An example from today – keep thinking, all!
So Esheru Kwaku and and Isobel Oakeshott disagree today. No surprise. But see the arguments…
Isobel: “Met Police Federation Chair Rick Prior appears to have been SUSPENDED for telling the truth on @TalkTV about how officers fear false accusations of racism. This is modern Britain, folks.”
Well, lets see if Isobel is exaggerating or not.
But Esher replies:
“Scarman, McPherson, Runnymede, Lammy. 4 Reports, 30 years. All conclude racism is a problem in the police force.”
Just because one of these claims might be true doesn’t mean the other isn’t.
They are not mutually exclusive.
A group (or even an individual) can contain both.
Keep thinking clearly folks and don’t fall for false binaries in yourself or others.
Then here Esheru goes on to attach two other assertions as questionable corollaries or confusions:
- “no amount of denial will change it”. But change what? The reports, or the racism? If the latter, he’s implying that the police’s historical institutional racism can’t be changed or reduced. This is the claim of “infinite malleability” which asserts that whites are racist and will always remain so, in various forms, despite and adapting to whatever measures against racism are officially adopted. This in turn fans and justifies reverse racism and perpetuates division. I’m not sure what was intended, but by not being clear it fans this.
- “Instead of defending the police and screaming nonexistent “two tier” look at the evidence”. So here the clear counter-claim is that the truth of McPherson, Lammy etc means that current “two-tier” accusations therefore cannot be true. But as above, both are easily true. Grooming gangs evidence on this is clear. So…This was only an exchange of 100 words but we need to keep thinking clearly to pick up the truths we can from them, and find our own, justifiable, position.
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