This video is causing much discussion on various web sites I visit. It is the very best takedown of Critical Race Theory imaginable, although a much briefer statement would make the same point admirably: CRT is stupid.
Pushing Back on the Narrative of Modern Systemic Racism & White Privilege by Casey Petersen
Published
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
The video expects the public to apply critical thinking in an environment in which we debate “facts” that are patently false and we have lost control of the language.
George Floyd’s death is referred to even in conservative media as a “murder.’ At worst, it was a tragic accident and by rational examination, it was the result of Floyd’s own fury and resistance.
Likewise, the shooting of Jason Blake has been referred to as a ‘police killing’ in spite of the fact that he is not dead(though seriously wounded.) But the presumption is that his shooting was unjustified, even though he resisted arrest, broke free of the police, went to his car to retrieve a large knife, and was shot only after he ignored two commands to drop the knife.
A man who swung a bag with a brick in it at the head of a teenager is called a “protestor” as is the man who struck the same teenager with a skateboard, and another who tried to seize the teen’s rifle while drawing a firearm with his other hand. But the teenager who killed two of those “protestors” and wounded the third is called a murderer and charged as such in spite of video clearly showing he acted in self defense,
If we can’t even use words correctly, or accept facts that disagree with the narrative, how can we reason?
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Discounting the fact that a fully grown man knelt on the neck of a handcuffed arrestee is wrongheaded. – IMO. It may have not been the only reason Mr. Floyd died, but to say it was not a contributing factor is ignoring ALL of the facts.
In Mr. Blake’s case, it did not appear he had the knife when the officer grabbed him by the back of the shirt and shot him IN THE BACK 7 time. The knife was found in the car. HE did not appear to threaten the police with the knife. (Remember Philando Castille who, after telling an officer he was reaching for his weapon and was a concealed carrier was still shot by the officer with zero provocation.) The investigation is ongoing. But resisting arrest is not cause for a death sentence.
Why was that teenager, who is not legally allowed to own the weapon he was carrying doing crossing state lines to be part of a questionable militia? He wasn’t standing guard over anyone’s property, least of all his or his family’s. He was moving among the protesters. If he was threatening those who who swung bats at him or tried to take away his weapon, are, not allowed the same level of self defense as you claim for him?
Too many questions and not enough answers. You are just as guilty of what you accuse others of.
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Blake had the knife when he was on the passenger side of the vehicle, it was dropped onto the floor on the driver’s side when he was shot. He had not brandished the knife but officers saw it before he went around the front of the vehicle, He had fought with the police before the video starts, and had been tazed twice without effect. But the important thing is that even after being told to drop the knife multiple times he pulled away from the officers and reached into the drivers side of the vehicle. Reaching into a potential hiding place for a weapon while resisting arrest will get you shot 100% of the time, per police training.
Regarding Floyd, his trachea and larynx were not injured, he was held down by pressure in his back and the back of his neck. This is a technique police are trained to use, though not for 8 minutes. Floyd fought the police strenuously and one of the officers even warned him to calm down before he gave himself a heart attack. It’s on the bodycam video. The autopsy showed an enlarged heart and 70% blockage in 2 of the three cardiac arteries, and 90% in the third. He died of his own exertions and the drugs in his system.
Rittenhouse was unwise to participate in the militia actions, but being unwise is part of being a teen. Note that the police welcomed the armed citizens and even handed out water to them.
In any case, Rittenhouse had left the store he was guarding to render first aid to an injured protestor when Rossenbaum attacked him with a brick in a bag, and was retreating when the other two ran him down and attacked him with a skateboard and a handgun.
Even if you provoke a confrontation, you can still defend yourself, though you have an obligation to retreat as much as possible before using deadly force if you instigated the confrontation(which is questionable)
https://tidewaterliberty.wordpress.com/2012/04/23/stand-your-ground-and-self-defense/
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Neo-Nazis and White supremacist groups of all different flavors have been clamoring for a race war for a long time. Their acts of violence, mayhem and murder have outshined anything that even ISIS affiliated groups have been able to accomplish.
Trump, in my opinion, has given them the support they feel has been missing for decades. You can absolve the president of all that support, but the fact is simple: they love him and have said so in no uncertain terms. The unfortunate result is the uptick in right wing violence against non-Whites, Muslims and, of course, Jews.
So now we have armed camps on both sides and the shootings and killings have started in the limelight. Although, I think there has been solid evidence of agitators being from the supremacist camps much more so than Antifa.
Just yesterday a Patriot Prayer supporter was shot and killed in the melee in Portland when hundreds of counter-protesters showed up.
It seems as if the right wingnuts are going to get their race war.
They have been trying so hard for so long, that by golly, they deserve a break. 😇
We are so fortunate to have so many guns to defend against communists, socialists, our current government, you, me and Molly McGee.
Putin and Xi are laughing their asses off as we struggle with the virus, the job market, the gun nuts and the never ending protests that have erupted into violence that may very well be planned.
All this chaos, pandemic deaths and economic damage are all on the present administration’s watch. Why on earth would we want to re-elect the man who could not contain any of this, even a little?
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Because the fault for the riots lies in the Democratic governors and mayors who have allowed the criminals to dominate the police.
Look at what all of the ‘police violence’ cases have in common.
They all begin with a Black man who feels empowered to refuse to be arrested.
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We don’t know what happened in the Blake case yet. But if what you posit is true, then if he had the knife in his hand and was getting into his car where is children were, he was not attacking.
If he did not have the knife, there is no earthly reason the two police couldn’t have pulled him back and subdued in right then and there as he leaned into the car.
7 shots in the back of a man at close range is pretty startling.
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First, if you are justified in shooting once, you are justified in firing however many times it takes to end the threat.
But the reason police are trained to shoot if a defiant suspect reaches into a hiding place is because he may be reaching for a gun. If you wait until he comes up shooting, it’s too late.
They are also trained to regard a knife held by a defiant suspect within 10 yards the same as one holding a gun.
Note the video attached. Although the audio is somewhat masked b y the commentator talking over it, you can hear the police shouting ‘drop the knife’ twice, most clearly just as Blake rounds the driver’s side headlight heading for the door.
CNN Police Union video
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I am not convinced the cop was justified.
How do UK police handle their violent offenders without shooting them? And they have hooligans that are banned from European soccer stadiums.
Something is just not right.
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The UK does not have an urban Black population that glorifies resistance to arrest. They do not face the challenges our police do. They do not call rioters protestors. Striking a Bobby is a serious offense against the Rule of Law with along prison term and rarely happens.
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Do you any data backing up that Blacks glorify resisting arrest. If there is any issue, it is that within the Black community, there is a huge distrust of police. And that did not arise out of a magic lantern.
Challenges? Have you ever seen rioting hooligans?
The shootings by police are all races, BTW.
But you are saying that there is a difference that accounts for 20,000 killings v. 24.
I think we are doing something wrong and the UK is doing something right.
I also think it has to do with our insane obsession with guns.
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“…yet we are still presented with allegations that a knee on his neck was the cause of his death.”
Two things:
1) He was begging for his life saying he could not breathe. Airway or not, he was in serious distress, held down and handcuffed.
2) The knee was certainly contributory in the same sense that the “bullet didn’t kill him, but when his heart stopped, he died.”
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Both wrong.
He was saying he could not breathe from the time he was initially placed in the police car. before he broke free, and could not have said he could not breath other than by being able to breath, He was short of breath from early in the conflict, long before he was on the ground, which was very likely when the heart arrhythmia began. One of the officers was concerned that might be the case.
The other knee, the one on his back, may have contributed to his shortness of breath, but the one on his neck was on the muscular back part of the neck and had no effect on his breathing.
Trust me on that, head and neck anatomy is my thing. Neither his airway nor his circulation was compromised by the knee on the back of is neck.
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OK so if he complained about breathing long before he was on the ground, then why keep ignoring him?
Like I said, “the bullet did not kill him, his heart stopped”.
If you got into an altercation with your neighbor who had heart problems and your punch caused a heart attack, you are in serious trouble.
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The police are not doctors. Floyd did not look fragile. On the contrary he was large and muscular, and fighting them. Expecting them to diagnose his underlying heart disease is a bit much to ask.
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A knife held 30 feet away is the same as a gun?
What about if his back is turned and he is leaving you? 30 feet still holds evidently.
You don’t think UK police have faced a lot of knives over the decades? And yet, they don’t kill them all. Just 24 in 20 years.
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Actually, it’s 21 feet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tueller_Drill
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RE: “The video expects the public to apply critical thinking in an environment in which we debate ‘facts’ that are patently false and we have lost control of the language.”
You make a very shrewd point. Mr. Petersen is perhaps typical of engineers who tend to assume that facts speak for themselves, but we live in a post-fact world where engineers who can be persuaded by facts are relatively scarce.
But it is worse even than that. We live in a post-philosophy world as well, where the moral absolutes of good and evil cannot be communicated. Critical race theory is a lie and evil for that very reason. But for having said so, I fully expect to be either lectured or psychoanalyzed.
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Nah, no lectures, just opinions.
I still hold to my theory that a nation that practiced violent racism for centuries until 55 years ago, codified in law just in case anyone asks, cannot expect to turn things around in a generation or so.
We still have disparities in sentencing, home buying, credit, education and healthcare. We have 1000 police killings per year that far surpasses similar cultures, like UK, by amounts that are staggering: 20,000 versus 24 in a period of 20 years. Not all killings by police are unwarranted, but we must have the most violent criminals in the entire world based on our policing.
Criminal justice for the poor is terrible in the US. Poverty is highest in the Black community, so the brunt of that injustice is felt there.
Are there bad actors on all sides of the race issue? Of course. Yet, with the advent of videos from just about any person with a cell phone, we are starting to see some of the racial issues in law enforcement.
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RE: “We still have disparities in sentencing, home buying, credit, education and healthcare.”
That’s a good example of fact-free thinking or failure to reason. Specifically, it is neither logical nor rational to assume that the disparities you list imply racism, systemic or otherwise. Also, many such observable disparities are readily explained by the known data. Examples of this abound in the video but, as Dr. Tabor noted, few will take the trouble to learn them.
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It’s worse than not taking the trouble to learn them, it is adamant refusal to accept the facts.
It has been months since the first time I posted the George Floyd medical examiner’s report that established there was no damage to Floyd’s airway and that he was a cardiac basket case with arrhythmia inducing drugs in his system at toxic levels, yet we are still presented with allegations that a knee on his neck was the cause of his death.
How do we discuss the issues when facts are rejected or ignored in favor of support for their narrative.
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“How do we discuss the issues when facts are rejected or ignored in favor of support for their narrative.”
Pot meet kettle.
Yet YOU still deny that the knees of 4 officers on Mr. Floyd’s back was still a contributing factor.
Nothing to do with narrative, just the facts, SGT Friday.
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There were never four officers knees on Floyd. There was one holding him down and 3 watching.
And if you read more carefully, you would see that I pointed out that the knee on his back might have contributed to the shortness of breath, though that is doubtful as Floyd was complaining of breathing problems BEFORE he escaped the police vehicle and was pinned down .
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“There were never four officers knees on Floyd.”
Go back and review the originally released video. At one point all four officers present were on him like flies on fertilizer.
“Doubtful”. Let me ask you this. If you are claiming to be having trouble breathing, would you want ANYONE to kneel on any part of your body? Protect and serve includes paying attention to the well being of those you are arresting. Falls under the 8th Amendment.
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All he had to do was to stop struggling. He was a huge, heavily muscled man, albeit with internal cardiac problems. How do you suggest they hold down a strong, angry man? Push a feather on his head?
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So those who are turned down or pay higher interest rates with all other things being equal except race is just coincidence?
https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-us/magazine/racial-borrowing-gap
Or Black criminals getting longer sentences for the same crimes is just the luck of the draw?
https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/11/17/16668770/us-sentencing-commission-race-booker
Just a comment on long videos. Transcripts are much easier. I watched about 45 minutes and could not recall some of his points or references.
I did recall one thing.
Unarmed black v whites killed by police. No cases to demonstrate the circumstances. No references to shooting without deaths.
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RE: “So those who are turned down or pay higher interest rates with all other things being equal except race is just coincidence?”
Coincidence is one possibility. If you read your own link you might notice that “all other things” are not equal. The point is, just because you can see a disparity doesn’t mean you can draw conclusions from it.
RE: “Or Black criminals getting longer sentences for the same crimes is just the luck of the draw?”
I doubt that’s the case, but I would recommend researching better sources than Vox on this issue. In this case, Vox reports on a study that finds a correlation between sentence length and certain demographic factors (primarily a specific combination of race and sex). But, as you should know, correlation and causation are not the same. One cannot conclude from the study Vox reports on that racism affects criminal sentencing. The report itself emphasizes the point:
“Because multivariate regression analysis cannot control for all of the factors that judges may consider, the results of the analyses presented in this report should be interpreted with caution and should not be taken to suggest discrimination on the part of judges. Multivariate analysis cannot explain why the observed differences in sentencing outcomes exist, but only that they do exist.”
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…”neither logical nor rational to assume that the disparities you list imply racism, systemic or otherwise. ”
Easy for you to say as you have never been a victim of it. It happened to my family years ago and it is still happening today. Denied the purchase of a home because we were a Jewish family.
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