BF2S Forums Race relations thread

Last edited by uziq (2020-06-04 06:01:03)

Last edited by uziq (2020-06-04 06:14:47)

I'm not mad about the peaceful protests. I think they're healthy.

Martin Luther King famously noted that violence “destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue.” This week’s violent looting has produced a deafening monologue.

On the south side of Chicago, where I pastor a church and lead a ministry, Project H.O.O.D., we are in the business of building dialogue as the way of rebuilding our community. We help build community leaders and we equip our neighbors—especially young black men who are exiting gangs—to build their own character and to help rebuild the streets. We build self-esteem and respect for our fellow man. And we build stronger families with firmer foundations.

The destructive violence, rioting, and looting of the last few days, however, have quickly erased years of our dialogue.

When I began New Beginnings Church on the south side of Chicago, the neighborhood held the sad distinction of having one of the nation’s highest homicide rates. Over the years, we have changed that statistic. We have built a thriving church with an average of 600 to 750 people at our services each Sunday. We have a community center with a free gym, a career center that offers advice and assistance with interviews, and a high-impact jobs training program that has helped people build successful careers in fields such as construction or landscaping.

Our work has paid off, and we have witnessed the power of a changed life. I have seen the excitement of young men who have turned away from violent gangs to embark on their own new beginning and get fitted for construction boots for their new jobs.

Where despair once reigned, we have replaced it with hope and opportunity.

The riots of this past week, however, have set us back in our ministry work and have done incalculable damage to our community. The physical damage to property pales in comparison to the damage done to our morale.

George Floyd’s death at the hands of a police officer in Minneapolis sparked understandable outrage. How could another black man have died because of police brutality? The protests began as a natural outpouring of grief, as white and black Americans were united in their horror at this senseless act.

But these protests turned violent, and the victims of this widespread looting are often the black community leaders and business owners. How does it advance our cause of racial harmony to wreck the black communities?

We are still surveying the damage on our streets. All of the CVS and Walgreens buildings were looted. The result is that we no longer have a pharmacy in our neighborhood. Church members are shuttling members of our community out to the suburbs to get their prescriptions and basic goods.

The grocery stores were also looted, leaving us without options to purchase local food.

The question lingers on many of our minds: Will these stores and pharmacies—so essential for daily living here—ever come back? It’s challenging enough in normal times to lure stores and businesses to rough neighborhoods; it’s going to be far more difficult to entice business owners to set up shop in our beleaguered communities now.

Liberal politicians in Illinois and across the country have fanned the flames of anger over the past several years. Their policies and worldview emphasize government as the solution to all problems, except, paradoxically, when we need police. Our mayor, Lori Lightfoot, has been unable or unwilling to put a stop to the violence in the streets of our home city, in part because she has been unable to offer a strong defense for good law enforcement agents doing the necessary work of making our neighborhoods livable.

Lost in the liberal messaging is the reality that the foundation of our society is the rule of law. The tragic killing of George Floyd reminds us that we need better training and screening for police officers. But the vast majority of the law enforcement agents in our nation advance racial equality, and help black Americans participate in the American dream.

No one, after all, wants to live in an un-policed and lawless neighborhood. Thriving neighborhoods are able to attract businesses and families precisely because of the rule of law and the police officers upholding it. Lawless neighborhoods, by contrast, are a turn-off for parents and business owners.

Violence is rampant in Chicago, and it has nothing to do with isolated incidents of police brutality. Over Memorial Day weekend, ten African-Americans were shot and killed in drive-by shootings. I’ve given funeral sermons for victims of drive-by shootings in the past, and those victims’ deaths are each a senseless tragedy.

On the south side of Chicago, we don’t need police stepping back and retreating because of political agendas. The logical extension of liberal police reform is for law enforcement agents to retreat from their duties, but this is exactly wrong and will weaken our neighborhoods.

We need justice in the George Floyd case, and we need assurances that these hateful acts will not take place again. At the same time, we need partnerships with the police so they will help us re-establish law and order in our neighborhoods.

Democrats, however, cling to wrongheaded rhetoric that does nothing to stop the destruction of our homes. It is no coincidence that the most violent looting and destruction took place this past week in cities heavily controlled by Democrats.

I’ve been attacked, been robbed, life has been threatened. Black Americans deserve better than this.

uziq wrote:

martin luther king was also an explicit critic of capitalism. why do right-wing people like to cite him so much as if he’s a house negro?

everywhere you see this concerted effort to appropriate MLK. the white house press sec cited him a few days ago. trump’s white house!

Jay wrote:

SuperJail Warden wrote:

Jay, how do you think the protest will end? When do you think they will end? Do you support sending in the military to stop protesters? Does the shooting start when the looting starts?

I think it will end on or about August 1st when people's extra unemployment checks run out. This is many people's first chance to get out of their home in three months without a woke-scold guilt trip. They have no jobs to go to currently, so why not spend the day out in the air carrying signs, chanting, feeling good about themselves for making a positive difference in the world. Whatever.

I think sending in the military to police anywhere is a terrible idea. The military is trained to kill, not to police. It was a shit idea with the occupation in Iraq, and it's an even worse idea here in America. I think Trump played right into the hands of the Democrats on this one. They've been telling the world he's a racist authoritarian tyrant since before he was even sworn in. It took four years, but he finally played the part for a few days.

Jay wrote:

KEN-JENNINGS wrote:

lots of words about how cops are mistreated, not a lot of words about how black people are mistreated.

Jay - MLK understood that racial justice is largely tied to economic justice. You can read his works for free online!

You've already got it covered. Why do I need to prostrate myself, ass up, like you? Quit your job at your racist corporation, sell all your property, donate all of your belongings to a reparations charity, and go self-flagellate in the wilderness.

SuperJail Warden wrote:

There really shouldn't be thousands of U.S. troops in the capital at the moment. I mean I know our government institutions are strong enough to resist Trump using the troops against Congress or something but we shouldn't normalize having troops in the capital. The Romans who a lot of institutions are modeled after had a concept of a city line where soldiers were not permitted.

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

Jay wrote:

SuperJail Warden wrote:

There really shouldn't be thousands of U.S. troops in the capital at the moment. I mean I know our government institutions are strong enough to resist Trump using the troops against Congress or something but we shouldn't normalize having troops in the capital. The Romans who a lot of institutions are modeled after had a concept of a city line where soldiers were not permitted.

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

DC is ringed by military bases