Spot on post and perspective IMO. People need to stop seeing themselves as victims. It causes irrational thought and hence, behavior.
somewhere a white person dared to have the means to protect himself from 3 other white dudes. #racism
I guess the basis is my own definition--one who assumes the role of law enforcement, but is not and officer. I'm not saying it should be outlawed, but it's something that has the potential to cause more problems than it solves if we're not careful.
The only issue I have with that is that calling someone out for racism is not an effective way to make them admit they see things is based on race. It's true that most don't see themselves as racist, but my experiences showed me that any kind of suggestion that a person has racial attitudes results in an angry refusal to consider they might actually have those racial attitudes. The brick wall goes up. IMO and experiences, you can still look at the issue as stereotyping and at some level still have a nearly rational discussion. If you call someone out and tell them their attitudes/opinions are part of that systemic racism everyone talks about, I'm pretty sure you're not going to educate people or get them to change their minds. Like I said, as soon as it's suggested someone is in some way sounding racist, the anger is triggered and the conversation is done. All that follows is people telling each other how unintelligent they are. Call me a pessimist, but I see no value in calling people out. Taking a less direct route requires more thought, but I think it has more promise. Tell them they're thinking in stereotypes, and you'll get a bit more rational discussion than if you tell them their thoughts are racist.
What I'm trying to ask is: why do you view that Rittenhouse was 'assuming the role of law enforcement'?
Same reason millions of CCW holders go most everywhere with a gun. Are you of the opinion they're all 'assuming the role of law enforcment' too?
To protect property and himself, neither of which the police are required to do or in fact were attempting to do. If he were acting as law enforcement in Kenosha he would have sat in the car eating doughnuts.
Agree 100% However, your comment was about removing race from the equation and that is impossible to do. We all have our beliefs and opinions and, for some, that includes filtering everything using double standards they have for whatever sub-group of society. Asking people to not use race as a *primary* basis of evaluation in this case is a completely different task.
I'm not including those other people in this. A ccw is not what Rittenhouse was carrying, and he wasn't just out taking a stroll through the neighborhood, was he? If all he was doing was offering bandaids, what need did he have for a gun? Because he was there, and because he said he wanted to protect businesses, I see that as a kind of vigilantism in the sense that he appointed himself as one to uphold the law. I'm not totally against the idea of vigilantism, but I do see that it can go terribly wrong like it did in this case.
I'm just glad I live in Texas where we have "Constitutional Carry". No CCW required. No registration of any sort required. With a few exceptions like schools and hospitals, if you are a legal gun owner, you can carry open or concealed anywhere. I don't normally carry since we love our cops here, we don't have any BLM or Antifa crazies and its pretty law abiding. But if the blue riots and looting ever DO migrate here... I'm glad our laws will help me keep my family safe.
Not really saying that race should be removed. What I'm saying is don't start with that and don't refer to others as racist. It always worked better if we started with establishing the fact that we all operate on biases, and not just for race. Our political beliefs, the kinds of foods we eat, the music we like--it's all bias-based. Then we talked about how we also like to categorize everything. The human mind must categorize all the information it takes in, and our biases speed up that process. But it also stops us from analyzing things such as why we believe/don't believe in God, that we walked on the Moon, that Democrats are snowflakes, etc, etc.. You can't just tell others their views of the world are racist. What worked best for us was to start off with some level of agreement.
Protecting businesses from rioters wasn't a function the police were engaged in. That's why folks showed up with guns. The police have no obligation to protect you or your property.
Our cops sure do protect property here in Texas. What state do you live in that cops are not tasked with protecting property?
In Texas, cops protect property... https://www.kwtx.com/content/news/G...ivate-property-during-protests-570894561.html
He was headed to put out a fire with a fire extinguisher when his first attacker attacked. This first attacker was an arsonist who is on video from earlier in night expressing hostility at other people who had also been putting out his fires. Would you consider Kyle's actions here to be 'assuming the role of law enforcement' if he had: a pistol instead of a rifle? a blade instead of a firearm? pepperspray instead of a lethal weapon? used hands and feet for defense instead of any weapon? I usually try to avoid nitpicking like this, but in this case I think its really important to pinpoint precisely where people are drawing the line between self defense and vigilanteism (or perhaps where people are equating the two...)