SpoonDog

If either made an offer because you were white or male and the other candidates weren't, would you have accepted the position?

Affirmative action is not admission black folks can't compete fairly with white folks. It's an acknowledgement white folks won't let them. We see it in housing, in healthcare, in employment, in policing. We see it here.

Mitch, this is why I always have to be so skeptical of your claims. lawenforcementtoday.com is not National Public Radio. An op-ed is not an objective news article. The NPR author tells us: "As a Latino, I've had non-Latino friends ask me to recommend Latin American authors and novels. This is fine, and welcomed. But if all I have to offer the curious-minded is literature that comes from people who look like me, speak my language, or come from where I come from, that's a problem." The lawenforcementtoday.com author hears: "The article is simply saying that reading too many books by white authors can be a problem" The NPR author isn't simply stating that. There's value in doing your own thinking, instead of letting others do it for you. The NPR piece clocks in under 800 words- it's an easy read. No enormous time commitment to do your own research, or at least double-check the information you're receiving is accurate. The lawenforcementtoday.com guy knows you won't do that.

Sure. White guy gets a job because of merit, black guy gets a job because of race. People rely on that particular crutch because they can't imagine black folks competitive for the same position, much less more qualified. Can't imagine living in a society that values people for their talents, so they turn to the most obvious difference between them and the other candidate. It's an easy, comfortable way of avoiding any sort of serious self-reflection. Find a way to blame the other guy, and you don't have to work on yourself. Been there. I remember being young and dumb, with a rejection letter from my dream school, thinking they must have had to fill some quota. Could've just kept going down that hole, beating my head against the wall. Instead I extracted my head from my rectum and gave it some serious thought. Turns out it didn't have anything to do with race, I wasn't lighting the world on fire with grades and it was a pretty competitive school. But chalking it up to skin color meant I had no control. Didn't require me to work harder. Didn't require me to be more competitive. If affirmative action is holding white folks back in the workplace....be a stronger candidate. White folks invested a lot of time and energy making certain black folks couldn't be doctors, lawyers, landowners, business owners, politicians, soldiers, scientists, engineers, jockeys, golfers, baseball players, ballerinas...all based on the color of their skin. White folks were totally comfortable with race-based hiring right up until the moment it didn't exclusively benefit them- once we applied the same idea to everyone, the idea was unconscionable. Affirmative action shows us that when black folks are treated equally, some subset of white folks cries foul about being treated unfairly. Affirmative action isn't a panacea- if it were, we'd see far more black doctors, lawyers, scientists, CEOs, politicians, etc. We don't. But it is an example of the sort of tough, uncomfortable policy we have to put in place because we understand some subset of white America can't imagine black folks being treated equally. It's the sort of policy we need if we're going to be honest about identifying and minimizing prejudice in our society.

Takes two to tango. If race relations get worse it's because some demographic group out there resents the idea black folks and white folks ought to play by the same set of rules. Who do you think that demographic group is, and what work would you suggest they do in order to overcome their prejudice?

I get it. Protest is constitutionally protected, and calling them something else means we don't have to think too critically about how police have responded. I'm just saying if you think the State shouldn't violate your rights, it shouldn't be some impossible logical leap to say the State shouldn't violate other people's rights, either. If the way peaceful protestors have been treated was unambiguously in line with the values which define our nation, we wouldn't have to do these sort of mental gymnastics.

...oh. Well at least you've live streamed dozens of these protests beginning to end, without editing or interruption, to really see what's happening in context. A lot of people aren't even doing that. They're trying to pass off secondhand information like it's an eyewitness account. Cobbling together clips and soundbites and talking heads that confirm their own worldview. When we can compare secondhand reports with our own firsthand experiences, we can arrive at a better understanding of how representative those reports are. You may have seen 10-15% of protestors acting up. Maybe that isn't representative. Maybe it's the ceiling, not the floor. We can agree the overwhelming number of protestors are nonviolent. And every one of those peaceful protestors is granted the same constitutional protections you are. That's why I don't understand how anyone can or should defend police violating the constitutional rights of peaceful protestors. Resigning or playing possum in solidarity with officers violating the constitutional rights of peaceful protestors. Arresting journalists, shooting them with pepper bullets, preventing them from leaving their office to do their job, in violation of their constitutional rights. I don't know why the Don't Tread on Me crowd can suddenly justify the State violating its citizen's rights. I think criminal behavior should be treated as such, whether it's looting or police brutality.

I've only been to four of the protests in person. Some of them were only a few dozen people, some were a few thousand. Just a bunch of folks, walking with police, carrying signs. At the smaller protests it was just a couple speakers and a PA, mothers and fathers talking to an audience about how scared they are their kids won't come home. Not once, at any of them, did anyone burn anything down. No riots, no looting. No one flipping cars, no one throwing molotov cocktails, no one throwing bottles, no strategically placed pallets of bricks. No shoving, no shooting, no chokeholds, no rubber bullets, no tear gas, no mace. So the 1% figure (and really, 1% is pretty generous) is based on my own personal experience of these protests. If some significant proportion of protestors were violent, I would've had a very different experience. Maybe you've gone to dozens more protests than I have, and maybe you've had dramatically different experiences at them. Whatever percentage you think it is, I hope it's based off what you've actually experienced firsthand, and not just what someone on the television told you to believe. Because we both know mainstream media is biased and unreliable, it'd be awkward to suggest we've drawn some unbiased, reliable conclusions from them. So how many protests did you have to go to, in person, to reach your conclusion?

Thank you for the civics lesson, I couldn't remember which section of the constitution grants citizenship based on hyphenation.

Columbus spilled a ton of ink, in his journals and correspondence, what great slaves these new people will make. He tells us about how he captured a couple, kept them captive in his ship, and brought them to Spain to be used as servants. He tells us about how it'd only take 50 soldiers to subjugate the population, he tells us about finding the best-looking native woman as a gift for a friend. He tells us how great the slaves are, how productive the slaves are, how valuable the slaves are, what a benefit the slaves are for the crown. The guy wasn't funding his explorations with tomatoes. Surely Columbus knew his own business better than any of us. If Columbus was such an honest and reliable fella that he's earned a statue, surely we can put some faith in his own written record.

Apples aren't a type of peach. Black people are a type of people. If we have to reduce people to fruit, you're arguing the largely cosmetic differences between clingstone and freestone are irreconcilable. I think that's a pretty extreme position. We can acknowledge they're different types of peaches AND acknowledge they're still both peaches. Acknowledging differences isn't racist. Using those differences to justify bias and discrimination is racist. "That person is a black person" isn't racist. "I'm not hiring that person because they're a black person" is racist. You can acknowledge the difference without using the difference to discriminate against them. I think the idea that differences "preclude any attempt to establish any equality" is defeatist and wrong-headed. As a society, we've overcome bias before. Ask Irish-Americans.

Protestors deserve what, Mitch? All of the rights you're claiming exist because someone else protested for them. Sometimes, they protested in ways contemporary power structures deemed inappropriate. If you're absolutely certain that's completely out of bounds...I guess you're welcome to cede some of those rights. What would you like to give up? Washington, Franklin, Jefferson et al. weren't playing by the rules. Personally, I doubt our founding fathers would've created legislation which implicated them in a crime, but obviously wee disagree. How do you think our founding fathers ought to be punished for protesting?

I hope someday you realize how your own experience undermines this statement. Lots. Tons. That's why malpractice insurance exists. I'd be over the moon if officers had to carry malpractice insurance.

I think it's interesting that you're deflecting. If 1% of protestors are bad, that means police are beating and macing and tear gassing thousand of innocent people. All over the country. That's something you're comfortable with?

You and I have different experiences with police than black folks do. George Floyd wasn't fighting, Breonna Taylor wasn't fighting, they both died. Neither of them get their day in court. If sleeping in your own bed is what gets you killed..I don't know what level of respect you need to display to prevent that. Do you?

More or less cherry picked than castigating all protestors as looters and thugs burning down their own businesses? I'd like to learn more about your sudden interest in objectivity. Even if true, I'm not reassured by the idea cops murder as many innocent white folks as they do innocent black folks. I don't think the police should murder ANY innocent people. We've established you're really interested in the Constitution, so you know about due process. We can both agree police shouldn't be killing any innocent people.

Define abstract poverty.

Also just the idea that counterfeiting is a capital offense. I remember kids passing around fake $20's in the high school lunch room in suburban St. Louis to pay for french fries and breadsticks. If the same rules applied...

In many instances, the police aren't making a distinction between protestors and criminals. The President's attempts to label "antifa" a terrorist organization is, by definition, an attempt at criminalizing protest. Oneshot- I'd imagine one of the four officers involved would have, say, handcuffs. I've never held my knee against the neck of another human being for eight and a half minutes because I'm reasonably certain what the outcome would be. SURELY there's a way of holding suspects that doesn't wind up killing them. If not, we need to rethink policing.

Put anyone on a coin. Put no one. Lady Liberty was on every coin for 100+ years and no one fretted about it. Make America's coinage great again. People are complicated, then and now. Washington, Jefferson, Franklin- every single one of them was a complicated, conflicted person. And I think what a lot of folks are asking for is a more robust history- flaws and all. Lyndon Johnson was a racist. He was also a civil rights advocate. Nuance, like Terrierman said. There are folks right and left who demand ideological purity, and I wish life were that easy and obvious and black and white. But for a lot of us...you just have to be honest with yourself and with others.

Mitch, you know George Floyd wasn't burning anything down. And you know Breonna Taylor was asleep in her bed when police knocked down the door and killed her. I'm sure you've seen the videos of police shooting credentialed journalists with pepper bullets. Arresting credentialed journalists, in defiance of the Constitution they swore to uphold and you obviously value. You know peaceful protestors are still being shot and killed and beaten and maced and gassed, despite the fact they're peaceful protestors. I don't think anyone should be defending or rationalizing that decision, police, civilian, or otherwise. Do you?

I just like the irony. What was the name of the chief Christopher Columbus met? What was his wife's name? His father's name? How did the dynasty come into being, how long had it existed? Did they even have a dynasty, or some other form of government? What were their holidays? What were their gods? What language did they speak? How did their economy function? Who were their heroes? What statues did they erect? What did they eat? What did they grow? Who were their enemies? Who were their allies? I don't know, and you don't either, largely because Christopher Columbus and folks like him were so wildly successful at erasing their history. Yeah, they kidnapped people. Enslaved them. Murdered them. They defaced and destroyed temples, religious and military monuments, burned books, tapestries, art, and cultural objects, looted homes, palaces, and graves, prohibited the speaking of native language and the practicing of native religion. If erasing history is bad, Christopher Columbus isn't the hill you want to die on. That's the irony. If you think what protestors are doing today is beyond the pale, I wish you could've seen what Christopher Columbus did.

...man. If protesting is now domestic terrorism, and the folks shooting/beating/macing/gassing them are heroes... we seriously need to revisit those two terms.

Auditing MDC is one of the legislature's favorite pastimes, and it's pretty rare for them to find glaring mismanagement of our taxdollars. There's already oversight, and it's showing MDC is a far better steward of public funds than many of the other state agencies. For me, that's enough. Costs go up, irrespective of whether you're a public or a private entity. Insurance, wages, retirement benefits, materials, utilities, maintaining and replacing infrastructure, trout chow- all those costs increase. MDC may not pay property taxes (although don't they reimburse some counties for lost tax revenue?), but they may be paying other taxes and fees. They're paying contract loggers, they're paying the dude to pump out the pit toilets- those costs go up through time. If MDC needs to adjust permit fees to cover those increasing costs, it seems reasonable to me. A trout tag at Montauk is still far cheaper than a day at a private trout farm. For the extra dollar tacked onto license fees, hunters and anglers maintain half a million acres of public access. There's probably some permitholders in this state who could afford that level of access all on their own, but not many. Purchasing your own private land for hunting or recreation isn't cheap. Managing it for wildlife isn't cheap. Hunting leases aren't cheap. If we're gonna talk bout cost reductions, we ought to acknowledge the tremendous savings gained by supporting public lands. As for the CWD regs, my read is that they're only affecting the CWD management zones. As far as I know, neither Boone nor Callaway county are within CWD management zones. You may not be effected.

It's easy to shout "cut costs!" in the abstract, up until the point it directly effects the person shouting. Let's cut to the chase. Post up the conservation areas, the fishing accesses, the shooting ranges, nature centers, programs, or cost-share opportunities you use, that you're willing to see go away. Not some obscure conservation area across the state you've never been visited, because everyone already knows it's easier and less painful to burden someone else with the consequences of your actions than it is to own them. So which of your favorite spots to hunt or fish or enjoy the outdoors will you give up in the interest of cost reduction? Let's share.