DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Black/White

There’s reasonable ways to restrain a bad guy without murdering them.

and if the person resists arrest?

We agree bro. There is also a way in MOST cases to lessen your chances of being killed by the cop.

BTW way do you call somebody who was speeding a bad guy?

Somehow it's hard to convince people that shooting them in the back is the answer.

I agree 99 percent of the time with that buddy. But if the suspect goes for the cops gun, or is beating the cop then all bets are off.

Shooting them in the back is never the answer IMO at least 99.9 percent of the time.

Trying to rewrite history doesn't look good on you.....


How LBJ Saved the Civil Rights Act

Fifty years later, new accounts of its fraught passage reveal the era's real hero—and it isn’t the Supreme Court.

In the winter of 1963, as the Civil Rights Act worked its way through Congress, Justice William Brennan decided to play for time. The Supreme Court had recently heard arguments in the appeal of 12 African American protesters arrested at a segregated Baltimore restaurant. The justices had caucused, and a conservative majority had voted to decide Bell v. Maryland by reiterating that the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal-protection clause did not apply to private businesses like restaurants and lunch counters—only to “state actors.” The Court had used this doctrine to limit the reach of the Fourteenth Amendment since 1883. Brennan—the Warren Court’s liberal deal maker and master strategist—knew that such a decision could destroy the civil-rights bill’s chances in Congress. After all, the bill’s key provision outlawed segregation in public accommodations. Taxing his opponents’ patience, he sought a delay in order to request the government’s views on the case. He all but winked and told the solicitor general not to hurry.

And then the conservatives on the Court lost their fifth vote. Justice Tom Clark changed his mind and circulated a draft opinion granting the appeal. In a revolutionary constitutional change, lunch counters and restaurants would suddenly be liable if they violated the equal-protection clause. But Brennan foresaw a new difficulty. By now it was June 1964, and a coalition of northern Democratic and Republican senators looked set to break a southern filibuster and pass a strong civil-rights bill. Would a favorable Supreme Court ruling actually give wavering senators an excuse to vote no? They might say there was no need for legislation because the Court had already solved the problem. So Brennan, ever nimble, engineered a tactical retreat by assembling a majority that avoided the merits of the case altogether. It was an alley-oop to the political branches. They grabbed the ball and dunked it. Ten days after the Court’s decision, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act and the president signed it into law.

In the popular imagination, the Supreme Court is the governmental hero of the civil-rights era. The period conjures images of strong white pillars, Earl Warren’s horn-rims, and the almost holy words Brown v. Board of Education. But in Bell, the Court vindicated civil rights by stepping aside. As Bruce Ackerman observes in The Civil Rights Revolution, Brennan realized that a law passed by democratically elected officials would bear greater legitimacy in the South than a Supreme Court decision. He also doubtless anticipated that the act would be challenged in court, and that he would eventually have his say. The moment demonstrated not merely cooperation among the three branches of government, but a confluence of personalities: Brennan slowing down the Court, President Johnson leaning on Congress to hurry up, and the grandstanders and speechmakers of the Senate making their deals, Everett Dirksen and Hubert Humphrey foremost among them. In this age of obstruction and delay, it is heartening to recall that when the government decides to act, it can be a mighty force.

But three equal branches rarely means three equal burdens, and the civil-rights era was no exception. Although the Court-centered narrative undervalues the two political branches, of those two branches it was the executive that provided decisive leadership in the 1960s. Just as the intragovernmental cooperation of 1964 is striking in light of today’s partisan gridlock, the presidential initiative displayed during the mid-’60s is worth considering in light of Barack Obama’s perceived hands-off approach to lawmaking. Of course, no discussion of civil-rights leadership is complete without including Martin Luther King Jr., who provided moral and spiritual focus, infusing the movement with resolution and dignity. But the times also called for a leader who could subdue the vast political and administrative forces arrayed against change—for someone with the strategic and tactical instincts to overcome the most-entrenched opponents, and the courage to decide instantly, in a moment of great uncertainty and doubt, to throw his full weight behind progress. The civil-rights movement had the extraordinary figure of Lyndon Johnson.

“You get in there to see Dirksen. You drink with Dirksen! You talk with Dirksen! You listen to Dirksen!”

The Civil Rights Act turns 50 this year, and a wave of fine books accompanies the semicentennial. Ackerman’s is the most ambitious; it is the third volume in an ongoing series on American constitutional history called We the People. A professor of law and political science at Yale, Ackerman likens the act to a constitutional amendment in its significance to the country’s legal development. He acknowledges the Supreme Court’s leadership during the 1950s, when President Eisenhower showed little enthusiasm for civil rights, and when Congress passed the largely toothless Civil Rights Act of 1957. During those same years, the Court spoke with a loud, clear voice, unanimously deciding Brown, which ordered the desegregation of schools, and Cooper v. Aaron, which held that state segregation laws conflicting with the Constitution could not stand. But the Supreme Court does not command the National Guard or control the budget. Someone needed to enforce those decisions in the defiant South. That is why, Ackerman writes, “the mantle of leadership passed to the president and Congress,” beginning with the 1964 law.

But the political branches ventured into the fray only in the last weeks of 1963. President Kennedy had introduced the bill in June of that year with much ambivalence. As Todd S. Purdum, a senior writer at Politico, recounts in An Idea Whose Time Has Come, Kennedy had led a sheltered life in matters of race. While generally sympathetic to civil-rights ideals, he “believed that strong civil rights legislation would be difficult if not impossible to pass, and that it could well jeopardize the rest of his legislative program.” He had tried to attack literacy tests and other barriers to voting with legislation but had twice been defeated in the Senate, where the old bulls of the South wielded the filibuster with practiced skill. (Roy Wilkins of the NAACP observed, “Kennedy was not naïve, but as a legislator he was very green.”) He regarded Martin Luther King Jr. warily, and with each new southern crisis saw his agenda slipping away. But events finally forced Kennedy to act. The Freedom Riders in Montgomery, the dogs and water cannons in Birmingham, and the sit-in in Jackson all made further equivocation on civil rights impossible by the spring of 1963. Four hours after Kennedy’s speech calling for legislation, an assassin murdered the NAACP organizer Medgar Evers in his own driveway. Five months after that, the bill was stuck in the House Rules Committee—“the turnstile at the entry to the House of Representatives,” in Purdum’s phrase—and the country had a new president.

Purdum, whose book is an astute, well-paced, and highly readable play-by-play of the bill’s journey to become a law, describes the immense challenges facing Lyndon Johnson after Kennedy’s assassination. “When it came to civil rights, much of America was paralyzed in 1963,” he writes. That certainly included Congress. The civil-rights bill, which had been languishing in the House since June, had no hope of coming to a full vote in the near future, and faced even bleaker prospects in the Senate. In fact, Kennedy’s entire legislative program was at a standstill, with a stalled tax-cut bill, eight stranded appropriations measures, and motionless education proposals. And Congress was not Johnson’s only problem. He also had to ensure the continuity of government, reassure the United States’ allies, and investigate Kennedy’s assassination. Purdum’s version of this story is excellent, but he cannot surpass the masterful Robert A. Caro, who offers a peerless and truly mesmerizing account of Johnson’s assumption of the presidency in The Passage of Power.

Days after Kennedy’s murder, Johnson displayed the type of leadership on civil rights that his predecessor lacked and that the other branches could not possibly match. He made the bold and exceedingly risky decision to champion the stalled civil-rights bill. It was a pivotal moment: without Johnson, a strong bill would not have passed. Caro writes that during a searching late-night conversation that lasted into the morning of November 27, when somebody tried to persuade Johnson not to waste his time or capital on the lost cause of civil rights, the president replied, “Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?” He grasped the unique possibilities of the moment and saw how to leverage the nation’s grief by tying Kennedy’s legacy to the fight against inequality. Addressing Congress later that day, Johnson showed that he would replace his predecessor’s eloquence with concrete action. He resolutely announced: “We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. We have talked for 100 years or more. It is time now to write the next chapter, and to write it in the books of law.”

The New York Times journalist Clay Risen contends in The Bill of the Century that Johnson’s contribution to the Civil Rights Act’s success was “largely symbolic.” One might say the same thing about Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon. Sometimes symbolism is substance—especially where the presidency is concerned. The head of the executive branch firmly seized the initiative, taking up a moribund bill addressing the nation’s most agonizing problem. Here was Johnson, president for only five days, working out of the Executive Office Building because the White House was still occupied by Kennedy’s family and staff, with an election already looming less than a year away. Instead of proceeding tentatively, as most anyone in those circumstances would have done, he radiated decisiveness, betting everything he had right after he got it. As Caro shows so persuasively, from that moment, Johnson’s urgency and purpose infused every stage of the bill’s progress. And in the days and weeks that followed, the stagnant cloud that had settled over Kennedy’s agenda began to lift.

Symbolism was the least of it. Johnson took off his jacket and tore into the legislative process intimately and tirelessly. As the former Senate majority leader, he knew his way around Capitol Hill like few other presidents before him—and none since. The best hope of moving the civil-rights bill from the House Rules Committee—whose segregationist chairman, Howard Smith of Virginia, had no intention of relinquishing it—was a procedure called a “discharge petition.” If a majority of House members sign a discharge petition, a bill is taken from the committee, to the chagrin of its chairman. Johnson made the petition his own personal crusade. Even Risen credits his zeal, noting that after receiving a list of 22 House members vulnerable to pressure on the petition, the president immediately ordered the White House switchboard to get them on the phone, wherever they could be found. Johnson engaged an army of lieutenants—businessmen, civil-rights leaders, labor officials, journalists, and allies on the Hill—to go out and find votes for the discharge petition. He cut a deal that secured half a dozen votes from the Texas delegation. He showed Martin Luther King Jr. a list of uncommitted Republicans and, as Caro writes, “told King to work on them.” He directed one labor leader to “talk to every human you could,” saying, “if we fail on this, then we fail in everything.”

As a leading southern senator put it, “You know, we could have beaten John Kennedy on civil rights, but not Lyndon Johnson.”

The pressure worked. On December 4—not two weeks into Johnson’s presidency—the implacable Chairman Smith began to give way. Rather than have the bill taken from his committee, he privately agreed to begin hearings that would conclude before the end of January, and then release the bill. Smith looked set to renege on his agreement in the new year, but reluctantly kept his word, allowing the bill to be sent to the full House on January 30, 1964. Risen credits others with this development, suggesting that it was Representative Clarence Brown of Ohio, a Republican member of the Rules Committee, among others, who got Smith to move. Risen is particularly sharp on the evolution of the Republicans during these tumultuous years, but here he accords them too much clout. Brown had to answer to House Republican Leader Charles Halleck of Indiana, whose support Johnson likely bought by proposing, and then personally securing, a NASA research facility at Purdue University, in Halleck’s district. And the entire Republican caucus in the House was wilting under Johnson’s relentless and very public campaign to portray “the party of Lincoln” as obstructing civil rights by opposing the discharge petition.

Johnson kept the bill moving in the Senate by dislodging President Kennedy’s tax-cut bill from the Finance Committee. As vice president, Johnson had advised Kennedy not to introduce civil-rights legislation until the tax cut had cleared Congress. Kennedy didn’t listen, and now both bills were stuck. (Like House Rules, Senate Finance had a wily segregationist for a chairman: Harry Byrd of Virginia.) Risen minimizes the significance of this problem, writing that the tax bill “presented no procedural obstacle to the civil rights bill, only a political one.” (And when does politics ever derail legislation?!) As Caro explains, the tax bill was a hostage. By holding it in committee, the South pressured the administration to give up on civil-rights legislation, with the implication that the withdrawal of the latter might produce movement on the former. But Johnson and Byrd were old friends, and during an elaborate White House lunch they came to an understanding: if Johnson submitted a budget below $100 billion, Byrd would release the tax bill. Johnson then personally bullied department heads to reduce their appropriations requests, and delivered a budget of $97.9 billion. The Finance Committee passed the tax bill on January 23, 1964, with Byrd casting the deciding vote to allow a vote, then weighing in against the measure itself. The Senate passed the tax bill on February 7, mere days before the civil-rights bill cleared the House.

Finally, Johnson helped usher the bill to passage in the Senate by working to break the southern filibuster, which was led by his political patron, the formidable Richard Russell of Georgia. In light of the Senate’s fiercely guarded independence, the president could not operate in the open; he had to use proxies like Humphrey, who was his protégé and future vice president, as well as the bill’s floor manager. Johnson impressed upon Humphrey that the vain and flamboyant Senate Republican Leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois was the key to delivering the Republican votes needed for cloture:

“You and I are going to get Ev. It’s going to take time. We’re going to get him. You make up your mind now that you’ve got to spend time with Ev Dirksen. You’ve got to let him have a piece of the action. He’s got to look good all the time. Don’t let those [liberal] bomb throwers, now, talk you out of seeing Dirksen. You get in there to see Dirksen. You drink with Dirksen! You talk with Dirksen! You listen to Dirksen!”

Johnson demanded constant updates from Humphrey and Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, and always urged more-aggressive tactics. (“The president grabbed me by my shoulder and damn near broke my arm,” said Humphrey.) Even though Senate Democrats did not deploy all those tactics, Johnson’s intensity nevertheless set the tone and supplied its own momentum. He kept up a steady stream of speeches and public appearances demanding Senate passage of the strong House bill, undiluted by horse-trading. And he personally lobbied senators to vote for cloture and end the filibuster. Risen contends that Johnson “persuaded exactly one senator” to change his vote on cloture. Given that it is of course impossible to know what motivated each senator’s final decision, this lowball figure is expressed with too much certitude. Evidence presented by Purdum and Caro suggests that Johnson’s importuning, bribing, and threatening may have made an impact on closer to a dozen. The Senate invoked cloture on June 10, breaking the longest filibuster in the institution’s history. The full Senate soon passed the bill. Johnson signed it into law on July 2, 1964, and immediately turned his energies to what would become another landmark statute: the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The civil-rights era conjures images of strong white pillars, Earl Warren’s horn-rims, and the almost holy words Brown v. Board of Education.

Risen’s attempt to minimize Johnson’s significance in the passage of the Civil Rights Act—“he was at most a supporting actor”; “he was just one of a cast of dozens”; “the Civil Rights Act was not his bill by any stretch”—is perplexing. In an otherwise strong book, his revisionist view is less a question of facts than of emphasis: after all, Purdum too notes that Johnson “strategically limit[ed] his own role” at key moments (careful, for example, not to upstage Dirksen). But Risen seems bent on denying Johnson his due, drawing nearly every inference against him and repeatedly overstating the anti-Johnson case. On the one hand, Risen is right to take a fresh look at the evidence and tell the story from a new perspective, focusing on unsung heroes such as Dirksen, Humphrey, Representative William McCulloch, and Nicholas Katzenbach of the Justice Department. He makes a fair point in questioning the way history awards presidents the credit for measures that by necessity cross many desks. On the other hand, Risen is simply wrong to portray Johnson as some hapless operator for trying multiple tactics and targets, some of them unsuccessfully. Johnson’s very comprehensiveness is what jarred the sluggish and paralyzed Capitol into action and ultimately moved the bill.

f the president led and Congress followed, where did that leave the Supreme Court? Three months after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, the Court heard arguments in a pair of cases challenging the constitutionality of its most contentious provision—Title II, which outlawed segregation in public accommodations. In December 1964 the Court decided Katzenbach v. McClung and Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, upholding Title II as a valid exercise of Congress’s commerce power. In the years since, the act has been a remarkable success. Its acceptance in the South was surprisingly quick and widespread. In a stroke, the act demolished the rickety but persistent foundation for segregation and Jim Crow. Title II reached far into the daily lives of southerners, creating an unprecedented level of personal mingling between the races and making integration a fact of daily life. Title VII, meanwhile, has vastly reduced workplace discrimination, through the efforts of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Although years of toil, struggle, and bloodshed still lay ahead, the 1964 law dealt a major blow to the system of segregation. The past 50 years of American history are almost unimaginable without it.

And yet the anniversary prompts an ominous reconsideration of the Supreme Court’s role in civil rights. In 1954, the Court launched the federal government’s assault on segregation, with Brown. In 1964, it got out of the way of the political branches, then quickly ratified their work. Today when it comes to racial civil rights, the Roberts Court is an aggressively hostile force. Recall Ackerman’s contention that the 1964 act has taken on the weight of a constitutional amendment. At a literal level, this is of course untrue: the act was not ratified by three-quarters of the states and is not part of the written Constitution. This means that a constitutional amendment is not needed to overturn the Civil Rights Act, which is vulnerable to a subsequent act of Congress or, more to the point, a decision by the Supreme Court.

Ten years ago, even mentioning this possibility would have seemed outrageous. But last June, the Court decided Shelby County v. Holder, striking down Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as unconstitutional. Section 4(b) listed the states with a history of voting discrimination that were required to seek preclearance from the Justice Department or the courts before amending their voting laws. The 5–4 decision by Chief Justice John Roberts is nothing short of appalling: as unpersuasive as it is misguided, it is, in Ackerman’s words, “a shattering judicial betrayal” of the civil-rights era. It is also the Roberts Court’s most brazenly activist decision: Congress has reauthorized the Voting Rights Act four times, most recently in 2006, with votes of 390–33 in the House and 98–0 in the Senate. In her brilliant dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg summed up the decision’s obtuseness: “Throwing out pre-clearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”

Shelby County may be so unique that it portends no harm for the Civil Rights Act. After all, the preclearance regime was extraordinarily invasive. Ackerman calls it the biggest federal intrusion into the prerogatives of the southern states since Reconstruction. But Title II of the Civil Rights Act is also strong medicine, reaching beyond state actors to tell private businesses whom they must serve. It was by far the act’s most controversial provision—and it remains controversial among some conservatives. In 2010, Senator Rand Paul caused a sensation by arguing that the provision in the Civil Rights Act dealing with “private business owners” (ostensibly Title II) is unconstitutional. He quickly walked back his comments, but his father, Ron Paul, proudly continues to make the same argument, and the Tea Party is listening. The Heritage Foundation’s Web site files the McClung decision upholding Title II on its “Judicial Activism” page, tagged to the terms Abusing Precedent and Contorting Text. The Voting Rights Act decision can only embolden Title II’s opponents.

The 50th anniversary of the historic bill prompts an ominous reconsideration of the Supreme Court’s role in civil rights.

And they just might get a hearing. Three trends in the Roberts Court’s jurisprudence suggest that the justices would be more receptive to a challenge to Title II than any prior Court. First is its disregard for precedent. The Roberts Court has repeatedly ignored prior decisions when doing so enabled a conservative victory—most notoriously in the areas of gun regulation (District of Columbia v. Heller) and campaign finance (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission). Hence it is little comfort that the Court upheld Title II in 1964. It had also previously upheld the Voting Rights Act and its reauthorizations. Second is the Roberts Court’s impatience with open-ended civil-rights measures, which some justices believe are no longer necessary. “The tests and devices that blocked access to the ballot have been forbidden nationwide for over 40 years,” the Court wrote in Shelby County, dismissing the need for ongoing vigilance against voting discrimination. And third is the Court’s continued disdain for the commerce clause. Remember when Roberts’s decision upholding the Affordable Care Act made the point that the act was not a valid exercise of Congress’s commerce power? He was singling out the section of the Constitution that supports the Civil Rights Act.

The 1964 law is not in imminent danger from the Supreme Court. But it is worth considering how a hostile Court changes the equation from 1964, when the judiciary acted in concert with the political branches. The new paradigm places a premium on presidential leadership, at the very least in nominating judges and justices who are in sympathy with the great statutes of the 1960s. But the battle over the Civil Rights Act shows that presidents who are serious about concrete social progress must do even more.

Lyndon Johnsons, of course, do not come along every four or every 40 years. Even if they did, Johnson brought plenty of darkness (election stealing, a credibility gap, Vietnam) along with the light (Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Great Society). Moreover, not every president needs to be a legislative genius in order to pass laws. Obama, after all, gambled big on the Affordable Care Act, investing the same type of capital in health care that Johnson invested in civil rights. It is now the law of the land. But the energy and purpose that Johnson brought to the Civil Rights Act struggle remains inspiring, and is a model for all presidents. As Richard Russell, the South’s leader in the Senate during the 1960s, put it to a friend a few days after Kennedy’s assassination: “You know, we could have beaten John Kennedy on civil rights, but not Lyndon Johnson.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/04/what-the-hells-the-presidency-for/358630/

How the ‘Party of Lincoln’ Won Over the Once Democratic South
Democratic defectors, known as the “Dixiecrats,” started a switch to the Republican party in a movement that was later fueled by a so-called "Southern strategy."

The night that Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, his special assistant Bill Moyers was surprised to find the president looking melancholy in his bedroom. Moyers later wrote that when he asked what was wrong, Johnson replied, “I think we just delivered the South to the Republican party for a long time to come.”

It may seem a crude remark to make after such a momentous occasion, but it was also an accurate prediction.

To understand some of the reasons the South went from a largely Democratic region to a primarily Republican area today, just follow the decades of debate over racial issues in the United States.

The Republican party was originally founded in the mid-1800s to oppose immigration and the spread of slavery, says David Goldfield, whose new book on American politics, The Gifted Generation: When Government Was Good, comes out in November.

“The Republican party was strictly a sectional party, meaning that it just did not exist in the South,” he says. “The South couldn’t care less about immigration.” But it did care about preserving slavery.

After the Civil War, the Democratic party’s opposition to Republican Reconstruction legislation solidified its hold on the South.

“The Democratic party came to be more than a political party in the South—it came to be a defender of a way of life,” Goldfield says. “And that way of life was the restoration as much as possible of white supremacy … The Confederate statues you see all around were primarily erected by Democrats.”

Up until the post-World War II period, the party’s hold on the region was so entrenched that Southern politicians usually couldn’t get elected unless they were Democrats. But when President Harry S. Truman, a Democratic Southerner, introduced a pro-civil rights platform at the party’s 1948 convention, a faction walked out.

These defectors, known as the “Dixiecrats,” held a separate convention in Birmingham, Alabama. There, they nominated South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond, a staunch opposer of civil rights, to run for president on their “States’ Rights” ticket. Although Thurmond lost the election to Truman, he still won over a million popular votes.

It “was the first time since before the Civil War that the South was not solidly Democratic,” Goldfield says. “And that began the erosion of the southern influence in the Democratic party.”

After that, the majority of the South still continued to vote Democratic because it thought of the Republican party as the party of Abraham Lincoln and Reconstruction. The big break didn’t come until President Johnson, another Southern Democrat, signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

Though some Democrats had switched to the Republican party prior to this, “the defections became a flood” after Johnson signed these acts, Goldfield says. “And so the political parties began to reconstitute themselves.”

The change wasn’t total or immediate. During the late 1960s and early ‘70s, white Southerners were still transitioning away from the Democratic party (newly enfranchised black Southerners voted and continue to vote Democratic). And even as Republican Richard Nixon employed a “Southern strategy” that appealed to the racism of Southern white voters, former Alabama Governor George Wallace (who’d wanted “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever”) ran as a Democrat in the 1972 presidential primaries.

By the time Ronald Reagan became president in 1980, the Republican party’s hold on white Southerners was firm. Today, the Republican party remains the party of the South. It’s an ironic outcome considering that a century ago, white Southerners would’ve never considered voting for the party of Lincoln.

https://www.history.com/news/how-the-party-of-lincoln-won-over-the-once-democratic-south

Stop pretending and trying to rewrite history. It's not a good look.

I don't even know what my own race is. Race is an odd concept in a world where people have continually migrated and intermixed throughout history.
Racism is even more confusing. Nobody seems to know what it is, we argue about it constantly and cannot even agree upon what is and is not racist. Yet we are supposed to accept that racism is evil even though we don't understand it and share the same definition?

Even more confusing are terms such as systemic racism or white privilege, which accomplish nothing more than giving media, pundits, and politicians with a way to further confuse and divide the public.

People need to discuss problems using language that everyone can understand. Start there, then start identifying problems and solutions to address those problems.

It's really not that hard to see or understand.

On the original topic - I have been reading and thinking on this since I read your post and the first couple of replies this morning.

I've landed on a slightly different way to view the question - or to respond to it - which is why or how in the world would anyone expect there NOT to be racism in the world in 2020 and in the USA specifically?

As humans we think in extraordinarily short time frames. Human lifetimes are "long term" - in today's world... days and weeks and months can be considered as long time frames ... With the pace of change in technology, it's as if we think human behavior can adapt and change just as quickly.

Look at how agitated people get at the thought of restrictions on their "freedoms" in order to try squash a pandemic in it's tracks. In WW2 soldiers and families sacrificed so much for their country - 80 years later the thought of not being able to eat out or get a haircut has people losing their minds. On another post somewhere I mentioned Anne Frank and 3 families hid in a tiny attic space for 25 months ... and as a society today we can't manage "shelter in place" for 3 weeks without many losing their minds. . . we can argue about the science and maybe that's ultimately a bad example. BUT - my point is we think in relatively short time frames.

The reality is that it was only 50 years ago that MLK was assassinated. 80 years ago (or so) Rosa Parks had the 'audacity' to challenge a segregated society. Someone posted that their parents reaction to the death of MLK ... that person and many like them are still alive today. Some will have changed their thought process and opened up to the thought that - hey everyone person on the planet really IS created equal. But many won't have - and they will find others who think the same and they will influence others who might otherwise have been neutral.

As complex as the human psyche is - I don't think these time frames are enough to undo all the prejudices and ingrained opinions "society" had developed. If we are painting over a dark past - it's like we might have one coat of base coat applied and there is going to take another 3 or 4 coats of paint to undo/cover over the issues. It takes TIME and part of that is open and transparent communication - which is hard. Hell - we can't even have a discussion on a football based forum without people being offended that their view and opinion might not be the best or only perspective to listen to.

I grew up in the UK - I didn't have a black friend. I had lots of them. At least 30% of the school was Black or Asian or Indian or Pakistani. And the White pupils were 1/4 Italian .... It wasn't all roses and people fought - but not generally based on the color of their skin. BUT - Institutional racism is still present in England. 90% of the police don't carry guns - but they still act in a prejudiced way, the force still attracts certain individual. And that's without the affect of segregation or busing or Jim Crow or any of the other history we have in the USA.

So - why is there still racism in 2020? I think it's still ingrained in too many societies DNA. I think it's going to take more than a passive approach to change the future ... I think it's going to take more vocal and load protests that grab headlines and dominate the social conscience. I think it's going to take more people like Vers who take an ACTIVE - proactive approach to addressing differences and inequalities. (I don't agree with Vers reaction to some of these posts - but huge kudos where it is due.) I'm probably as guilty as anyone - but I don't think sitting back and knowing that as an individual I am not racist is enough. Discussing racism - discussing racial prejudices - discussing inequality and the historical reasons for those inequalities - discussing White Privilege even though many get offended at the subject .... doing all this constantly regardless of what is in the news "today" - that's what is needed. Constantly and sometimes in a loud and aggressive way. AND - as has been discussed on this board - when protesters do it in a way that we don't like or their words/actions are offensive to us ... closing your ears and saying "that's not right" probably doesn't help either. . . . . .

And, And (this really is the last point) don't let the criminals and opportunists or the extremists dictate the subject, don't let the actions of a few take the spotlight off the root cause and the real issue. . . . just my 2 cents.

If you haven't seen Dave Chappelle's 30 minute 'George Floyd' special ... it's profanity laced and will offend many - but it might give some folks and alternative viewpoint. As OCD at the moment we have a very one sided perspective on the board.

I won't post the link due to the profanity - just google "Dave Chappelle 8:46"

Trump says he won't watch NFL, U.S. soccer if players kneel during anthem

(Reuters) - United States President Donald Trump has said he will not watch National Football League (NFL) or U.S. soccer team matches if players do not stand for the national anthem.

The U.S. Soccer Federation last week said it had dropped its requirement that players stand during the anthem, saying the policy was wrong and detracted from the Black Lives Matter movement.

The policy was adopted in 2017 after U.S. women’s national team member Megan Rapinoe took a knee during the anthem before a game, in solidarity with NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who knelt to call attention to racial injustice.

“I won’t be watching much anymore,” Trump tweeted late on Saturday in response to a report of Republican congressman Matt Gaetz criticising U.S. Soccer’s move.

“And it looks like the NFL is heading in that direction also, but not with me watching,” Trump said.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said this month that the league had made mistakes in not listening to players and denounced racism in the country amid protests over police brutality against black people.

The issue returned to the fore last month after the killing in Minneapolis of George Floyd, a black man who died after a white police officer knelt on his neck.

Trump has been a vocal critic of players kneeling during the anthem, previously tweeting that NFL players who did so were “disrespecting our Country & our Flag”.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-minne...m-idUSKBN23L0DA

Who didn't see this coming? The president of division strikes again!

Trump loses 2 pivotal allies in his anti-kneeling crusade: NASCAR and the NFL

Both are vowing to stand up for racial justice in a way that could challenge the president’s relationship with each organization.



President Donald Trump has long had two cherished American institutions standing beside him as he railed against athletes taking a knee during the national anthem: NASCAR and the NFL.

This week, they both started to walk away.

Bending to the cultural moment, NASCAR and the NFL in recent days reversed course on their approach to athletes protesting racial injustice. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said he had been wrong for not listening to protesting players earlier and encouraged “all to speak out and peacefully protest.” Meanwhile, NASCAR relaxed rules barring kneeling during the national anthem and banned Confederate flags from its events. Within days, a NASCAR driver was circling a track in a race car emblazoned with #BlackLivesMatter and a NASCAR official was taking a knee during prerace ceremonies.

The moves came in response to the protests that have erupted across the country in response to the killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who died at the hands of the Minneapolis police. And they reflected shifting cultural attitudes — polls show an increasing percentage of the population view racism as a big problem in the country and the protests as a justified response.

Yet Trump stood his ground. He attacked Goodell, wondering whether the commissioner was telling players “that it would now be O.K. for the players to KNEEL, or not to stand, for the national anthem, thereby disrespecting our Country & our Flag?” And he separately lashed out about a blossoming discussion about renaming military bases named after Confederate leaders.

The changing tenor from the two leagues could be pivotal for Trump, though. The president has long leaned on the front offices of each organization as he has publicly attacked athletes who took a knee during the national anthem, and privately pressured some team owners to change anthem rules. Trump has also relished NASCAR’s historically conservative, Southern fan base, praising it for being “patriotic Americans” and serving as the grand marshal of the Daytona 500 earlier this year. At rallies, he has praised racing fans for standing during the national anthem, and cursed at NFL players taking a knee.

“The shift is really going to put a damper on one of his favorite playbooks,” said LZ Granderson, a sports and culture columnist for the Los Angeles Times who has been covering the NFL and NASCAR reactions to the Floyd protests. “People who didn’t give a damn before won’t give a damn now, but the people who view themselves as nonracist, they just aren’t going for that rhetoric anymore.”

The debate over kneeling during the national anthem began in 2016, when San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the song in protest of police brutality and racial injustice. Trump fanned the flames of the issue, at one point calling for NFL owners to fire players for taking a knee.

“Get that son of a bitch off the field,” he said during a 2017 rally in Alabama.

Around the same time, Trump praised NASCAR for resisting kneeling protests.

“So proud of NASCAR and its supporters and fans,” Trump wrote in a tweet in September 2017. “They won’t put up with disrespecting our Country or our Flag — they said it loud and clear!”

The next year, the NFL banned players from kneeling on the field during the anthem, leading many players to simply stay near the locker room during the song. The decision put them in line with NASCAR.

Trump praised the decision, suggesting kneeling players “maybe shouldn’t be in the country” and taking credit for bringing attention to the issue before “the people pushed it forward.”

It was just one of several examples of how the president has used the NFL and NASCAR stances on protests to his political advantage, from taking a lap around the storied Daytona racetrack in his presidential limousine to using the NFL protests to rev up his fans at rallies. And the leagues’ refusal to allow overt kneeling gave Trump two allies as he fanned the culture war flames over the issue.

More broadly, the president has long aligned himself with the two leagues. Trump once tried to purchase an NFL team and counts some NFL owners, including New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, among his supporters and donors. Trump tapped New York Jets part-owner Woody Johnson as the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom. And he has praised the NASCAR-founding France family, some of whom are Trump donors, at political events.

But now, in the wake of a national movement, both organizations are promising to stand up for racial justice in a way that could challenge the president’s relationship with them. Instead of allies, the leagues may become yet another Trump attack target.

Goodell this week said he, and the league, were wrong. The NFL, he said, “believes black lives matter.”

NASCAR President Steve Phelps said the sport must “do better” addressing racial injustice.

As part of that, NASCAR issued a statement banning the Confederate flag from all events, just hours before Bubba Wallace, NASCAR’s only top-tier black driver, made laps in a race car painted with “Black Lives Matter.”

“The presence of the Confederate flag at NASCAR events runs contrary to our commitment to providing a welcoming and inclusive environment for all fans, our competitors and our industry,” the association said in a statement.

Former NASCAR CEO Brian France, who made a push to get rid of the flag in 2015, told POLITICO the organization “can’t be out of step and need to meet the moment.”

“In all sports, we have this big platform and we are speaking to millions of people every week, and have a devoted fan base and we need to lead,” France said.

The announcements come as Trump has gone the opposite way. He shut the door on a push to rename military bases named after Confederate leaders, tweeting that the names are part of a “Great American Heritage.” And he went after both Goodell and New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, who also recently apologized for saying that kneeling disrespects the flag.

“We can no longer use the flag to turn people away or distract them from the real issues that face our black communities,” Brees said.

Trump pounced on the apology, tweeting that Brees “should not have taken back his original stance on honoring our magnificent American Flag.”

The president’s obstinance in the midst of a racially heated moment has been compared with his response to the 2017 protests in Charlottesville, Va., when Trump equated white nationalists with those protesting the removal of Confederate statues.

This time around, some of the president’s advisers have urged him to take a less combative tone. Instead, he has leaned into “law-and-order” rhetoric and stuck by most of his previous stances. Trump has not, however, commented on NASCAR’s ban of Confederate flags.

An administration official referred to Trump’s 2015 comments about the removal of the Confederate flag from the South Carolina statehouse. “I would take it down, yes,” Trump said when asked about then-Gov. Nikki Haley’s decision. “I think they should put it in a museum and respect whatever it is you have to respect.”

Andrew Giuliani, a special assistant to the president who’s worked as a White House liaison to sports programs, said “there’s been no president since [Abraham] Lincoln who’s done more for the black and Hispanic communities in the United States than President Trump. At the same time, he has been consistent in his belief that we should stand proud for our great American flag and asks American citizens to kneel only for God.”

The NFL is “taking an issue that most people agree with — peacefully protesting racial disparities and racial injustice — and then they’re reembracing a type of that protest or debate [kneeling] … that a lot of people that don’t think people should do,” said another administration official.

But the issue remains divisive. A recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that 52 percent of Americans think it is OK for NFL players to kneel during the national anthem to protest police killings of African Americans.

Meanwhile, 44 percent of NASCAR fans said race attendees should be allowed to express themselves however they want, including by displaying the Confederate flag, according to a Morning Consult poll.

The president, according to an official, is expected to continue to stump against kneeling during the anthem, believing it works to his political advantage.

“Kneeling during the national anthem is a slap in the face to the men and women of the United States military who defend our freedoms, many of whom make the ultimate sacrifice,” Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh said.

Still, the question remains whether more than Trump’s die-hard supporters will stick with him.

“He completely missed the boat,” said Rick Reilly, a former Sports Illustrated and ESPN contributor and the author of “Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump.”

“It’s like somehow his cable that comes into the White House is set in 1962, he’s so far behind,” Reilly added. “This is a watershed moment and he’s lost. It’s like your grandpa who thinks Joe DiMaggio is still playing.”

Politico.dot.com

I don't think people have figured out the root cause(s) and real issues.

I think too many people ignore their own culpability.

People can find all kinds of excuses. Blaming others is easy. So is blaming circumstances. Few people seem to be willing to take responsibility.

Rich, poor, black, white; everyone has the opportunity to make their own choices. Too many people try to rationalize bad choices. "He lacked options." That's the biggest load of bull. There are an infinite number of options. Bad options are unfortunately just easier at times and believed to be acceptable. It's hard to find better options when you're busy blaming a lack of options for your problems instead of trying to find positive solutions.

Systemic racism isn't just a "white" issue. While there are clearly issues, it's not a one way street.

The victim mentality absolves responsibility. Other people have to fix things for me. They owe me. I deserve XYZ...

Maybe it's actually the "they owe me" mentality that everyone needs to get over. I showed up, where's my trophy? I'm saying there's a problem, aren't I a good boy? I'm going to kneel, that'll fix everything.

That's not to say that there aren't external issues. There obviously are. Unfortunately, I think the external hyper-focus glosses over the need for introspection, personal growth, and hard work.

The other problem with focusing on external issues to the absence of all else is that external issues are just that: external, outside your control.

I've probably rambled enough. Half the people reading this probably shut down several paragraphs ago. Why really think about things and do mental work when you can attack someone else and put blame somewhere that you don't have to feel responsible?

Attacking people that are trying to put in the work is a good way to ensure that it never gets done. Sadly, growth is frequently uncomfortable. Most people would rather not change or admit they should do better if they'd have to face any discomfort.

Perhaps our society has grown too attached to comfort. It makes it hard to change.

Nice articles. It's a shame that one is from the atlantic, which has been heavily left for a long time. It's also a shame that the second one states the dixiecrats shifted to the Republican party, without any proof. On the other hand, I have two articles with names of which dixiecrats changed parties. I could only find 3. That is not a large party shift in any stretch of the imagination.

Your first article tries to paint the civil rights act as a democrat achievement. If anyyhing, it is a better example of bipartisanship. It's no rewrite of history when I said that a larger percentage of Republicans voted for the bill than dems. It's also a fact that a coalition of 18 dems and 1 repub tried to filibuster. These facts happened. The bill gave enforcement to the 14th and 15th amendment, in which democrats found loophole to create Jim crow laws.

Your article on Nixon states another falsehood. It states that Nixon formed a coalition of racists to win the southern states. Nixon actually never campaigned in the deep south. He kept his campaign in the sunbelt states, VA, TN, NC, AZ, and avoided MS, AL, AR, GA. The deep south went democrat. Nixon won the sunbelt. That does not show a coalition. In fact, the deep south stayed dem until Reagan's second election.

This is a false narrative.

I wanted to quickly jump in and out on this.

Nixon didn’t win all of the south because in 1968, segregationist George wallace won GA, AL, MS, LA, and AR. Had Wallace not ran, Nixon would’ve won those states anyway due to the southern strategy.

In 1972, Nixon won all of those states Wallace won in 1968.

I’ve stayed out of this thread due to the fact that it’s been cool seeing you guys discuss this amongst pretty much all white guys.

But Erik’s constant denial about the ideology swap can not be ignored. Y’all need to call him out on his revisionist history.

One of my favorite things to do at this web address.

Always an eye-opener.
Tons of opinions/self assurance, zero intellectual curiosity/questions.

I been on a little soul get away. I do it often. no phone no news. I get home this morning and hear about the Atlanta shooting.

I just cried, I can't believe this.

It's really awful, isn't it?

It's why I've talked for years about my close calls, random rousts, streetside 'trunk pops' and 'emotional breakdown moments.' Every time I share this painful stuff with the board, I spend a night of tortured half-sleep, bad dreams and a morning 'trauma hangover.' Still, I do it because to keep it to myself only traumatizes me, and does nothing to drop the real 411 on an audience that has never, and most likely will never experience something like this.

I hope you'll someday reach the point that tears won't be enough. Lots of those folks in the streets have never been 'blipped'/trunk tossed, but they cared enough about those who have to actually come out to publicly address this chronic societal illness.

Shedding a tear of empathy/understanding is a good first step. Things only get better when all of us insist upon improvement.

.02

There seems to be so much wrong with that post that I won't even try to break it down. We disagree wildly.

Swish/Clem - shame you only came to laugh at the old white guys who have it all wrong. Some insight would have been appreciated... & I don't know the history to refute Erik's post but I'll gladly be educated, if it matters.

i think you took what i said the wrong way.

i think its cool that you guys are opening up about it. there seems to be a lot more open dialogue since Clem and i arent saying much, specifically me cause...yea we all know how i can get.

im just sitting back and observing. im only commenting if somebody has their history wrong.

Thanks for clarifying and that makes a good amount of sense.

It's a shame that you're rather new to this forum/discussion. Lots of Dawgs have read me for years, and not only know where I stand, but also why. Most of what's now being discussed here has been laid out in years past... and more than once. I have not been shy with the bandwidth about this stuff, as others will attest.

After all the personal anecdotes, historical references, alternative views, etc, I'm pretty much typed out. Everyone who knows my posts already know where I stand.
I'm all up and down the archives about this stuff. Cops, BLM, 'Articles of the Confederacy,' you name it.

Folks who know me can 'plug&play' my soundbytes from 10 years of regular input. My freakkin life is chronicled at this place.

I'm tired from 40+ years of this.

I wanna watch someone else haul the weight. Someone else can do something. Think something. Say something. Ask something. Work things out in front of me. Lord knows I've already done enough of it for them. I'm waiting to see if anything I've said over the past decade has mattered to anyone else but me. If anything any folks like Swish and me (either here or elsewhere in your lives) has said something that has made a difference.

Only Time will answer that question- and there hasn't been enough of that yet. The nature of the posts that get made about this social issue going forward will answer that question.

June 2020's newest version of this age-old conversation is only a couple weeks old. It's too early to know what, if anything may change in peoples' hearts and minds. A consistent track record is required for that, and that takes months and years to establish. It's a person's reputation we're talking about here.

For now, I'm giving threads like this room to breathe.
Thank me later



p.s. for a really convenient example of one of my self-described posts: find your post addressing Swish & me... and ^^look up^^ one spot.

This is why I'm taking my time.
I've burned a lot of calories at this address.
It's time to see if it was just mindless exercise.

Thank you for taking the time to explain your interaction on this thread. I appreciate that very much. Apologies for my little jab earlier!! And whether you realize or not I'm certain your past discussions on this topic haveade a positive difference. Don't base any assumptions on the lowest common denominator that you see or read here.

I never have/I never will.

The LCD's occupy a place of their own at this address-
-and we've all known them for years.

Wild that it's page 4 and The Southern Strategy is just now acknowledged. The Southern Strategy converted the democrats in the South that held slaves, to republicans, shortly after the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed.

The Southern Strategy took advantage of racism in the South to bring white voters to the GOP.

See Lee Atwater's speech in 1981. Cannot link due to language.

So your saying peoples attention spans are ..... oh look a squirrel.



Our society has become all about me, me,me for far to many people, when it should be all about we, we, WE.

I am glad you have posted about everything you have. Speaking for myself only it gives me a different perspective on things. It makes me think outside of the box that I grew up in. I can still at my age grow and learn. I told Swish last week even at my age I can still learn from him. His life experiences are different from mine, so I can still learn from him. That goes for others on these boards as well, and I wish everybody around here could learn how to discuss things more openly without everybody flying off the handle.

Yep you can get passionate about what you believe in. Just like a lot of the rest of us

So 0.1% of the time it’s the answer. Sorry bro not a good look on ya.

What if someone were running away from the officer and toward someone else while shooting at them?

I explained it poorly - yes people have short attention spans, but my point was and is, racism was an established way of life only 50 years ago. It was part of the bedrock of American 'culture' at that point. People were treated differently based on the color of their skin. . . . 50 years is not enough time to completely change and eradicate those biases. 50 years might seem like a long time to a species who have short attention spans but it is not.... 50 years is especially not enough time when you have people distracting from the argument by suggesting we don't know what the root cause is. I mean that is so blindingly obvious and yet we have people trying trying to deflect and obfuscate by suggesting the root cause might be something other than people being treated differently because of the color of their skin. Having different class citizens. Yes - all different groups and people of every color can and have racists among them - yes there are other dynamics going on and opportunistic and entitled behavior .... but the suggestion that we can't address racism without getting distracted by all that other noise? That's part of the problem too.

Another example of getting distracted and lost in the weeds ... your example is not what happened is it? No. The guy in Atlanta wasn't running towards someone else with a fire arm or other deadly weapon.

Has ANYONE ever said that if a life appears to be threatened (for example a man running away from the police while shooting at others whether running toward them) that the police are not entitled to use deadly force ??? No.

I think you confuse cause and the horrible symptom we're trying to come to grips with. Our society has a tendency to treat symptoms instead of actually trying to figure out what is wrong that causes the symptom. If you only treat the symptom and not the true underlying cause, the symptoms will keep coming back. While racism might be a "cause" of some of the issues we are seeing, it is also a symptom.

I'm not saying we can't address racism. I'm saying that to address racism we have to also look at what causes racism.

If we don't, it will never be eradicated. It will keep "coming back" (not that it's left) because instead of really getting rid of what causes it, we rather just treat specific expressions of it.

It's frustrating that people see trying to figure out something that might actually change things as a distraction. I'm sorry I don't have a fast acting pill that will cover up the symptom which has been causing other symptoms. Well intended platitudes aren't going to make racism go away. Treating racism as THE cause without addressing the cause(s) of racism hasn't worked yet. As you say, people are shortsighted. They want quick fixes. Unfortunately, quick fixes are more frequently cover ups than long lasting solutions. Covered up problems tend to lead to system failure, and this country has enough failing systems already.

While I agree with you to a point, that doesn't mean that because you can't find the cause of a headache that taking a pain reliever for it isn't a good idea.

Well I think the root cause of the problems is racism. I am not actually smart or knowledgeable enough to understand the root cause of why one race thinks they are superior to another race.

But if Root Issue is a better phrase .. or whatever you want to call it ... then stick to that. Whether it was slavery, affluence, the influence of the class system/attitude of the British idk .... but to deflect and start looking at entitlement attitudes or what black culture and people may or may not do to help themselves is all a deflection in my opinion.... you alluded to things like White Privilege not being real, or even the perception of White Privilege as being a problem to finding a solution. I could not disagree more vehemently. White privilege is the proof that there is a problem - and that when two totally equal people in our country: social/economic/education/qualifications status equal at all levels ... but one is black and one is white and statistics shows that he white person on average is always attains a more favorable result. That is one huge part of the problem that has to be overcome.

And we aren't even talking about how many minorities die at the hands of the police, or how frequently they are stopped and searched etc as Clem referenced.

Everything else is deflection and making an excuse not to address the root issue .... talking about looters, rioters, blacks killing blacks, the history of slavery, Democrat or Republican .... they are all distractions or technicalities or diversions that prevent a discussion about what the real problem is.

At least we agree there is no Quick Fix and any such measure is not going to solve the problem.

Oh it's wonderful how you keep droning on but some of us were actually alive back then. Some of watched this entire thing unfold.

We all remember George Wallace. That Dixiecrat turned Republican. We remember Kennedy having to send The National Guard in to force desegregation in Alabama when Wallace refused to follow federal law.

We remember Wallace being supported in the south not by Democrats in southern states as he ran for the Republican nomination in 1968. Then when Wallace was no longer in the running in 1972 Nixon won those same states. Your droning won't change what the southern Republicans were voting for and supporting on the ticket in the 60's...



We remember those who fought for the freedom and equality of blacks being slaughtered and how so much sorrow was brought to our nation by those who opposed them. No amount of rhetoric will change that.

This is mostly BS. If you are waiting for one generation to one day unilaterally decide that racism is over, then you will almost certainly die disappointed. There are racist parents out there who pass it on willingly to kids and, IMHO, this will never be completely stopped. But the number of parents out there doing this is pretty rare... Hate always has and always will exist and it is not the singular domain of white people.

For many years I have made the argument that it is to our detriment that we look at racism as a "you are" or "you aren't" decision... There is a long spectrum from the "I'd lynch you if I thought I could get away with it" white supremacist to the most enlightened and receptive.. and we fail routinely to acknowledge that the vast majority of white people have moved further down that spectrum toward acceptance and tolerance than at any time in history.

Pretty much any white person on this board with an ounce of intellectual honesty, who was alive in the 60s, 70s, 80s would tell you that things are vastly different, much better, than they were back then. I'm not looking for an attaboy or a pat on the back, there is still much to be done... but to act like nothing has been done until this glorious appearing of this race free generation is just foolish.