The most Military/Veteran friendly College Commencements!

[sanantone]

Until very recently, polls have shown that most black people support the police. There hasn't been an increase in violence; there has just been an increase in smartphones and social media usage bringing to the forefront what black people have been dealing with since slavery was abolished. Still, I'm not afraid of Black Lives Matter shooting me. Those who study homeland security see most of the domestic threats coming from right wing groups the past few years. Neither superficial support nor vocal opposition of the police are more of a concern to me than people who actively challenge the police and train to "fight" the government.

Again, there is no factual basis for the idea that blacks are subject to a higher rate of police violence than whites. The data I have seen shows that the rate of police violence is actually slightly lower when you adjust for the number of police interactions. If you have seen data that I haven't, feel free to post it. From my perspective, the hype around this issue is caused by the media blowing every incident of police violence against blacks out of proportion. This is the case even when the police officers and their chain of command are all black.

You're about 20 years too late if you think that right wing groups are a threat to the government. Even back then, it was blown out of proportion to justify budget increases for various agencies.

Many cities have cut police and firefighter benefits; it's a trend that started during the Great Recession.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-p...2120120730

The pension issue is happening across every industry. The fundamental problem is that these systems were developed during the mid-20th century when everyone thought the economy and population would continue to grow forever. The models are simply unsustainable.

Most right wingers in the South don't blame slavery for slow economic development; they blame Lincoln and Reconstruction. Many historians place the blame on Andrew Johnson.

I'm not sure why Johnson would bear the brunt of the blame. Slavery was indisputably an economic drain on the South. It inhibited mechanization, industrialization, and urbanization.

I never said that the social sciences are devoid of science; I said that humanities courses are. Humanities and social science are not the same thing. The humanities aren't supposed to be scientific. I am a social scientist (and a graduate student in a microbiology/biochemistry program), so I'm used to listening to people criticize something they know little about. The social and natural sciences mostly use the same research methods. As a matter of fact, wildlife biology and the study of animal behavior is not much different from sociology. Physical anthropology is basically biology with a focus on the human body. Psychologists often study psychopharmacology and neuroscience and tend to be good statisticians.

I was speaking specifically of the departments that focus on unfalsifiable nonsense like systemic racism and the narrative that Western Civilization is a uniquely oppressive system set up by white men to keep everyone else down. This narrative and its derivative ideologies are spreading throughout the social sciences, humanities, and literature. The obsessive drive to prove  this narrative is one of the reasons the social sciences are experiencing the replication crisis.

You didn't read what I said. I didn't say that black people face more police violence. Besides, counting the incidents of use of force isn't enough data. You would have to dig into police reports and investigation findings to find out which uses of force were justified. 

There have been many studies/investigations, however, that have found evidence of racial profiling i.e. New Jersey Turnpike, Ferguson PD ticketing minorities more often for monetary gain, the Texas Department of Public Safety; and NYPD supervisors threatening officers to stop and frisk black and Latino men (this policy found very few illegal firearms).

Johnson is blamed because he took retaliatory actions against the South. Lincoln's plan was to rebuild, but Johnson sought to punish. 

Well, there is a history of systemic racism in the U.S. It's not like Jim Crow, redlining, Black Codes, and justifying slavery by preaching that Africans are sub-human didn't happen. And, it wasn't just the KKK that lynched people. Police departments in Texas were actively involved in lynching, and thousands of Mexicans were lynched after the Texas Revolution. Businesses would even put up signs during the Jim Crow era saying that Mexicans weren't welcomed. 

A Republican politician admitted a couple of years ago that voter ID laws are designed to decrease minority voter turnout. A person who worked in the Reagan administration admitted that talking about things such as "states rights" was a dog whistle to racist, white voters in the South. This comes from southern states arguing that the federal government did not have the right to come into their states and defend people's constitutional rights. It's a known fact now that the war on drugs was started to target black people and "hippies." Look at how this country responded to the crack epidemic, that mostly affected black people, to how it is now responding to the opioid epidemic that is mostly affecting white people. This year, a record number of white nationalists are running for office, and the growth in white supremacist groups since 2016 has been substantial. There has also been an increase in racial crimes against minorities. 

I've talked about this study quite a bit, but if employers can tell that you are African American by the name on your resume, you will have a lower chance of getting a callback.  

Right wing extremists are not a threat to the government; they're too stupid to accomplish anything of significance. They're a danger when it comes to encounters with authority figures.