Senator Dick Durbin reinforces Joe Biden's statement that you ain't black if you don't vote for me by calling Senator Tim Scott's (the only black republican senator) police reform action, only a "token" action. Surely Senator Durbin is old enough to know just what that means and how offensive it is. He basically called Senator Scott an "Uncle Tom".
Did anyone else here notice ?
Once again, another reminder that systemic racism originated in the democratic party, which gave birth to the Confederacy, The KKK and Jim Crow laws to name just a few of the worst. Yet they keep getting a pass even though they created these things, in a time when we are going back to the beginning and holding others responsible for actions of a couple of hundred years ago. If we are going to demonize founders of this country for being slave owners, then to be consistent, we must do the same to the democratic party and deligitimize its very existence as being racist from its very beginning.
Boy howdy is he gonna get pilloried for this. Being right is no defense.
And he's about 90% right; the parts he got wrong are serious tho. I spotted two flaws:
His critique of the "defund the police" movement is shallow. When pressed the advocates for this approach will admit (after they call you racist for daring ask) that defund doesn't mean defund-defund, it means divert some funding currently going to police to social programs. That's a readily-defensible position, but they've done a poor job of pushing it. Sorry what you really mean doesn't fit on a banner, try harder. But I think he'd drop his objection if he heard those folks out.
The other is his analysis of the demographics of police interactions. He's right that encounters with police by black people are statistically less likely to result in death, but it ignores that black people having more encounters with police (which overwhelms that proportionality) is a problem by itself.
Otherwise his discussion is insightful and important. I fear it will accomplish nothing but getting him cancelled.
The overall suicide rate increased from 10.4 to 12.1 per 100,000 population between 2000 and 2010, a 16% increase. The majority of the increase was attributable to suicide by hanging/suffocation (52%) and by poisoning (19%). Subgroup analysis showed: (1) suicide by hanging/suffocation increased by 104% among those aged 45–59 years androse steadily in all age groups except those aged ≥70 years; (2) the largest increase in suicide by poisoning (85%) occurred among those aged 60–69 years; and (3) suicide by firearm decreased by 24% among those aged 15–24 years but increased by 22% among those aged 45–59 years. The case fatality rates for suicide by hanging/suffocation during 2000–2010 ranged from 69% to 84%, close to those for suicide by firearm. Analyses were conducted in 2012.
Conclusions
Substantial increases in suicide by hanging/suffocation and poisoning merit attention from policymakers and call for innovations and changes in suicide prevention approaches.
Voting rights for people in Florida dates back all the way to the Civil War, when Florida, as well as many other Southern states were really trying to figure out really diabolical ways to restrict the rights of former slaves to vote. And what you saw in most of the Southern states, going back to the 1800s, were laws that prevented people from voting if they had prior felony convictions. That combined with racist police practices, meant a whole lot of former slaves and descendants of slaves as the generations passed, were really not able to vote. Florida was one of only four states that permanently prevented people with prior felony convictions from voting.
Well that all changed by ballot initiative. People with prior felony convictions got together in Florida and passed the ballot initiative by a super majority. 64% of Floridians said, âHey, when youâre done serving your prison sentence, when youâre done with probation and parole, you should be able to vote again. Itâs not a lifetime bar.â That measure passed overwhelmingly, and the Florida legislature, which is dominated by Republicans, wasnât happy. They didnât want to see a lot of people with prior felony convictions voting. And so the Florida legislature passed what you could really call an amendment to the amendment. The legislature said, âOkay, finish your prison sentence, finish probation and parole, but also youâve got to pay back any court debts.â These could be fines, court fees, restitution, any kind of court debt that mightâve been attached to your conviction. And for those who canât pay their court debt under the legislatureâs vision, you canât vote. It really amounted to a poll tax.
The analysis of those arrests, conducted by ABC News in collaboration with ABC-owned stations, reveals a stark racial disparity. About 42% of Philadelphiaâs population is black; about 63% of people arrested for all crimes throughout the city were black; but about 85% of arrests for loitering and curfew violations were made against young black people.
Riya Saha Shah, an attorney for the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, said those numbers are âstriking for sure, but not surprising.â
âThereâs a long history of treating young black people differently than young white people in terms of how criminal laws are applied,â Shah told ABC News. âIt all goes back to how they are being policed. When you couple discretionary charges with over-policing, you see a racial disparity.â
So Loving is actually a kind of johnny-come-lately to the civil rights movement. In 1954, probably the most important case in the civil rights movement is heard by the Court. And that, of course, is Brown v. Board of Education, which strikes down laws mandating the segregation of public schools. Brown immediately sets off a huge firestorm in the South.
And it's not just because of the fact that Southerners are unwilling or don't want to integrate their schools. There is this secret fear that lurks at the heart of Brown, and the fear is that in time, integrated classrooms may lead to integrated bedrooms. So deep at the heart of Brown is this fear that if Black children and white children go to school together, they will become familiar with each other and the traditional barriers that have prevented racial mixing as a cultural matter in the South, not just as a legal matter, will break down and you will have more and more intermarriage.
