“If Black people can develop and refine metaphors to understand the white experience (in all of its constituent complexity, pain and privilege), how is it that white people are excused from understanding the Black experience?”
—Christienne Leigh Hinz
“Fieldnotes on Allyship: Achieving Equality Together”
Arizona State U #Library not only has a new #Black Collections archival repository—there's also a free, online Black Memory and Storytelling Symposium going on right now!*
While Tennessee’s House made headlines for expelling two Black members, over in the Tennessee Senate, two senators were speaking up for Confederate History Month.
Their proclamation celebrates “a four-year heroic struggle for states’ rights, individual freedom, local government control, and a determined struggle for deeply held beliefs.”
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No #Abolition thread this week but since so many people are getting gunned down for doing ...well nothing... I thought I would explain Stand Your Ground Laws (SYG). Stand Your Ground Laws warped the traditional understanding of self defense. Under common law a person has a right to defend themselves against threats of bodily harm as long as the response to a threat is proportional to the threat. 1/9?
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You can use deadly force to protect yourself if the person attacking you is using deadly force and you reasonably believe you are in danger of death or serious bodily injury. If someone attacks you with a wet towel you can't gun them down with an AR 15. That's not proportional. 2/9
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Also, you cannot be the initial aggressor meaning you can't start the fight, although as we
know from Trayvon Martin, if you are a white aggressor and you shot a black person, it doesn't matter that you started the fight. The law on self-defense did require that you had to try and retreat first if it was possible to do so without risk to the person retreating. 3/9
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Under CL there was an exception to duty to retreat. You know the British love their castles, so we had the "castle doctrine" which says if you are in your house when the person attacks you don't have to try and retreat, you can just go ahead and shoot them. 4/9
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In the states that have Stand your Ground laws the laws have changed the duty to retreat precedent. In those states you can use deadly force anywhere, in the movie theater, in your car, just walking down the street. Your reaction to the threat still has to be reasonable. This is a question of fact meaning a jury will decide whether your actions were reasonable. 5/9
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Don't ask what reasonable means because no one really understands it and it varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction
But one formulation would ask would a reasonable person going about the careful undertaking of their affairs believe what you did was reasonable. In FL shooting people in a car listening to rap music almost got by as reasonable. Took 2 trials to get a guilty murder verdict for the white guy. 6/9
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In some states, like FL which has an extreme version of SYG, a judge can decide right after the killing whether the shooter acted reasonably and dismiss
the charges or prevent the state from bringing charges. This happens before discovery occurs and without a determination of reasonableness by a jury. The judge can also bar any civil law suits against the shooter.
It is the most extreme version. 7/9
This is a good article, but it misses something crucial. It states: "[Scott's] presence makes the Republican brand more palatable to those who want an American conservatism without the racial resentment."
Fundamentally untrue. Scott's presence makes the GOP more palatable to those who want conservatism without the appearance of racial resentment. Scott and his supporters are 100% fine with the white nationalist policies and ideology of the GOP. They just don't want to be called on it, and Scott gives them enough plausible deniability to get by.
When you shoot a 16-year-old boy in the head, then shoot him in the arm as he lays on the ground, then tell him “don’t come around here!” as he staggers and runs away—spoiler alert: THAT’S NOT SELF-DEFENSE, YOU FUCKOS.
"Substack CEO Chris Best said he didn't want to "engage in speculation" about statements like “all brown people are animals.""
Given another opportunity to answer correctly by the interviewer, “You know this is a very bad response to this question, right? You’re aware that you’ve blundered into this. You should just say no. And I’m wondering what’s keeping you from just saying no,"