Thoughts on the Jena 6

[t...]

Quit writing so much. It's no secret Breadboy both flames and trolls.

[obamacon]

I would go through and do a "breadboy treatment" of this account, but it's not worth it.  I am skeptical, of course, of any claims you make to understand and assess "contemporary black culture," but this is especially true when you base your criticisms on, what, a memorial set up by family of a man who was shot dead on the eve of his wedding?  Neighbors' concern that -- given the facts as they knew them* -- the same thing could happen to them or their loved ones?  Community demands for investigation and prosecution of clear violations of police policy and likely violations of the law?  This is pathetic.

Would you acknowledge that memorials can be inappropriate/ridiculous, say (at the extreme) Eric Harris?

Accepting the facts as you've outlined them, I don't think being drunk, dealing crack, going to a strip club/brothel for your bachelor party, and trying to get away from people (unidentified as cops) chasing after you, and even purposefully trying to hit an unidentified person aiming a gun at you with your car mean you should be killed in a hail of fifty gunshots.

I do. Trying to run someone over is trying to kill them. When someone is trying to kill you you fire until they are definitely dead which can take some time to ascertain if they're driving a vehicle.

Perhaps it's not a perfect example of institutional racism (unlike some other notorious police shootings in NYC over the past several years) given that the cops had some reason to believe they were in danger and that a crime was imminent,

This is ridiculous. It isn't even a slight example of racism, institutional or otherwise.

but this doesn't change the fact that they police black neighborhoods more heavily, view young black men out at night or in high-crime neighborhoods with automatic suspicion (as long as they aren't in uniform), associate fear of police with violent criminal activity (see, e.g., Wardlow), and pull guns on black men much faster than they do on anyone else.  This isn't right, even for crack dealers and johns.  I don't see any problem with community concern -- and even outrage -- about this incident,

This is tangential at best. However, we do need to have a discussion about some of this (i.e. if blacks are being targeted as a class why is it that only a smaller subset of the population is involved in 95% of the incidents?)

regardless of Bell's character flaws and alleged criminal history.

Alleged?

In any case, this has nothing to do with Jena.  I mentioned those names because of your claim that only African American, and not African immigrant and West Indian, black men experience what some of us in this thread have described as racism.  The "isolated" and "he was a real bad guy" defenses don't explain away the common thread between those victims -- the fact that they were black men. 

I was responding to Sands. But as a side note, anyone who reaches for things when the police say hands up is asking to die, black, white, or otherwise.

*Remember, this was when our white, Republican mayor had called the shooting "unacceptable" and "inexplicable" and described himself as "deeply disturbed" by the officers' "excessive force."

I don't see automatic comrades in white faces, sorry.

[obamacon]

Doesn't that generally contradict with almost everything you've said in this thread?

Nope.

[obamacon]

But, wasn't that quote suggesting that the "idealists" who are well-fed are a bit OVERLY idealistic? As though perhaps "idealist" is mildly pejorative, because those idealists themselves live a mildly under-informed version of life, surrounded as they are by people who have less material wealth than them, and therefore unable as they are to sympathize with the plight of the less fortunate?

Nope.

[obamacon]

Oh I see. So the quote is suggesting that the morons who are materialist are all wrong and ought to be idealistic because materialism is the bad thing, and idealism the good thing that we all could have, if only we had enough stuff?

Nope.

[Miss P]

This is ridiculous.

Yup.  I'm not doing this anymore.  You need to find a new playmate.

ETA: Marx, of course, was the ultimate materialist.  You should read the German Ideology and then come back with different aphorisms.

[obamacon]

This is ridiculous.

Yup.  I'm not doing this anymore.  You need to find a new playmate.

red. and stanley are gone 

[Private David Lewis]

lol, bb is still the most interesting poster here.  Sorry guys. 

[t...]

lol, bb is still the most interesting poster here.  Sorry guys. 

You're a fool.

[obamacon]

lol, bb is still the most interesting poster here.  Sorry guys. 

You're a fool.

I prefer useful idiot.