Do you have it in UK too?
I believe police brutality is the result of the more-than-necessary power they've been given.
Have you ever heard about
Stanford prison experiment?
Yes. Police brutality is everywhere. People have pretty similar genetics throughout the world, so many of their inclinations are hard wired. For example, 1% of the population are psychopaths. Many of these end up in prison. I believe they make up approximately 12% of the population. They get jobs too you know!
Yes, I have read widely about the field of psychology, and I also saw the movie about it a year or two ago. There have been many experiments on authority, and peoples reaction to it. You may have heard of the experiments where they got volunteers to electrocute people on command by a white-coated scientist. It was all staged but they found authority figures could get people to do all sorts of things they wouldn't normally do. Also, at the private school I briefly attended, some of the previously placid amicable guys in my house of 20 students turned into monsters when made a school prefect, which came with privileges and power over other students.
It is difficult to know where to attribute blame. Blame the person, or blame the nature of mankind?
Incidentally, my best mate from a comprehensive school I went to told me about his brother who was a police officer. He said there was institutional racism, but that was way back, maybe around 1988? He said a police officer threw a black guy across a table, or something like that. I am vague on the details, but I remember his comments.
Having said that, just because someone else says it, it does not mean I believe it to be true. Even if an expert says it, I leave the comments open for debate. Just look at football pundits. They are all supposed to be experts. Yet they all disagree with one another. The world is full of subjective opinion, even about the objective.
Let us take the topic of claims of racism from the black community, or claims of disadvantage. Yes, there may be. I've seen people make plenty of racist comments to me in private. But on the flip side, how does a black person know what it is like to be white? We are told if you are black, a white person cannot comment about it because they don't know. But does not the same apply the other way around? And because the issue is comparative, white verses black, you cannot say a black person knows what it is to be white, but not vice versa.
I also think that many people who make racist comments are not endemically racist. For example, they do it to hurt the other person, if it is a face to face confrontation. To me, racism is where there are people out there who genuinely believe in their racial superiority over the other race. That is probably an old school view but to me it is where the most serious issues are.
The whole topic of racism is really just a subset of a wider issue: prejudice. I've always taken the view that focusing exclusively on racism hides the real problem. Let us take the gingers! They often get a hard time, for having ginger hair! What about short men? They get a hard time. Have you seen some of the videos about women selecting men? The guys who were particularly short had to be like multi-millionaires to get the same attention from women taller than them. Plenty of experiments on that one. How about prejudice against the old? That fat? Those with mental or physical health issues?
I'm sure some readers here may think I am a nazi-loving Trump deplorable who has no compassion for others, with racist undertones and a blinkered view of reality. Yet to me, that is just more prejudice. If you saw my Hexaco personality profile, I am off the chart for high altruism.
