(10-08-2011 12:25 )Sooky™ Wrote: (10-08-2011 05:51 )iamthatjack Wrote: The peaceful protest that became a riot in Tottenham was because a policeman struck a 16 year old girl in the face. The rest of the riots had no cause/link and is opportunistic destruction.
- Killing a man who is sitting in a cab is heavy handed.
- Attacking rioters in order to stop them causing increased destruction to various areas of London and beyond is justifiable, since as you say, they are unrelated to the shooting.
There's anarchy on the streets, the police can't handle it...so other than Ghostbusters, who are you gonna call?
Its so easy for Caucasians to dismiss racism, you never experience it to the extent everyone else does, you can never understand
The Tottenham riot began as a result of the rumour that a 16 year old girl had been attacked by police. You condemn one side based on conjecture, yet condone another using the very same method
- Killing a man "sitting in a cab" is not neccessarily as clear cut as it sounds. There is a difference between setting out to kill someone and it being an unfortunate result of an unintentional act. What doesn't help is people automatically jumping on the police witch-hunt bandwagon in order to justify unlawfulness, violence and destruction. This is inciteful behaviour and the reason why we end up in situations like this in the first place.
- ALL THE RIOTS ARE UNJUSTIFIABLE!!!! A riot is a riot - no matter which way you want to justify specific ones. NONE of them are related to the shooting or anything else. Have you not been paying attention for the last year 6 months or so? Every time there is any kind of protest etc in London at the moment it results in riots. Why? Because there are always people who will use these situations for their own means and are in no way sympathetic or interested in what the original protest was about.
It's so easy to throw the racism card around as it keeps everything in a neat little box that people can feel vindicated in cause they're treated so badly, nobody else understands. When, in reality, what is just as bad as racism is the perpetuation of racism as a means to justify a victimisation mindset so as to justify other actions. Racism is not just about skin colour. Scots, Welsh, Irish, French, Germans, Americans, Jews (the list goes on). These people (who are often predominantly caucasian) all are subject to racial/xenophobic feelings etc by English people (not all, I hasten to add). These groups of people are often caucasian. So to claim that caucasian people cannot understand racism is ignorant. Racism cannot be tolerated, but nor is everything race related. It is not race related just because black people, or anyone with colour, are involved. To suggest it is race related purely on the grounds of a black person having been at the heart of the matter is little more than rabble rousing - and that will cause a great deal more problems.
These are not race related riots - hence there have been little attacks on people. It is all simply to do with opportunistic looting and an attempt by groups of people to have what they class as fun with little to no regard for anything else. There is no meaning or agenda behind it. There never was - in Tottenham or elsewhere.
I don't condemn the police based on conjecture, I've seen and experienced it first hand. It's no coincidence that a lot of non-whites hate the police.
If Mark had done something in the cab to lead to his death, surely that would have been released straight away, showing that the police did well and acted correctly. Yet nothing has been said. Don't tell me investigations etc need to be done, if he was acting untoward at the time, we would have known. Before you think to the contrary, I don't justify or condone any of the violence, but I can see why they have resorted to it.
Racism is about skin colour.
Xenophobia is hatred for people form certain countries.
If you genuinely are comparing hating the Scots etc to actual racism, you need to get out of your bubble and see what is really happening to the various races in this country, not just by the police (and I don't mean all the police). You say it's easy to 'its easy to throw the race card' but until you have actually experienced it and know what you are talking about regarding race, you really can't comment, but of course you will just dismiss this again because you know all about racism.
I've never claimed, and no one has, that these riots are race related, as I have said, they are opportunistic, but the initial riot (after the peaceful protest) in Tottenham was after a girl was beaten by a fair few policemen, for either throwing a stone or a champagne bottle. Now I will be the first to say she was 100% wrong to do anything of the sort, but would it have been difficult to arrest her? Did they need to beat her?
Just to add, I am not black