Here No Longer

Just listened to a Sam Harris podcast that opened my eyes a little bit on the issue of the protests:

He's one of the first people I've come across to legitimately want a real conversation on the real issues here. He makes a few interesting comments that actually seem to be very realistic but aren't the story that always comes across. You can get the gist of what he'll say by about the 20-30 minute mark, but he goes into detail on that take later.

He presents the idea that, actually, race is nowhere near as big of a part of the current issue with policing as BLM presumes, while of course coming to the sensible conclusion that Trump's reaction to this is also complete divisive lunacy. Of course nobody will want to listen to that point of view, though.

I realized that my stance on the issue was being a bit too influenced by being a part of my own minorities of gender identity and sexuality, as well as potentially being part of the autism spectrum. However, I also did find a few things he got wrong, and I'm not going to say there is no racism, because that's plainly untrue and the statistics he recites in this (nearly 2 hour long) podcast show such.

What I WILL say is we should STOP sensationalizing this issue, liberals and the right (especially the further reaches of the right) alike. Sam Harris makes a very logical assertion saying we should treat skin color like we treat hair color. Like it makes no difference to much of anything whether you have blonde or brown hair. The same should apply to the color of a person's skin. Which was exactly what MLK advocated for in the 60's, not this idea that blacks should be more equal than whites.

But there's also a lot more to this issue to unpack that quite frankly would turn into a novel. Like how blacks make a tenth of what whites make on average, or how blacks are more likely to use drugs than whites and therefore get affected more than whites would by the War on Drugs (in a negative way, of course), or also how, in all actuality, statistics show that black and hispanic cops are more likely to have a violent confrontation with a black suspect than white cops are.

If you take anything out of this essay-length status let it be this: the issues of policing and racial inequality are very likely MUCH more complicated than you think regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, and both sides of this discussion are doing immense amounts of harm here. There needs to be an actual conversation here, though of course both sides must make concessions for it to be even possible, like the right needs to concede that the police aren't always right and also to concede that racism indeed exists against blacks, while the liberals need to concede that this is no epidemic and police brutality isn't a race issue. If you can't just compromise and listen to reason, then you're too far gone and there's nothing anybody could say to bring you to sane conclusions. I once again say this to both liberals and the far right and the real left (Kyle Kulinski, Bernie Sanders, etc.) also.

TL;DR: Stop sensationalizing this issue and actually think about how it needs to be fixed. Stop being overtly racist for the sake of it, and also stop sensationalizing the issue of racism to the extreme it has been sensationalized, but instead start a honest conversation (of course allowing such by taking necessary concessions). That's the only way to fix this. And an extra note to the right: peaceful protests whether you like them or not, are protected twice over by the first amendment.