Okay, it's one thing to present truth. It's another to present an opinion piece from a blog that has a spurious association with its sources, and then claim it is truth.
- Refused loans . . . This is a horrendous piece of misinformation. The article puts this statement in present tense. The problem? The link is to an article discussing redlining, which was outlawed in 1968. Redlining ended over half a century ago.
- "Stopped and Frisked." The blog misrepresents the article. At the very beginning of the article, they state plainly that the reason most cited is "furtive moments." Do I agree with that? No. But it isn't like they're walking up to a black person that was just walking down the street listening to headphones and throw that person up against a wall.
- "Anatomy." Oh, come on. At this point, anyone who really cares about "truth" should stop reading the blog. The linked article is about a police chief explaining that they've recently learned there's differences in how arteries work and blood flows, and the recovery after a chokehold. The chief made an unfortunate statement of "normal" for those who recover faster (more likely white people). This isn't justification for killing a black person. It's an explanation of what they are learning. Moreover, the article itself is about the "moral outrage" of the use of "normal."
- "One analysis of the national database..." This is an awful, fallacious piece of logic here. He cites an article, then pairs it with a statement on Black America to push the idea that death of blacks are vastly underreported. That's the exact opposite of the conclusion. I'll quote from the conclusion. "There was no evidence suggesting that underreporting varied by death investigator type (medical examiner versus coroner) or race/ethnicity."
- "Charging document." Well, the link is broken and the blog gives no indication of who reported about the document. That means this is an unsourced assertion at this point.
- "Falsely overstated." What? Um, no. Here's what it said. "The autopsy revealed no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation. Mr. Floyd had underlying health conditions including coronary artery disease and hypertensive heart disease. The combined effects of Mr. Floyd being restrained by the police, his underlying health conditions and any potential intoxicants in his system likely contributed to his death.
In other words, there are three things that look to have had a hand in his death. That's not an overstatement. It's a well-measured statement on possibility. Moreover, if someone was play rhetorical games, they'd write it as, "The combined effects of the underlying conditions, and potential intoxicants likely contributed to his death along with the actions of the officer." But, note the police actions were first.
The author then goes on with this great piece of horrid logic that "artery disease and hypertension . . . increase the risk of stroke and heart attack over years, not minutes." Um, yeah, and then that risk remains elevated so that when a person's heart rate spikes, they're more likely to have a heart attack. It's the past damage that is currently present that causes the risk.
- "Other physician groups." This is a reference to the "Collective Black Physicians Statement." Repeat after me, everyone, "Confirmation Bias." I don't doubt what the physicians are saying is true. I point this out to show how the author of this article has no clue how to properly uses sources. Find an unbiased study that says the same thing. Call up a few physicians and interview them.
- "Autopsy reports are manipulated to bury police violence." Um, this is a link to an opinion piece. Oh, and one that's also behind a paywall. It is not a legitimate source.
- "And uphold white supremacy." Again, a link to an opinion piece. And, ironically, vastly overstated. The article title? "Autopsies can uphold white supremacy." Now, the author is a scholar, but opinion pieces are not peer-reviewed pieces. They do not serve as a good source.
There were others, but I decided to stop here.
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This "writer" would fail any freshman 100 level course I teach. You simply cannot use sources in a spurious way and attempt to be taken seriously. Especially when some of your sources say nothing of what you're trying to say, and at least one says the exact opposite. Moreover, it's this kind of crap that makes people doubt anything they read on the topic (which is, itself, a cognitive distortion of all-or-nothing thinking).
Look, is there racism in this country? Yes. But it's become the go-to card anytime there's a confrontation between a white person and someone of a different race. And, one of the very sources used in the article above specifically says that underreporting does
not differ between races.
What you and many others are missing here is that there's two questions. 1. Was the police officer's actions driven by race. 2. Was the following investigation driven by race. I can't answer the first one. As for the second one, if you want to prove it was driven by race, then compare the way this report was handled with the way reports from other black people and the deaths of white people in police custody are handled. Until that is done, there's as much if not more possibility that the underlying point of view was, "Oh crap, we better make ourselves look less guilty" and not "Oh well, he's a black person so it's okay."