(06-04-2020 11:22 AM)Rice93 Wrote:  I definitely can't. I have to rely on what I hear from the black community.

So you get one side of a story--that, like every other story, has at least two sides--and go off half-cocked from there. Perhaps you would do well to make the effort to educate yourself sufficiently to enable a more balanced, objective view.

Quote:I appreciate your experience and that, in many ways, the treatment of minorities has improved since the 1950s. This doesn't mean that there are not significant issues that face POC in America. Police brutality being one of them.

Which begs the obvious question--so, how do we make them better?

Seems to me that just as there are two sides to the story, there are two sides that both need to make some moves:
1. One huge problem that I see with police--and with teachers, in another context--is that they are typically represented by powerful unions which exert great pressure to keep even bad officers--and teachers--employed. My understanding is that this officer had 12 complaints on his record. Without knowing the specifics it is hard to evaluate that raw number, but if a significant portion of them were for excessive violence or racist acts, he should have been long gone from the force. Interestingly, it appears that the decision not to pursue legal action to remove him for some of those prior complaints was taken by the DA for Hennepin County, one Amy Klobuchar. Reduce the power of unions to keep bad apples on the tree.
2. There are other techniques, such as community policing, that have been found to reduce tensions in numerous places.
3. A system of interactions between officers and citizens hime at helping each understand the other better. These should be in schools, and could also be in civic groups or other organized events.

On the other side it seems to me that one issue to address in the tendency of blacks to resist more often, while whites tend to cooperate more often. I've been stopped for no apparent reason on several occasions. I cooperated and was never charged or detained very long. I hear story after story from blacks about how offended and pissed off they were to be stopped, and some even admitted to being hostile or even resisting. Throw an attitude there, and you're going to get worse back.

Another problem, and this one won't fix easily, is the absence of fathers in so many one-parent back households. This clearly appears to have resulted in no small part from the Great Society programs to compensate unwed mothers. Have another baby, get a bigger handout. And if the father runs away, you get more money. So guess what, you get a huge spike in unwed mothers. Who would have thunk it? Duh.