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America's Children - real lippy?

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michaelicious:
Heh, I just had to edit my post above because I was gonna ask the same question. So I guess I will answer it.

I hope there would be as much of a stir, but honestly I doubt that there would be. I think the news still implants the idea of a young black male as an automatic suspect in a lot of people's minds, which is really sad. While I don't think anyone truly thinks someone deserves to have their head slammed into a wall, I think they would not be as outraged by it if it happened to a teenage boy.

KvP:

--- Quote from: tania on 04 Mar 2009, 11:02 ---
--- Quote from: KvP on 03 Mar 2009, 21:08 ---violence against women
--- End quote ---

i am making some assumptions here as i obviously don't know what was going through the cop's head when he assaulted this girl, but to be honest i think this has very little to do with violence towards women and a lot more to do with police officers' contempt towards teenagers in general. police do tend to hold more conservative views than the rest of the public, but they are usually more chauvinistic than anything (we need to protect the weak members of society, etc etc). however, a very common view shared among people working in law enforcement is that teenagers are disrespectful assholes who need harsher punishments and longer sentences and basically to learn to respect authority, for the reasons rallymonkey outlined. personally i would say age is the important factor here, not gender. again, i'm making some assumptions but my feeling is that if the victim had been male instead of female, i don't think the cop would have responded any differently.

--- End quote ---
I agree, I don't think violence against women is connected in particular to this incident, I was more reffering to the whole Rihanna thing. We could expand the concept to "violence against (broad group)", this idea that there is something inherent about being part of said group that invites violence.

Nodaisho:
I would say that for the most part, a group that is more likely to be attacked is more likely to be attacked because they are seen as weaker, or at some sort of disadvantage. I imagine there are some exceptions, but I think that is the main issue.

Alex C:

--- Quote from: benji on 04 Mar 2009, 11:28 ---I do wonder if the public would have responded differently. If he had beaten up a 15 year old boy, would the public at large be condemning him as much?

--- End quote ---

Yeah, merely saying "Hitting girls is bad" as so many are wont to do is an irresponsible and needlessly reductive response to what happened. This guy is a fucking police officer. They have been given authority in large part because we as citizens expect them to act in a reasonable manner even when other people wouldn't. It's a tough job, and it certainly isn't fair, but them's the breaks. Putting up with some bullshit is in the fucking job description. The government monopoly on violence is intended to be contingent upon the idea that they will not use violence unless it is to mitigate further harm. A 15 year old girl being lippy in no way warranted that response, and so they shouldn't be cut any slack just because of the fucking badge; if anything we need to come down all the harder.

benji:
All true, but when first watching that video, before I thought of the abuse of public trust involved, I had this culturally ingrained response that said "he's beating up a little girl." How many people wouldn't let their outrage get beyond that point? And how many of those people wouldn't have had even that response if it had been a boy?

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