Another shooting of an unarmed young black male with dubious validity, this time by the police. http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci ... th-kendrec

freeman3 wrote:Another shooting of an unarmed young black male with dubious validity, this time by the police. http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci ... th-kendrec

Sounds kinda complicated:

A year later, questions still remain as to how much responsibility can be placed on Carrillo's initial 9-1-1 call and what McDade was doing on the night of the shooting.

Pasadena police Chief Phillip Sanchez said Carrillo's call fixed in the minds of the two officers that McDade was armed and potentially dangerous.

"If any one thing would have changed, maybe the outcome would have been different," Sanchez said Friday. "At the end of the day Mr. Carrillo is hugely culpable in setting the conditions prior to the shooting. "

Carrillo, who at one point admitted he had lied, is due in court Tuesday. He has pleaded not guilty to two misdemeanor charges of lying to a 9-1-1 dispatcher.

Carrillo would later tell officers that McDade and a 17-year-old companion stole a backpack from his car. The 17-year-old eventually pleaded guilty to commercial theft for stealing Carrillo's backpack.

McDade's alleged participation in the theft is still being contested by his family and their attorneys, according to court documents.

During a 2012 deposition for the civil case, Carrillo struggled to positively identify McDade as one of the two teens he encountered that night. The Police Department won't release video evidence it claims will prove McDade acted as a lookout in the backpack theft, despite a request from the Pasadena Star-News.

A lot of factors to sort out, and not anything like the Trayvon Martin shooting.

Well what's not complicated is that two police officers shot a young unarmed black male several times because they claim he was reaching for his waistband. What is complicated is their state of mind when they shot him. Whether or not race factored into the decision of those officers to shoot is impossible to say, but it's likely it had something to do with it. Not because these officers are bad people, or that they are racists, but simply that human brings naturally have evolved to classify other groups by certain characteristics and in our culture a young black male (without further information) is going to be classified as more of a threat. We know from psychological studies that whites will have their amygdala light up (associated with fear response).
just by looking at pictures of black men.
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/look_twice
Zimmerman profiled Trayvon Martin by how he looked (and Zimmerman's own racial background is frankly not relevant to how his brain classifies other racial groups) How he classified Trayvon Martin as a criminal merely because he looked almost certainly had something to do with his decision to shoot Trayvon Martin. The police also information that McCade might be armed, but it is still likely that the officers preconceptions about the threat that a young black make posed to them had a part in the shooting. So, no, I disagree that the McCade shooting and the Trayvon Martin shooting are totally different.

freeman3 wrote:Well what's not complicated is that two police officers shot a young unarmed black male several times because they claim he was reaching for his waistband. What is complicated is their state of mind when they shot him.

Brought on by a phony 911 call--and that's why I said it's complicated. They did not simply drive up and shoot him.

Whether or not race factored into the decision of those officers to shoot is impossible to say, but it's likely it had something to do with it. Not because these officers are bad people, or that they are racists, but simply that human brings naturally have evolved to classify other groups by certain characteristics and in our culture a young black male (without further information) is going to be classified as more of a threat.

Maybe. However, in Pasadena, they interact with young black men all the time.

Zimmerman profiled Trayvon Martin by how he looked (and Zimmerman's own racial background is frankly not relevant to how his brain classifies other racial groups)

YOU know that, because you believe what the prosecution says, not based on any info about Zimmerman. How much do you know about him and his background (not just his ethnicity, but his life)? There was plenty of evidence to dispute the "racially profiled" accusation.

How he classified Trayvon Martin as a criminal merely because he looked almost certainly had something to do with his decision to shoot Trayvon Martin.

Because people on top, administering a beating, tend to look . . . threatening?

Wrong forum, but keep reaching.

The police also information that McCade might be armed, but it is still likely that the officers preconceptions about the threat that a young black make posed to them had a part in the shooting. So, no, I disagree that the McCade shooting and the Trayvon Martin shooting are totally different.

Of course you do. You view all of life through the prism of "white America" is racist.

That's sad.

Psychologists indicate that our brain works on two levels. One is fast and unconscious, the other is slow and conscious. So you are completely misunderstanding what I am saying. A person can be rationally completely non-racist, but their amydgala is not controlled by the cerebral cortex. So when a person gets into a stressful, life-or-death situation their fast system is the one that controls. And we know from psychological studies that under those kinds of conditions whites are going to have an unconscious basis against African-Africans. Now, if you want to take a look at those studies and try and say why they don't apply, fine. I would also hazard to guess that as time goes that those kinds of unconscious associations will lessen. But for now there are scientific reasons as to why there are questionable shootings of young black males by people who think they see the world in race-neutral tones. One would hope that reasonable people could acknowledge the problem and take steps to lessen the chance of another such shooting.

freeman3 wrote:Psychologists indicate that our brain works on two levels. One is fast and unconscious, the other is slow and conscious. So you are completely misunderstanding what I am saying. A person can be rationally completely non-racist, but their amydgala is not controlled by the cerebral cortex. So when a person gets into a stressful, life-or-death situation their fast system is the one that controls. And we know from psychological studies that under those kinds of conditions whites are going to have an unconscious basis against African-Africans. Now, if you want to take a look at those studies and try and say why they don't apply, fine. I would also hazard to guess that as time goes that those kinds of unconscious associations will lessen. But for now there are scientific reasons as to why there are questionable shootings of young black males by people who think they see the world in race-neutral tones. One would hope that reasonable people could acknowledge the problem and take steps to lessen the chance of another such shooting.

Sorry, but I doubt psychologists can recreate true life/death conditions in the brain, measure them, and then report the results. So, you can cite 10K such studies and I'm not going to be impressed.

On a pragmatic level, we would expect to see daily shootings of black Americans (I am taking a serious dislike to the tag "African-American" since it rarely applies. How many are one, two, or even three generations removed from Africa? And, if all life began in Africa, as some believe, aren't we all African-Americans?) by white officers, since there are many high-stress contacts with them by officers. We would also expect to see shootings by black officers of black suspects to be very rare, right?

Believe what you want.

Yes, we all came from Africa. Interestingly, the evidence indicates that a small group carrying a certain part of mitochondrial dna called L3 emigrated out of Africa and all non- -African racial groups came from that small group. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_human_migrations
In other words most persons of African descent do not have that L3 sub-group, while all other non-African races do. This closer genetic relationship between non-African racial groups may help to explain some of the historical racism against persons of African descent.
But people should believe what they want to believe, regardless of facts or scientific evidence, so why bother trying to discover the root causes of racism, right?

freeman3 wrote:But people should believe what they want to believe, regardless of facts or scientific evidence, so why bother trying to discover the root causes of racism, right?

Spend some more time in your books, Poindexter.

I can tell you about racism. You want to see it? Get yourself arrested and spend a weekend in jail. You'll see racism/tribalism on a scale that no psychologist or sociologist or anthropologist can enumerate.

You think racism is a white->black problem? It's an education problem. The more knowledgeable people are, the less likely they are to see race as an issue--unless they're liberal, in which case race is THE biggest problem in the world.

Why read books when the anecdotal triumphs over the scientific...

freeman3 wrote:Why read books when the anecdotal triumphs over the scientific...

I don't believe it's science. You can't scientifically recreate the situations like the one the cops ran into in Pasadena. It's not possible.

That's the point. Of course, if you want to believe everything in life is quantifiably racial, you ignore common sense and believe what you want.

I'm sure you have the bonafides to determine whether a given study of psychologists is legitimate or not . . .

Again, go ahead, remind me of all the life and death situations you've faced, of all the racial situations you've lived in . . . I'm sure you have experience to qualify as an expert on race.

I'm sorry--I forgot I was talking to "Doctor" Fate! Of course you're the expert--my bad

freeman3 wrote:I'm sorry--I forgot I was talking to "Doctor" Fate! Of course you're the expert--my bad

Welcome to terra firma!

freeman3 wrote:I'm sorry--I forgot I was talking to "Doctor" Fate! Of course you're the expert--my bad

Sorry, but your argumentation goes like this:

1. It's another racial shooting.

2. As proof, I have a psychological study about racial bias under pressure.

3. Any counter-arguments are irrelevant unless you're a psychologist who has done clinical experiments.

Okay. Whatever.

Well, I am not dismissing the argument that a psychological study or studies cannot accurately simulate how someone will react in a real-life situation. But aren't you dismissing such psychological studies because of your anectdotal experiences? It seems to me that one would to need to make the following assessment:

(1) Are young black males shot by police at a disproportionate rate (or are there a disproportionate number of questionable/unjustified shootings) given their percentage involvement in crime?

(2) If young black males are being shot at a disproportionate rate, what would be the reasons for that?

(3) If you cannot identify other factors that explain the discrepancy, then you might want to look as unconscious racism as an answer.

Admittedly, I have not proven the above (it does seem like blacks get shot an disproportionate rate but that certainly is not scientific) But I don't think your real-world experiences can shed light on whether a police officer's split-second decision in a life or death situation may be affected by unconscious biases.

anecdotal experience

"real life experience" vs a book