DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... How to inform a Police Officer you have a Gun and Live

Just following your lead...you do see the irony though right?

The irony would've been valid if I was a user while active duty.

Or if I drive around the streets looking like I have a blown radiator inside my truck. Then yea.

But since I don't...well....but yes I do see your point.

LMFAO

It's funny right?

The fact that you can't even respond to me directly anymore. But you seem to have plenty to say.

Yes, some will. I've seen a bunch of stuff on Twitter ripping folks for posting articles or videos of cops interacting well with blacks.. saying things like "As if that makes it all better".. these blacks want reasons to hate cops, they don't want to see good cops doing good things. So this "why bother" notion applies to both sides. Why should cops try to do better if SOME people aren't going to acknowledge it?

As for me, I can look at one black guy doing the right thing and respect him.. I can look at another black guy looting and burning a convenience store and think he belongs in jail. So I don't get this notion that "it doesn't matter what WE do." and "the way they look at US"... I thought the whole purpose of civil rights was to get folks like me to look at and understand the difference between Swish and the dude burning down a gas station? That they aren't the same.. while they both may be black, they aren't the same person... Isn't that the point?

Apparently not the the people in power.

And the followers that they have.

Or maybe they want to see changes in a judicial system that wasn't built for them to be rectified to coexist with them.

I think some folks (of all races) look for reasons to go be hooligans.
Team wins a title...riot and loot
someone get killed by a cop...riot and loot
Hurricane ....loot

Yes, but do you also think they could have a valid reason for being upset over the judicial system?

Of course, but that is not the answer. Nor will it get the results they are after. Im not sure how burning your neighbors house down does anything productive. Heck, it doesnt even express frustration in the correct direction.

Then what's the correct expression?

Should blacks start going into white neighborhoods and burning that [censored] down? Will that finally get y'all to change the justice system?

Should we go to war?

Seems like the only way to get anything done in this country. War.

We didn't fight back when y'all sprayed us with water hoses, had your German sheppards attack us, made us drink in different water fountains, hit us in the back of the head with bricks, and lynched us if we so much as talked to a white woman.

We was peaceful, and that STILL DIDNT WORK.

So obviously, we have to go to war, because AMERICA, the GOVERNMENT, and WHITE people taught us that the ONLY way to get anything accomplished is war, violence, bloodshed.

If that's what it takes, then so freaking be it. This country cares more about fixing the Middle East than its own damn citizens. Y'all care more about a damn gorilla and lion than y'all do about minorities in this country. Y'all care more about sending black people to prison than y'all do about educating us.

So if it's war that will fix or determine what happens in this country. Then so be it.

If you don't want war, then tell these freaking white people to fix the damn justice system.

We've been dealing with this BS since 1865. We're fed the hell up.

I didnt do any of those things Swish. You keep accusing people of doing things that they have no connection to because they are white. You are being racist. For someone who wants barriers dropped and people to stop being put in groups you sure seem to do an heck of a lot of it. More than anyone else on here.

You don't speak out against it. Which makes you part of the problem.

Do I need to post the definition of a racist, again?

But see, we want the justice system fixed, and yet you deflect and cry about something else.

It lets me know you're the racist, because you see nothing wrong with anything that's going on against minorities.

j/c

This thread sickens me. It's why society has delved into the mess we see today. There are some facts we all need to face which some seem unable to do.

There most certainly is a double standard in our justice system. It's between the haves and the have nots.

Poor black neighborhoods are targeted by law enforcement.

There are bad cops. What people call good cops don't do enough to help root out the bad cops.

Most cops are good.

You can't condone the actions of bad cops any more than you can condone those who loot and resort to violence.

Blacks targeting whites isn't any less racist than whites targeting blacks.

If people would just own up to their part of the problem, maybe we could begin a starting point in solving problems rather than escalating them.

How is that? I am absolutely against police abusing their authority. I am against ANYONE being treated poorly because of their race or ethnicity.

Agreed. I just wanted to make sure.

Look man, if you don't want to hold the people you allow to represent you accountable for anything, that's on you. At this point I honestly could care less. Nearly ever incident held up as evidence of police brutality and racism, they've been proven with facts and evidence to be no such thing. Yet social justice warriors keep trying to make martyrs and Saints out the likes of Michael Brown and this idiot in Milwaukee.

I'm not asking you to take ownership of the crap the worst do. You didn't do it. But that's my point: I just don't know why you and others keep allowing social justice groups to hold people like Brown and this idiot up as examples of what black people go through. The majority of people in this country know that every black person isn't out there slingin crack, shooting up the neighborhood, robbing people, fighting with cops, etc...

You, Clem, and Lurker have taken the time to (attempt) to share your experiences with the boards. It may not always seem like it, but I think most do appreciate it (more than those who don't anyway). But when we turn our attention away form the board to the national conversation... groups like BLM aren't telling the same story you guys are.

But that's just my $0.02 from the "outside" looking in.

How did gay people do it? Gay people have slowly and methodically been overcoming obstacles for decades.. to a point now where they are kind of the "favorite" special interest group among many... they did it without war. They did it without violence. How did they do it? 50 years ago if you had a gay family member you didn't dare tell anybody because of the shame it would bring on your family, couldn't find a job if you were openly gay (anywhere but in the entertainment industry)... 25 years ago you might whisper it to close friends and family who would all immediately wonder if you secretly had AIDS..... now they hold a parade.

Their battle isn't over, they still have things to overcome... they realize that there are still people in this country who look at them disapprovingly, who are afraid of them for their gayness, and some who outright hate them and wish they were dead.. yet they continue to move forward, to make progress, to change hearts and minds of people who NEVER thought they would have their mind changed... How are they doing that... without war?

Speaking for me and me only, and I think you know me well enough to believe what I say I really feel. I trash any idiots who argue with the cops then bitch and moan when they catch hell. White, black, red, yellow, tan, purple, or green. If your STUPID enough to be an ass with the cops you deserve the beat down you get.

I agree, and I think a lot of this is why Trump and his empty message has drawn so many. People ARE tired of this crap, and unwittingly think Trump is the answer.

I agree w/that, but I need to say that I sure as hell don't think he is the answer. I think he is as racist as those I just railed against.

Two wrongs never make a right.

And I gotta add something because I can see how some of my remarks will be misinterpreted.

I have played sports w/blacks. I have coached w/them. I have coached them. I have taught them. I have had contact w/the parents. I have worked for blacks.

The vast majority of the black people I have come into contact w/are hard working, honorable, and decent folk. They are not the types to excuse the nonsense that is going on in places like Milwaukee.

It just galls me when certain blacks give others a bad reputation.

Black folks are just like white folks in that there are many damn fine ones and a few rotten pieces of crap that make life difficult for everyone else.

I had a long response to this written up. It was thorough, well written, and pretty damn harsh. I read it over and deleted it. I'm just saying this because I want to let you know that I'm making an attempt to not escalate things. I'm trying man. It made a lot of good points but it would not have helped the atmosphere at all.

This is something we all have to figure out, we're all Americans and we are all going to have to figure this out together. Just think about that, whether someone lives in downtown Cleveland or Strongsville or wherever, people are people and they want what is best for their families and communities, even if there is sometimes disagreement on how to get there.

j.c

Lot of different issues going on in this thread. Almost too many to parse.

1. If posters read Swish's thread literally, then they can't hear the frustration that is fueling his words. I hear it, because I've felt it. The frustration transcends the narrow scope of this thread's subject, because race is everywhere in our culture, whether some of us are able to see it or not. Being able to see it is a subject for another time, but trust me- it's worth a visit.

2. A short visit to America's 60's history will inform you that MLK's noble efforts were paid lip service until America's cities erupted in flame and foment. White America was content to invite MLK to 'The Adult's Table' and listen attentively, but America Herself needed the combination of MLK, Stokely Carmicheal, Bobby Seal, Huey Newton... and an entire 'Summer Of Unrest' [u]to actually do something[/u] that actually mattered. So, in this narrowly defined depiction of American History, Swish is/was right.

We only truly respond when $#!+ gets dire.

Newton's laws of physics are in play when dealing with social conventions, too. Inertia is a powerful force... and inertia had always been the defining factor in America's race relations- until the 1960's. American "Negroes" had simply had enough of systemic mistreatment... and demanded that Their Country finally take substantive steps to honor the words immortalized in her Bill Of Rights.

If MKL hadn't sat down at the table, none of our current national gains would have been possible. If cities hadn't burned, complacency would have slowed MKL's social progress... because NOTHING spurs Americans on like an Existential Crisis. Historically, it has ALWAYS been when Americans produce their best product. We're stupid in that way: we 'do it dumb,' until the $#!+ hits the fan. Then, we become Olympian. I wish we would grow out of our adolescence, as a nation.

3. I support the initial premise behind Black Lives Matter, because our nation has a long and tortured history of citizen abuse that went virtually unchecked for almost 200 years. That fact cannot be denied. The basic message has always been relevant, as far as I'm concerned, because there is a paucity of voices speaking up for those who are on the receiving end of such abuse.

4. My 85/15 Theory: in any demographic, one will find that roughly 85% of that population exists withing a "scale of convention": some will be slightly better than the baseline norm, some will be slightly over it... but that 85% make up the general populace. Then, there are the other 15% who distinguish themselves either far above the group or far below the group. The Olympics are shining examples of the +15%. Looters, rioters, organized criminals, meth dealers, Dylann Roofs, ISIS, Skinheads... they are the lowest 15%. Within each group, the 85/15 breakdown can be repeatedly applied: only 15% of Olympians take home medals. Only 15% of criminals become Charles Manson, Timothy McVeigh or Osama Bin Laden.

It's entirely possible that BLM movement arose in response to the historic actions of Law Enforcement's "bottom 15%" since the days of Jim Crow Law. In that case, they are totally justified, because those Jim Crow 15% are 'effing it up' for the other 85 of respectable cops, nationwide. Same can be said of the Milwaukee miscreants who don't represent a single thing about what I like about the BLM movement.

I've applauded DeRay McKesson for putting a face on the BLM movement, but I've also taken issue with his unwillingness to call out the differences between the peaceful demonstrators we saw in Dallas and the mob we saw in WI. His message is diluted for me, because his principles are unclear/undefined.

Now- he may not feel that it's his responsibility to clear up misconceptions- and that's totally OK with me, but I'm also old enough to know how this [censored] really works. If one aspires to be a 'MKL Lite,' one must be willing to unequivocally state what one represents. Make a stand/say what you represent. McK hasn't done that to my satisfaction. I feel compelled to hold him and other New Leaders to the same standards that MLK exemplified. You must be down for something, even if that means you must separate yourself from those who have co-opted your cause for short-term gain. I personally draw a firm line between social activism and anarchy, because I want my message to reach rank and file Americans... the only people who can initiate true, sweeping social change.


In this country, Power has always been abused by the well-connected... until they are confronted by the sheer mass of people demanding that Right makes Might. The coal miners' unions of the 50's, 60's and 70's played the same game against Power just like Black Lives Matter movement seeks to do 2016. Marie Antoinette is immortalized for all time with her classic expression of total disconnect: "Let them eat cake."


Until the most coherent and credible voices are heard drawing clear distinctions between such groups, a large number of Americans will feel no need to see ANY such distinction. It's why the original message of BLM has been so easily dismissed/unheeded by some. It doesn't help that folks like Shawn Hannity and Bill O'Reilly (paid spinmeisters) have such an easy job of selling frightened 70-year-old Euro-Americans that BLM is nothing less than a totally subversive, evil group. All they need do is plant the seed in their viewers' heads, and roll tape of 'Low Black 15%-ers' to sell their polluted message. Works every time.

5. The very nature of news coverage is to expose the unusual, the extraordinary, the sensational. It's why some have such a skewed, dystopian view of the world and current events. ISIL makes headlines, but volunteer outreach social workers, American Marines helping to build schools on sand as part of their deployment, Doctors Without Borders, and activists like Malala Yousefzai get NO front-page headlines when doing the difficult, vital and unheralded work they do.

There is Good Work being done in every major American city to address the ills outlined in this thread... but those efforts are relegated to the middle of Section B of the local newspaper, some in-depth investigative reporting on some obscure NPR program, or the last minute of some local 11:00 PM newscast, when they need a 'feel-good human interest story as filler. It's no wonder that so many (otherwise good, decent) people think the world's a $#!++y place to live.

"Dog bites Man" isn't news.

So- if a person living in Salina, Kansas has only met 5 Black people in his entire life, and gets his understanding of Clemdawg's complex, nuanced, Half-Black/Half-White/married to an Irish/German wife/member of a Civil War-era progressive social pioneer family/specialist 'niche career' life from nightly 6:30 National news broadcasts and some on-air op-eds by Fox News... what conclusions will he draw?

Unless he shared this message board with me, he might easily conclude that Clemdawg loots burned-out liquor stores, sells crack in alleys, has a dozen hoes bringing him nightly profits and fights with police...
...when he isn't putting cellos and violins in the hands of underprivileged inner-city youth, and playing playing Bach, Brahms, Beethoven and Brubeck for society's 'Top 15-Percenters.'

Do NONE of you now see what we're up against?
It's literally everywhere.

_____________________

Euro-American Immigrants created this problem for themselves, when they declared their independence... and then imported easily-identified slaves to do their heavy lifting for them. I'm certain that they never envisioned an America where those pieces of 'dark-skinned farm machinery' could actually have a voice in their country's politics... but here we are.

50 years after I marched for Martin's cause as a little kid, we still have these fights on an 2016 internet message board. We should all be better than this, by now.

__________________


I can't do these threads like I used to any more.

I've lost the will, desire, and strength to preach the Gospel According To Clemdawg.

They bring up the most bilious parts of my personality, and make me want to lash out at folks whom I would otherwise enjoy. They make me lean toward never attending tailgates, because of the baggage they attach to my Browns fandom. They make me think about the hours I've spent trying to share my life in an effort to enlighten... and they make me think that 85% of that time was wasted. Time I've spent foolishly, because nothing ever really changes.

The arguments never change.
Positions are entrenched.
Heels are dug in.
The same rhetoric gets played out time and again.

You 'entrenched' Dawgs have been effected by NOTHING that we have been trying to tell you. You are unreachable. So be it.


I have one more post after this... and then, I'm pretty sure that I'm done- perhaps for good.

Y'all can go on with your bad selves. You've shown me that my work here is done- for better... or for naught.

Vaya con Dios, the entire lot of you.


Peace/out,
A person who just can't tread water in this cesspool any more.

Not long ago, Becky Deen Tai would never have imagined herself attending a civic meeting about police officers’ treatment of African Americans.

She’d grown up a white girl in a family with roots in the Deep South, and only recently had become “more aware of how unaware I am,” she said, later recalling her astonishment at learning via social media that black mothers often lecture their sons on how to avoid being targeted by law enforcement.

Yet Tai had felt compelled to attend the recent forum in Silver Spring, Md., after watching a stream of amateur videos in the news showing fatal encounters between police and blacks across the country. There was Ferguson, Mo., South Carolina, Minnesota — that very week, in fact, a video had flashed of a North Miami policeman shooting and wounding a black male caregiver, even as he lay on the ground with his hands raised.


“Now they’re taping it and it’s harder to stay away,” said Tai, 53, a special education teacher who moved to Silver Spring from Atlanta a year ago. “I didn’t have to think about the problem because I didn’t have to see it. Now it’s in front of me.”

As the nation’s first African American president completes his second term, the country’s racial divide has grown more pronounced, bursting into full view during heated debates over issues such as income inequality, jobs, educational opportunities and, perhaps most prominently, how the criminal justice system treats blacks.


At the same time, videos documenting police officers shooting African Americans — widely shared on social media — are forcing the nation’s white population to confront head-on evidence suggesting that blacks still face an onerous set of challenges.

The videos’ influential role recalls how television news footage shaped white public opinion during the civil rights movement, when cameras captured Southern police officers using hoses and dogs to control black demonstrators. A few years later, television coverage of the Vietnam War had a similar galvanizing effect.

The change in sentiment is visible in a growing number of whites attending Black Lives Matter protests and staging rallies focused on racial justice, as well as the Black Lives Matter T-shirts worn by the mainly white Wyoming delegation at the Democratic National Convention. Yet in many cases, the evolution is far more subtle, surfacing in unspoken shifts in perspective, a change in the tenor of everyday interactions or desires to gain greater understanding.

Many whites remain intolerant in their racial views, yet recent polls have shown that a growing percentage of whites think that the country needs changes to give blacks parity with whites.

A Washington Post poll asking this question last year found 53 percent of whites saying more changes are necessary to ensure equal rights for black people, jumping from 39 percent before Michael Brown’s death in 2014. Concern about equality rose among both white men and women, those with and without college degrees, and among white conservatives and liberals.

The phrase Black Lives Matter first received national attention in summer 2014 and, since then, has become part of conversations on race in America. Here's how the phrase became a movement. (Claritza Jimenez, Julio Negron/The Washington Post)

The shift was not fleeting. An identical 53 percent of whites in a Pew Research survey this spring said more changes are needed to ensure equality. Dealings with police stood out as the area of greatest concern, with half of whites saying that blacks are treated less fairly in such encounters.

In interviews, some white Americans said that Trump’s rise and the overt racism and xenophobia voiced by some of his supporters have heightened their awareness of racial fissures.

But news reports about African Americans dying during encounters with officers have been especially jolting, providing whites a glimpse of what blacks long have insisted was commonplace.


Patricia Wudel is the executive director of Joseph’s House, which provides end-of-life care for homeless men and women in Washington. (Amanda Voisard/For The Washington Post

Patricia Wudel, 63, the white executive director of a hospice center for the homeless in the Adams Morgan neighborhood, said she realized that her sense of the African American experience was far too limited several years ago as she ate breakfast with colleagues after a Florida jury exonerated George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

“I said, ‘I can’t believe they let that guy off,’ ” Wudel recalled. A black woman seated next to her, she said, “so close, our arms were touching — had tears coming down her face and she whispered, ‘I always knew he would.’ ”

“In that instant,” Wudel said, “I realized that her response surprised me, and I knew my world view was too small. And I knew I had to make room to talk to people.” As a result of her deliberations, Wudel said she felt compelled last year to attend the funeral of a stranger — Freddie Gray, the black man who suffered fatal injuries while in the custody of Baltimore police.

As she got out of her car in downtown Manassas, Va., a 68-year-old white woman said the incidents involving police and blacks were a reminder of the advantages available to her that African Americans don’t have. “I’m looking for ways to dig into white privilege, to become more cognizant of it,” said the woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she said she fears retaliation from racist whites.

When an African American opens the door for her, the woman said, she finds herself making a mental note to be sure to open the door for a black person when there is the opportunity. She also told her neighbor — a black woman — to no longer refer to her as “Miss Beverly” because it made her uncomfortable.

As for the police, the woman said she is “rethinking” her long-held belief that stories of misconduct were the result of a few bad officers. “You hear about so many you have to wonder if it’s more than a few,” she said.


Alanna Mensing, 34, says she "feels sympathy for the mothers who have to worry that this is going to be their children’s future.” (Amanda Voisard/For The Washington Post)

A block away, Alanna Mensing, 34, who was walking with her 18-month-old son, said that when she takes the boy to play groups, she thinks about what black children will face when they grow up.

“A few years ago, that would never have occurred to me,” said Mensing, a music teacher. She said she becomes upset when she reads about racial incidents on social media.

“I feel insanely guilty about everything,” Mensing said. “I feel guilty that it’s not white people who are getting shot. It’s always black people.”

More to be done

In the 1950s, the driving force behind the civil rights movement was a nexus of black church and community leaders who organized protests such as the Montgomery bus boycott. All of the participants were African American.

It was not until 1960 when large numbers of whites became involved in the movement, joining sit-ins at a Woolworths in Greensboro, N.C. They joined the Freedom Riders through the South, attended the March on Washington in 1963, and traveled to Selma, Ala., in 1965 after Bloody Sunday.


Whites’ participation, said Taylor Branch, the historian who has written a widely praised history of the civil rights movement, helped disseminate the importance of the movement to the broader public.

“It meant a lot to have distinguished, highly credentialed white people submitting to the discipline of a movement run by black people,” Branch said. “There were some white people across the country who wouldn’t care about black people going to jail in the South. But they would care if some college students from Yale got beaten up or killed.”

Referring to current demonstrations against law enforcement, Branch said: “It’s vital to have white people involved in the issue of police justice because it makes it not purely a racial issue of black versus white. This is about right versus wrong.”

The echo of the civil rights movement is partly what drew Lisa Reed, 58, a paralegal, to attend the Silver Spring forum sponsored by the Montgomery County government last month. Before an audience of more than 400 people, African Americans stood and recalled what they described as unwelcome encounters with the police.

The evening’s most riveting moments included when a white woman recalled her recent outrage over seeing police officers pulling down the pants of a black man they had detained on the street.

“I kind of felt like the civil rights movement had passed me by, and I realize now that it hasn’t,” Reed said later. “There’s a lot to be done.”

While she looks for ways to become involved, Reed also revisits her own background growing up in Atlanta. Whether she likes it or not, she said, she was influenced by her father, a man she described as prejudiced who told her when she was 10 that Martin Luther King was assassinated because he was a “rabble rouser.”

“You can’t be raised with the level of isolation that I was raised with without absorbing certain prejudices,” she said. All these years later, she said, she finds herself aware of reflexive perceptions such as when she encounters a black attorney and thinks it’s unusual.

“It took a long time of me stopping my brain and telling myself that was a stereotype and to let it go,” she said. Instead, she tells herself: “This is a person who attended law school and has a family. This is not an exception. This is what black men do.”

‘I can do both’

Joel Teitelbaum, 77, a retired anthropologist, participated as a student in sit-ins for housing integration and civil liberties in Maryland in the 1950s and 60s. (Amanda Voisard/For The Washington Post)
Like Tai, Joel Teitelbaum, a white retiree who lives in the Washington suburbs, said he has become more focused on race after watching the videos of police shootings on the news.

“The nation has crossed the line of fracturing the decency of our relationships with one another with the repeated violence against minorities,” said Teitelbaum, 77, an anthropologist. “We’ve got to consider what’s happening.”

The night after the Silver Spring forum, a second meeting was held in Germantown, this one also drawing an overflow crowd that was a mixture of blacks and whites.

Barry Filderman, 57, a white mortgage loan officer who lives in Potomac, attended the meeting because he “wants to understand” black anger toward the police. “It doesn’t happen to me,” he said.

Yet Filderman also considers himself “pro-police.”

“I get angry at the police, and I get angry at the black community,” he said. “I can also sympathize with the black community and the police. I can do both.”

Seated in the same row, Sylvia Darrow, 79, said she went to the meeting primarily to support the police. She described herself as “sick and tired of hearing the term ‘white privilege,’ ” and added: “We need to squelch some of this perception that the police are brutal and they’re mistreating people of color.”

Yet, after listening to more than a dozen African Americans speak about their experiences with the police, Darrow also came up with an idea.

A raffle designed to raise funds for survivors of police who are killed could also be used for another purpose: to help sponsor meetings at which African Americans and police officers can talk to one another.

“I guess I do have the sense that maybe we do need to have more dialogue,” she said.

Scott Clement contributed to this report.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/soc...7583_story.html

Well said Clem

and I will say I understand Swish' anger because I am from the same place he is , so when he talks of war against all white people, i do not get offended, but I also see how others may.

Honestly its all so frustrating and it effects me to the point of just wanting to shut down and block it all out. The political BS, our government, our racial divide, class warfare, media being used as a pawn to control the ignorant minds of the people to advance the agenda of the ultra wealthy. I wish I had an answer for it all. I wish I could see a solution on the horizon.

I see it too, King... but at this point, I can't allow myself to worry about how Swish's words might offend the delicate sensitivities of others.

Black Americans have been beaten down like no other Americans have. They were the only Americans who did not come to this country as 'immigrants.' They are the only 'immigrant group' that came to this continent as Property. From Day One.

And that distinction has followed us since the 1600's.

It's the only American distinction that separates us from all other immigrant groups who have ever found themselves on these shores... and it's the overriding distinction that still separates us from every other immigrant class who has ever been allowed to assimilate themselves into American culture.

My People were the only Americans who arrived here as less than Human. My People arrived here as pre-destined 'Farm Machinery' in an age that pre-dated Eli Whitney's cotton gin.

So... when a 21st-century movement describes itself as "Black Lives Matter," you'd better believe that Clemdawg is totally down with what it represents.... even if some of its 'hangers-on' use the title to do stupid $#!+.

________________


I flatly refuse to allow the 'stupidest of us' to define the baseline that others use to define who I am, or what I represent.

The people who need to hear this message the most, are the very same people who hear it with the most profound degree of deafness.

The pace of 'social progress' will always be defined by the amount of social resistance it finds.

BUT: The pace of social progress is also always MEASURED by its results.

Each step that is made toward America's "More Perfect Union" is a definitive repudiation of the injustices that stood in the path of progress.

Some people simply cannot be be reached...
And I'm done wasting my time with them.

Life's too short.... and I'm too busy living out my 'American Dream' to waste time with idiots who want to argue, instead of listen.

_______________


It's now up to you, and Dawgs like Swish to tell them what they need to know. I'm checking out of this fruitless endeavor.

Young Dawgs need to pick up the program.
Old guys like me have done all we can.

I'm passing the baton to you, in this relay race.


Good luck.

May Jesus' Eternal Message be with you all. You will need the strength of His words to prevail in this fight.

All my best,
Clemdawg.

Why some whites are waking up to racism


Not long ago, Becky Deen Tai would never have imagined herself attending a civic meeting about police officers’ treatment of African Americans.

She’d grown up a white girl in a family with roots in the Deep South, and only recently had become “more aware of how unaware I am,” she said, later recalling her astonishment at learning via social media that black mothers often lecture their sons on how to avoid being targeted by law enforcement.

Yet Tai had felt compelled to attend the recent forum in Silver Spring, Md., after watching a stream of amateur videos in the news showing fatal encounters between police and blacks across the country. There was Ferguson, Mo., South Carolina, Minnesota — that very week, in fact, a video had flashed of a North Miami policeman shooting and wounding a black male caregiver, even as he lay on the ground with his hands raised.

“Now they’re taping it and it’s harder to stay away,” said Tai, 53, a special education teacher who moved to Silver Spring from Atlanta a year ago. “I didn’t have to think about the problem because I didn’t have to see it. Now it’s in front of me.”

As the nation’s first African American president completes his second term, the country’s racial divide has grown more pronounced, bursting into full view during heated debates over issues such as income inequality, jobs, educational opportunities and, perhaps most prominently, how the criminal justice system treats blacks.

At the same time, videos documenting police officers shooting African Americans — widely shared on social media — are forcing the nation’s white population to confront head-on evidence suggesting that blacks still face an onerous set of challenges.

The videos’ influential role recalls how television news footage shaped white public opinion during the civil rights movement, when cameras captured Southern police officers using hoses and dogs to control black demonstrators. A few years later, television coverage of the Vietnam War had a similar galvanizing effect.

The change in sentiment is visible in a growing number of whites attending Black Lives Matter protests and staging rallies focused on racial justice, as well as the Black Lives Matter T-shirts worn by the mainly white Wyoming delegation at the Democratic National Convention. Yet in many cases, the evolution is far more subtle, surfacing in unspoken shifts in perspective, a change in the tenor of everyday interactions or desires to gain greater understanding.

Many whites remain intolerant in their racial views, yet recent polls have shown that a growing percentage of whites think that the country needs changes to give blacks parity with whites.

A Washington Post poll asking this question last year found 53 percent of whites saying more changes are necessary to ensure equal rights for black people, jumping from 39 percent before Michael Brown’s death in 2014. Concern about equality rose among both white men and women, those with and without college degrees, and among white conservatives and liberals.

The phrase Black Lives Matter first received national attention in summer 2014 and, since then, has become part of conversations on race in America. Here's how the phrase became a movement.

The shift was not fleeting. An identical 53 percent of whites in a Pew Research survey this spring said more changes are needed to ensure equality. Dealings with police stood out as the area of greatest concern, with half of whites saying that blacks are treated less fairly in such encounters.

In interviews, some white Americans said that Trump’s rise and the overt racism and xenophobia voiced by some of his supporters have heightened their awareness of racial fissures.


But news reports about African Americans dying during encounters with officers have been especially jolting, providing whites a glimpse of what blacks long have insisted was commonplace.


Patricia Wudel is the executive director of Joseph’s House, which provides end-of-life care for homeless men and women in Washington. (Amanda Voisard/For The Washington Post)

Patricia Wudel, 63, the white executive director of a hospice center for the homeless in the Adams Morgan neighborhood, said she realized that her sense of the African American experience was far too limited several years ago as she ate breakfast with colleagues after a Florida jury exonerated George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

“I said, ‘I can’t believe they let that guy off,’ ” Wudel recalled. A black woman seated next to her, she said, “so close, our arms were touching — had tears coming down her face and she whispered, ‘I always knew he would.’ ”

“In that instant,” Wudel said, “I realized that her response surprised me, and I knew my world view was too small. And I knew I had to make room to talk to people.” As a result of her deliberations, Wudel said she felt compelled last year to attend the funeral of a stranger — Freddie Gray, the black man who suffered fatal injuries while in the custody of Baltimore police.

As she got out of her car in downtown Manassas, Va., a 68-year-old white woman said the incidents involving police and blacks were a reminder of the advantages available to her that African Americans don’t have. “I’m looking for ways to dig into white privilege, to become more cognizant of it,” said the woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she said she fears retaliation from racist whites.

When an African American opens the door for her, the woman said, she finds herself making a mental note to be sure to open the door for a black person when there is the opportunity. She also told her neighbor — a black woman — to no longer refer to her as “Miss Beverly” because it made her uncomfortable.

As for the police, the woman said she is “rethinking” her long-held belief that stories of misconduct were the result of a few bad officers. “You hear about so many you have to wonder if it’s more than a few,” she said.


Alanna Mensing, 34, says she "feels sympathy for the mothers who have to worry that this is going to be their children’s future.” (Amanda Voisard/For The Washington Post)

A block away, Alanna Mensing, 34, who was walking with her 18-month-old son, said that when she takes the boy to play groups, she thinks about what black children will face when they grow up.

“A few years ago, that would never have occurred to me,” said Mensing, a music teacher. She said she becomes upset when she reads about racial incidents on social media.

“I feel insanely guilty about everything,” Mensing said. “I feel guilty that it’s not white people who are getting shot. It’s always black people.”

More to be done
In the 1950s, the driving force behind the civil rights movement was a nexus of black church and community leaders who organized protests such as the Montgomery bus boycott. All of the participants were African American.

It was not until 1960 when large numbers of whites became involved in the movement, joining sit-ins at a Woolworths in Greensboro, N.C. They joined the Freedom Riders through the South, attended the March on Washington in 1963, and traveled to Selma, Ala., in 1965 after Bloody Sunday.


Protesters hold signs during a Black Lives Matter movement protest at Lykes Gaslight Park in downtown Tampa. (Octavio Jones/AP)

Black Lives Matter protests the police shooting death of Philando Castile with members of the American Teachers Federation in Minneapolis. (Adam Bettcher/Reuters)
Whites’ participation, said Taylor Branch, the historian who has written a widely praised history of the civil rights movement, helped disseminate the importance of the movement to the broader public.

“It meant a lot to have distinguished, highly credentialed white people submitting to the discipline of a movement run by black people,” Branch said. “There were some white people across the country who wouldn’t care about black people going to jail in the South. But they would care if some college students from Yale got beaten up or killed.”

Referring to current demonstrations against law enforcement, Branch said: “It’s vital to have white people involved in the issue of police justice because it makes it not purely a racial issue of black versus white. This is about right versus wrong.”

The echo of the civil rights movement is partly what drew Lisa Reed, 58, a paralegal, to attend the Silver Spring forum sponsored by the Montgomery County government last month. Before an audience of more than 400 people, African Americans stood and recalled what they described as unwelcome encounters with the police.

The evening’s most riveting moments included when a white woman recalled her recent outrage over seeing police officers pulling down the pants of a black man they had detained on the street.

“I kind of felt like the civil rights movement had passed me by, and I realize now that it hasn’t,” Reed said later. “There’s a lot to be done.”

While she looks for ways to become involved, Reed also revisits her own background growing up in Atlanta. Whether she likes it or not, she said, she was influenced by her father, a man she described as prejudiced who told her when she was 10 that Martin Luther King was assassinated because he was a “rabble rouser.”

“You can’t be raised with the level of isolation that I was raised with without absorbing certain prejudices,” she said. All these years later, she said, she finds herself aware of reflexive perceptions such as when she encounters a black attorney and thinks it’s unusual.

“It took a long time of me stopping my brain and telling myself that was a stereotype and to let it go,” she said. Instead, she tells herself: “This is a person who attended law school and has a family. This is not an exception. This is what black men do.”

‘I can do both’

Joel Teitelbaum, 77, a retired anthropologist, participated as a student in sit-ins for housing integration and civil liberties in Maryland in the 1950s and 60s. (Amanda Voisard/For The Washington Post)
Like Tai, Joel Teitelbaum, a white retiree who lives in the Washington suburbs, said he has become more focused on race after watching the videos of police shootings on the news.

“The nation has crossed the line of fracturing the decency of our relationships with one another with the repeated violence against minorities,” said Teitelbaum, 77, an anthropologist. “We’ve got to consider what’s happening.”

The night after the Silver Spring forum, a second meeting was held in Germantown, this one also drawing an overflow crowd that was a mixture of blacks and whites.

Barry Filderman, 57, a white mortgage loan officer who lives in Potomac, attended the meeting because he “wants to understand” black anger toward the police. “It doesn’t happen to me,” he said.

Yet Filderman also considers himself “pro-police.”

“I get angry at the police, and I get angry at the black community,” he said. “I can also sympathize with the black community and the police. I can do both.”

Seated in the same row, Sylvia Darrow, 79, said she went to the meeting primarily to support the police. She described herself as “sick and tired of hearing the term ‘white privilege,’ ” and added: “We need to squelch some of this perception that the police are brutal and they’re mistreating people of color.”

Yet, after listening to more than a dozen African Americans speak about their experiences with the police, Darrow also came up with an idea.

A raffle designed to raise funds for survivors of police who are killed could also be used for another purpose: to help sponsor meetings at which African Americans and police officers can talk to one another.

“I guess I do have the sense that maybe we do need to have more dialogue,” she said.

Scott Clement contributed to this report.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/soc...7583_story.html

And I don't care about how other people's delicate sensitivities will be offended if I state that burning down stores, looting stores, killing people, beating up random people, throwing rocks, bottles, glass, and other dangerous items at police are not productive acts, but rather acts of violence fueled by ignorance and hate.

j/c:

I respect and admire this man. However, I disagree with Sheriff Clarke.

It is both culture and officers responsible for the situation as it currently exists.

After much research and participation on panels within my community, it is highly evident to me that both play a crucial role along with socioeconomics. Our panels include youth from our communities who have had issues, struggles with the law and served jail time.

The single root cause as I would identify it would be the breakdown of the American family.

These youth have had no guidance and nurturing leaving them vulnerable to gangs and gang related activity to gain a sense of belonging. They "need", as we all do, to fit in. Since society has turned a blind eye to them, they relate to the angry mob mentality prevalent within gangs.

I know some will accuse me of being non sensical because I don't live in the inner city.....I can't possibly understand. That's OK. I am talking continuously with troubled youth and getting their thoughts. . Race is a non issue.

Simply put, this is my effort at becoming part of the solution to this monumental, unfortunate and destructive societal problem.

I agree with most of what you said, but you kind of contradict yourself. You say that both sides are responsible, but then later give one solo reason.

It frustrates me when I read these conversations and in other places, that people try to speak in singular terms. Its kid of like the debates in Pure Football where people say " the reason we lost is ....." no there is not one singular root cause . It is a combination of many things.

Ya know, King, after re reading my post, you are correct. Today's youth are vulnerable in many circumstances. we can all agree on that. Vulnerability makes them suceptible to some, otherwise, unacceptable behavioral thoughts.

Officers are at fault as well. I thought we all understood that there are bad apples in every bushel/profession. There is inadequate sensitivity training within the police force, there is inadequate de-escalation training within the police force and, I might suggest, now there is an unhealthy fear that permeates this profession and makes some trigger happy out of fear for their own lives.

Sheriff David Clarke is a sound thinking man, at least from what I have observed of him.

His failure to take into consideration that racism exists within both entities (youth and officers) as well is where we would part ways. This must be acknowledged if progress in a positive direction is to be made.

Thanks for reading and critiquing my post.

I guess you show your gun permit license. Just to play it safe. Is the way I would go.

If I have to take my gun somewhere I take it unloaded and in the trunk. Problem solved.

I agree with every word you just said

Not saying you are wrong, but just out of curiosity, are you a CCW holder? If so, what good does your gun, in the trunk ,unloaded do you ?

Yes I have a ccw. I do not conceal carry. Mainly i go to the range to target shoot. It was taught to me to put the gun in the trunk to avoid problems with the cops.

but why should you have to worry about trouble from cops for doing something you have the legal right to do? I am not understanding that logic

Have you never been hasseled by the cops before ? Have you never been searched for no reason? I prefer 5o not give them a reason to hassel or shoot me.