Bad Boys II

[Dill]

(06-03-2020, 09:11 AM)hollodero Wrote: Riots to me are a form of this "culture of violence" as well. I don't know if they work now, but in general, they sure have at times worked in one way or another. As already stated, I do acknowledge that the forming of your nation is connected to justifiable rioting against authority, so hard to dismiss that point. So yes to the first question, the second yes is inevitable then.
Specifically with black people rioting, I have a hard time evaluating what change they brought in the past. And at quick glance, this often seems like a disputed question. Many say the LA riots changed police force there, others claim that Ferguson did not change anything; for the current situation, I don't know if riots can turn things for the better, and I have a hard time evaluating how much justification for violence there is in possible change achievable. Or if it's fair to say "we tried the non-violent way", for which Kaepernick is the poster boy. My hunch would be that these current riots and destructions don't make anything better though, given the current climate with Trumpism/Breitbartism, the upcoming election and sure also the still ongoing pandemic.

I do know Floyd's brother empathically called for ending the violence, and I feel like going with his take there.

Some riots are a part of my above-mentioned and racially inflected "culture of violence"--e.g., lynch mobs and the Tulsa race massacre. But not all.

I'll skip the rather obvious causal relations between 60s protests/rioting and the end of segregation, and leap to the 21st century. Evaluating what change riots have brought can be partly answered by data connected with Control Decrees. That's much better than throwing up newspaper reports of "bad apples."

Take the LAPD for example. When they couldn't seem to clean up their own dept. after the Rodney King riots, complaints of "nothing changes" led the DOJ to force a Control decree on them in 2001.  Over twelve years, they successfully met it targets and the decree was lifted in 2013. https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2013/05/16/civil-rights-consent-decree-over-lapd-lifted-after-almost-12-years/
“In these last 12 years, the Los Angeles Police Department did not just comply with consent decree, they took it to heart,” [Mayor] Villaraigosa said. “They used it as a guide to change their culture.”  If one bad cop slips through the system and beats someone to death for jaywalking, it won't mean "nothing has changed."

Sometimes, though, the timing is problematic. The DOJ investigation into Ferguson after the 2014 slaying of Brown and subsequent rioting led to finding that, among other things, the police used the black residential areas of Ferguson as a source of funding. I.e., they used tickets to "harvest" money from black residents. https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/doj-finds-ferguson-targeted-african-americans-used-courts-mainly-to/article_d561d303-1fe5-56b7-b4ca-3a5cc9a75c82.html

That resulted in, in 2016, in a Consent Decree between the DOJ and the city of Ferguson, which set targets for training and other requirements to be monitored by the DOJ to create community involvement and accountability, and to change the police culture there (no more circulating departmental emails with pictures of Obama as a chimpanzee).  https://fergusonmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Consent-Decree.pdf

Initially there was great progress, even into 2018, according to the federal judge monitoring the agreement; then Sessions put the Decrees "under review" (and on hold), and by July 2019 Ferguson had fallen way behind on meeting these targets. https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/ferguson-needs-to-make-more-progress-on-consent-decree-federal/article_047fa0e7-ca28-5734-8555-ef4366448400.html

One could plausibly say now that "riots changed nothing" in Ferguson, but a Dem DOJ might get reform back on track.

People have to see how these reforms, and their maintenance, are connected to the leaders we choose. Stop saying "nothing changes" and "nothing can be done."  I've lived long enough to witness a tremendous transformation of our national culture on race issues. I've also lived long enough to know this only means that the battle is not over, for that transformation also produced a tremendous whitelash.

Final point--you are still giving too much power to Trump/Breitbart. Just as the civil rights struggle generated Whitelash, it has likely reached its high water mark and is now receding before  a broad coalition of opponents.