WestWYOPoke said:
First off, the one incident comment was brought up because you literally said "To take one incident and make it indicative of the nation at large is questionable, at best."
To the second part of your comment, no, not all white people are racist, but yes this absolutely is a racist nation, has been basically since it was founded. Want proof, turn on the tv.
Racist nation? I turn on the TV and I see a racial mix of people engaging in discussion about a racial mix of people that get paid lots of money playing sports. I see Americans of Italian, German, Puerto Rican, and African decent hi-fiving and congratulating each other. I see couples who constitute a plethora of skin pigmentation looking to buy homes in nice neighborhoods. I see TV shows with a mix of racial characters living their lives and friendship.
Don't buy into the 1619 agenda. Has the U.S. struggled with race, yes, but few other countries have had the racial mixture to the degree the United States has in its citizens from 1790 til now. Oh sure you had European and Asian based empires whose subjects where diverse. Those are subjects and governing subjects is different than the governing of citizens. The U.S. has been faced with navigating how to have a unified nation with citizens of multiple races. That navigation hasn't been perfect, but the founding principles found in the Declaration of Independence and the idea of equality under the law has enabled the U.S. to continually improve (with its ups and downs) from the imperfect pre-existing condition prior to its founding to a more egalitarian and just nation. The founding idea of the DOI is not one race was created above others, no the idea written was All Men are created equal. Yeah the Founders weren't perfect saints, they all had some flaws some dealing with racial prejudices. Yet a good many recognized that and worked towards changing their attitudes and behaviors to get more in line with the principles they put forth in those founding documents. George Washington for instance knew he wasn't fully living up to the ideals of the Revolution, and seeing his growth in his ideas of how to address slavery and its eventual abolition is in my opinion a good example of self reflection and change. The principles of the Nation as founded are not racist but rather egalitarian and I see people wanting to move from an imperfect, unjust world into a more egalitarian more just world in spite of and against some of their prejudices.
Some of my thoughts about the current situation
We live in an imperfect world with a bunch of imperfect people and some of those people are more imperfect than others. I will call these sorts of people jerks. Some of those jerks are going to find their way into the police force. They may be jerks about religion, race, gender, or 17 on a Wyoming license plate. No matter how good your hiring process is, some are going to make it because the duties and task of law enforcement are enticing to these sorts of jerks. Say as a police agency you make 100 hires, is it hard to think 1, 2, maybe even 5 of those hires are jerks slipping through the cracks? To expect the police to never hire jerks is unrealistic. With that written, this is why it is especially important that when it becomes apparent you hired a jerk, it needs to be addressed pronto. Enough of this Union garbage of defending bad cops, sure let them have their time to defend against false accusations. As soon as it is clear those accusations aren't false, they need to be dealt with. Wanting to hold bad cops accountable doesn't make me unsupportive of law enforcement, rather supporting bad cops torpedoes the good ones, it sullies the reputation of the law enforcement agencies, and makes it far more difficult to police the community.
And before anyone starts saying how bad a certain segment of our nation may have it. Here is a particularly enlightening work about just how well off the bottom 20% of the United States are compared to the average person of other countries. When the bottom 20% are comparing favorably with the average of the other nations, that shows you we are well off.
https://www.justfacts.com/news_poorest_americans_richer_than_europe.asp
