[News] The USA Police State will never satisfy its lust for beating, gassing, and imprisoning minorities

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Yes, yes, it's probably been posted here before, and I know the argument can be shot full of holes. "Old white guys two hundred years ago thought differently" still isn't a valid or sensible argument as far as I'm concerned, though :p
 
Another UK one - the Met police tried to block an event last year & the High Court found that that was illegal. So the police appealed. And lost. And now they're appealing again saying "The reason we're appealing this case is that we believe there are important points of principle around the role of police in advising organisers ahead of a proposed event and whether that should involve an assessment of the importance of the cause" (emphasis mine).

So what was this event? It was a vigil in memory of Sarah Everard who was abducted & murdered while walking home. Her murderer was a man named Wayne Couzens, at the time a serving police officer nicknamed "the rapist" by his colleagues. Let's not have the police spend time & money trying to downplay the importance of this event, yeah?
 

figmentPez

Staff member
Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy: Our Maternal Death Rates Are Only Bad If You Count Black Women

“About a third of our population is African American; African Americans have a higher incidence of maternal mortality. So, if you correct our population for race, we’re not as much of an outlier as it’d otherwise appear. Now, I say that not to minimize the issue but to focus the issue as to where it would be. For whatever reason, people of color have a higher incidence of maternal mortality.”

For whatever reason....

And this is part of his arguments as to why planned parenthood should be defunded. Racists never seem to remember that Planned Parenthood provides pre-natal care as well as abortions. Getting rid of pre-natal care is not going to reduce maternal mortality, dipshits!
 
I think the real takeaway here is him saying, "The only reason Louisiana's statistics are bad is because there are too many colored people dragging us down," where he makes it clear that colored people aren't part of the "we."

--Patrick
 
I think the real takeaway here is him saying, "The only reason Louisiana's statistics are bad is because there are too many colored people dragging us down," where he makes it clear that colored people aren't part of the "we."

--Patrick
I mean, yes. But there are so many layers to the problem here. Not only are black people not part of his “we,” but he also implies there is some sort of genetic weakness on a physical level for black people. It’s as if somehow they have inherently bad health that makes them die more often than white people.

And we all know you can ignore everything that comes before the word “but” in a sentence. So when he says “…not to minimize the issue BUT…” that means he totally wants to minimize the issue. It simply does not matter to him and his colleagues.
 
Really there are only two reasons why black maternal mortality would be significantly higher. Probably a good mix of both.

1. It’s lack of resources. Poor people can’t afford to see their OBGYN as much as they need to. Either lack of money for whatever copay they have or lack of PTO to see an OBGYN during business hours and not lose a day’s pay they can’t afford. And since African Americans are more likely to be poor than whites it could be fairly even between blacks and whites when adjusted for income.

2. Doctors don’t take Black women’s complaints seriously. Pregnant woman comes in complaining of abdominal pain white woman gets a scan black woman is given midol.

It’s an interesting discussion that could really help marginalized people but of course he’s only talking about it to justify taking away a woman’s right to decide whether she wants a to be pregnant or not.
 
Pregnant woman comes in complaining of abdominal pain white woman gets a scan black woman is given midol.
In this case it really says something that they are instantly funneled down two different tracks based solely on color. Sure, there are predispositions based on race genetics, but if that condition is not related to the symptom(s) listed on the intake form, why would it enter into anything? At that point it should be start the routine exam no matter what color they are.

--Patrick
 
In this case it really says something that they are instantly funneled down two different tracks based solely on color. Sure, there are predispositions based on race genetics, but if that condition is not related to the symptom(s) listed on the intake form, why would it enter into anything? At that point it should be start the routine exam no matter what color they are.

--Patrick
Well, there's actually also problems with that. I neither have the time to go really deep into this, nor do I think I could without coming across as a racist. Which, no, does not mean what I'm trying to say is racist, just that I'm bad at explaining and/or people at getting my point.
Anyway, very short: in some cases, being entirely race blind is a very bad idea in medicine, because some afflictions/diseases are so much more prevalent among certain populations (be it through genetic disposition, which very much CAN be linked to race, or through socio-economic factors like certain ethnicities being far more likely to live in specific conditions - be it polluted areas, poverty, more manual labor, worse food options, etc - which may all be NOT inherently linked to skin color, but because of systemic racism in specific cases can still be important to consider). Combined with some of those "doesn't seem to make sense" statistical rules, and you get things that get perceived as racist done by technically neutral AIs. In some cases, it's most certainly possible that a white and black woman coming in with the exact same symptoms, the likelihood of person A needing treatment 1 and person B needing treatment 2 is so much greater that would indeed be the statistically best option, even if it sounds super racist.

Having said all that, to be clear, in the vast majority of cases, skin color, like age and gender, should have limited or no impact on the decision making in medical cases. (unintended) racism causes a LOT of avoidable deaths in minorities because they aren't considered equal and signs or symptoms are ignored or not given the weight they deserve based on biases. "He's black so more likely to be diabetic so we'll avoid X" isn't necessarily racist. "He's black so his liver pain's probably just from too much drinking, send him home without further checking" IS. Also aided by the US healthcare system which means poor and even average people will tend NOT to want too much testing done because it's prohibitively expensive.
 
you get things that get perceived as racist done by technically neutral AIs.
They're discovering that AIs can determine race via X-rays with something like 90% accuracy, which is something that human radiologists just can't do, and there is genuine concern that the AI will automatically recommend machine-learning-derived treatment based more on the determined race than the actual X-ray.

--Patrick
 
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Thought I'd lost this photo, but turns out it had just gotten eaten by a folder on my desktop:

regression.jpg


...because obviously what this country needs is a bunch of dumb cops -- the dumber, the better -- because the dumber they are, the less fewer questions they will ask about the things they are being told to do.

--Patrick
 
In cops being worthless news, in Edmonton the cops are thinking of taking legal action against the people who set up the Police Misconduct Database. All the information is public info that the cops had previously made difficult to obtain. Spitting in the face of a cop is basically moral duty at this point.

 
In cops being worthless news, in Edmonton the cops are thinking of taking legal action against the people who set up the Police Misconduct Database. All the information is public info that the cops had previously made difficult to obtain. Spitting in the face of a cop is basically moral duty at this point.

They're basically just making an open threat, hoping that whoever is running it will get scared and shut it down. Typical mob police tactics.
 
Here's hoping that instead of shutting them down, it just gets them added to the list: "Attempted to intimidate/coerce the operators if this database with baseless threats..."

--Patrick
 
LOL, the Edmonton police chief all but admitted they've been doing a piss poor job on purpose to get more money.

Spit in a cop's face.
 
Dollars to donuts Candace Cameron put them up to it!
For some reason, I assumed Sweetin shared Cameron's insane opinions. I can't imagine working that closely with someone for that long and not want to constantly knock them the fuck out. There's being professional, but man, my patience would wear thing fast.

(Similarly, apparently Pedro Pascal tried to sit down and talk with Gina Carano about the hurtful or insane things she was posting about on social media. He's seems like a pretty progressive guy so I have to wonder if he was growing uncomfortable working with her.)
 
I meant to post this in the cops beating people thread. Doh. I just saw the Old Charlie avatar and clicked and posted.
 

figmentPez

Staff member
Female inmates were assaulted, raped in Clark County jail after former corrections officer sold a key to male inmates

Jeffersonville, Indiana "After male inmates gained access to the female pods with a key sold to them by a former corrections officer, 20 women lodged in Clark County jail were victims of acts ranging from threats to assault and rape, attorneys claim in a lawsuit filed in federal court. "

...

After the women managed to hit an alarm button, the response from corrections officers was to tell them "they had lost their 'dark' privileges and the lights remained on in their pods for the next 72 hours, according to the lawsuit."

“Over the next several days, the female inmates were put on lockdown and taken to holding cells to be questioned,” attorneys state in the lawsuit. “The following Saturday, at approximately 8:30 a.m., the corrections officers returned and ‘shook down’ the female inmates. Officers removed the females’ personal items, including razors, pillows, blankets, colored pencils, etc.”
 
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