[Julie Steiner]

I agree that Harris didn't say that activism never works.

But he did strongly imply that protesters in Los Angeles are making much too big a deal of police brutality and racism, because he can point to police shootings being at a 30-year low in Los Angeles. That's what I was taking issue with.

Here's the paragraph in question, from the transcript (bless you for finding that!):

In a city like Los Angeles, 2019 was a 30-year low for police shootings. Think about that…. Do the people who were protesting in Los Angeles, peacefully and violently, do the people who were ransacking and burning businesses by the hundreds—in many cases, businesses that will not return to their neighborhoods—do the people who caused so much damage to the city, that certain neighborhoods, ironically the neighborhoods that are disproportionately black, will take years, probably decades to recover, do the celebrities who supported them, and even bailed them out of jail—do any of these people know that 2019 was the 30-year low for police shootings in Los Angeles?

Harris associates thousands of peaceful protesters with the tiny minority of violent ones (upon whose actions he dwells for some time), while suggesting that if ANY of these people showed up to protest, it was only because they were more ignorant than he is of the 30-year low statistic for police shootings.

But the article he links to in the transcript also says this about the report containing that 30-year low:

After two commissioners and several members of the public raised concerns that the majority of individuals shot or shot at by police were people of color, Moore agreed the department should continue to look for systemic inequities and improve policing methods.

Of 26 suspects involved in the incidents in which officers opened fire last year, 15, or 58%, were Latino. Another eight, or 31%, were black, and two, or 8%, were white.

[...]

In a city that has seen the most police shootings in the U.S. in years past, there is a heightened sensitivity to criticisms of aggressive policing tactics, and that has not abated as the number of people killed each year by police has declined.

Even when encounters do not end in death, they draw intense criticism, such as with an officer’s beating of a homeless man in Boyle Heights in late April that was captured on camera by a bystander and is now under investigation. In addition to releasing the use-of-force report Tuesday, police released body camera footage from that encounter.

So, yes, I think it's quite possible that many of the Los Angeles protesters were familiar with ALL of the problems documented in that report, not just the one that made the headline he cited.

I do credit Sam Harris for acknowledging in that blog post that white privilege exists, and the fact that he probably benefits from it personally in ways he does not even know. I salute him for saying that systemic racism exists in a number of areas in society, not just in law enforcement. I particularly appreciated his comments on the un-level playing field that has, on a grand scale, affected the ability of families of color to build as much wealth across generations as white families have, even in recent decades. I should probably go easy on him.

But he still seems to be outraged less by the fact that a shocking number of white people die in police custody than he is that protesters might be giving Black people who die in police custody more than their fair share of the national spotlight. That looks a lot like petty jealousy to me. And yes, saying that Black victims are less deserving of attention than white victims, because white victims (like the white population itself) are in the majority nationwide (although the proportions are quite different in different places), inevitably comes off looking like a complaint that white privilege is failing with regard to who is getting that national spotlight.

If he could find a way to make his point about excessive use of police force affecting more than just the Black community, but without looking like he's trying to de-legitimize Black protesters' success in drawing attention to Black victims, he wouldn't have to worry so much about offending people.

(That, by the way, is the problem with attempts to replace "Black Lives Matter" with "All Lives Matter." It's not that being inclusive looks racist. It's that crossing out "Black" and replacing it with something else looks like a denial that some of these problems affect the Black community disproportionately. If you want to be more inclusive, come up with your own slogan, without arrogantly appropriating and "fixing" someone else's. I realize that no one here seems to have trouble grasping that point, but Sam Harris still seems a bit unclear on that general concept.)

[Martin Elster]

Mark - thanks for coming back to this thread (even though it was not for debating). I appreciate it. Also thanks again for the link to the transcript, which really helps. (I haven’t watched the videos of police violence he linked to. I didn’t feel like getting nauseated.) I’m grateful for your summary of the main topics of Harris’s podcast.

I’m also glad to hear your points, Julie’s points, Max’s, Jan’s, and Aaron’s. Now I’m getting more of a feel for how that podcast has gone over with a few you folks here. And I’m glad my link was a prompt to more conversation. I’m not generally all that interested in politics — like you, Mark, I’m much more interested in poetry — but Harris’s podcast got me thinking more about some of the crazy stuff that has been going on lately, both in the US and the world.

Mark, yes, he is a scientist. Just yesterday I saw a video of a talk with Sam Harris & Brian Greene - Toronto - Sept 5th 2018. The caption is: “For the first time ever, Sam Harris & Brian Greene sit down for a conversation. They discuss science, reason, AI & more.” Since you like science, you might enjoy this talk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pbHsRz8A7w

[Martin Elster]

The Glenn Show: The Viruses | Glenn Loury & John McWhorter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So7-_Sq1FP8&t=2705s

Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs

John: George Floyd’s murder was not an exclusively racial matter 0:09
Glenn: “We’re in the grip of hysteria” 9:41
John: Apparently anti-racism trumps even medical science 20:41
What it’s like being a black contrarian right now 28:22
Glenn: The real threat to black people is crime 32:53
John argues that fixing problems with the cops has to be the first step 40:48

Glenn Loury (Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University) and John McWhorter (Columbia University, Lexicon Valley, The Atlantic)

Recorded June 9, 2020

Added in: Here's another video, which I found informative and mentions a lot more facts and statistics, as well as more specific and clearer commentary.

Coleman Hughes: The moral case against Black Lives Matter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k9F8I_-HL0

[Aaron Novick]

just a few more bad apples serving and protecting

[W T Clark]

Originally Posted by Aaron Novick

just a few more bad apples serving and protecting

Is the officers' behaviour even lawful?

[Aaron Novick]

I would think not, but wouldn't be too shocked to find out otherwise. Maybe we should get some cops to arrest them...

[Aaron Novick]

Meanwhile, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, a police officer attempted to murder a black man in front of his own kids.

[W T Clark]

Originally Posted by Aaron Novick

Meanwhile, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, a police officer attempted to murder a black man in front of his own kids.

The news has now broken in the UK.

[Martin Elster]

Has anyone seen this? It's worth watching.

Trump Supporters Allow Freedom of Speech For #BlackLivesMatter On Stage At MOAR Rally

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tWPMbQ_PCA

[Martin Elster]

There are bad cops, as there are bad people in all walks of life. I have some blood-boiling stories of my own. Here are three.

1.
I once met a young man who worked at a dog kennel. He lived with his parents in the suburbs of a small Connecticut town. He had a 35-pound American pit bull terrier. The dog was very friendly and had never bitten anyone. One day, the plumber (or carpenter or someone) working at his home neglected to close the fence gate when he left. The dog, sensing freedom, flew the coop and started investigating the neighborhood. He was only out for maybe 5 or 10 minutes when some guy saw him in his backyard and called the cops. An officer showed up. The cop and the neighbor were standing next to each other, watching the collarless dog sniffing around at the far end of the yard. The dog then, for some reason, ran toward them. The cop pulled out his gun and shot the dog. The dog fell down. After a minute, he got up and the cop shot him again. The dog never got up again.

How’s that for overreacting? The family filed a lawsuit. I don’t know the result, as I have not seen the young fellow after our talk. (I told this story recently to a friend of mine who is a long-time professional dog walker. After he heard the story, he said that he would rather have let the dog take a bite out of his leg before pulling the trigger. What my friend was saying, in other words, was: The cop should have given the pooch the benefit of the doubt instead of acting like a frightened chicken.) I am quite sure if an animal control officer had come to the scene (instead of a regular officer) the dog would have faired a lot better.

2.
I heard about a case where a mentally impaired man, who was (if I remember the story correctly) quite large, accidentally pushed the button on the medical alert gizmo on his wrist. He knew the police would come and, because he didn’t want them to come, called his sister. His sister then called the police department pleading with them not to come to her brother’s apartment, explaining that he accidentally pushed the button. She also told them very clearly that she was afraid something bad would happen to her brother, that the cops might hurt him (due, perhaps, to his unpredictable behavior). Sure enough, the cops didn’t listen to her and went to his apartment. And sure enough, as she feared, they ended up killing him.

3.
I heard this one a very long time ago, and I don’t know all the details, but I’ll relate the main gist. A young man was being arrested. He started having a seizure while the cops were restraining him. They thought he was resisting arrest, so hit him on the head with a billy club (truncheon for you folks across the pond).

The moral of these stories, I guess, is that there are too many situations where cops act hastily and without thinking. I wonder, could that be a result of working 80-hour weeks and not being trained well? Should we abolish the police? If that happened and you are being robbed, who would you call? But, yes, police departments should be majorly improved. Less funding? Maybe more funding so departments could recruit better people and train them better and so cops wouldn’t have to work 80-hour weeks and not have to do the kinds of jobs better suited for social workers, etc.?