie breaking into the house across the street...Follow

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2009/07/powell_partly_f.html

I <3 CP, not because he placed part of the blame on Gates (which I happen to agree with), but because he exemplifies what I would expect from someone of his (and Gates') stature with regard to experiences such as these.







I've been witness to a lot of situations in which people (black, white, and other) have had altercations with authority figures and I can honestly say I can't emphasize the bolded statement enough. Though more common in younger males (although a pissed off black woman can be pretty damn unruly in her own right), I've seen time and again the situation made worse by the person being questioned / disciplined issuing a direct challenge to the authority figure's authority. If you think you're being wrongly accused, you address it, but not in a manner that invites further confrontation or legitimizes the frustration of the other person(s) involved.

A highly practical, safe, efficient, and execrably unjust piece of advice.

Next you're going to accuse Ghandi of being racist towards Indians.

What's unjust about categorically capitulating with authority simply for a practical concern, without taking the time to assess whether the executive branch is overstepping it's bounds, not only contributing to a subversion of not only the ideal behavior but also psychology of the ostensible servants of the people, but also enabling not only corruption but reinforcing the very adversarial nature of cop versus citizen which causes even non-corrupt authority to treat people as threats to be neutralized and contained rather than reasoned with, causing us to even have these ridiculous and fraudulent proscriptions against yelling at people?

Why, I haven't the slightest notion.



I have no idea what the opinion of some emotional or depressed person reacting to a death of a family member has to do with justice.

Spoken like someone who wouldn't know 'rebellion' if it dropped out of the sky in front of them, kneed you in the bollox and spray-painted CNUT on the back of your neck, whilst drunkenly singing White Riot at the top of its voice and waving a can of Special Brew about.

Sanctimonious ****.

Jeez! That statement made me pissy.

See this is why people shouldn't make inferences, or hell, why bother generalizing? You, you in particular should not make inferences. You don't seem to know what's implied and what isn't. What is this fetish that people have for interpreting destruction of side A for construction of side B?



Practical yes. Most applications of common sense are.

But that's not what you took issue with, you wriggling nematode. You specifically asked how such a characterization was unjust. Justice is the process by which we allocate things to people depending on dessert. Arresting a person for getting pissed off at you just because you feel some ridiculous imperative to maintain control of a situation, project an image of authority, an aversion to apologizing, or basically any reason whatsoever in the universe aside from the person assaulting you physically, is not just, and Colin Powell's advice is a totally inapplicable (even he admits it himself) maxim which he throws down for the purpose of... teaching a ****** lesson to young people in order to redeem the actions of the police that were, specifically in this context, completely irrelevant.

There is not a single link in this discussion to co-operating with lawful police business that doesn't **** with the lives of private citizens, and your entire post is a red herring. Or.. oh damn I'm sorry, now I see, maybe you were just grievously misinterpreting the blatantly obvious context of this entire thread, wherein a dude was arrested on his own property for insulting a cop with vehemence.

Great writing style, too bad it makes no sense whatsoever.




That has got to be one of the longest sentences ever. Sounds silly, but long.
Now tell me please, when did I ever said anything about arresting someone who gets pissed off at me is just or not just? How did you even get into that topic? If you scroll back up, you will see that I was talking about co-operating with police, remember? Nice try, but no cigar.




I do so enjoy your name calling attempts!

Of course not, and you'd be an idiot to pretend that challenging an officer will actually result in anything pleasurable. It will probably get you arrested and cause everyone a ******** of trouble. If that's what you care about (and I mean, you know, a lot of people do, and that's fine) then by all means, don't bother ******** to him. There's just no reason to pretend that such an action is anything but blatant hypocrisy, and a betrayal of the trust that the public puts in the police, the trust that they are agents of good, rational, or worthy of upholding the ideal.

I just, well you should know by now that it's extremely difficult for me to put practicality ahead of what's right.

Harvard University?

A lot of publicity, a justification to ***** handed to him on a silver platter, and a spark that made everyone talk about race issues after spending less than a day in jail?

Awesome.

Ducked:



Change you can believe in.

That's great for Gates that he gets his name in the newspaper, but issues like this probably worsen the racial divide. On one hand we have black people who are going to take it as an example of why white police are out to get them and the authorities (and by extension the government) can't be trusted. On the other hand we have people like Gbaji who think that Gates was just raising hoo-ha and that this is further evidence of why black people are to blame for racial conflict because they won't shut up about it.

Maybe one in every dozen thinks like you do and treats it as an excuse to re-examine issues of race. The other eleven treat it as an excuse to again re-argue and re-justify their earlier prejudices without making any meaningful changes, as they do all the other times such issues surface in the media.

Overall, a sh*tty day for universal love and compassion and a great day for media-fueled racial strife. Your own ideals should be making you really upset that this ever got the publicity it did.



What we're trying to say is that the probability that this has made things slightly worse is very, very high.



On the other hand, conforming to a unified social ideal under a common law is kind of what society is all about, really. Even social reform would have no effect until everyone agreed to follow it. The vast majority of people who achieve great things do it by working with or modifying an existing system. They don't do it by destroying the system and shouting "hoo-rah!"

Edited, Jul 29th 2009 9:17am by zepoodle