Time magazine’s cover this week (5/11/15) on the Baltimore protests is “America, 1968/2015: What Has Changed. What Hasn’t”:
What has changed? Well, for one thing, in 1968, Time was unlikely to compare current events to things that happened 47 years earlier, in 1921–before most people alive then were born.
This thinking is a dishonest dodge.
In the 60;s it was all minority women, children and man who were persecuted for just trying to exist. There is no parallel whatsoever with today, despite the many silly articles we see about minute percentages of police brutality. Yes, by all means fix the institutions of our land, but trying to use over and over and over the images of thugs fighting and runnin away from the cops as reasons to think we have not made progress … well, it’s despicable.
For those who are informed, many things (not all) have gotten worse since the 1960s in terms of racial inequality. Minor crimes for which white kids get a pass become a strategy to criminalize entire black neighborhoods and cities (see “broken windows” policing, which results in 1.5 arrest warrants, mostly for unpaid tickets, per resident in Ferguson). Black kids are less likely to use illegal drugs than white kids per capita, but 13 times as likely to go to prison for possession. College campuses have Judicial Committees that protect kids from prosecution for the same crimes that black and poor kids get convicted of, and ruin their lives. On my campus (Otterbein University, Westerville, Ohio), there is roughly a 95% rate of students not even being charged for drug and alcohol related crimes that they are arrested for by campus police — the Judicial Committee openly protects them from prosecution on the basis that it might affect their ability to get a job (I’m sure Michael Brown would have appreciated this courtesy) — and this is standard practice on college campuses.
The short version of this is that we have two judicial systems, that black people (whether or not they are poor) and poor people are held responsible for crimes that the middle and upper classes get an almost automatic pass on. Our institutions support these practices, both openly and covertly, and most (white) Americans (especially), choose not to know the facts about it. Here you go: blacks use 13% of drugs, make up 14% of drug dealers, are 35% of those arrested on drug charges, 55% of convictions, 75% of prison sentences. What do you think that means.
Brux, you are so stupid, either willfully ignorant or just plain dumb, that it would make me want to cry if I hadn’t met you 10,000 times and read 1 million posts by morons who are an exact duplicate of you.
@Brux –
“This thinking…” – – – which thinking are you referring to exactly? The Time magazine POV or Jim Naureckas’ POV?
Wow! Here we go again
Brux: people who “talk like that” (don’t you mean write like that?) — or, use empirical evidence to construct a rational argument — are generally known as smart people (or, at least informed people). Also, a tip for the future: ignoring me would involve not responding.
I’m with Martin. Racism continues to play a large role in the way US society is structured in terms of who wins and who loses.
There has been much superficial progress made in terms of public life, President Obama being the foremost example of the superficiality of this progress. He represents a change in our society which must certainly be celebrated – he is the USA’s non-100% “white” President. But we see how little that accomplishment alone (important as it is) means in terms of the structure of our society and President Obama’s inability or lack of desire to accomplish some things which would fundamentally change the country for the better or even the economic conditions for the majority of African Americans. It’s still all about class and there we see few changes. It’s not for nothing that the greatest hero of the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King, Jr., made giving the impoverished a political voice his main focus.
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Funny, you can usually date photos of today’s police by the military style uniforms, combat boots, flak helmets, modern military style communications gear etc.
This photo harkens back to a simpler times where all the police needed to crack skulls was a bat and a short-sleeved shirt.
It *would* be interesting if they had looked at 1921. Arguably far bigger of a change in occurred between 1968 and now.
Consider the appalling criminal act of the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot, where Black Americans were killed by the score and a whole section of a city burnt to the ground in an attack by a part of the white community. By 1968, you had full scale insurrections in Black neighborhoods over real grievances.
That’s a huge change, at least in terms of the ability of people to defend their neighborhoods and stand up for their rights.
Normally I’m all with FAIR, but I’m not sure what point is being made here. Is the fact that a comparison is being made with something 47 years ago a form of media bias–and if so, why?