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Originally Posted by roachboy
i am wondering if folk have a pre-set threshold relative to which they make judgments about this sort of issue or if they realize that they had thresholds once a situation pushes them past it.
i'm not sure that i have a particular co-ordinate system in place--i'm not sure if there is a particular amount of information concerning police misconduct that would push me over a line or not. i understand the police as an extension of state power and that state power is an extension of class power. so there is an extent to which i would see the police as a largely repressive arm to begin with--but even with that said, i am not sure about this question of thresholds, or tipping points.
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Great angle on "tipping" points. I think that we reach them, primarily in hindsight, and that the signs of tipping points are over reaction. I think the reaction to "black crime" is the best one that I can come up with, right now.
I am concerned that it's begininings as "a problem" are blurred with racial persecution. Even with that, sometime, probably in the '70's the reaction to "black crime" led to the building of more jail cells and stiffer penalties for drug possession and distribution (ala Rockefeller drug laws). The result was a dramatic growth in the law enforcement, adjudication, and corrections "industries", to the extent that one in six black male adults is in "the system", as an inmate, an accused, on parole, or on probation.
The "tipping point" reaction by "society" to "black crime" had an escalating, snowballing effect. The more blacks "put in the system", the more new cells were built, the more additional black males were "put in the system".
We know that we are not at a "tipping point" with official corruption, because enforcement....arrests, jailings, are not increasing at a dramatic pace. Signs of increasing concern are the dramatic politicization of the DOJ recently, and the appointments of Kerik and Norris to such high sensitive positions at DHS and in Maryland, followed by their respective indictments.
The jail cells in the US are chock full of young black males, though. While there is plenty of intimidation of young black males, police and prosecutors seem to be increasingly elevated to a level of regard, expecially after 9/11, that is reserved in this country for...."the troops". 343 NY City firefighters dies on 9/11, and of the 43 police officers who perished, many were actually non-law enforcement policy emergency service personnel.
You've touched on something, roachboy. The entire apparatus of US authority, because of the incessant playing of the 9/11 "fear card", has gotten a "pass" as far as oversight and accountability. "There's no time for that, now....there's a war on, we're fighting to preserve our way of life, because, they hate us for our freedom".
It's more like a form of leukemia, I think, than a tumor. It's slower to act, but it reaches every area, and still wrecks the health of the patient. The tipping point for the public, though, is reached by what the immediacy of what it thinks it is most aggravated by...be it the young black male, or the cop on the beat.