I can agree with Ty in part.... the Media needs ratings. It's how they make their money, controversy creates cash, etc. That being said, they create fallacies. You hear about a plane crash where all the passengers die, flying is unsafe...yet, that's not true... Statically, it's about the safest way to travel there is. Basic psychology.
I'm very pragmatic. I like facts, sources, and statistics to make my mind up or whatever theory or view I take on a topic instead of getting emotional and firing off. I don't like to be manipulated when it comes to these views so I often try to do research if I take an interest.
The whole kneeling started as a protest vs police brutality towards blacks as we know sparked by Ferguson and subsequent others after. So statistically speaking, are police racists? I believe in 2013 more whites were killed by cops than blacks, however we know that whites are the population majority. When we break it down by population, I recall it came down to blacks being more likely to be shot by cops than whites with a 3 to 1 ratio or something like that. However, the next statistic was that blacks were overwhelmingly committing more crimes and thus increasing their encounters with the cops which upped the amount of brutality chances. If you dig deep enough you can find these stats or watch some Pragur vids (while right leaning they use lots of stats to at least push their PoV such as this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQCQFH5wOJo).Other interesting facts:
"Some may argue that these statistics are evidence of racist treatment toward blacks, since whites consist of 62 percent of the population and blacks make up 13 percent of the population. But according to The Wall Street Journal, 2009 statistics from the Bureau of Justice Statistics reveal that blacks were charged with 62% of robberies, 57% of murders and 45% of assaults in the 75 largest counties in the country, despite only comprising roughly 15% of the population in these counties.
Black and Hispanic police officers are more likely to fire a gun at blacks than white officers. This is according to a Department of Justice report in 2015 about the Philadelphia Police Department, and is further confirmed that by a study conducted University of Pennsylvania criminologist Greg Ridgeway in 2015 that determined black cops were 3.3 times more likely to fire a gun than other cops at a crime scene.
Blacks are more likely to kill cops than be killed by cops. This is according to FBI data, which also found that 40 percent of cop killers are black. According to Heather Mac Donald during a speech at Hillsdale College, the police officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black than a cop killing an unarmed black person."
The majority of these incidents come from poor communities where officers are more often to encounter crime. As mentioned earlier, I agree that I think it's an issue with wealth and social standing more so than race in my opinion just in the statistics I've seen. Drive a nicer car, live in a nicer neighborhood, etc etc and you are less likely to be messed with. I was born and raised in the 4th poorest county in the
entire United States in southeast Kentucky and they have no problem messing with you if you're poor. I got pulled over for inane stuff like having a dirty license plate (I lived up a damn holler. WTF. Really?) or they saw me leave a store after buying a bag of ice thinking I had just bought beer from a bootlegger. All that changed when I got out and went to college and made a better life for myself elsewhere.
The only thing I don't care for is the whole white privilege thing when it's brought up in this argument. It never takes into account Appalachia. People there wouldn't know privilege if it jumped up and kicked them in the ass. Inner cities have it way better than these people as a whole and it kinda wrecks that theory when they suffer the same problems.
I am in no way saying that racism does not exist, but I believe this issue comes down to social class wealth in this current day and time unlike years past based on raw data. As a Libertarian I support their right to take a knee (kudos for peaceful a protest), however I feel its divisive. I think the Cowboys handled it the best so far kneeling before hand and then standing during...how can you even fault that no matter what side? My biggest complaint is that I feel the NFL is hypocritical, having Goodell come out and support kneeling when he squashed every other protests most of these same players wanted to do for such things as domestic violence, breast cancer (outside of the few pink games), 9-11, the 5 cops killed in Dallas during the BLM protest, etc etc. Who cares if they put a sticker on the back of their helmet? And don't get me started on how much shit Tebow took for his kneeling, like when NBC said he was polarizing for doing it because he was praying (fuck off Liberal Media for that).
Anyways, I debated if I would even interject into this thread again and hope I don't regret doing so.
