AS269: Rondale and Jabari on Black Lives Matter

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Atheistically Speaking. This is episode 269, and I'm your host, Thomas Smith. Alright, I've got something great planned for you this week. We're going to hear a discussion about Black Lives Matter between, well, among me and two other black atheists who might not have the same views on it, and, I think, that is a really cool thing to be able to explore. So, without further ado, let's get over to it. Joining me right now is Jabari. How you doing, Jabari?

0:00:59 Unattributed: Doing all right, thanks, Thomas. I'm

0:01:01 Thomas: And Rondale. How's it going, Rondale?

0:01:04 Unattributed: Doing okay, yeah.

0:01:05 Thomas: Now, I think you've been on the show before, right? Wasn't that a few years ago?

0:01:08 Unattributed: Yeah, I think it was just a few months ago, I, I think, uh, end of last year maybe, yeah.

0:01:12 Thomas: Oh, well, that's like seven months ago, right. I don't count that. No, that's, like, 10 months ago? That's almost a year. So, I'm going to say, sorry, time flies. I can't keep track of how long it's been. I felt like it was longer, or like way back when I first started, but okay. Either way, Rondale's been on the show before. Happy to have him back. Happy to have Jabari, who I met through Eli. And I sort of just wanted to have you guys on and just talk about some issues involving like Black Lives Matter and that sort of thing. I kind of want to tell the audience what's going on because I had first who wanted to talk about some things he maybe some views he agreed with, when I had the Chicago police officer on. And so what I was worried about, though, and I'm just going to come clean and say it was, I didn't want to have have Rondale on to maybe talk some things that he didn't like about Black Lives Matter and that

0:01:16 Unattributed: Yeah. I

0:02:09 Thomas: Sort of thing and just have it be some sort of token black guy thing like Fox News does where they get like, hey, we got a black guy on to talk shit on Black Lives Matter. So I was actually concerned about that because I don't want to do that because I think that's kind of BS. So I wanted to make sure I have all sides represented and Eli put me in touch with Jabari who, if I have it right, Jabari, let me know. You are very pro Black Lives Matter and somewhat active in that, right? Is that right?

0:02:18 Unattributed: Yeah.

0:02:36 Unattributed: I'm strongly pro-Black Lives Matter, that's a real... right.

0:02:38 Thomas: Okay, awesome. So I just wanted to make sure that we can get all views represented and I'm not, you know, being unfair to any side that's not getting represented. And with that said, though, I'm very interested to see where you guys might agree or disagree. What do you think, Rondale? Do you want to try to set up the things you were identifying that you maybe agreed with the police officer episode on or something like that?

0:02:39 Unattributed: Yeah.

0:03:00 Unattributed: So, so one of the things, uh, well, one thing I want to start off by saying is, um, you know, I've been personally, uh, affected by having a family member killed by a police officer, uh, I had a cousin that was killed back in 2006 by a police officer in, uh, Harford, Connecticut, so, you know, I, I felt the pain, I, I understand where everybody's coming from, um, but To Start, yeah.

0:03:19 Thomas: Do Do you mind just telling us like a tiny bit about that? Like, what was it accidental? Was it, what happened? Or if it's okay, if you're not comfortable talking about it.

0:03:26 Unattributed: No. No, no, I'm perfectly, uh, comfortable talking about the incident, so, um, basically what, what happened, I had a cousin that was stopped by a police officer. The police officer was sitting in his vehicle right behind my cousin. And he thought that my cousin was selling drugs and he thought that he was reaching for a weapon in the center console of his vehicle and shot through the back of his car and shot him in the back of the head.

0:03:52 Thomas: Wow.

0:03:52 Unattributed: Yeah. And the police officer, I think the, the case might have lasted, like, I want to say about eight years, because I believe I've just recently, like the jury came to a verdict and said that the police officer was going to be found not guilty and he was let off, but he's No longer a police officer. So I would like to preface everything I'm about to say by saying I do think that there are some cases where police officers are in the wrong. They do do the wrong thing. I'm not like the black police sheriff from Wisconsin, I believe, who thinks that all police officers aren't the greatest thing in the world. They never make any mistakes, right? I think they're people just like everyone else. They make mistakes, stakes. But I definitely agreed with the police officer that you had on.

0:04:14 Thomas: Jeez. Okay.

0:04:43 Thomas: It Elizabeth was the police officer from Chicago I had on, just to let you know, Jabari.

0:04:49 Unattributed: So A former military member, I think that there's a lot of things I've learned in training that police officers also learn. And I think a lot civilians don't have a complete understanding of what it's like to be on the police officer's side of things, right, I think they don't understand, like, hey, when, when you're a police officer, you're going into a lot of high crime areas, you need to watch your back, you need kind of be rough with some people so that they can, you listen to your direction, right, I'm not saying that it needs to happen all the time, but if you're dealing with terrorists, uh, you know, when we talk about in the context of the military, you know, if you don't act a certain way, if you don't present a certain presence, you will not be listened to, right? So there were some things like that, you know, I agreed with her about.

0:05:36 Unattributed: And when it came to the police shooting down in Baton Rouge, her statement on how she think that one, and she said that, I think she said something along the lines of, hey, she would have done some of the same things that the police officer did in that situation. I believe her, you Know, I believe that there's a heightened sense of fear when you're arresting somebody and they're reaching for something to shoot them, whether they're white or black. And so I agreed with her on some of those things.

0:06:03 Thomas: Interesting. Well, is that enough to go on, Jabari? What do you think?

0:06:06 Unattributed: Yeah. I mean, I can talk a little bit more about just, well, my thoughts have always, you know, of police being in difficult situations, high stress, making snap decisions. Yeah. I mean I totally, I totally get all that. And I would never say a police officer's job isn't hard. My counter to that argument has always been like, you know there are other jobs that are pretty pretty difficult.

And I mean, if there were, if there were an epidemic of surgeons accidentally, you know, killing black people, um, and a higher proportions than what, than white people, that would be something we examine. And, uh, you wouldn't need to start, you know, we need to have a whole bunch of legislation addressing whether or not these surgeons are racist or, or what, but you wouldn't eat to address what are the underlying causes causing these surgeons to accidentally kill, um black people at a much higher rate.

So, and you would need to do, um create policies to address those discrepancies. So, I mean for me, it's never been an issue of, is the police job hard and do we excuse them because their job is difficult, but more so how do we accept that it's a difficult job and also acknowledge that the current discrepancy in lives lost is unacceptable?

0:07:05 Unattributed: Well, I'm not saying that you should excuse them or anything like that, but I do believe that the statistics show that there's a higher rate of crime in urban communities. And I say urban not to say, it's not a cover word for black, but urban communities because there are poor white people, there are poorer Hispanic people, people that all live in, you know, inner cities, right? Like I've lived in the Bronx, I lived in Hartford, Connecticut, I've left in,you know, locations where there was a, you know, a diverse amount of people, right. And I think when you have high crime areas, right, and there's, you, know,a lot of black people in those areas and they're committing more of the crimes in the United States, then I do think that they're going to have more run-ins with the police and therefore, you You know, there's going to be a higher rate of, you police instances where they are shot.

0:07:52 Unattributed: But even with that being said, I believe Roland Fryer's study displayed that that's actually not true, right? I believe the number is something like there are, if you're black, I think the number is like 23.8% less likely of being shot by the police officers, right. Now, of course, white people make up a higher percentage of the population, but to me, it's pretty staggering that we make up only about 13% of the population, and yet we're being somehow involved with the police at a higher rate, but we also have less of a chance of being killed. To me, that sort of nullifies the argument that Black Lives Matter, one of the arguments that Black Lives Matter is trying to make that, you know, black people are killed more often than white folks are.

0:08:43 Thomas: Let me frame that over to Jabari, maybe using his analogy. You use the surgeon analogy. If you assume, you know, if you say, oh, lots of black people are dying in surgery, what's going on? And then you find out, well, it turns out they're operating on a higher proportion of a disproportionate number of black people. And so that's why surgeons are killing more black people. Does that fit your analogy or where does that break down for you?

0:08:50 Unattributed: Yeah, that does. That does. And then, you Know, not to dive too much, and I don't want to keep diving, pushing into this analogy, but then you have to address like, well, what are some, you root causes of the, you know, the disproportionateness of, like, people going to the surgery, or in this case, dealing with the police. I mean, it's not an issue of just being in high crime areas. I means, you have, for example, I live in New York, and we had the stop and frisk policy. Now, that was highly targeting black and brown people. So you know it's, then that's the issue where there is profiling. You know what I mean? Like, why is it that you are much more likely to get arrested for marijuana if you're black than you're white? Like I mean I will, agree. I will agree. Yes, Black people, especially in urban communities, do get arrested more, do get stopped by the police more. But we must tie that into the fact that they are also getting profiled more. And that is something to address, which is, I mean, that there are other factors.

I mean it's not to say there are high crime areas. There are also highly profiled areas. Right, right. But don't you think part of the reason that they're highly profilled though is because there is higher crime, right? And I guess this is maybe partly a chicken or egg, you know, type of argument, like what came first, the higher crime or the police brutality or whatnot.

0:09:33 Thomas: Right.

0:10:21 Unattributed: But if you have more crime, you don't know in those specific areas, don't you think the police are going to say, hey, you know what, one, it's a lot easier for us to do our job and get arrested in those areas, but two, like we must really have a presence in that area to try to keep that area safe, right, and then, you You know, one of the other things I'll say about like Stop and Fist, I can't remember the name of the book, but there are a lot of black middle class Americans that were supporters of Stop and Frist, right? When I believe Rudy Giuliani came to office and proposed that, I mean, overwhelmingly, like a number of black Democrats and conservatives, you know, were like, hey, this is something that we won't put in place. And I wish I could remember the title of the books, but it was a book that I remember reading back in college that detailed just that phenomenon. Oh, that's fine. I mean, I'm sure there were plenty of people that were in favor of it when it started.

0:11:09 Unattributed: I think when the numbers came out at the end and saw that they were actually just stopping a lot of black and brown people for almost no reason other than like standing on the wrong corner or anything.

0:11:31 Unattributed: I mean these gangs and stuff were not there in the sixties. Uh, and you know, we did, we did have the, uh, we didn't have the police problems way long before that. I mean, that's what the black Panthers arose out of, which was black people deciding to, you know walk around with, you help police their neighborhoods from police terror. So in terms of chicken and egg, I mean a lot of these things that people blame the crime for, like the drugs, the uh, the, the uh the guns, everything, these, a lot of things were not in the community 40 years ago, they are a direct environmental result of racist policies. What do you mean by they were not in the communities 40 to 60 years ago? Because, so by the way, I have a bachelor's degree in history. I want to be a history professor. And I actually studied the Black Panther Party extensively and a lot of the groups that were formed as offshoots of the Black Panthers Party, right?

0:12:21 Unattributed: So what do you means like these things weren't happening? Because as far as I know, these things were also happening. Now, I'm not saying that there wasn't any, you know, police brutality back then. There was. There was definitely police brutality. And I understand why the Black Panther Party came to be and whatnot. And I would agree with, you Know, I would disagree with a lot of reasons why they came into fruition 40, 60 years ago.

But what do you mean, like, there was no violence, there wasn't no gang activity? Because there were. As a matter of fact, I believe, like the Crips and Bloods, for example, were offshoots, you of the Black Panther Party in some form or fashion.

Yeah, I'm specifically saying that if you go back into the 1950s, 1960s, the gangs and gun violence that plague the Black community now are, I think, direct responses to the policies such as keeping Black people out of certain housing markets, keeping them out of ghettoizing the neighborhoods, And also notions of drugs coming into the communities, like crack coming into communities in the 80s, things like that. Are you saying because of the policies that were put in place by, by the United States government, you're saying that created the, uh, you know, the the drug violence and the drug dealing and things like that? So, so are you saying by that token, are you saying that blacks have no, no agency to make these decisions for themselves?

Because, because I mean, I can tell you right now, like, I feel like, or two successful, you know, Black people, I'm pretty sure you probably, the chances are you grew up in a, you knows, tough inner city community just as well as I did. You know, we have agency. You have the ability to not make those choices. Even if you have the most racist policies out there, you now, in this country, you still have the abilities to work your way out of that.

0:14:06 Unattributed: So, how do you, so, so I just don't get the correlation between, well, how this This automatically causes – well, I do get it. I have my own reasons why I think that this happens. But – I think if you took a bunch of white people, put them in – one community denied them housing, kept them from moving out to the suburbs, created large urban areas that are just white people denied them jobs, and put many oppressive policies on them also. Also, if their neighborhoods pump hard, if there were drugs that were prevalent and you heavily targeted white people for them, I believe the confluence of those factors would lead to drug and gang violence in white urban communities.

0:14:54 Unattributed: I think if you did all those things, you would get the same result. And I'm not, yeah, I don't want to make it sound like I'm trying to excuse the Black community and saying we have no agency. But in terms of understanding the root cause of these, we need to address the policies that ultimately lead to violence in the community, lack of jobs, marijuana should not be illegal, many drugs should be decriminalized. We need to take out, um, certain, yeah.

0:15:22 Thomas: Maybe we can take a step back. This is great discussion. Great discussion. Absolutely great discussion. But I'm wondering, Jabari, maybe we should take a step back and I want to ask you what you see Black Lives Matter is representing and what you see as the goals there. Because I'm just curious, people see it so many different ways and people, you know, a lot of people cherry pick bad examples and say, oh, this is what it means. It means, you know, they want they want to kill cops or whatever it is. What do you see as kind of is it just, oh, we need to end police violence or is it, oh. Not only that, but we have these root issues that we need to address. What do you see is kind of the overarching strategy and goal of Black Lives Matter?

0:16:03 Unattributed: Right, there's, I mean, there's the vision, there's that, I have a dream, of Black Lives Matter, which, um, I think, when, I can't speak for, I mean, I'm not the founder, originator or anything, but I do. See like an overarching vision of dealing with these systemic issues of racism, which may never go away, and that's great because we need, two, well, not great, but that's, um, that allows us to continue in the conversation in perpetuity and eventually strive toward that time where we do not have these root causes of racial injustice and therefore social injustice. And at the concrete level, there are tons of policy things that Black Lives Matter is addressing through Campaign Zero, which for some reason don't make it into the media. I'm not sure if that's.

0:16:10 Thomas: Sure.

0:16:39 Unattributed: Willful or just, sure, we need, yeah, I don't know why. Yeah, that's the thing, which is weird. The media only shows black people marching and chanting and not anything about the specific acts to, for example, make fairer police union contracts, say things like maybe we should have – if an investigator is investigating a police officer who's murdered somebody for the murder, they not be kept from investigating other things the officer might have done. There's That there's also, you know, break, I'm ending for-profit policing or ending broke broken windows policing. There's... there's demilitarizing police, because it does psychological things to you. I mean, I've been out protesting and then it's it's different dealing with the, you know, a cop in riot gear versus a cop whose face you can see.

0:16:39 Thomas: Can you tell us about that? Yeah, I don't know about Campaign Zero. Hmm.

0:17:06 Thomas: Right.

0:17:23 Thomas: What about so what is Campaign Zero? Zero, just on a basic level. Is this part of Black Lives Matter or is it a, or is it separate or?

0:17:30 Unattributed: It's Absolutely part about Black Lives Matter. Is started by, I forget the names of who I'm, who founded, I've founded it, but it is a notion to address policy issues, which

0:17:32 Thomas: Okay. Okay. So it's like a strategy, like that's interesting. Yeah. I haven't heard much about that and I'm, I'm glad to get the word out, but so that sounds like very tangible strategies that, the Black Lives matter has. Do you see it Jabari as a weakness that maybe that people don't know what's going on with Black Lives Matter sometimes and that anybody can, like, I almost wonder if there needs to be more top-down organization so that people can say, oh, this is what the movement is, or is that just impossible because basically anyone can say like, oh yeah, Black Lives Mater, and then you think they're a spokesman for it.

0:18:13 Unattributed: I think at this point, it's it, I would, I would say I would support top down organization. I mean, I'm I'm a huge fan of grassroots organizing there. But at this moment, we're trying to get policy initiatives done. It's great to have figureheads, people that, you know, can go on to media, say media sites or media and say these are the things that are being demanded. Because as of now, I think a big part of the reason why it's getting portrayed as just a faceless entity that just marches around asking to kill cops is because we don't have specific figureheads that media can turn to that are demanding the things of Campaign Zero or demanding the specific policy changes.

0:18:54 Thomas: So what do you think about all that, Rondale? Are there any things that come to your mind that you you think black lives matter is, is doing wrong or, or any criticisms you have for the movement? I'm curious.

0:19:04 Unattributed: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So definitely. Definitely. So one of the issues that I saw when I did like my senior thesis in college, by the way, was on like the Black Panther Party. Right. And I actually did a paper on like The Expatriation of Black Panthers and why I believe the Black Panther Party fell apart. And I think this plays directly into Black Lives Matter in some form or fashion. I think what happens is I do think being this grassroots organization is kind of hurting Black Lives Matters in a lot of ways. Although I see like with their recent – I believe they just created a website where they put out their statements and there's community leaders, there's different chapters. So it's like the organization is starting to come together. But I think one of the criticisms that I have and my main reason for kind of talking about this, I think when any – anytime you do something like you block people from speaking on stage at certain universities, when you block highways, when we do things like that, I think you take away from your, your message, right?

0:20:02 Unattributed: Because of course the media is going to want to highlight that. And I think Jabari would agree with that. Right. Um, and so, and so I don't know. Okay. Okay, so maybe you don't, but, but I, but but I think anytime you, you, you do things that are affecting other people in a negative way, I think the media is going to highlight those things. And then I think that's going to impact your message in a negative way, right? You can have the most positive message in the world or whatever you could call for protest.

The Black Panther Party did the same exact thing, right, but what the media did to the Black Panther Party is they highlighted the most negative aspects of them, and so the people that would be supporters of them were just like, no, I want nothing to do with that organization, and then you have opposing figures, you know, most likely, you know the alt-right, you know, who'll come out and say, well, look, they're just a bunch of you niggers or something like that for doing what they're doing, and then people like, well, there's no way we should, you know, respect that organization. That's that, that is one of my criticisms, uh, of

0:20:09 Thomas: What do

0:21:02 Unattributed: Them. So, but I think everything else that, uh, Jabari had to say about them, you know, wanted to, uh, fix certain things within, like, the police department, when I can agree with some of those things.

0:21:11 Thomas: You think Jabari?

0:21:13 Unattributed: Okay. I promise you, if Black Lives Matter did the most respectable protest, they weren't even blocking a highway. They all went to their local police station and just held out with signs to dance. Fox News, the alt-right, the far conservatives would still misconstrue that into their narrative. They would say Black Lives Matter. They will say Black Lives Matter. Right, right. So let me clarify what I'm saying. I 100% agree with you. Those people would always exist, right? I will also make the argument you always have a small percentage of racists out there, no matter what you try to do to try to combat racism, right, so I would agree with you, but I think that there are other people, you know, on the left, I think there are other Blacks that would love to, you knows, support what people are doing, but there are people like, hey, you now what, I don't want to be a part of that movement because I see all the crazy things that they're doing, and I don't want to a part that.

0:22:02 Unattributed: Those are groups of people I'm talking about. There's nothing you can do about Fox News commentators. There's nothing you do about Breitbart reporting and stuff like that, or Miley, you know, Yiannopoulos, or people like that. You can't do anything about those people, right? I'm a believer you cannot control anyone's reaction to Black Lives Matter. I mean, you cannot control anybody's experience. So, I mean, yes, there are people on the left are like, oh, no, they ruined my brunch, and, like, that's, uh, that's Um, that's like something that's out of our, out of the control, and I mean it's again, it's, I mean, you could do the most peaceful thing. Rosa Parks just sat down in front of a bus, and then and pissed off, you know, a lot of people. The barn of the king marched across a bridge, he shut down that bridge, smoking moving into away from Selma, and again, very peaceful action versus how was it portrayed in the media.

So it's not even this issue of, um, the Black Lives Matter is doing things that are, uh, that that disruption is hurting their cause. It's that there are people that don't want to care and they look for a way to justify their apathy. And this is very prevalent. And Martin Luther King referred to it as one of the greatest threats being the moderate white. It is these people that you kind of care. You would help them.

But if they did it, if the civil rights movement was protesting in the right way, and there are people today, they're like, I like Black Lives Matter, but they need to protest in the right way.

0:22:30 Thomas: Let me,

0:23:21 Unattributed: I know it's bad that these people are dying, but I want them, I don't know if they should, you know, block this highway. I just, maybe they can, you know, protest at this time on this day in this location, you'll make it convenient for me. And, um, that's, uh, that kind of defeats the purpose. Uh, protest is not supposed to be, uh, convenience. Um, the reason people say that is because they want to, to, um. Not be involved. I mean, if, if it's, if not happening in the streets where people can see it, then they can conveniently ignore it, right.

0:23:53 Thomas: I wanted to put something out there and I'm, I'm honestly not sure like, you know, what you guys will think about it. So I'm not sure who to phrase it as a question too, but let me just put this point out there and I can get whoever wants to react. One of the things I see is potentially, I don't know if it's an issue or if it is just something that you can't control because it is a confluence of things, but one point that I think was on Sam Harris' podcast was that one problem with these shootings is can we at least agree, I guess, that there is going going to be a certain number of police shootings, regardless of black or white, that are justified in a given year or whatever.

Like there's going to Be a certain Number of people who he legitimately had a gun. He, you know, uh, made some, was some sort of threat was perceived as a threat in a way that is consistent with the best training. It's going To happen a certain amount of the time. So one problem that I can't even remember if it was Sam or if it Was, uh. His guest, brought up was the problem is that the knee-jerk reaction from,

0:24:32 Unattributed: Right. Right. Yeah.

0:25:00 Thomas: I guess, Black Lives Matter and other people is anytime there's a police shooting of a black person, it's already perceived as a racist killing, like, or whatever it is, like right away. And I don't even mean to cast judgment on this. I'm just pointing out that this is a problem that happens. So then Then what happens is more facts come out or you get more evidence or whatever it is. And maybe it is a totally racist, unjustified killing. Or sometimes maybe it happens to be like, well, he didn't really have another choice. Like the guy had a gun, whatever it ist. And already both sides have kind of staked their claim. And then maybe conservatives or maybe some of these moderate whites that you're referencing are like, Well, you know, I kind of think he was justified.

0:25:46 Thomas: So am I against Black Lives Matter in this case? I just see that as kind of a barrier or an issue. I'm not sure what the remedy is, but I'd like to get your thoughts on that.

0:25:56 Unattributed: Um, I'll definitely go first, so that's definitely one of my criticisms, right, is is that one of the first things that, and I don't just think this is a Black Lives Matter thing, right. I think that This happens With the black community, uh, in general, like any, anytime, anytime it's a a white police officer calling out or killing some black person, it's automatically racism, right? And I really hate that because I don't think that, first of all, I don't believe that racism is that prevalent in our country. I really don't. Is there racism in our country? Yes, right? But is it that prevalent that it's causing all these shootings? Is it causing you from not going to college? Is it causing from doing so many other things? No, it's not, right? We have equal opportunity in our country. Just as well, you have the equal opportunity to be shot by a police officer. And when you look at the Michael Brown case specifically, first, the Ferguson Police Department did an investigation on the whole catastrophe.

0:26:04 Thomas: Right, right, right.

0:26:56 Unattributed: And they found out that, I forget the name of the officer now, but they found out that the officer was justified in shooting him. And I could understand the angst we don't believe the police department because they're going to try to, you know, um, protect their own police officers. But then the federal government led by Barack Obama, a black man came in, right. Led by a black, um you Know, um Uh, yeah, yeah. Eric Holder, you know, let the prosecution and everything like that, or let the investigation.

0:27:19 Thomas: Holder? Yeah. Investigation.

0:27:25 Unattributed: And they found the same thing that the Ferguson police department found out. So obviously, once you look at the facts, you must say to yourself, okay, maybe this wasn't about race. Maybe Michael Michael Brown must have really reached for the officer's gun. Now, of course, Michael Brown is dead. He can't give his side of the story. And so I guess at the end of the day, you can make the case where you never will truly know what exactly happened.

0:27:47 Thomas: Sure.

0:27:48 Unattributed: But we only have the facts that we have. And given the facts that we have, you can't necessarily say that that shooting was based on race. And then you juxtapose that with what happened in Minnesota, where you had a Black guy who who was shot by a black police officer. And what are you going to say then? Are you going to say, once again, this is racism? Or are you gonna say, well, no, this is a black officer that is working in a structurally racist system. And so therefore, he only killed another black guy because he's brainwashed somehow by some type of racist police policies. I just can't buy that. I feel like at the end of the day, you are teetering towards it's uh conspiratorial thinking um if you believe all these shootings have to do with racism.

0:28:37 Unattributed: Do I think a certain percentage of them do? Yes, of course there's going to be racist people in any industry, right? Uh, I...

0:28:43 Thomas: Well, I think you've given plenty for Jabari to react to, so I really want to hear Jabari's take on this. What do you think, Jabari?

0:28:47 Unattributed: Um... Well... I'll just, I'll start with what you said for a way back when, Thomas, about this knee-jerk reaction and um, you know, I'm waiting for the facts and um, you know, I'm a big fan of that, uh, you know, that historical quote, like it's better for, uh, for 10 guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to go to jail. And I feel the same way in terms of, and brown bodies dropping. I would rather overreact to a killing 10 times and be proven wrong than to be silent on one where I really should have spoken up on something. And I want to address this notion of how racism plays in, how I feel racism plays into these these killings, because I feel like when I'm arguing with a lot of conservatives, they have this notion that when somebody from Black Lives Matter or anybody on the left says that a killing was racist, they they imagine we're implying that this cop is going around with his gun looking for black people to kill and he hates black people, and that's not exactly what, that's that's a um, that's straw man of

0:28:54 Thomas: Okay.

0:29:44 Unattributed: What racist police is. Racing, is it, doesn't look like, you know, somebody looking for a black person to um attack. It looks more so like, um, you know, seeing an officer, seeing a white white guy with his hands in his pockets, and thinking, oh, OK, that's that's, he's like, has his hands and his pockets, versus seeing a black person with his hands in its pockets and saying, I am threatened by that. And it's a, and that's, and that's an emotional thing. And that's something that, you know, you may not feel like you're racist at all, but it may be something that that happens. And it does, it has effect when you're making these split second judgments. I mean, it comes up with, you know, Amadou Diallo, like reaching into his pockets for his ID. And this is on New York, like back in the 90s, reaching into his pocket for his ID, he gets shot 50 times. This happens again and again with people being told to get their ID.

0:29:44 Thomas: Strawman, yeah.

0:30:33 Unattributed: And when they reach into their pocket, they don't tell the officer they're getting it from their pocket and they think a gun is happening.

0:30:41 Unattributed: So that's something that can be addressed. And part of that, too, is one of the planks of Zero is getting more people from from the community into their local police departments. I mean, just so you get more representation. And I can't speak about like demographics around the country, but I know that here in my city of New York, it's a huge minority population. The majority of police officers are white and majority of them live actually outside of New YorK City, which makes no sense to me. They live outside New York City, they come here to police us, that's not community representation. And that leads to divides and misperceptions. Okay, so a couple of things about that. There was a recent case I was just reading about where, and I believe this happened back in 2015, there was a white female police officer that shot a white guy, and I believe he was reaching into his pockets.

0:31:37 Unattributed: Shot for the same exact reasons that some black people are being shot for, right? Reaching into their pockets. And I mean, I don't really see the differences there. If there's a white person being shot for reaching into their pockets and there's a black person that is being shot from reaching into the pockets, to me, they're virtually being shot, for the same reasons. The officer didn't trust the person that they were arresting to be complacent, and so therefore they shot them.

Now you can talk about police policy and say, well, she really shoots somebody, they reach into their pocket. We can talk that another day, but to me it seems like police officers are killing both black and white people for the same specific reasons. Also, I can tell you, I live in the city of Atlanta, uh, most of our police force is African-American, uh, the city itself is, you know, over 50% African-American, and we have the same police problems that a city like New York City has. I live in New York City, I know what the problems are there too, um, and whatnot. We have some of the same exact problems where more often than not black people are more often arrested. They're more often, quote unquote, profiled for whatever reason. They're most often spoken to because they're hanging out on the street corner and they're grouped up together.

And these are black officers that driving around black neighborhoods and they are finding the same things that white officers are finding, finding. So I don't think it has anything to do with... So I'm saying that to say that I don't think that it really has to do anything with, well, you need people from your own community to police the people that are in that community. Because I can tell you, if I was a police officer, I know the type of things that happen in my own community, right?

0:33:18 Unattributed: I know where to look for the trouble. So, I would probably profile more than the average white officer would, because I know exactly where to find the issues. Great.

0:33:27 Thomas: Interesting. Interesting. What do you think, Jabari?

0:33:29 Unattributed: Yeah, sure. Well, my first thing to say is I never buy the argument of like saying, you know, it's a, it's uh, black officer, um, you know, committing violence against a black civilian, that that excuses that of racism solely because, you know, there were black slave owners as well. And I mean, the notion of racism is not a, is not uh, it's not dependent on, I'm the person committing the offense. It's on the race that's receiving the offense, so yeah. But I guess I would argue that, with how many black people do you actually think are racist against other black people? I would have to say that's a small number of blacks. So the chances are that you would be incorrect in assuming that a black police officer profiling another black black person is being racist.

0:34:19 Unattributed: They could have some, you know, undeterminable amount of information to make an accurate judgment that, hey, this person, you know, hanging out on on this specific block may be doing something that they should not be doing. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I would need the numbers for that. I would get numbers of how many stops in our profiles that are committed by black officers towards black civilians versus white civilians and to see if it's just proportionate or not. Yeah, yeah, I can tell you that I believe from the studies that I've seen so far, along with the Roland Fryer study that was just recently done, which I'm pretty sure you know about. It was actually, so actually it was more likely for black people to be stopped by black police officers. And I believe in the Sam Harris podcast, they also kind of slightly pointed to, or something like this, where Sam Harris had brought up that, believe the Washington Post or some group associated with the Washington Post in some way.

0:35:09 Unattributed: They did a study where they had put white police officers in a simulation. And of course, this doesn't totally dissipate the idea of racism and that white police also can be racist. But they found that white police officers were actually more likely to shoot somebody who was white than was black. And then if you follow that up with the Roland Fryer study, he found the same thing, that white policemen were more likely to shoot someone who was black, or police officers in general were more like to shoot or kill someone who is white rather than black. Of course, he...

0:35:48 Thomas: Yeah, you know, I can talk about there. He had two interesting caveats or potential problems with those studies. But I want to make sure Jabari gets a chance to speak here. I think Jabari, you sound like way too nice of a guy. You sound like the nicest guy. No, you're just like, yeah, go ahead. Talk.

0:35:55 Unattributed: Yeah. Sorry. I'm... A pretty nice guy. Yeah, I'm pretty nice, guys. I mean... I... Mean, yeah.

0:36:04 Thomas: So I wantto make sure you get a chance to talk. So if you don't mind, go back. Ithink you had more you were going to say last last time. I just want to make sure you get a chance to be heard.

0:36:14 Unattributed: Was talking about this notion of, um, can blacks be racist towards other blacks? And, um, yes, they can. I mean, it's a racist institution. I mean, I mean, it disproportionately targets Blacks. And again, we talked earlier on about that being, well, do Blacks commit more crimes? Yeah, but in some instances, it is the system. I mean, you have issues of Black people and white people going to court for the same crime and Black people getting longer sentences or larger. I mean, there are tons of, there's just numerous instances where the system is less equal to black citizens, black and brown citizens than to white citizens. And that, again, has to do with the people that are receiving the offense, not the person that is committing an offense.

0:36:17 Thomas: Sure.

0:36:59 Thomas: Does it at least crack the idea that it's like a gut reaction? Like when we think of the typical, okay, what's a racist police action? Well, it's a white guy, seeing a black person and perceiving him or her a certain way and therefore reacting maybe too violently or too quickly. Do you think that if a black officer does, do you think, I'm really just curious, like does institutionalized racism, does it pervade even that so that a black office is reacting differently? Because I would think it's such a fast reaction that I thought it had more to do with literally like, oh, this person is different from me. Like I'm going to perceive him more cautiously or whatever, but it's, so you don't think it's that it's like, it's just, really, no matter who the beholder is, what's happening.

0:37:28 Unattributed: Yes.

0:37:41 Unattributed: No, the reaction is I'm looking at a black or brown person and I can't speak for the mental state of every police officer in America. But Um, that is what I'm implying when I talk about, "Oh, this is the racism that's happening." It is, you know, seeing a, seeing a different type of person, you know, and and seeing them as not different type person, seeing a um black or brown person and seeing dem as more of a threat than a white person. Yeah.

0:37:51 Thomas: Right, right, right.

0:38:07 Thomas: Okay. So that, so your opinion is that's something that's institutionalized. So even black officers do the same thing, and that's still racism, even though it's black on black or whatever.

0:38:20 Unattributed: Racism is keeping a race down, it's not like it's a, it's an attack from one race to another, it's keeping a down. So. If I, if I was specifically going out to um kill black people because they were black, I would be racist. So, so I think my question would be, though, I remember earlier you had said, though, that one of the one of things that Black Lives Matter is looking to do, and I think the black community as a whole is really looking to, is to get more representation and, you know, police academies and um and uh precincts around the country. So if if, if the law enforcement system is just inherently racist, or there's a lot of institutionalized racism going on, how would having more Blacks going, you know, become police officers, how would that change anything? I mean, because at the end of the day, you would just fall into the system, right? Like, you wouldn't be able to overcome the institutionalized racism.

0:38:26 Thomas: Hmm.

0:39:14 Unattributed: So, so my question to you is, how, how could you see having more black officers change the system of institutionalize racism?

0:39:22 Thomas: Interesting.

0:39:22 Unattributed: Sure. So there, well, there's two things to that. One, it's not necessarily, I'm getting more specific than let's just let's put more black people in the force. It's putting more people of the community into the force So, for example, again, I live in New York, I love in Brooklyn. We need more people that live in Brooklyn to be policing Brooklyn. Right. And there's that. There's also the issue of just fixing policing and contracts like you need to I mean, in many places, there are days where they don't need to release the name of a police officer who just murdered somebody, so the body is dead, and there's no independent investigation for days. Or there never is an independent investigation. The police officers investigate themselves, and big surprise, they find themselves free of all charges, innocent of all charge. Charges. So there are like, again, like I said, the notion of being able to investigate a police officer for more than one crime.

0:40:16 Unattributed: And that's really, really big. For example, if, you know, you're investigating the crime of a shooting and find out the officer has, for lack of a kinder, whatever, you knows, has raped several women along their beat, like the investigators should should be allowed to investigate those crimes as well. There are technically a lot of laws in the books in many states that prevent the investigator from pursuing any other course.

0:40:41 Thomas: Really? So they can only pursue one, like whatever the charge is at that time or something. So, but how, but if someone's raped a bunch of women, how they still, I don't get it. Or is it like allegations or something?

0:40:43 Unattributed: Right, right. Yes. Right, well, like Officer Daniel Holsklaw, like, you know, he was, well he was pulling aside these women and then taking them out to unpopulated areas and doing whatever and then you know they were afraid to, I mean, who can they, they can't talk to the local police department because he is at their local police apartment, so what do they, I mean, what do that, I.

0:40:55 Thomas: Right.

0:41:12 Thomas: And another thing, actually, I wanted to see if you agree, Jabari, to bolster your point. Also, it seems like we have really shitty stats for all this stuff. Like, don't we not even know how many police shootings there are really? And like, is that a part of your or of Black Lives Matter platform is getting having better track?

0:41:32 Unattributed: We need More accurate, yeah. There's also just the basic thing of just like body cameras, like That's, it's something, it's so obvious and it baffles me that the federal government is sending so much money to local police departments for, you know, crazy guns and riot gear and in some case, uh, uh, SWAT, SWAT team gear, and for some reason can't, uh, you know, send the money for body cameras and You Hear all These I Don't

0:41:33 Thomas: Yeah, exactly. Mm-hmm, you Know, that's Interesting I Had A bunch Of people send me, maybe, you know, something about this. Send me, I think, uh, Black Lives Matter, I think they put out a platform or something and one of the things was it sort of implied to get rid of body cameras because they were, like, using them to profile or something. Do you know anything about that? Because I, I had a bunch, a couple different people send me, oh, Black Lives Matter wants to get rid of body cameras, and I thought it was really odd. It's okay if you don't know anything about that, though. Okay.

0:42:22 Unattributed: Know any about, I don't Know about that, but I guess, I guess, again, you talked about a weakness of lack of central leadership, um Earlier And I guess that, that's part of it, yeah.

0:42:23 Thomas: Yeah There You go So To the best of your knowledge, one of the goals of Black Lives Matter would be body cameras? Because it's an interesting thing to talk about, because I, sometimes I think, oh, that would, that would totally help And then people say, well, you know, actually, it's not really helping that much. Like, people, people still see the footage and they just see whatever they want to see on it, you know, right?

0:42:39 Unattributed: And Also they, all, sometimes the camera quote-unquote malfunctions or quote-unquote Breaks or whatever, right? Well

0:42:51 Thomas: But Overall, do You think it would be a good thing? I I tend to think it would be a better thing. It's better to have more information than less, right?

0:43:00 Unattributed: They have the same effect that it's had now, um, but you know, they call the Ferguson effect, which, you know, cops are terrified of, uh, people actually, um, to filming them and therefore, you know, behaving or, you know, acting accordingly.

0:43:11 Thomas: Interesting. Okay, sorry, Rondale. I think you wanted to get in there a number of times. So go ahead.

0:43:15 Unattributed: Well, yeah, I would just add on to part of the Ferguson effect thing, and I, I think Sam Harrison and I can talk about this a little bit. Maybe there's some ways I heard this, where, like, they were saying something like, well, because of the Ferguson effect, it's actually, like, crime has risen slightly and, you know, urban communities due to the Ferguson fact. But I think Larry was saying something along the lines of he doesn't really think it's a thing.

You know, on your point about the body cameras and whatnot, I believe in, like, this most recent shooting in Minnesota, I don't know if it is the most recent one, it could have been another shooting somewhere else that's happened today or something like that. But I believe the police officer involved in that shooting was actually wearing a body camera and it did nothing to do, it did nothing to stop the riots. Right.

And from what I know about policing, and when I've talked about other people that I know that are police officers about the incident, The police officer was totally justified in shooting the guy in Minnesota, and it did nothing to stop the riots, and so

0:44:10 Unattributed: I agree With Jabari

0:44:10 Thomas: Just to clarify, what was the specifics of this one? It's so bad, but honestly, I have a hard time keeping track because there's so many of these things. It's terrible.

0:44:11 Unattributed: Yeah Yeah Right Right, exactly. So if I remember this specific story correctly, like you're saying, there's so many, so sometimes details Get kind of, uh, mixed up, but I believe the police officer was pointing his gun at a guy who had his gun also pulled out, and he tried to run away, and I, and I believe, after he started running, the police officers shot him.

0:44:23 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Oh, okay.

0:44:38 Unattributed: Um, and, and from what I know, police officers are allowed to shoot in that situation. I could be wrong, you can have a police officer come on and say that guy was totally wrong about that, but from what I know, from what ever, police officers aren't in the right to shoot somebody, and he also had a body camera on him, if I'm correct, um, not 100% about that because I haven't read the stories about that in the last couple days, but you still had a number of people riding in the streets and saying, "Hey, there goes a white guy, let's beat him up." That's actually caught on video.

0:45:11 Unattributed: I'm not saying that Black Lives Matter, by the way. I'm not saying those people are necessarily associated with them, but you still have people that are going to make up their minds. Just like Jabari was saying, people are going to be like, hey. I don't care. If a police officer is shooting somebody, he's a part of the racist system, or he's doing what he's supposed to do. I think at the end of the day, people are just going to have their own opinions, and I don't think it's going to matter that much.

0:45:36 Thomas: But don't you think, Rundell, like the camera can't hurt really? I mean, I understand maybe it won't solve the issue, you. But do you think, I'm just wondering if maybe we all agree, all three of us, that body cameras are on the whole either maybe neutral, but possibly a good.

0:45:38 Unattributed: No. Right, right, right. Yeah, right-right, right—exactly. I don't think—I don't think it would hurt, right? Like, I think, if anything, it's a good PR move for a police department to show, hey, like, look, we're trying to do something to improve our, you know, policing methods, right? You're not just willy-nilly saying, hey, look—you don't need to—because I think if you didn't do it, what it would show that you have something to hide, right. And and so again I just want to oh sorry, go ahead. No, no, go ahead. Yeah, I mean, I just wanna, like, I want to, like, you know, express myself again, like, clearly, like, the purpose when I, you know, of a body cameras is not to, like, prevent riots or prevent people from marching against police brutality. The purpose of body cameras is to have evidence in the event that a black or brown person has been killed, um, illegally or unjustifiably by the police officer, and again, I'm a strong supporter I would rather, right.

0:45:53 Thomas: Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:46:34 Thomas: Well, or a white person. I mean, it also could help it. I mean, that happens too. Yeah.

0:46:38 Unattributed: Or yeah, Yeah. Yeah, that's true. That's right. You're right. Any, any, any person killed.

0:46:44 Thomas: Sorry to be that guy.

0:46:45 Unattributed: No, you're fine. No. I get it. And again, I would I would go I'd rather go out and protest 10 times in a knee jerk reaction to to somebody that I found out later was killed in a way that was in accordance with the law. Then then have to know that there was one person that was killed and there was nothing that could be done about it. See, I personally think that's, you know, wrong. I personally think that don't want to sacrifice somebody's life in jail, because it, you know, it justifies everything else that may happen afterwards. I think that I want to hold off, you these ideas that, you know, I'm not going to do that. It's racism or killing people through the racism, because I just think that is the way things should be done.

0:46:46 Thomas: Well,

0:47:33 Unattributed: I I want to see the facts first. And I know that's a side. I know what you'll hear from the right a lot. I know this is what you will probably hear from a lot of white commentators on these things that are spoken about. But if there truly is racism, let's find the racist and let's get rid of him. Let's throw him in jail. I'm with anybody who wants to do that. But I don't want to succumb to the conclusion that all of these killings are due to racism. Let's really find out what happened. Sometimes the person that was shot, you know, was shot for a justifiable reason. And that's what I don't like. I feel like we've gotten to the point where we're just jumping to conclusions too fast. Where we're saying, oh yeah, this is due to racism because it was a white cop shooting a black guy.

0:48:19 Unattributed: Or even nowadays, there's a black cop shooting a or a black cop shooting a black guy and because you know the system it's institutional um it's struggling the structural racism well all of a sudden like this is due to racism too even though the they're the black cop that shot a black eye like no let's look at the facts first and then if we find out that this is through the racism because sometimes there are you know slightly overt signs that it was a racist killing um then we can make that determination yeah I agree I mean And I think that's what body crammers are for, is that we can look at the facts. We can literally look at The Facts first.

0:48:51 Thomas: Right. Well I think I think we're all agreed on body cameras, but All right. Lots of good stuff. Still more to come in part two. We talk about the word racism and how it's being used and maybe if it's been redefined. We talked about the Ellen DeGeneres post. We've talked about a lot of stuff. Really cool stuff. I'm so happy to have Jabari and Rondale on for these two episodes. Speaking of two episodes, part two is available already to my patrons over at patreon.com/atheist. Love to give you guys early content, and that'll of course be available to everyone else on Thursday. Just a very brief update on opening arguments. Don't worry, these won't be every single show, but as we're launching, I just want to keep everybody informed, and based on the overwhelming patron response over at patreon.com/law, I think most of you are as excited as I am about this show, so I won't feel bad for giving you another update.

0:49:58 Thomas: So it's still not launched. I had some people ask. I think I might have accidentally not been specific on that. We haven't launched it to iTunes yet. It's patron only until roughly Wednesday is when we're hoping that everything will be figured out. We're going to do a big launch. We're gonna give you like all at once eight episodes or so and we're hoping everybody's just gonna rush to download them. And that all that attention will maybe get us to the new and noteworthy page on iTunes. So look out for that. I will post it. If you're, you know, Facebook, Atheistically Speaking, or if you're on the Opening Arguments pages, you will see it. Trust me. I'll make a note because we're really hoping to have a nice, big, good launch and get this podcast noticed so that we can reach a new audience and just be able to do incredible things with it.

0:50:45 Thomas: It's so, it's such a cool project. I am really excited about it. And again, blown away by your support. So thank you so much to everyone who went over to patreon.com/law and pledged because I'm blown away. Seriously, we're already fully funded for a weekly 30-minute podcast. And I think it's going to keep going. And eventually we'll get to a weekly hour-long podcast, sort of a la Scathing Atheist, that kind of thing. But it's great. So thank you so much for that. Look out for that launch midweek. Week. Look out on social media, on Twitter, on all that stuff, because we will launch and I'm hoping people will subscribe and get eight episodes. We're doing like a binge watch. It's like pretend it's Stranger Things season two, except, you know, not maybe not quite as exciting as that.

0:51:34 Thomas: But check that out. All right. Thank you guys so much for listening. And I will see you for part two with Jabari and Rondale.