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What are y’all thoughts on looting?

KingstonUponHulbury

Well-Known Member
Well of course that exists why would anyone try to deny that these things really do happen? I don't think it's fair to discredit the idea that black on black crime happens just because it goes against the idea that white police officers target black people. Both happen.

I think the point is that there's literally nothing significant or surprising about the rate of black-on-black crime, because ALL ethnic groups are far more likely to commit crimes against members of the same group. Anyone making a point of the rate at which black people commit crimes against other black people at best doesn't understand the stats.
 

SBaby

Dungeon Master

bobjr

You ask too many questions
Staff member
Moderator
White Nationalist and groups, including the police themselves are shooting and driving into protest groups and police aren’t charging them, which only serves to further justify why the protests are needed.
 

Sadib

Time Lord Victorious
You know what they say. "When the looting starts, the tooting starts." *fart*

Imagine if Trump said that during one of his speeches and immediately poops himself to death.
 
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Ignition

We are so back Zygardebros
I feel as though the lootings were started to make the protesters seem like they're "pushing an agenda" even though most are fighting for the right to have basic human rights. I personally wouldn't do it but I felt as though the initial looting at Target was understandable to a degree. Everything else was excessive.

What I don't get is how people use this as a way to make BLM and their motives invalid. There are so many things wrong with the responses to the lootings like how there's footage of cops planning out destruction to make it seem like the protesters are constantly destroying property. There's also the fact that people use this to stereotype BLM and all their protesting even though there's much more evidence of peaceful protesting. Wish people would put this much effort into stopping police brutality
 

Aduro

Mt.BtlMaster
Looting will just undermine the cause of a political protest. Protests have to be inconveniunt to established authority, but if they don't do so in a way that seems selfless and restrained, the media can just turn on them or distract from the issues.

The vast majority protesters really have shown very admirable restraint. Marching with clear purposes and very specific, reasonable demands. While police are acting so shamefully, covering their badges, using brutality, treating peaceful protestors as criminals. Its a shame that the unions are so aggressively resisting change.

Too many highly influential officers and politicians would rather give the police more violence and fewer consequences, rather than funding social care that would take the pressure off policing. Regardless of how many jobs police have to do that are not helped in the slightest by the inherent threat of violence that police carry. They're totally resistant to any measures that would make a police officer less likely to reach for their guns, while showing contempt for social workers who do constantly do a professional, productive job of helping desperate people.
 

NPC

sleep researcher
Looting in and of itself is not a morally virtuous action. People who are caught in natural disasters may end up looting provisions needed to survive; who could blame them? At the same time, taking the opportunity to rob a local business because it caught fire is hardly "an expression of the language of the unheard." Looting can ruin livelihoods, and it doesn't happen in a vacuum; people usually end up hurt as well. If you defend looting with no ifs, ands or buts, you don't believe in private property, in which case this debate is pointless for you.

The problem is that looting, like so many other things in contemporary media discourse, is not just a word, but a heavily-loaded term and a racist dogwhistle that serves different purposes under different contexts. Vandalism, looting, and riots are all basically the same thing, but are used to describe different groups of people in different situations. No politician whips up a moral panic when the supporters of a sports team destroy hundreds of thousands in private property after a major sports upset. In the US in particular, the use of the term "looting" has an undeniably racist dimension because it summons forth images of criminally-minded, inner-city minorities marching out of Wal-Marts with $500 TVs. That's what politicians want you to think about when they talk about "looting."

Ultimately, it's all about optics. The last year in BLM protests has shown that, when the status quo's reputation is sufficiently tarnished (as it was under the Trump administration), even corporations will hesitate to come out in favor of "law and order," because they know the public wants blood. But even before that, it wasn't hard to tell that the US media apparatus has a very different view of "violent protests" when they're happening in other countries, against governments that they consider opposed to their own interests. (Consider HK and the Arab Spring.)

I think destruction of property is never the ideal solution to societal ills, but it has to be examined on a case-by-case basis; and in any case, should not be used to scapegoat minorities or groups, or to escalate violent conflict.
 
It depends on the context. Specifically when it comes to racial injustice, personally, I am okay with targeted looting/vandalism. When rioters burned the 3rd precinct in Minneapolis, I thought that was an important, symbolic message to send. When Target refused to sell milk to protestors who were tear gassed, and were subsequently looted, I fully supported that. I think looting and vandalism should be targeted toward entities that are complicit in perpetuating the injustice minority communities suffer through. That's fair game. I don't support mindless looting and destruction, though, where your target has no strategic purpose.

Though, while in the abstract I don't support *random* looting and vandalism, I think it's important to take into consideration these things are symptoms of grief and rage. No one should be surprised that oppressed communities have pent up anger and resentment, and that reaches a flash point when a trigger event occurs. It's like if my parents died in a car crash and I became an insufferable drunk, people may not like it, but you should be able to understand and sympathize with it.

I feel like it's unfair to harshly criticize protestors participating in this kind of action for "making the movement look bad" because most of the time, as I said, it's not strategic or calculated, it's a grief response. If you don't want people to riot, you should fix the circumstances that are causing them to riot in the first place. It's really backwards to express moral outrage at the *symptom* of a larger problem.

If I were a king and I starved half my populace, and they started to riot and burn things, and started slaughtering loyalists in the streets, yes you could make the argument it isn't necessarily moral but Jesus Christ, who's really at fault and responsible for the situation? Me, the king.

Ofcoooooooourse, people are going to riot and burn **** when their brothers, sisters, mothers, etc. are being shot, beaten, brutalized, etc. and they never receive any justice. Honestly, I'm surprised they haven't tried to bomb state capitol buildings and other government facilities the way the U.S
government treats its citizens, let alone minorities.

Imagine if the French government pulled half the **** the U.S. gets away with. The populace there would wipe out their elected leaders entire bloodlines. Part of the reason why this nonsense is allowed to continue without end is precisely because we aren't rioting and burning **** down *enough* We have an extremely complacent and tame populace compared to citizens of others nations that demand better.
 
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WishIhadaManafi5

To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before.
Staff member
Moderator

Bolt the Cat

Bringing the Thunder
Imagine if the French government pulled half the **** the U.S. gets away with. The populace there would wipe out their elected leaders entire bloodlines. Part of the reason why this nonsense is allowed to continue without end is precisely because we aren't rioting and burning **** down *enough* We have an extremely complacent and tame populace compared to citizens of others nations that demand better.

Ironically so. This country was founded by protestors who were sick of the way they were treated by their leaders, and they enacted one of the most infamous looting events in history in the form of the Boston Tea Party. And yet here in America in this day and age, when presented with a similar scenario, and so many in this country are too complacent to stand up against what's going on. Then again, even during the American Revolution, about half of the colonies still supported British rule and we still succeeded in revolting, so the country could have a split opinion on the state of this country and major change could still happen.
 
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