FBI Director - Hard Truths about Race Relations in America

The FBI Director gave an amazing speech just the other day about race, especially in regards to law enforcement. Most on the right were very angry about it of course because it was exactly what they didnt want to hear, they see this as "white guilt" and what they want is white pride instead of white guilt. Regardless, here is this beautiful speech on race relations in America by a very intelligent man,

http://www.fbi.gov/news/speeches/har...ement-and-race
"I am descended from Irish immigrants. A century ago, the Irish knew well how American society—and law enforcement—viewed them: as drunks, ruffians, and criminals. Law enforcement’s biased view of the Irish lives on in the nickname we still use for the vehicles we use to transport groups of prisoners. It is, after all, the “paddy wagon.”

The Irish had tough times, but little compares to the experience on our soil of black Americans. That experience should be part of every American’s consciousness, and law enforcement’s role in that experience—including in recent times—must be remembered. It is our cultural inheritance.

There is a reason that I require all new agents and analysts to study the FBI’s interaction with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and to visit his memorial in Washington as part of their training. And there is a reason I keep on my desk a copy of Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s approval of J. Edgar Hoover’s request to wiretap Dr. King. It is a single page. The entire application is five sentences long, it is without fact or substance, and is predicated on the naked assertion that there is “communist influence in the racial situation.” The reason I do those things is to ensure that we remember our mistakes and that we learn from them.

One reason we cannot forget our law enforcement legacy is that the people we serve and protect cannot forget it, either. So we must talk about our history. It is a hard truth that lives on.

A second hard truth: Much research points to the widespread existence of unconscious bias. Many people in our white-majority culture have unconscious racial biases and react differently to a white face than a black face. In fact, we all, white and black, carry various biases around with us.

. . .

But that leads me to my third hard truth: something happens to people in law enforcement. Many of us develop different flavors of cynicism that we work hard to resist because they can be lazy mental shortcuts. For example, criminal suspects routinely lie about their guilt, and nearly everybody we charge is guilty. That makes it easy for some folks in law enforcement to assume that everybody is lying and that no suspect, regardless of their race, could be innocent. Easy, but wrong.

Likewise, police officers on patrol in our nation’s cities often work in environments where a hugely disproportionate percentage of street crime is committed by young men of color. Something happens to people of good will working in that environment. After years of police work, officers often can’t help but be influenced by the cynicism they feel.

A mental shortcut becomes almost irresistible and maybe even rational by some lights. The two young black men on one side of the street look like so many others the officer has locked up. Two white men on the other side of the street—even in the same clothes—do not. The officer does not make the same association about the two white guys, whether that officer is white or black. And that drives different behavior. The officer turns toward one side of the street and not the other. We need to come to grips with the fact that this behavior complicates the relationship between police and the communities they serve.

So why has that officer—like his colleagues—locked up so many young men of color? Why does he have that life-shaping experience? Is it because he is a racist? Why are so many black men in jail? Is it because cops, prosecutors, judges, and juries are racist? Because they are turning a blind eye to white robbers and drug dealers?

The answer is a fourth hard truth: I don’t think so. If it were so, that would be easier to address. We would just need to change the way we hire, train, and measure law enforcement and that would substantially fix it. We would then go get those white criminals we have been ignoring. But the truth is significantly harder than that.

The truth is that what really needs fixing is something only a few, like President Obama, are willing to speak about, perhaps because it is so daunting a task. Through the “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative, the President is addressing the disproportionate challenges faced by young men of color. For instance, data shows that the percentage of young men not working or not enrolled in school is nearly twice as high for blacks as it is for whites. This initiative, and others like it, is about doing the hard work to grow drug-resistant and violence-resistant kids, especially in communities of color, so they never become part of that officer’s life experience.

So many young men of color become part of that officer’s life experience because so many minority families and communities are struggling, so many boys and young men grow up in environments lacking role models, adequate education, and decent employment—they lack all sorts of opportunities that most of us take for granted. A tragedy of American life—one that most citizens are able to drive around because it doesn’t touch them—is that young people in “those neighborhoods” too often inherit a legacy of crime and prison. And with that inheritance, they become part of a police officer’s life, and shape the way that officer—whether white or black—sees the world. Changing that legacy is a challenge so enormous and so complicated that it is, unfortunately, easier to talk only about the cops. And that’s not fair."



The last part is the most important, POVERTY creates crime, not "free will" or being colored. Its not a coincidence people raised in extremely stressful, dangerous environments comined with many other factors such as a lack of nutrition and proper education, its no wonder these people are so much more likely to commit crime, its not their fault its our fault for exploiting them and leaving them in this position. If you dont think its our fault read your (*)(*)(*)(*)ing history, not only did we enslave them for centuries getting rich off their labor and passing those riches down to our children, we continued to exploit them under Jim Crow and the Reich-Wing pretends this all magically ended with the end of de-jure segration which is absolute bull(*)(*)(*)(*) because we know there is still de-facto segregation, schools and housing are still INCREDIBLY segregated in America and its getting worse, even you libertarians stick up for this and call it the "free market", Rand Paul was asked if he agreed with the Civil Rights Act and he said no because it forces private businesses not to discriminate and he believes they have a right to be racist fascists Well he is wrong, we fought a Civil War over the South being racist Fascists and it was settled that they are not allowed to do that, even if its for example at the point of a bayonet as it was in the 1800's, a bayonet of liberty!

 

No it doesn't. If that was true, West Virginia would be the 2nd most violent state in the country, and it's not. Hispanics have a similar percentage of their population living in poverty as blacks, and they are a significantly larger minority than blacks, yet commit less violent crime.

There's something unique in black culture and/or the black community that is causing them to commit so much crime, but white liberals don't want to talk about it, because it exposes the failures inherent in their ideology.

Much of that stress is due to their own poor choices. Dropping out of high school and having a couple of out-of-wedlock kids before age 20 is going to leave a single mother in an impoverished situation. Her kids will most likely suffer for it. Whose fault was that?

They weren't committing this much crime during the Depression, when 1 out of every 2 blacks were unemployed and poverty was much higher. They weren't committing this much crime in 1960 when racism and discrimination were arguably much worse than it is now. It's no coincidence the crime rates started after those of you on the left decided to revolutionize society to remove religion, remove family, remove the idea of a unified culture, remove the responsibility of a father to take care of his wife and kids, etc. It's your mess, you feel guilty about it, so you're trying to blame someone else.

That's not why the Civil War was fought, but coming from someone who routinely defends the mass murdering psychopaths involved in the Bolshevik Revolution, and other communists worldwide, I'll take your comments about "liberty" with a grain of salt. You're not advocating liberty. You're advocating for Government to rob one group to give to another. Call your BS what it actually is, not what you pretend it is.

 

Yeah, that uniqueness is called racial profiling, liberal race baiting, and all around white racism that they can't seem to escape.

Remember folks, because some black people/Muslims.Jews, whatever race to want to scapegoat, are bad, then they must all be bad people and must be watched.

White people just can't be racists or bad people because they have a divine right to moral turpitude. Why they don't commit crimes or other assorted atrocities because theya re just that good.

No no, it always has to be the other guy. Because they don't know anything about morality and what it means to have the grace of divinity flowing through your blood.

 

What difference does it make what color you are? If you commit a crime, you are a criminal!!!!! What happened even yesterday has no bearing on a crime committed today. Do the crime do the time!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

So, here is a hard truth from the speech.

Sure it affects police attitude, that is natural, not only white officers but black officers as well.

I am in agreement that police need better training to deal with the public.

 

Did you even read the speech? The Irish at one time were known as Ruffians, criminals, drunkards, etc. And guess what? THEY WERE!!! Because they were dirt poor and heavily exploited by the Capitalist English and Americans, but once the Irish began oppressing their fellow black workers other whites started to accept the Irish, leading eventually to today where the Irish are fully intergrated into our society and dont have a abnormally high crime rate, yet blacks still do, again because they are still oppressed and segregated. Tell me, do you know of any Irish ghettos where only Irish people live? I highly doubt it, but there are tons of black ghettos, and this is a direct cause of de-facto segregation.