Obama is definitely a gifted, charismatic, likeable person that communicates some great ideas.

Live: Obama Speaks At Town Hall On Policing And Racism | NBC News

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZevgdbMIB0

It's good to address this problem from the point of changing the mindset of police officers............but you will NEVER, NEVER get close to managing the real problem until you address this issue.

Not only are we not addressing it, we are not even recognizing it as the biggest contributor to the mindset of police officers who work in the REAL world..........not  a manufactured, distorted world with speculative theories based on politically generated narratives.

This is the REAL world:

From the peer reviewed study for the state of MN above:

African American Males in the  Criminal Justice System

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/ccj/African%20American%20Males.pdf

" For violent offenses, the arrest rate of African Americans in 1999 was 1,621 per 100,000.  The comparable arrest rate for whites was 76 per 100,000 resulting in African Americans being 21 times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes than whites."

I have been using National data that the rate was 6 times higher but for MN, it's the highest of any state. 

Do some of these cops hate black men because they commit 21 times more crime and  it causes them to lose respect for them and treat them as less human? You bet. That has to happen. It's human nature. That's where better training and better psychological testing might help to weed out people like that but c'mon, 21 times more violent crime and that side is not taking ANY responsibility or being held accountable and we somehow think the other side is totally to blame?

If it was 2 or 3 times more violent crime, that would be bad enough but 21 times more violent crime and the reason it stays that way is because everybody keeps looking elsewhere and blaming every body except the criminals. 

I've already posted numerous times about what I think the solutions should be including mentoring of young black youth, connecting them to positive role models,  tutoring and job creation in the inner cities as well as making parenting classes mandatory in every inner city high school. 

Also, getting local cops involved in the black community so they have a positive relationship with good black citizens they respect to offset them be bombarded all day long with nothing but the worst..........confrontations with young black men committing violent crimes which they have to arrest. After awhile, it erodes their respect for young black men if there is nothing there to balance it. 

To be clear, in case you didn't read the my previous posts, this was a heinous hate crime of cold blooded murder that deserves the max sentence and there are no excuses and his accomplices deserve  time in prison. Even though this man committed several felonies, including armed robbery, breaking into  a house and holding a loaded gun to the body of the lady living there.........all humans deserve to be treated with humanity. Good, bad, reformed, white, black, young, old..........ALL humans. But please, why can't we spend more time working on the most important element defining this issue. Fixing that problem would not only positively affect the relationship between blacks and cops but it would do something MUCH more important. It would bring the black man into the part of society that is most rewarding............getting him out of the prisons. Playing a key role in families as good husbands and fathers. Better educated and employed. Trusted, instead of profiled by police officers who mostly know young black men from their constant personal encounters with them committing crimes, sometimes confrontational(violent criminals are not peaceful people). 

I am just telling you what the most effective solution would be for obtaining more respect for young black males going forward..........they need to do more to earn it and in reversing the condition which is causing the the very justified  rational bias behind cops being suspicious of them. 

Everybody, everywhere is screaming for more needed changes in the racially biased legal and law enforcement community.  This is good.

Who is actually recognizing the biggest problem?

This horrible murder is getting all the attention around the world but what about the thousands of people, mostly black that are murdered by violent young black criminals? Why don't those black lives matter?

Politics.

Not science or facts.

The black man as the victim sells well in politics. Do you REALLY want to help him though?

What good is it for him if we had a world of perfect cops, so that all the young black men committing violent crimes at a double digit rate greater than whites were arrested with respect and given fair/just prison sentences for their crimes?

This is the solution that we are getting from the political world right now. A life that still SUCKS for young black men.

And a continuation of him causing more damage to society than contributions. This is what needs to change.

President Obama is a wonderful example of success for black people.

He has some great ideas on how cops can change.

As a black man, his biggest impact could be to talk directly to young black men and boys about how to become successful.

HE became successful because he was privileged but he can still talk directly to the majority of young black violent criminals from the inner cities...........before they choose this path that destroys their lives.

In Minnesota, a double digit number more young black men choose violent crime vs young white men based on statistics. We need Obama and other well respected, accomplished black men to step forward and speak out and forget the politics. Tell the truth about the reality.

Young blacks will never listen to what Donald Trump has to say, even if he was giving good advice. They will not listen to Joe Biden or anybody else frankly. President Obama, however is revered in the black community. Maybe the only man respected and loved this much by African Americans other than Martin Luther King.......ok, Mohammed Ali too. 

If only he would use his powerful voice and unique position to help change what needs changing the most.  I am grateful to him for providing our country with leadership and evidence of racial healing that took place because we decided that color didn't matter in the voting booth, in deciding on the most important political position in our country  in 2008 and 2012.

I am certain that he is a good person. However, his own politics as a democrat, blind him to the real problem and his massive potential as a black president to actually make a substantial change as great as MLK did.........if he would only apply this properly...........towards raising up black youth and young black men. 

One of the things, possibly the biggest of all to  help young black men is to provide jobs. One of the biggest deterrents for keeping a person away from a life of crime is for them to to be gainfully employed. Obviously, a strong economy is the only way that we can do that effectively.

This was one of MLK's biggest causes. In his day, addressing the unemployment rate that was over double that of whites and the average wage of blacks being much lower.

There are dozens of  studies and written discussions that point exactly to this........jobs as being so important in the black community to success, that its mind boggling, that so many politicians and others look the other way/ignore it.

A jobs-centered approach to African American community developmentThe crisis of African American unemployment requires federal intervention

https://www.epi.org/publication/bp328-african-american-unemployment/

Millions of African Americans live in communities that lack access to good jobs and good schools and suffer from high crime rates as a result. African American adults are about twice as likely to be unemployed as whites, black students lag their white peers in educational attainment and achievement, and African American communities tend to have higher than average crime rates. These issues have been persistent problems.

Jobs are essential to improving African American communities. Increased employment would help people in these communities lift themselves out of poverty. In addition, because poor economic conditions are an important causal factor behind poor educational outcomes and high crime rates are correlated with high unemployment rates, creating job opportunities would help improve educational outcomes and reduce crime.

This paper outlines a plan for significantly increasing the number of jobs available to African Americans. The plan, which targets communities with persistently high unemployment, includes three main components: creation of public sector jobs, job training with job-placement programs, and wage subsidies for employers. Although the plan is constructed with African Americans in mind, it would also provide benefits to Latino, American Indian, and white communities in which unemployment has remained high.¹

A precondition for implementing this plan is a U.S. economy with strong job growth and low unemployment. Unemployment in African American communities cannot be low while the national unemployment rate is high. Thus macroeconomic initiatives—such as infrastructure investments, aid to states, and a stronger safety net—are needed to restore the national economy, reduce the national unemployment rate, and create the conditions for strong job growth in the future.

Even when the national economy is good, however, conditions for African Americans are typically bad. Federal intervention to aid African American community development is necessary for the following reasons:

• African Americans still reside mainly in separate and unequal communities. In 2010, in the 100 metropolitan areas with the largest African American populations, 62.5 percent of blacks would have had to move to achieve full black–white integration.
• Unemployment rates for African Americans have been far higher than those of whites for the past 50 years, even in good times. In fact, since 1960 the black unemployment rate has been about twice the white rate. Had blacks had the same unemployment rate as whites in 2010, an additional 1.3 million blacks would have been employed.
• Parental unemployment, and not simply low income, has negative effects on children’s educational outcomes. Blacks are twice as likely as whites to have had 10 or more spells of unemployment over their prime working years.
• Joblessness, although by no means the only factor producing higher crime rates in African American communities, appears to play a significant role.
• Neither educational advances nor suburbanization by blacks has translated into reductions in the black–white unemployment rate ratio.
• If a bold new approach is not developed to address the racial unemployment disparity, it is likely that African Americans will be condemned to unemployment rates that are twice those of whites into the foreseeable future.

This paper begins with brief discussions of residential segregation and the persistent job crisis facing African Americans. It then presents evidence that suggests why improving educational attainment and access to suburban labor markets are not likely to be enough to raise employment rates among African Americans. This discussion is followed by a proposal for reducing the high rate of joblessness in and rejuvenating African American communities

When poverty and unemployment decrease, crime also decreases and arrests/confrontations with cops decrease proportionally. But the biggest benefit is to the person and their family with an improvement in the quality of their lives.

George Floyd: What has Trump done for black jobs, poverty and crime?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52907646

Make sure to read all 232 pages of this dissertation because there will be a test on it as the end of the week (-:

https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/198118.pdf

Conclusion: Collectively, these analyses support a number of claims concerning the relationship between employment and crime. 

First, it exists. The relationship between work and crime at the cannot be explained by an underlying construct related to individual personalities or cultural values. Even after controlling for a number of characteristics at the individual and aggregate- level, industrial composition, joblessness, and part-time employment at the macro-level, and employment status and employment quality at the mi cro-level influence crime.

 Second, we can be fairly confident that whiie there is apt to be some reciprocal causation, the relationship cannot be explained entirely by the influence that crime has on future employment. At the individual level I included previous measures of  misbehavior and lagged employment variables in the models to add to our confidence in the proposed causal direction. 

Third, this relationship cannot be explained through strictly economic mechanisms. Crime may in some cases serve as a substitution for legitimate wages, but the influence of work in deterring crime appears to go beyond the economic aspect of both employment and crime. This is supported both by the work characteristics that influence crime and by the types of crime that work influences.

 Fourth, the aggregate-level relationships between work and crime cannot be explained entirely by individual-level mechanisms. There are macro characteristics of labor markets that influence individual crime above and beyond their infl!uence on individual employment.

 Fifth, some of the individual relationships between work and crime vary across different contexts. Some are constant. In some cases the variance of the relationships that are not constant can be explained by county characteristics related to labor market opportunities. Employment is an essential aspect of social life. The majority of adults spend most of their waking hours engaged in some type of work. At the individual level, it has the power to This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice.This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.219 shape our attitudes, influence our decisions, and determine our lifestyles. At the community level, employment structures social interaction, influences stability, and creates opportunity. Both its individual and community effects can influence crime. If the goal of the public is to decrease property and violent crime, focusing on investments in conventional activities may be a useful approach. Developing programs and policies that promote a sense of investment in employment is likely to lead to an array of socially beneficial outcomes. According to this research, one of these would be a decrease in criminal behavior."

And now, time for some wonderful graphs!

Feel the Heat!The Unrelenting Challenge of Young Black Male Unemployment!

https://www.clasp.org/sites/default/files/public/resources-and-publications/files/Feel-the-Heat_Web.pdf

I listened to most of Obama and was thinking his ideas sounded pretty smart but then thought " wait a second, why didn't he have these great ideas when he spent 8 years as president?

Keep in mind that I voted for him in 2008 and one of the reasons is that I thought he would be good for race relations.

If memory serves me right, race relations, after decades of progress, took their biggest drop in history under his very divisive racial politics.

Ironically, as the first black president. Was this right or was I imagining it? If I was imagining it, this post would not exist.

Trump didn't take over until 2017, so you can't blame him for this reality(though that's what is always happening).

  Under Obama people describing race relations as good dropped 17%.  Those thinking they are bad went up 16%.

Most Blacks Rate Race Relations With Whites as Bad

https://news.gallup.com/poll/246899/blacks-rate-race-relations-whites-bad.aspx

Implications

When one compares Americans' views of race relations among most racial groups, they are most divided on black-white relations. Although a majority of Americans describe the current state of black-white relations as good and express optimism that challenges between the races will be eventually worked out, black Americans describe current relations between whites and blacks as either very or somewhat bad at the highest levels of this century.

Immediately after the election of the first black U.S. president, Americans' optimism about the future of black-white relations soared. However, since 2013, Americans' overall positive perceptions on race have cooled, and perceptions among blacks have soured considerably. 

metmike: Again, I voted for President Obama the first time and part of it was related to hopes that race relations would get even better under a black president.........but he used race for politics and did ZERO to address the worst problem(massive violent crime by young black men).

Again also, he has a couple of decades  left on earth. It would be wonderful if he ever recognized the need  to assist young black men in becoming more productive as citizens vs committing far too much violent crime. 

As their hero, he enjoys a level of admiration that no other black person in the world enjoys right now,. This is why he really could make a big difference and create needed change in applying himself to the real problem and forgetting the politics. 

I will not rule out the possibility of him stepping up and having some heart to hearts with the black community about the out of control violent crime rate of young black men. Let's stop trying to hide the truth. Forget the politics. 

I'm just some yahoo from Southern Indiana but its so obvious to me that this would take things in a direction that would yield the most benefits for everybody. 

And  what would be the downside?  None!

This is so important that if Biden got struck by lightning and changed his tune to one acknowledging this major problem, along with some legit ideas on how to address it, I would vote for him. 

Think about how many lives would be saved? Both victims and those who become productive citizens instead of criminals. 

A huge drop in the violent crime rate.

A huge drop in the prison population.

A huge savings for tax payers.

Better quality of life for those young men and benefits to their families and communities. 

A politician serious enough to address this would get my vote.

As it stands now, Trumps agenda is best for working Americans, including blacks because there will be more jobs with him as president. Unless Biden can trump Trump with something much better than that(beyond the changes that we all know need to happen with cops) there should be less crime with Trump as president based on proven principles that  strongly connect employment  rates to crime. 

And please don't interpret this position as one of additional  stereotyping or "profiling" young black men as violent criminals. This actually, would only contribute to the problem. 

The vast majority of young black men are good people. I am viewing this as the scientist using authentic data NOT POLITICS to determine what the problem is, not to stereotype or vilify a particular group of people that is different than me .......but to offer viable solutions. 

There are numerous reasons for why things evolved this way and society in the United States caused/is causing most of it. Young black men born and raised in this society, will only be a reflection of our society, which  causes them to be at an enormous risk growing up. Only society in the United States can fix it. 

Blaming others for the sake of assigning blame usually makes problems worse. Blaming others for a problem because the objective is to identify the problem to help them fix it CAN MAKE IT BETTER for that group.....for everybody in this case.

I am just an old white man that gets to decide how much time I can spend on this topic based on how important it is to me and my life and my researching abilities. But at the same time, acknowledging that African Americans don't get to pick and choose how important it is to their lives. It IS THEIR LIVES. 

Embracing this fact is probably the biggest challenge for  most white people who don't understand why it's a huge deal for all blacks. 

At the same time, many blacks also think its impossible for white people like me to understand, even if we think we know what it might be like and I think this is also wrong. 

Human beings are experts on understand their own lives based only on their own unique experiences but we DO have the ability to have a profound understanding  of things that we DON'T experience and most of us have compassion for fellow human beings. 

                Where police reform has worked            

                            Started by metmike - June 5, 2020, 12:15 p.m.         

   https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/53381/