Derek Chauvin murder trial (George Floyd)

Deleted User wrote: »

I don't treat others differently based on their skin colour.

I don't advocate for special treatment based on skin colour.

I believe that everyone to have the same opportunity regardless of skin colour.

I encourage inclusivity based on merit not on skin colour.

I don't encourage non white people to perceive themselves as victims

I oppose any white person who deems themselves as better or more privileged than any non white people.

I don't think that every white on black crime is a crime based or steeped in racism.

I don't immediately assume racism as the most probable cause.

You said you advocate against racism, what you have listed are beliefs or views that indicate you are not racist. But not that you advocate against racism which would be to express the above views, and more specifically, to call a halt to views that are in opposition to yours in a public manner (ie one where you can be identified and observed for doing so).

So do you advocate against racism, or just belief that it is wrong and that you yourself do not practice it? Either is fine, you don't have to answer to me or anyone else on here, I'm just curious as to where exactly you stand given what you have said and because of your opposition on here to people who do publicly call for an end to racism (BLM protest attendees and kneeling footballers for example).

Tell me how wrote: »

You didn't hear of the Eric Garner incident?

Actually yeah, I had completely forgotten that.

Tell me how wrote: »

1 - I'm not saying definitively yes, but I think it is possible/likely.

I think it's possible too. To say it's likely, I need some kind of argument or evidence.

Tell me how wrote: »

2 - The ambivalence with which Chauvin carried himself throughout the incident, hands in pockets, no concern that his actions were being recorded or watched by so many bystanders. 8 minutes is a long time. Something led to Derek Chauvin doing what he did for those 8 minutes and not thinking it was a problem.

'Something', yes. But that something could just as easily be that he's an equal opportunity allround scumbag. 'Something' caused those police officers to sit on Tony Timpa and taunt him as he died. Maybe it's the same 'something', maybe it's different.


But as always, the onus is on those making a claim to support it.

cdeb wrote: »

But without any evidence, how do you distinguish between racist acts and non-racist acts?

Do you just make your own assumption based on what suits you?

That's why we need evidence before making major accusations like you've made.

Sigh, what major accusations have I made? This is a thread in an online forum discussing a very active current affairs topic which has influenced the occurrence of several other very active current affairs topics. Stop making it sound like I just pulled something from thin air.

That aside, to answer the premise of your post, sometimes, you can't, but you look at the reaction of those on all sides of the arguments (and the bigger picture) to determine are things generally moving towards a better place, for everyone involved, or are unacceptable behaviours being passed off as being inconsequential.

GF and Chauvin are significant because they were another incident in a long line of incidents which gave rise to outrage amongst black communities who feel that they are not treated fairly or equally by people who are supposed to treat them in this way.
We will never know definitively what the root cause was, but if we are progressing (we the collective societies in which these events are happening) are progressing, they will happen less and less.

And I know some people are going to point to crime in black areas and say the police have to act like this, and others are going to say race is always turned in to an issue when it is a black person involved with police, but as long as others can point to increase incidents of them being targeted excessively, or prejudicially then you can't say racism definitively isn't a factor any more than I can say it is.

But already I bet that some sergeants have warned their people to not bring another GF incident to his door and to be aware that they are being watched and filmed at all times, and ultimately, that should be a positive thing even if they don't put put a white board with the message 'Don't be racist' when saying this to their officers.

Deleted User wrote: »

I'm sure there are racists who don't give any proof. It still doesn't give you the right to call them one.

I mean, what's to stop anyone calling anyone else a paedophile? They've no evidence but, hey, they might be.

How many incidents are there where people are just called racist out of thin air? I'm sure it has happened, but how many become a talking point or are done so with no basis of any logic behind the accusation?

I just happen to think seeing an officer kneel on someone for 8 minutes as the life drained out of them with a complete lack of concern or empathy as to what was going as enough of a reason to ask the question as to what motivated him to behave in this way.

I end up in a lot of the same conversations on here as you do, people have plenty opportunity to accuse someone of being a racist should they just want to throw that out there, but it doesn't generally happen does it.

cdeb wrote: »

You're saying that Chauvin is a racist, or was racially motivated in his treatment of Floyd. Do you not think that's a major accusation? I do. It's a nasty thing to say about someone if you have no evidence of it.

And you pretty much have pulled that accusation from thin air. Your long post again contains no evidence at all to back up the suggestion that Floyd's death was racially motivated.

The problem I have with that is that if you focus on the wrong thing - and in this case, race appears to be the wrong thing, absent of any evidence to the contrary - you miss the real issues. In this case, that appears to be police training, which appears to be woeful in the US.

But how are you going to fix the real problem if you think the real problem is something else? You can't.

'Don't ask, don't tell' is the message you are giving here. It's a message racists would love to see gain prominence.

And I repeat, I'm not throwing an accusation out there, I'm discussing an active current affairs topic. You're making it sound like no one discussed race in relation to this issue in the 13 months since it happened.

But given you brought up police training, what do you think the BLM protesters who were protesting so much were calling for when they called for reform of current policing practices? The message has been that policing is not working in the best interests of society and yet cop defenders hijacked and focused on the defund message and turned that in to 'They don't want any police' because they knew that would be an easy line to target so as to dismiss the entire discussion.

Deleted User wrote: »

I'm a little confused.

Do you think chauvin is a racist murderer?

I think Chauvin is someone who murdered a man who he showed pretty much total ambivalence towards as to whether he lived or died.

Whether he did this because of his own racist views, because he had been trained in a police force which systematically treated black people in a prejudiced and/or excessive manner or for any other reason I don't know.

What I do know is that when someone murders someone else while working as a police officer who are hired to serve the public then all efforts should be taken to ensure that these types of incidents happen fewer and fewer times going forward.

Ruling out the first or second potential causes for what happened just because there is no clear and irrefutable evidence, will not lead to the opportunity to discover if such things are the root cause of the problem and why this is specifically relevant is because of the frequency of such incidents in which members of a particular race feel that they are not treated in an appropriate manner, often resulting in their death or injury.

Looking at this and the police force in which the officer operates should benefit all people, black white or any other colour if it leads to an improvement in deployment or training. Not looking at it only results in more people being treated unfairly because of the things outside their control.

cdeb wrote: »

No - I'm asking you for evidence that Chauvin was a racist and I'm open to hearing it, but you're not able to tell me any. "Innocent until proven guilty" is the message I'm giving here.


In discussing an active current affairs topic, you are throwing out the accusation that Chauvin acted in a racist manner or was racially motivated.

As for the link you wanted, here you are saying it is "likely" that systemic racism played a role in Chauvin's killing of Floyd. Without any evidence - and you haven't explained how you'd differentiate between a racially motivated action and a non-racially motivated action without any evidence - that's a fairly unfair accusation.

Already gave evidence.

Tell me how wrote: »

You didn't hear of the Eric Garner incident?



1 - I'm not saying definitively yes, but I think it is possible/likely.
2 - The ambivalence with which Chauvin carried himself throughout the incident, hands in pockets, no concern that his actions were being recorded or watched by so many bystanders. 8 minutes is a long time. Something led to Derek Chauvin doing what he did for those 8 minutes and not thinking it was a problem.

(I'm aware his superiors testified that he behaved contrary to recommended dept practices but I can not look past his comfort with what he was doing for such a long time and wonder what led him to think that it was not a problem)

I know you don't agree with it, but you can't say I'm not forming my opinion on something.

Deleted User wrote: »

That's absolutely a strange way of looking at what happened in the aftermath.

There were tonnes of looting, deaths, fires, destruction of property, calls for defining of police, international outrage, the rise to prominence of the racist BLM movement etc.

It was assumed as a racist incident. A violent career criminal was made a martyr, white people were asked to apologise for their privilege, black people were told they were oppressed and were uncle Tom's if they didn't agree.

I've yet to see any evidence of racism in the death of George Floyd. Yet all this bollocks over the last couple of years has been ignited by his death.

Chauvin killed Floyd. He was subsequently arrested, tried and convicted. End of story really.

Biden having dinner with his family, murals on city streets, been lauded as some sort of activist rather than a petty criminal with a drug addiction.

It's all ****e.

Look, you've your own narrative on this, that's fine, we all have opinions but you're clearly misrepresenting some facts that have gone on both within this case and in relation to the topic in general.

Floyd's history is completely irrelevant in the context of his death unless you are advocating for police to be judge, jury and executioner when it comes to how they behave with known or expected criminals.
This incident was recorded start to finish and there is no evidence of Floyd either being violent, or Chauvin knowing him as such.

GF was another incident which contributed to BLM and 'all this bollocks' as you refer to it rather than the start finish and end to the reasons for all the events, incidents, conversations and debates around racism both in the US and elsewhere. Breonna Taylors name was mentioned nearly as much as GF last summer but given his death happened after hers, the growing response focused on that. Colin Kaepernick started his kneeling protest to protest police brutality a full 4 years before GF died.

On all sides of political debates, people make assumptions, frequently to fit their arguments. That's as old as time itself and laypeople do it in the same way if not as publicly.
It's happening right now with blanket statements on another thread on this platform stating that Islam and western society are incompatible with each other. We have a thread on this platform whos sole function is to decry immigration in one country and probably from which a single digit number of people, if any, live who will ever read or contribute to the thread. Would you class that as '****e' or is that reasonable and open debate about a necessary topic. I'm willing to bet there are many times more people living in the US who see the impact of policing on their communities in different ways who post here than there are people living in Sweden who do so and yet at times discussion on BLM, racism, policing topics is attempted to be shut down on here with people saying 'Why do people in Ireland care about what is happening in America'.

Also happening right now is the ongoing search for 150 missing people after a building, which an engineer had determined was at risk of collapsing went ahead and did that in Florida, a state whos Governor lauded the fact that he was pushing deregulation. If there was even a hint that muslim terrorists were involved in something that led to that building collapse there'd be a 500 post thread on here right now saying the last President was right in banning people from such countries coming to the US at the very least.

If people on this thread now who are now saying that they think Chauvins training was at fault for what happened, then surely they can point to posts from the wider BLM threads where they supported calls for refocus of police training and deployment while still insisting the Dept's aren't racist. I think I give people the benefit of the doubt on here but I tend to see a lot of the same posters say no to multiculturalsim, no to BLM protests, no to kneeling to highlight racism while also adamant in claiming there's no evidence of racism in various events and as such it cannot be considered as a factor. Many who invoke the name of a white person who died at the hands of the police as seemingly some sort of evidence that they are not biased rather than seeing it as further evidence that the police often behave both preemptively and prejudicially and frequently disproportionally.

So maybe when we see some people focus more on improving the groups that serve the society in which we live rather than just denounce racism, other people will be less inclined to feel that their racial group is being targeted unfairly.

Sweetemotion wrote: »

Debate you?

What are you going to do?

Tell me to **** off, then edit it to piss off.

Tell me I'm **** when I'm posting and then delete that?

It's you not able to debate.

You said it.

Sweetemotion wrote: »

Top drawer to you.


A lot of waffle and excuses to me.


Who are "these people", you speak off?

How about the poster who has probably thanked a couple hundred posts in this thread, including yours and has a single solitary post as their contribution to the debate.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they have to post in order to thank other posts, but they clearly are spending a lot of time on the thread and yet aren't debating any of the points being made but are cheering pretty much every point they see from one side of the argument.