Us Church Shooting

[dinker]

The media are strangely silent about the thousands of people killed by black gangsters every year:

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/04/16352612-weve-lost-respect-for-life-detroit-records-deadliest-year-in-decades?lite

[Executive Sadman]

The media are strangely silent about the thousands of people killed by black gangsters every year:

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/04/16352612-weve-lost-respect-for-life-detroit-records-deadliest-year-in-decades?lite

I do find the Detroit murder rate disturbing. 54.6 per year per 100,000. So over the course of an 80 year lifetime, that sums to 4368 (80 x 54.6). So during your life, you have a 1 in 23 chance of being murdered. One in every 23 people might expect to be murdered. Imagine knowing personally dozens of murder victims. Incredible. Obviously some areas will be safer, others worse. Who knows, there might be blocks where every other person is murdered

[Executive Sadman]

The media are strangely silent about the thousands of people killed by black gangsters every year:

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/04/16352612-weve-lost-respect-for-life-detroit-records-deadliest-year-in-decades?lite

But yes, there is little political capital to be made out of black on black or white on white murder.

The demonic types who enter politics know how people function. Our own intrinsic racism as humans makes us vulnerable to comprehending 'interacial' murder far more irrationally than other murders.

Its their ideal political issue. They can demand big money to 'fix' it, when the reality is there is little to fix, and even lesser chance of fixing whatever limited problems there are. That is to say racially motivated murders are incredibly rare in the whole murder arena, and yet there will always, always be nuts like this individual. Nothing can be done to change that. They already have the death penatly in the US, you can have a much harsher punishment that that.

Fixing Detroits murder problem (ie, a real, massive problem) takes a lot of time and energy...thus politicians, being the serial procrastinators, and zero action types they are, don't want to confront it.

[MrPin]

I want to be murdered in Detroit now, by white people driving a German car.

[Scunnered]

I do find the Detroit murder rate disturbing. 54.6 per year per 100,000. So over the course of an 80 year lifetime, that sums to 4368 (80 x 54.6). So during your life, you have a 1 in 23 chance of being murdered. One in every 23 people might expect to be murdered. Imagine knowing personally dozens of murder victims. Incredible. Obviously some areas will be safer, others worse. Who knows, there might be blocks where every other person is murdered

[Just to be awkward]

Isn't there a flaw in your calculations? The probability's based on living to 80, but there's a good chance you'll be murdered long before that...

[thecrashingisles]

[Just to be awkward]

Isn't there a flaw in your calculations? The probability's based on living to 80, but there's a good chance you'll be murdered long before that...

And it doesn't take account of people who get murdered more than once.

[MrPin]

And it doesn't take account of people who get murdered more than once.

That's tough, even for serial martyrs!

[stormymonday_2011]

Amazingly Americans seem to have decided that the cause of the shooting in the US South Carolina Church was not down to the fact that nutters of all persuasions in the US have ludicrously easy access to firearms but because too many people in the Southern states are still flying the Confederate Battle Flag of the Army of North Virginia which they are now attempting to ban. As a consequence the Dukes of Hazzard toy car now needs to be given a makeover to remove the offending insignia. The fact that the flag in question is not even the one adopted by the Confederacy in the 1850s at the time of it attempted secession seems to have passed everyone by. The original actually looks like the picture below

My money is that many people who get outraged by the Battle Flag would not even be able to name the flag shown above.

It is not often I agree with Louis Farrakhan but I do wonder why the flag of the slave owning Confederate states of America any worse symbol of oppression than the flag of the United States of America itself under which the mass genocide of so many of the Native American peoples was carried out

http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/06/24/farrakhan-i-dont-get-debate-over-confederate-flag-we-need-to-put-the-american-flag-down/

Why do Americans get so worked up about the institution slavery which for all its evils hardly wiped out the black population of the US yet not the fact that the indigeneous people of the country and their cultures were virtually exterminated to such an extent that what little remains has been expropriated to supply the names of helicopter gun ships. For example, the great Shawnee tribe which once roamed much of the eastern US only numbered 7584 in 2008

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawnee

Am I alone in finding this utterly bizarre ?

[Nuggets Mahoney]

Am I alone in finding this utterly bizarre ?

I think the bit you're missing is recognition that the institution of slavery, practised throughout the world for thousands of years, is the unique responsibility of White men, particularly US Southerners; regardless of how long after its abolition they were born or whether they are the descendants of planters or paupers.

I've spent a fair bit of time in the South and there's no way on Earth people there are going to give up the 'stars and bars' (sic.). They'll see this as a continuation of the Northern aggression that, in their eyes, was what the Civil War was really all about.

I like the South a lot and understand the appeal of the Lost Cause mythology. Having said that there is a tendency to overcompensate and eulogise some fairly iffy characters and happenings. The attachment to the flag I get. The boner some Southerners still have for, say, Nathan Bedford Forrest, co-founder of the KKK and almost certainly responsible for the murder of Black POWs I don't empathise with.

[stormymonday_2011]

I think the bit you're missing is recognition that the institution of slavery, practised throughout the world for thousands of years, is the unique responsibility of White men, particularly US Southerners; regardless of how long after its abolition they were born or whether they are the descendants of planters or paupers.

I've spent a fair bit of time in the South and there's no way on Earth people there are going to give up the stars and bars. They'll see this as a continuation of the Northern aggression that, in their eyes, was what the Civil War was really all about.

I like the South a lot and understand the appeal of the Lost Cause mythology. Having said that there is a tendency to overcompensate and eulogise some fairly iffy characters and happenings. The attachment to the flag I get. The boner some Southerners still have for, say, Nathan Bedford Forrest, co-founder of the KKK and almost certainly responsible for the murder of Black POWs I don't empathise with.

The Confederacy was doomed from the outset not because of its moral failings but because by the 1850s a slave owning economy was already a historical anachronism in an age of industrial capitalism where no entrepreneur wanted the burden of actually housing and feeding workers during the ups and downs of the economic cycle.

Slavery is reprehensible because owning people as chattels is wrong regardless of their colour or race. Similarly bondage based on debt or tying people to land as in Czarist Russia or Medieval Europe has nothing morally to recommend it. However, to pretend that the past can rescinded by removing a flag is as ludicrous as supposing the great Native American plains tribes can be resurrected by changing the name of the Washington Redskins. Moreover, a society in which mass shootings by various nutjobs in possession of firearms regularly occurs is not going to be altered by banning the Confederate or any other flag. Anyway if you remove old symbols racists can always invent new ones as the Nazis showed only too well in the 1930s.

Anyway Randy Newman, a Jew who spent part of his youth in the South, skewered the hypocrisy of the attitude of many whites from the northern States to their black fellow Americans in his song Rednecks many decades ago

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=hTLHxpUQ_B8

[ccc]

Isnt it true that there are more black people enslaved today in Africa by other black people than were ever enslaved by white people in the US ?

I heard that but who knows where the numbers came from.

[Nuggets Mahoney]

Moreover, a society in which mass shootings by various nutjobs in possession of firearms regularly occurs is not going to be altered by banning the Confederate or any other flag. Anyway if you remove old symbols racists can always invent new ones as the Nazis showed only too well in the 1930s.

First off, I completely agree that Confederate flags have got biff all to do with this shooting and the people connecting the two, along with other people with pet causes doing the same, are being opportunistic

Re. the issue of the Flag, as opposed to the murders, I think the point of contention is not so much about removing old symbols but whether their use should be perpetuated or not. A related question is what do those symbols represent to the people perpetuating and viewing them?

Personally, I'm not keen on banning things in general. Neither am I keen on paying for stuff that I find abhorrent through taxation. (As it happens, I'm personally not all that keen on flags anyway but that's by the by). In this instance that would all translate into no blanket prohibitions and perpetuation/ discontinuation of use by public bodies in accordance with democratic consent.

[stormymonday_2011]

First off, I completely agree that Confederate flags have got biff all to do with this shooting and the people connecting the two, along with other people with pet causes doing the same, are being opportunistic

Re. the issue of the Flag, as opposed to the murders, I think the point of contention is not so much about removing old symbols but whether their use should be perpetuated or not. A related question is what do those symbols represent to the people perpetuating and viewing them?

Personally, I'm not keen on banning things in general. Neither am I keen on paying for stuff that I find abhorrent through taxation. (As it happens, I'm personally not all that keen on flags anyway but that's by the by). In this instance that would all translate into no blanket prohibitions and perpetuation/ discontinuation of use by public bodies in accordance with democratic consent.

I understand the action by the various legislatures since the flag has political meaning (indeed secessionist constitutional implications) in that context but removing it from Dukes of Hazzard toy cars or even old gravestones as has been suggested is just barking and ultimately pointless. I mean what are they going to fly at the battlefield of Gettysburg to indicate the position of Confederate troops. And racists don't need old flags as a prop for their ideology. Hitler did not use much of the Imperial iconography of the Kaisars Germany when he came to power. Instead he invented or appropriated a new set symbols for his regime

[XswampyX]

Exactly, it was all right last week so it's all right today. If he had been holding the stars and stripes, would they ban that? No.

Anyway that flag is also a testament to the fact that they lost!

It will just create another 'hate' symbol that everybody can get offended by.

[Nuggets Mahoney]

I understand the action by the various legislatures since the flag has political meaning (indeed secessionist constitutional implications) in that context but removing it from Dukes of Hazzard toy cars or even old gravestones as has been suggested is just barking and ultimately pointless. I mean what are they going to fly at the battlefield of Gettysburg to indicate the position of Confederate troops. And racists don't need old flags as a prop for their ideology. Hitler did not use much of the Imperial iconography of the Kaisars Germany when he came to power. Instead he invented or appropriated a new set symbols for his regime

I doubt that love of slavery is the motivation for most of the people using that flag. To them it is emblematic of a culture and identity of which slavery was once a regrettable part.

No doubt, some don't regret the slavery part but, as you've already mentioned, plenty of other flags have a similar taint.

And just in case the sarcasm in my earlier post wasn't clear, yes, slavery sucks but there's plenty of historical blame to go round. Some of the more extreme rhetoric I occasionally run into from across the pond seems to me to be suggesting that the urge to enslave (and colonise) is almost exclusively an innate White male thing. The responsibility for which we still carry like some kind of original sin.

[Captain Cavey]

If I was to prioritize what should be banned following this incident, an old flag would not be at the top of the list.

Not that it couldn't be used, it's just that a flag is not the most efficient murder weapon.

[frozen_out]

Jim Jeffries, one of my favourite comedians nails it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL8JEEt2RxI

[wherebee]

I do think that we do not understand the need for guns in countries like Australia and the USA where the rural spaces are so huge. There are no police going to come save you. I can see why having more than a knife would seem essential.

[stormymonday_2011]

I doubt that love of slavery is the motivation for most of the people using that flag. To them it is emblematic of a culture and identity of which slavery was once a regrettable part.

No doubt, some don't regret the slavery part but, as you've already mentioned, plenty of other flags have a similar taint.

And just in case the sarcasm in my earlier post wasn't clear, yes, slavery sucks but there's plenty of historical blame to go round. Some of the more extreme rhetoric I occasionally run into from across the pond seems to me to be suggesting that the urge to enslave (and colonise) is almost exclusively an innate White male thing. The responsibility for which we still carry like some kind of original sin.

Quite.

The slavery predated the Confederate flag by many centuries and the newly independent United States of America was quite happy to retain it for nearly a 90 years after they had thrown off the rule of the British in 1776. Indeed their former tyrannical imperialist European rulers abolished it first. As a consequence Louis Farrakhan's statement that slave owning is just as deeply inbedded in the US flag as the Confederate one has more than a touch of truth in it. The irony of the US Civil War is that it was the triumph of a centralising, industrial state over an agrarian society and more devolved system of governance. In the process some of the ideas that lay behind the original US constitution were killed. Moreover, the US became transformed in the process into a nascent belligerent expansionist imperial power more prepared to use force to achieve its end. The initial victims of that change were the American native peoples who went from being an oppressed minority uffering ad hoc expropriations of their lands to the victims of a policy of removal and assimilation which resulted in their virtual genocide. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 and the Indian Appropriations Act of 1851 was a template for so much that happened later in Europe under the Nazis or South Africa under apartheid

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_reservation#Rise_of_Indian_removal_policy_.281830-1868.29

Even now in the US what remains of the Native American population remains essentially locked away in reservations out of sight and largely out of mind.

[Bloo Loo]

I doubt that love of slavery is the motivation for most of the people using that flag. To them it is emblematic of a culture and identity of which slavery was once a regrettable part.

No doubt, some don't regret the slavery part but, as you've already mentioned, plenty of other flags have a similar taint.

And just in case the sarcasm in my earlier post wasn't clear, yes, slavery sucks but there's plenty of historical blame to go round. Some of the more extreme rhetoric I occasionally run into from across the pond seems to me to be suggesting that the urge to enslave (and colonise) is almost exclusively an innate White male thing. The responsibility for which we still carry like some kind of original sin.

Indeed, I bet 99% of US white citizens in the south could afford a slave, and were as bad off in many respects as the slaves themselves.

Again, the ire is directed at the people, when it is the 1% who deserve it.

[Nuggets Mahoney]

Indeed, I bet 99% of US white citizens in the south could afford a slave, and were as bad off in many respects as the slaves themselves.

Again, the ire is directed at the people, when it is the 1% who deserve it.

In a similar vein, the historical practice of indentured, sometimes involuntary, servitude rarely gets a look in. I suspect in part, because it was often predominantly 'White on White'.

It's perfectly understandable why the Powers That Shouldn't Be prefer the contemporary focus to be on race rather than class consciousness but, personally, I'll be f**ked if I feel any guilt or sense of obligation for immoral acts carried out by some landowner's great great grandfather.

[stormymonday_2011]

Indeed, I bet 99% of US white citizens in the south could afford a slave, and were as bad off in many respects as the slaves themselves.

Again, the ire is directed at the people, when it is the 1% who deserve it.

History is full of ironies.

Georgia in the US South was originally founded as a non slave owning colony by the British. It was the only colony including the northern ones to specifically prohibit it at the outset. Georgia only adopted slavery when it could not find enough European labour to populate it or work the land.

Similarly the legal moves to abolish slavery was already underway in Britain by the mid to late 18th century. The judgement of Lord Mansfield in 1772 stating that slavery had no basis in English Common Law was certainly one of the events that triggered Americas secession from the British empire in 1776.The fact that the original US flag was therefore as much intended to defend slavery as the later Confederate one seems to have passed most people by.

Simon Schamas book on the subject Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution is quite an enlightening read on the subject

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/sep/03/featuresreviews.guardianreview2

In fact one of the surprises of history is that during the US War of Independence so many of the black and Native American inhabitants of the US sided with the British preferring the rule of a 'tyrant' such as the George III than the 'liberty' being offered them by the founding fathers of America

[stormymonday_2011]

In a similar vein, the historical practice of indentured, sometimes involuntary, servitude rarely gets a look in. I suspect in part, because it was often predominantly 'White on White'.

It's perfectly understandable why the Powers That Shouldn't Be prefer the contemporary focus to be on race rather than class consciousness but, personally, I'll be f**ked if I feel any guilt or sense of obligation for immoral acts carried out by some landowner's great great grandfather.

The truth is that the nature of human bondage changes down the ages but the essential economic coecercion of one group of people by another remains more or less the same.

The fact the chains of student debt or a mortgage debt can not be seen does not mean they bind modern people to lives of unending labour for the benefit of others any less than the more visible restraints of the past

As for the legacy of 'historical guilt' that is a Gordian knot no one is going to unravel. For example, should I feel shame at the consequences of the Irish potato famine because two of my grand parents are English or outrage because one grandmother came from Cappamore in County Limerick in Ireland which was essentially starvation Ground Zero in the 1840s. It gets even more complicated when I reveal that one English grandparent themselves had an Irish grandparent. Personally, I look to pick out my ancestor who was rather romantically 'Born Upon The Sea' and therefore claim King Neptune as my forebear thereby dodging all supposed historical liablities.

[Riedquat]

As for the legacy of 'historical guilt' that is a Gordian knot no one is going to unravel. For example, should I feel shame at the consequences of the Irish potato famine because two of my grand parents are English or outrage because one grandmother came from Cappamore in County Limerick in Ireland which was essentially starvation Ground Zero in the 1840s.

It's not that hard to unravel - you weren't involved therefore you don't have anything to be ashamed of or responsible for.

[stormymonday_2011]

It's not that hard to unravel - you weren't involved therefore you don't have anything to be ashamed of or responsible for.

Entirely my view as well but that is not a message that some in our society want to peddle is it ? Particularly but not exclusively on the political left.

The current furore in the US about the Confederate Flag is as much about retaining certain historical stereotypes such as that all southern white are in favour of slavery and Jim Crow laws as it is about abolishing them. And if you have any experience of how the Irish diaspora particularly in the US views the past you will see that history is still wielded as a potent weapon. The fact that Irish immigrants to the US fleeing poverty and starvation in Ireland during the 19th century were only too happy then to join their fellow European Americans in the mass extermination of Native Americans is conveniently forgotten. The past is not taken as a whole but used as a running buffet where people can pick and choose facts for their current agendas