When push comes to shove

Society must ask itself:
In a violent struggle, whose life should come first, that of a suspected criminal or that of a policeman?

There is a good reason citizens must not resist from a policeman, for the latter is entrusted by the law to arrest suspected criminals. And in spite of some corruption within local police units, these "officers of the law" deal with hardened, violent criminals who when they resist will use everything at their disposal to do so.

There is no way to know beforehand whether a suspected criminal is armed or unarmed.  Even if they are unarmed, as many know, a sucker punch or a blow to the organs can lead to serious injury or even death.

Police work is not an exact science without a margin for error.  Yes, there are corrupt police. Whether more or less compared to another occupation, I don't know.  But I wonder to myself:  For every black erroneously convicted for a crime he did not commit, how many criminals never get convicted?   In fact, reading the newspaper it is not difficult to realize that those who commit horrific crimes have a long criminal past that only comes to light if and only if, in fact, they are finally arrested and convicted.

Trolling the back streets at night of any large city in the U.S.A. is dangerous business.  Police have to make snap decisions under enormous stress.  We live in a culture that on all levels glorifies violence and guns, the Cowboy West, the Dirty Harry + Rambo U.S.A.  This tends to be totally ignored and/or forgotten by the media.

The disproportionate use of force in a specific case is a difficult question to answer unless an exhaustive examination of all the pertinent facts are known.  Unfortunately, the public often or usually assumes they already know the answer based on only a few "facts" and the already presumed guilt of the police.

Gut instincts are not reliable when emotional reasoning trumps all else.

Examples of distorted cognitive thinking ("emotional reasoning") that leads to rage. escalation, and violence:

"Driving while black" (It is a crime to be black and be driving, because you might get arrested.  What is the real statistical probability that this will happen if one is not speeding or doing something suspicious, as in fleeing at high speed from the site of an armed robbery, etc.?

"Travis was murdered by Zimmerman in Florida because he was wearing a hoodie and because he black."  (There was no altercation, no physical contact, no threats?  How many young black men wear hoodies and how often do they get harassed by non-blacks?)

"Either you're for or against us."   (What if I agree with some of the things you are doing and disagree with other things.   What you're really, in effect, doing is to force us to make a choice:  either join our camp or become "the enemy."

"This country was built on genocide and on the backs of black slaves."     What the U.S. government did to the American Indian population on this continent was indeed shameful and genocidal in many ways.  But it is simply not true that all the wealth in this country was created by black people, as if the Italians, Scots, Irish, English, Pennsylvania Dutch, etc. sat around all day doing nothing but sipping brandy while devouring the things which black people alone had created.  Americans all worked very hard and contributed.   10% of the population could not have supported the idle other 90%.

In Eugene Delacroix's famous "Massacre at Chios" (Louvre), 1824, depicts a group of vanquished, exhausted, dying Greeks lying or huddled on the ground while on the opposite side of the picture is an upreared horse with a victorious Turk brandishing a long sword.  The Greeks are waiting either to be deported or taken away as slaves.

Europe had a long history of slavery.  It was not until after the French Revolution in 1789 that the consciousness that slavery was immoral gained general acceptance. (After all, the Bible had never specifically said that slavery was a sin).

What happened on the African continent was a terrible thing and worse than that meted out to any race or ethnicity, but it is not as if slavery was something that had only been done to black people and was unknown in Europe itself right up until at least the third decade of the 19th century.



"Après un débarquement d'un millier de partisans grecs, la Sublime Porte envoya près de 45 000 hommes avec ordre de reconquérir puis raser l'île et d'y tuer tous les hommes de plus de douze ans, toutes les femmes de plus de quarante ans et tous les enfants de moins de deux ans, les autres pouvant être réduits en esclavage. 

"Vendre les Chiotes comme esclaves était une activité plus profitable que de les massacrer. Kara Ali l'avait d'abord interdit, mais il avait dû s'y résoudre, constatant que ses hommes exécutaient leurs prisonniers. La réduction en esclavage apparaissait alors un peu plus « humaine ». À la fin du mois de mai 1822, deux mois après le débarquement, près de 45 000 hommes, femmes et enfants, sans distinctions sociales, avaient été déportés vers les marchés aux esclaves de Smyrne, Constantinople, mais aussi d'Égypte et de « Barbarie » (Afrique du nord ottomane)."

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_de_Chios






There is a big difference between actually knowing what happened at Ferguson, MO and thinking you know happened there.