After reading various articles about the Swedish riots (and the French and British ones from a few years back) and discussing this topic with many friends who happen to be considerably more liberal than I am, I thought of a solution to racism that I haven't heard discussed before. It seems that no matter what the root causes of a riot are or where the reasonable blame can be put, there are always accusations of racism thrown about. What if all law enforcement officers that interacted with minorities were legally required to be minorities themselves? That would certainly simplify things, right? If any police brutality occurred, you could just blame the officers involved rather than pull the race card, because no one's going to believe the officers are self-hating Muslims/blacks/Latinos/whatever. Any thoughts?
I disagree, there can easily be conflicts of interests. I'm an immigrant and do not expect a mini-Anglo/Dutch police force for me and the other expats. The Britist riots kicked off because a white guy was supposidly wielding a gun and the police shot him. The Swedish riots were caused by an immigrant wielding a knife and the police shot him. Don't wield guns and knives in public. When the British riots kicked off, mob-mentality kicked in and people from all different races, religions, skin colours etc... were involved. It was a pressure relief, for all manner of reasons. People simply went wild and did what they were not ordinarily allowed to do.
Additionally, if our police force, as-is, is not capable of dealing with immigrant communities, then our immigration policies are wrong.
Oh I agree that the people shot by the police probably had it coming, but it seems like left wingers typically make the racism claim in order to justify the rioting. That's what I hear around here anyway. It's never the fault of the rioters themselves. - - - Updated - - - I'd agree. Less immigration would certainly make things easier to deal with.
Looking for the reasons "why", is viewed by the GOPers as making excuses. It is not. I want to understand why people act the way they do, so that if something can be done, we cann look into it. The immigration quota is also difficult to discuss, in this forums haze of blatant racism and religionism (if there's such a word).
I understand what you're getting at, and being an independent myself, I have noticed that tendency, but honestly, I just don't have much patience for a lot of groups. The more different a group is from myself, the more I tend to avoid it, which is part of why I'm not a fan of open borders. Diversity has its strengths, but its main weakness is conflict, and it would seem that the world is just becoming more and more tense with all of this internationalism. Agreed, but I think a certain amount of wariness toward different cultures is actually well founded. You don't see as many conflicts in mostly homogeneous countries like Norway and Finland.
That's essentially what we have here in the Los Angeles area. The majority of police officers are either minorities or women. White males must score much higher on their application exams in order to secure a position, so there are fewer white males hired. The LAPD is still routinely accused of racism by the black and Hispanic communities, however, so I doubt that racism would be solved by having a 100% minority force. "Racism" is more of a weapon than a real thing, nowadays, at least to the majority of people who complain about it.
