Hey, @jaketapper, here's my GOP debate question. pic.twitter.com/GAV1bIUyT6
— Bob Schooley (@Rschooley) September 2, 2015
Stacia L. Brown, at Buzzfeed, on how “The social media feeds of young people of color are auto-obituaries — and a corrective to the news narratives of black lives“:
All we need now is a name. Nobody waits for a mugshot or allows media outlets to choose a photo of the slain anymore. The name of the victim — so often black, so often unarmed — is all we need to begin our search.
If the person gunned down or assaulted by a white police officer was at all active on social media, an amorphous online collective of activists and other people who care about the survival of black people will track down their accounts within hours of the first news report. We’ll read their Twitter feeds, share their Instagram photos, circulate their Snapchats. Sleuthing gives us something to do when the news of another police-involved shooting death leaves us at our most helpless…
Mining the digital footprints of the victims of racially motivated crimes for selfies and tweets might seem like a ghoulish activity. And it does sometimes make it feel like the victims are speaking to us from beyond the grave. But when the alternative is to allow law enforcement and traditional media outlets to cherry-pick photos of the deceased to fit their own agenda— he was a thug or he was a child; she was thriving or she was depressed— who could blame us?…
But more recent hashtags responding to the deaths of unarmed black men and women, like #IfIDieInPoliceCustody, have crystallized the grim reality that we may be survived by our tweets. Young people who witness near daily police shootings and racially motivated murders are preparing for the prospect of a life cut short. They’re tweeting everything from hopes for long, successful lives to what they would want others to do in protest of their killing or in lieu of private mourning. “If I’m arrested today please know I’m not suicidal,” one activist wrote. “I have plenty to live for. I did not resist, I’m just black.”…
redshirt
BLM is a hate group – haven’t you heard the latest “news”?
sparrow
I want to point out another place where this applies: the daily, grinding, death-march going on all the time in the inner cities. In Baltimore the news tonight is another 3 young black men killed in shootings.
So many many people, whether they admit it openly or not, comfort themselves that this is somehow “part of the drug trade” or that these kids (yes, kids) were gang members. But this is simply not true. A girl I know actually makes a grim hobby out of researching the deaths, looking up their known records. A lot of them have no criminal records at all. And most of the rest are for minor crap — certainly not worthy of summary death, certainly no evidence that they are running drugs. And even if they are? Do we care less for human life because someone takes a dangerous-ass job working the corner?
I am upset as hell about the police brutality, but I am also upset as hell about the death toll on young kids in my city every fucking day that we do nothing about. Because, duh, they’re black. Imagine 3 white teenagers killed every week. The problem is I really just don’t know what to do. I had high hopes when Dr Kennedy came here with is “Don’t Shoot” program but this unfortunately coincided with the police killing people and then being intransigent assholes, so good luck getting a program that is really about building trust between the community and police to work now.
On the upside, they didn’t throw out the case against Freddie Gray’s killers today, and the judge had harsh words for the defense.
redshirt
@sparrow: Do you have any stats that would show trends in police killings over the last 20 years? And specifically for African-Americans?
rikyrah
If I die in Police custody was some sad reading. But, I understand it. In using the social media to fight the narrative of the MSM of attempting to justify their murder.
Yatsuno
And…stomp.
benw
@redshirt: obviously, since a BLM activist shot that poor cop. I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that’s what happened. Well, that’s what we get when we let a ni-clang president rename a glorious American mountain “black power” in his native Muslim language. Needless to say.
John T
Has anyone else noticed that Mike Brown’s body keeps getting bigger and bigger since he died? Every time I read about him on the internet his height and weight keep inflating. He’s up to 6’4″ and 320 pounds last I heard. He was a boy on the day he was killed, then he turned into a thug after getting riddled with bullets, then he turned into a monster the size of Paul Bunyan in our collective memory.
redshirt
@efgoldman: lol. To hell with Babe.
Citizen Alan
@John T: Demon. The cop actually testified that he looked like a demon.
redshirt
@Citizen Alan: Jesus.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@redshirt:
Part of the problem is that police departments are under NO obligation to report shootings. None. It is completely voluntary. So most studies have to go by either what was voluntarily reported to the FBI, or by newspaper reports. You can’t have a comprehensive study if no one has to keep the statistics you need for it.
That said, a few media outlets have put studies together of their own. One pretty frightening finding is that unarmed black people seem to be far more likely to be shot by police:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/fatal-police-shootings-in-2015-approaching-400-nationwide/2015/05/30/d322256a-058e-11e5-a428-c984eb077d4e_story.html
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@sparrow:
Here in the Los Angeles area, there was a nasty gang war going on between black and Latino gangs where the gang members basically started shooting the first person they saw who belonged to the other race, so you had a lot of completely innocent people being murdered because the fucking gang members were too goddamned lazy to go find actual opposing gang members to kill. I wouldn’t be surprised if a similar dynamic is happening in other areas and totally innocent people are being caught in the cross-fire a lot more often than people realize. “Gang-related shooting” doesn’t necessarily mean that the victim was a gang member.
Kryptik
@John T:
Same thing happened with Trayvon. Same thing will happen with the death of another black kid at the hands of police soon, I’m sure. And again and anon. Black people aren’t people in the public eye, not when police and/or violence are involved. They end up with superhuman size and powers attributed to them, if only to make the violence they experience palatable. To make the narrative that they HAD to be put down.
Black people so very often are not considered people, they’re considered monsters.
Zinsky
I’m afraid all that will be left of any of us is digital footprints, like those we are leaving daily here at BJ.
Another Holocene Human
@sparrow:
WE (white people) REFUSE TO SPEND THE MONEY AND DETECTIVE TIME ON INVESTIGATING HOMICIDES OF YOUNG BLACK PEOPLE THAT WE DO ON YOUNG WHITE PEOPLE.
This is why the homicide rate is so high for young people of color.
Another Holocene Human
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Cue the “he/she shouldn’t have been at that place at that time (walking home, getting into their car, buying milk)”.
Like whatever stupid asshat killed my coworker whom the cops still haven’t found.
Another Holocene Human
@Kryptik:
I had this discussion with my wife recently. Anti-Semitism is similarly contradictory. In the 19th century it was that Jews were poor rabble bringing us down but also SUCH geniuses at finance that if you let them in “the club” they’d take it over so the Presbyterians pre-emptively colluded to cut American Jews out of business deals (also barred them from their country clubs and quota’d them out of their colleges).
Hatred contradicts itself. It contains multitudes. And, yeah, it’s an encapsulated justification for whatever outrage the hater is about to enact on individuals from that group.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
I was shocked to find that my black cowokers were so terrified of this kind of stuff happening in Oakland, Ca that they refuse to even drive freeway threw it.