I don't disagree with the overall sentiment, although I have no evidence whether this guys was a scumbag or not.Wokko wrote:You're right, but it's all so tiresome. Chinese putting people in concentration camps for their religion, Islamic Theocracies throw gays off buildings and murder their daughters for having boyfriends, North African Arabs selling black slaves in open air markets, Hong Kong fights for democracy and independence but we get wall to wall news coverage and black squares on social media and every corporation virtue signalling about a scumbag dying in a city that most people couldn't place on a map in Midwestern USA.David wrote:Well, for one thing, I think everyone understands that this isn't about just one guy, but rather symptomatic of something that African-Americans have been enduring forever, basically. So a murder as brazen as this caught on video is like a lit match being dropped into a powder keg.
As for why it's big news overseas, that one's even easier to explain. America dominates the world politically and culturally, so anything that happens there reverberates to a much greater extent than anything happening anywhere else. I mean, case in point, we have a 170-page thread here on this Australian bulletin board discussing the American president; in contrast, how many people here could even name, say, the president of Mexico or tell you three things about India's prime minister? As a Wim Wenders film put it all the way back in 1975, "The Yanks have colonised our subconscious."
I think I'm ready to pull up a rocking chair and tell the kids to get off my dang lawn. Well, maybe after laughing at angry libs when Trump wins again
fact is, if this guys was shot while in the middle of a drug fuelled rampage we'd never have heard of him. It's the seemingly innocuous nature of his alleged crime and subsequent arrest followed with the bizarre nature of his death that has lit the powderkeg in the USA.
It's very likely that the reasons black people get a rawer deal with Police than white people has bugger all to do with institutionalised racism but far more practical considerations, however for the people who feel hard done by (and likely are)this was dropping a lit zippo on a fuse.
The other stuff, you're right. But you pick on China, you're called racist, you point out faults with Muslims, you're an Islamaphobic white supremecist.
It's a pity we can't look at issues for what they are without the ideological overlay. Scumbag or not, George did not deserve to die that day and the way it was done sent a massive signal.
