Kareem, a Black commenter, writes:
Ultra Cool: Why are there racially motivated riots like these in the U.S?
Kareem: It’s all about narrative. It has become increasingly common that whenever a Black person is shot by a cop, it becomes national news. Blacks in this country, regardless of where and why, feel like they are being are treated worse in situations because they are Black. Now, this sparks a narrative that Blacks are mistreated and that there is a systemic effort to keep them down. Now, the number of Blacks killed by the police effectively supports this narrative, which confirms the belief of it.
Now that the narrative exists, it becomes hard to dispel. The people who attack it have their motivations questioned. It doesn’t matter who you are either. A White man who attacks it is a Klansman. Even a Black person who attacks is merely suffering from internalized racism.
These problems are exacerbated by the fact that the actual racists will make the same points as average people who are merely questioning the narrative, but they actually have more negative motives. For this reason, it becomes easier to ascribe these motives onto them. Because you’ll have someone will say, “Blacks aren’t killed in out of proportion numbers”, but also say, “Niggers don’t deserve any rights!” in the same breath.
At the end of the day, it is extremely difficult to dispel narratives, and there is little hope for full integration as long as the narrative exists.
It will take a long time for the Michael Brown shooting (from the facts at hand) to be seen as anything other than an extrajudicial execution in the eyes of a lot of Black people because supporting the narrative is the most important thing.
Politics. Race. Feminism. Religion. All of these things are built on narratives.
This comment is absolutely brilliant. If you want to know what is behind these police riots, race riots, cop shootings, police brutality protests, Black Lives Matter movements, etc., this is where you are going to find the answers.
Kareem’s answer is much better than the standard liberal narrative (which I must admit is idiotic and preposterous).
It is better than the stupid conservative narrative: welfare, the state, and Democratic mayors created all Black problems in the US.
And it is surely better than the racist narrative: Blacks are a bunch of violent savage niggers who are incompatible with any form of modern advanced civilization. Further, Blacks and Whites cannot live together – Lincoln was right. Race war or RAHOWA is coming soon, and the end of civilization is near.
All of these are the standard narratives that 95% of people support, and they are all pretty much bullshit in one way or another. The real answer is more in line with what Kareem wrote: narratives.
I would say Kareem’s theory is also in line with Information Theory, which I would define as “He who controls information, controls the world.” Ask the CIA, Bill Gates, Google and Rupert Murdock about that. We take media for granted, but it is so important in our modern world. We don’t live on little house in the prairie anymore. Smart cameras, street cams, security cams, dash cams, body cams and smart phones are everywhere. Facebook and social media are omnipresent. Everything is or will be televised, not just the revolution. Much of what we take as received knowledge nowadays, stuff we ignorantly think we thought up on our own, was actually filtered for us via a media narrative.
