Coming February 6, 2024 . . .
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
Coming February 6, 2024 . . . MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
Nearly 1 in 3 black Americans know someone personally who has died of covid-19, far exceeding their white counterparts, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos pollthat underscores the coronavirus pandemic’s profoundly disparate impact.
The nationwide survey finds that 31 percent of black adults say they know someone firsthand who has been killed by the virus, compared with 17 percent of adults who are Hispanic and 9 percent who are white.
Hard to convince people that race doesn't matter in COVID when the chances of knowing someone who died is high.
Comments
As to your last sentence, I can play that game too. It's hard to convince me that race matters when two of my professional friends (both the kind with white skin) died miserably from Covid without memorials or funeral at too young an age. And I lost a professional acquataince as well, he just turned 90 and had moved with his wife into "senior living" because hah-hah what a joke, it was safer for them there.
And I have lived in total lockdown for several months, my city of businesspeople and tourists of many colors and nationalities is dying and broke. Plus a minor thing: there is little hope that the kind of business I worked in most of my life will ever be possible again. And then there's that I also know how to do restaurant work....what a joke.
But no, we are protesting about police brutality. At a time when ideally people should have been mostly been staying at home and therefore not getting anywhere near police.
And we are protesting about iconography of public statues that are offensive to some. When people really should not be prioritizing worrying about public art expenditures and what kind of decor is there now.
And protesting about Target calling the police about shoplifters when Target has been one of the few essential stores to keep operating in cities and offering fresh fruits and vegetables and full line of groceries.
Best we tear every single statue in this country down, whatever the subject, melt them all down for the metal and hope China buys it for melt. We can make more when there is not a pandemic and we have an economy. We are in desperate, desperate shape.
Here's protesting I could understand at this point in time: that poor people needed more space so that they could isolate better, protesting to give al those empty hotel rooms free of charge to those who were living in crowded homes. Protesting for more help with home schooling. That's the kind of protesting I wished I would have seen. Instead we had protesting against police brutality, when it was not killing anywhere near the number being killed by coronavirus.
Lack of sensible priorities, that's the killer here.
by artappraiser on Sun, 06/28/2020 - 2:27am
I'm sorry about the loss of your friends. The fact that about 1 in 3 black people know someone who died from COVID does not suggest that blacks may feel more threatened? This is not a game. The majority of nursing home deaths were ethnic minorities. Your friends should not have died but we should not be in a situation where almost a third of black people know someone who died of COVID.
Blacks are protesting in public. Blacks tend to have jobs that put them on the front lines of COVID risk. Many do not have the option of staying home. They are told that you should risk your life to stabilize the economy. The risk exists in a crowded home. The risk exists in public.
If after being told that your life doesn't matter you see police abuse, you react. You protest in public. You are already at risk on your job. Many others have already lost employment
In order to vote, they are being told that they will have to risk their lives to get new leadership elected. They expect long lines and obstruction to voting by mail.
Nothing that they do will be correct in your eyes.
BTW: Arranging housing during a pandemic is difficult, but some cities are trying.
You lack empathy for those outside your circle.
https://www.streetsensemedia.org/article/coordinated-entry-coronavirus-cahp/#.XvlDSC01hOk
Finally, you do not get to choose what people protest. Some police departments are changing. Some abuse cases are being reopened. Some corporations are re-evaluating their practices. Baby steps.
Again, in the words of Roxane Gay
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/20/opinion/how-we-fight-racism.html
by rmrd0000 on Sun, 06/28/2020 - 9:45pm
Priorities....
by artappraiser on Tue, 06/30/2020 - 7:22pm
Priorities. The officer who is alleged to have murdered George Floyd had multiple charges of abuse before he got to Floyd. This pathetic response is laughable. Police reform is not just about the murders, it is about the abuse that allows officers to be in a position to commit the murders
https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/04/24/usa-today-revealing-misconduct-records-police-cops/3223984002/
Mac Donald's WSJ article.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-myth-of-systemic-police-racism-11591119883
"Cough". The data Heather MacDonald uses is incomplete. We do not know how many people are killed by the people because the data is not kept in an organized fashion. In addition, Heather telegraphs her bias.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/tippling/2020/06/08/the-myth-of-heather-macdonalds-the-myth-of-systematic-police-racism/
Mac Donald wants the number to be 10, but has no basis in fact because the true number is unknown. We have deaths of unarmed black men and we have police abuse. Finding a solution is a priority.
Edit to add:
Another takedown of the article this one focuses on the article suture. She cites data without providing links, feels the need to attack Obama, and ignores the entire range of encounters police have with black people.
https://medium.com/@mikeskessler/the-problems-with-the-wall-street-journals-myth-of-systemic-police-racism-op-ed-cab41e5ee2ec
"Cough".
by rmrd0000 on Tue, 06/30/2020 - 10:29pm