Return_of_the_STAR wrote:I’ve never ever seen a police officer in over 13 years target someone for a stop and search because of their race.
How would you know? Are the other policemen likely to te you that they did it for racist reasons? Have you heard of subconscious bias?
If certain races are believed to be disproportionately stopped and searched then that is an issue for our country and our leaders to sort out.
I don't think the law/government says "search the Blacks!". So no, it's a big problem with the police.
Why are they more likely to be in a situation where the police become involved? Police officers will stop those that they believe they need to within the law. People that fit the description of suspects or offenders that have been reported to them.
That's dangerously close to "well why do the Blacks commit all the crime!".
I’ve never heard a racist comment amongst colleagues.
Never? Nothing at all? Either they're hiding it from you or you're lying. Not one comment from not one person in 13 years? I get you're defending your workmates, but there isn't a workplace in the land with that spotless a record.
My team has one Asia police officer and one black officer. They are very offended and disheartened by a lot of the comments they’ve seen flying around in the last week.
One of each? How diverse.
I get that the good police will be disheartened and offended. Things like "ACAB" shouldn't be taken so literally, I don't think anybody genuinely believes 100% of coppers are bad. But you good ones do yourselves no favours at all by blindly defending the bad ones.
Are there any racist police officers around? Of course there are. There are racists all over the country in ever occupation. Does that make an entire organisation and all its staff racist. No it’s bloody doesn’t.
I'm intrigued by how you know there are racist officers around? You said you've never heard a single racist comment in 13 years......
I don’t have the time to answer all this. But you only said a couple of days ago that all cops are bastards. I challenged you on it and you stood by it. Now you are claiming that no one genuinely believes 100% of coppers are bad.
I’ve been shouted at, abused and called racist because of things people have seen on edited videos on Facebook or twitter that have nothing to do with me.
You yourself laughed at a police officer this evening getting badly injured because his horse bolted after it was attacked with fireworks, bottles and a bloody bike by people today.
Me meaning ACAB 100% literally is about as likely as you not hearing one single racist comment from any colleague in 13 years.
Last edited by Moggy on Sat Jun 06, 2020 10:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
If people are saying that all Police are racist or bastards, then surely ROTS as a policeman has a right to challenge that viewpoint?
Most police I have met or interacted with have been decent people. I've met a few arseholes as well but don't believe all police are bastards or racist.
Albear wrote:If people are saying that all Police are racist or bastards, then surely ROTS as a policeman has a right to challenge that viewpoint?
Most police I have met or interacted with have been decent people. I've met a few arseholes as well but don't believe all police are bastards or racist.
This is a basic misunderstanding of the ACAB line.
ACAB is not talking about individuals, it's about the systems that allow institutional and systematic racism to exist within structures of power and authority. The police, both in the US and UK are infamously institutionally racist organisations. Is literally single every cop a bastard? Probably not. But they are part of that system that creates those with the attitude that kneeling on the neck of a black man for over 8 minutes as he pleads for his life is not only acceptable, but defensible.
Seems a bit silly to me but so do most sweeping statements.
If the statement was that the Police system is institutionaly/systematicly racist, then whilst I wouldn't agree I could at least have a conversation with someone about it.
But when someone says that all police are racist/bastards then that unfairly labels all of the good/decent policemen out there and makes me not want to engage anymore.
Anyway, I don't particulary want to derail this thread any further so won't bang on about it any further.
The pragmatist accepts that while "ACAB" does lead to some misunderstanding in debate, it is simply a more effective sloganised call to protest
The important thing is to not let the narrative get sidetracked into the literal meaning of ACAB - it's not useful or interesting, and engaging with the literal argument is to risk "losing" the debate and ignoring what is more important.
I'm always baffled when people say we don't live in a racist society.
Most young people today - the dreaded "millennials" - probably have parents born in the 50s or 60s. This means being born into a time when Jim Crow laws were in full effect, where life was partitioned out to you based on your skin colour and where black kids like Emmett Till got beaten into a literal pulp for (perhaps) looking at a white woman the "wrong" way.
Yeah these are American issues, but that was supposed to be the leader of the free world for all of the 20th century. The UK doesn't far much better - a quick look at our own society in the 70s or 80s would reveal ugly scars that linger today. Look how immigrants from India or the West Indies were treated, or the language used to describe them in some TV shows from that time. The comedy used to marginalise and differentiate them. The way black football players were treated (and still are).
So you think of the problem being "solved" in the 60s with the civil rights movement. But all those racist incidents were when our parents were being raised or were growing up.. These are now the people who moulded and raised us. Humans are sticklers for mimicking the actions and values of those in their "tribe" and we learn from our families and friends around us. Our parents were raised in a deeply racist society, those values don't disappear over night.
Go back a little further - our grandparents were likely born around 1920/30. These are people who moulded one parents, the very people who would be the cornerstone of our moral development. It doesn't just get solved with a passing of a law.
We think of the 1860s as ages ago, which it was in a way, when we look at our own lifespans, but it's much more complex then that. If you're in my father's position, maube tenuously a boomer (not sure if he counts as one or not) but he's definitely in the generation that run things, decides things, are vocal on things and, crucially, vote in the largest numbers for things. Well, his grandfather's grandfather was born in the 1850s. That's predating the American Civil War and abolishment of slavery. It's well within living memory of our own abolition of slavery.
So that's his grandfather's grandfather. Sounds still quite distant, but that means a man born in the 1850s was part of his grandson's growth and development. That grandson became my dad's grandfather and did the same. You've got a clear throughline of human ideas, beliefs and values still permeating today. Someone who greatly affected my life, was himself affected by people born in the 1890s and 1920s.
I'm not explaining this very well, but the human condition or human thinking doesn't change with the passing of a law. We are still all living in the shadow of the generations before us. Even if 50 years, 100 years or 150 years feels quite a long time ago, it's not. Legal slavery in the US is less than two full human lives back.
Likewise tenuously connecting it to the police and the ACAB. Are the police racist? We still live in a fundamentally unequal society which favours white people, either consciously or subconsciously. So in the same way that we are the products of an upbringing or development that is still going to be keenly influenced by people born 40-50 years ago, or maybe even almost a hundred, then so are institutions formed and developed without our society. Are our police forces racist? The answer isn't a simple "yes/no" it's more: "How *can't* they be racist, given the society they have been formed in".
Great stuff. Hopefully that statue gets destroyed so nobody can put it back up.
Already seeing people moan that it's "erasing history", as if a memorial to a slave trader is an appropriate representation of that history. We're allowed to rethink who we choose to continue to lionise, actually. Simple symbolism in statues and street names already erases history, no-one should now take exception just because that negative side to someone gets highlighted in this way.
Great stuff. Hopefully that statue gets destroyed so nobody can put it back up.
Already seeing people moan that it's "erasing history", as if a memorial to a slave trader is an appropriate representation of that history. We're allowed to rethink who we choose to continue to lionise, actually. Simple symbolism in statues and street names already erases history, no-one should now take exception just because that negative side to someone gets highlighted in this way.
Yep.
I can see the arguments for putting the statue in a museum, but it should be nowhere near the strawberry floating centre of a 21st century multicultural city.
Everything with that banana splits name needs to be renamed now.
Great stuff. Hopefully that statue gets destroyed so nobody can put it back up.
Already seeing people moan that it's "erasing history", as if a memorial to a slave trader is an appropriate representation of that history. We're allowed to rethink who we choose to continue to lionise, actually. Simple symbolism in statues and street names already erases history, no-one should now take exception just because that negative side to someone gets highlighted in this way.
Yep.
I can see the arguments for putting the statue in a museum, but it should be nowhere near the strawberry floating centre of a 21st century multicultural city.
Everything with that banana splits name needs to be renamed now.
Great stuff. Hopefully that statue gets destroyed so nobody can put it back up.
Already seeing people moan that it's "erasing history", as if a memorial to a slave trader is an appropriate representation of that history. We're allowed to rethink who we choose to continue to lionise, actually. Simple symbolism in statues and street names already erases history, no-one should now take exception just because that negative side to someone gets highlighted in this way.
Yep.
I can see the arguments for putting the statue in a museum, but it should be nowhere near the strawberry floating centre of a 21st century multicultural city.
Everything with that banana splits name needs to be renamed now.
Great stuff. Hopefully that statue gets destroyed so nobody can put it back up.
Already seeing people moan that it's "erasing history", as if a memorial to a slave trader is an appropriate representation of that history. We're allowed to rethink who we choose to continue to lionise, actually. Simple symbolism in statues and street names already erases history, no-one should now take exception just because that negative side to someone gets highlighted in this way.
Yep.
I can see the arguments for putting the statue in a museum, but it should be nowhere near the strawberry floating centre of a 21st century multicultural city.
Everything with that banana splits name needs to be renamed now.
I think they should put it up again with a new sign underneath that just reads "You know what you are Bristol."
On a similar note some folks went around Glasgow yesterday putting new street signs up with the names of civil rights leaders on the streets here that are named for the Tobacco Lords/slaveholders). Hope the momentum keeps up.
