Kyle Rittenhouse wasn’t convicted because, in America, white reasoning rules
Michael Harriot below is perfectly correct. America IS ruled by legal notions that people of European descent see as reasonable. Such people are a big majority in the USA. And majority rules.
Ideas of proper behaviour do differ as between different ethnic groups. If you want to see what black ideas produce, just look at the egregiously high rate of interpersonal violence prevailing in any African country.
And European ideas of proper behaviour do very much hold that you are entitled to defend yourself if attacked -- which Rittenhouse was
Before sending a Kenosha, Wisconsin, jury to deliberate if Kyle Rittenhouse is a murderer, Judge Bruce Schroeder informed Rittenhouse’s hand-picked jury that his fate rests on the “privilege” of self-defense.
Neither side disagreed that the 18-year-old intended to shoot Anthony M Huber, Joseph Rosenbaum and Gaige Grosskreutz. They don’t disagree that the Smith & Wesson M&P 15 is a dangerous weapon. However, under Wisconsin’s self-defense statutes, Rittenhouse was allowed to use deadly force, even if he provoked the 25 August attack, if he “reasonably believed” it was necessary to prevent his own death. Even though he traveled to the city and walked into a chaotic scene with a killing machine.
Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed two demonstrators during protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, was acquitted of all charges on Friday.© Photograph: Getty Images Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed two demonstrators during protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, was acquitted of all charges on Friday.
Related: Kyle Rittenhouse acquittal: five key takeaways from the courtroom drama
“A belief may be reasonable even though mistaken,” the jury instructions read. “In determining whether the defendant’s beliefs were reasonable, the standard is what a person of ordinate intelligence and prudence would have believed in the defendant’s position.”
Before former Kenosha alderman Kevin Mathewson summoned “patriots willing to take up arms and defend our city from the evil thugs”, no one else had died during the unrest in his city. Before Rittenhouse killed two people and wounded another, no one else had been shot. So, why is it reasonable to believe Rittenhouse needed a killing machine to protect himself against the “evil thugs” who were not shooting and killing people?
The “reasonable man” test derives from the description of a nondescript English character called the “man on the Clapham omnibus” – a reasonably educated, but average, hypothetical passenger on a London bus route whose thoughts and actions are defined as “ordinary”. The US supreme court case Graham v Connor enshrined this concept into law. The reason police are often acquitted of killing unarmed citizens is that they can argue that a “reasonable” police officer would have used deadly force, even if the officer turned out to be wrong and the victim was unarmed. When I first heard this principle, the first thing I thought was: “A white person came up with this.”
Because all of our opinions are shaped and colored by our experiences, “reasonable” is a subjective notion. Only white people’s perceptions are made into a reality that everyone else must abide by. Think about how much privilege one must have for their feelings to become an actual law that governs the actions of people everywhere.
While there is no doubt about the value of the white lives Rittenhouse snuffed out, there’s also no doubt that Rittenhouse was venturing into one of the scariest, most dangerous situations those white jurors could imagine: a Black Lives Matter protest. It is easy to see how, for Rittenhouse and jurors, the victims were part of the frightening mob of “evil thugs”.
In America, it is reasonable to believe that Black people are scary.
Understanding the innate fear of Blackness embedded in the American psyche does not require legal scholarship or a judge’s explanation. This belief shapes public perception, politics and the entire criminal justice system. And it is indeed a privilege only afforded to whiteness.
Only white people’s perceptions are made into a reality that everyone else must abide by.
Researchers have found that Americans perceive Black men as larger, stronger and more threatening than white men the same size. A 2016 paper found that Black boys are perceived as older and “less innocent” by police officers. Black girls as young as five years old are viewed as older, less innocent and more aggressive than white girls. In real life, 35% of gang members are Black, but in Hollywood, 65% of the roles described as “gangsters” are played by Black actors.
The idea of the “scary Black person” manifests itself in every segment of the US criminal justice system. It’s why police are more likely to stop Black drivers, even though – according to the largest analysis of police data in the history of the world – white drivers are more likely to be in possession of illegal contraband. It’s why unarmed Black people are killed by cops at three times the rate of whites, in spite of the fact that most on-duty police fatalities are committed by white men. After controlling for factors that include education, weapon possession and prior criminal history, the US sentencing commission found that federal judges sentence Black men to prison terms that are, on average, 20% longer than white men with similar circumstances.
It’s why 5,000 people responded to Mathewson’s Facebook call-to-arms. It’s why police officer Rusten Sheskey was not charged with a crime for shooting Jacob Blake seven times in the back and the side. Blake’s pocketknife made Sheskey fear for his life, but Rittenhouse was allowed to waltz past officers from the same police department carrying a killing machine during chaotic protests. They did not see the gun-toting teenager as a threat. He is not Black. He was not scary.
That privileged loophole extends past the borders of Wisconsin. It is on display in the trial of the men who killed Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick, Georgia. The impromptu lynch mob hunted Arbery down based on an 1863 law that allows citizens to arrest anyone based on “reasonable and probable grounds of suspicion”, referred to by Cornell professor Joseph Margulies as a “catching-fleeing-slave law”. This explains how a court could seat only one Black juror in a county that is 26.6% Black.
Knowing how this belief has shaped reality for every Black person in America explains why white people are the only group who doesn’t think “attention to the history of slavery and racism is good for society”. It is reasonable to assume that Black history is as scary as the people in it. It is reasonable to assume that police fear for their lives when they detain Black suspects. It is reasonable for conservatives to assume that Black voters will upset the political equilibrium if they are not systemically suppressed. And yes, it was reasonable to believe that Kyle Rittenhouse’s white jurors would grant him the privilege of self-defense.
The Rittenhouse verdict is proof that it is reasonable to believe that the fear of Black people can absolve a white person of any crime.
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Virginia cop who was fired for anonymously donating $25 to Kyle Rittenhouse's defense fund after being outed by hackers demands his job back
A Virginia cop who was fired for anonymously donating $25 to a Kyle Rittenhouse defense fund after being outed by hackers and the media is now demanding his job back from the woke, 'hypocrite' police chief who fired him.
Speaking to DailyMail.com on Friday, as the Rittenhouse verdict came in on Friday, Norfolk Police Lieutenant William 'Bill' Kelly explained why he thought Rittenhouse deserved his help back then, and why he stands by the decision now.
Rittenhouse was found not guilty on all counts on Friday after a two week trial. He buckled in tears as the verdict was read aloud and is now a free man.
Seven months ago, long before the trial had even started, 42-year-old Kelly was fired for donating anonymously to the teenager's then-growing defense fund.
Kelly, a 19-year veteran and father-of-three who had moved into the internal affairs division at the time, made a $25 donation to a Give Send Go online campaign for Rittenhouse's legal team after watching social media videos and journalists' footage from the August 2020 Kenosha riots.
He wrote alongside his donation: 'God Bless. Thank you for your courage. Keep your head up. You’ve done nothing wrong. Every rank-and-file police officer supports you.'
He thought nothing else of it, until his name appeared in an article by The Guardian among the names of other cops who gave to the fund. Their details had been hacked by a group and provided to the media. Kelly was fired and vilified by the police chief and city manager in Norfolk, who called his actions 'egregious'.
In an interview with DailyMail.com, he explained why he thought Rittenhouse was innocent from the beginning.
'Everything I'm saying is just my personal opinion. I've been a homicide detective, a violent crimes investigator for years. I have a background. I watched the video of the shooting and I'd seen the video of the journalists of Mr. Rittenhouse before the shooting and the protesters before the shooting and I thought it painted a pretty clear picture that Mr. Rittenhouse had a very strong claim for self-defense.
'I was very surprised when he was charged soon after the shooting with these murders and the shooting of the third victim,' he said.
Kelly, a self-confessed 'news junkie', saw that a GoFundMe account for Rittenhouse had been canceled, and a site called Give Send Go had set up another page for him.
He logged on and donated, making sure to leave out personal details because he says he didn't want to associate himself with the police department.
'I was interested in giving him the chance to defend himself in front of a jury. I know that lawyers are expensive, and it's hard sometimes to get the message out there. I wanted to make sure that he had the means necessary to make his claim in court.
'It mattered. The comments I made, my belief that he has a strong claim for self-defense was a personal opinion. I didn't want my city or police department to be associated with it, so I chose to donate anonymously.
'It was only after the hackers broke into it that they were able to connect those dots,' he said.
A hacker group called 'Distributed Denial of Secrets' obtained his name and email address from the fund and provided it to The Guardian, which published a story including his name. The Daily Dot followed.
Within a day of it coming out, the Norfolk Police Department was receiving widespread calls to fire Kelly from all over the world.
'It wasn't people local, it was people from all around the country who read an article and sent a nasty tweet. In the absence of that outcry, there would not have been any kind of disciplinary action against me, I'm confident,' he said.
The city decided that the comments 'eroded' the public's trust in the police and Kelly was fired in April.
He has since filed a grievance, but the process is ongoing and in the meantime, he's had to survive on his savings.
Speaking from his home in Norfolk, he said he wishes the city officials had waited at least until tensions surrounding the case had calmed, if not until the trial.
'If people consumed as much information as I did about the case they may have come to a different conclusion. And honestly even if they did consume as much information as I did and they came to a different conclusion - that's fine.
'This is America. You can agree with your neighbors and other people in your community and you can disagree with them. Just because someone has a different opinion than you, it doesn't mean you should destroy their lives, take their job away.
'My opinion on the self-defense claim of Mr. Rittenhouse has no impact on my ability to do my job as a police officer.'
He says the only reason he was fired was because he supported the teenager.
'If I had a different opinion and I donated to a fund for the victims and made comments about how Mr. Rittenhouse was a murderer, nobody would have cared or tried to get me fired.'
In his grievance, he points to the fact that the police chief Larry Boone attended a BLM protest in May last year in full uniform, while on duty.
In the photo, Boone is holding a sign that reads Black Lives Matter, with the names of people who have been shot by cops - including some in Norfolk - around it.
'The hypocrisy is dumbfounding. For the leader of our organization to be able to advocate support for a movement that is at the very least divisive in America today, in uniform while on duty... he was holding carried the name of a person who had recently been shot by a Norfolk police officer.
'The sign demanded justice for that person, but that shooting was still under investigation to determine whether or not that officer should be charged criminally. It's very inconsistent.
'Yet I cannot, off-duty, on my own time make a donation and some comments that are well within the realm of public, acceptable discourse?'
The bigger issue, he says, is that he was fired for daring to have an opinion that went against woke officials and public pressure to condemn the teenager.
'The outcome of the trial has nothing to do with my vindication - right or wrong, an American has the right to express their opinion within the realm of public discourse.
'That same freedom exists regardless to the outcome.'
Now, he says the censorship of right-wing political views is 'chilling' police officers all over the country. They feel 'disposable' unless they submit to a liberal ideology.
'It made me feel disposable. Not only how it affected me, how it affected other officers. I was contacted by others who said they immediately deleted their social media accounts after I got fired out of fear that they would go through them and find something innocuous to use against them.
'I've been contacted by officers who say, "what if Trump runs in 2024 and I put a sign for him in my front yard, can media get a hold of that? If enough people complain, will I lose my job?"
'The effects of this kind of censorship are wide. It ripples through the entire department. It's a chilling effect.'
Kelly and his wife have been surviving on her salary as a school teacher and his savings to get by, but he is hoping he will be reinstated soon and given backpay. The couple have three kids, the oldest of whom is 18.
He is desperate to return to work and was just ten months away from vesting for his pension when he was fired. If he doesn't get his job back, he'll lose the pension he worked almost 20 years for.
'I love being a cop, it's a part of me and who I am. It was a huge hit to me to lose my job. If I got the chance again, I'd jump on it,' he said.
Kelly said that even though Rittenhouse has now been acquitted, he does not believe public discourse will change because people have 'dug in' to their opinions.
'I don't think the discourse will change. People are dug in on their heels... they'll point to some other boogie-man as an excuse as to why he was acquitted. They won't be forced to look at the facts of the case. I don't think they'll change their mind.
'Honestly, most of America is pretty polarized. People on both sides who seem to be ideologically dug in to their position.
'They try to view fact patterns through it and it's hard to break free from it,' he said.
The City of Norfolk did not respond to inquiries about whether it intended to give him his job back.
He is hoping for a hearing date at the end of January, but wants to resolve the issue privately before then.
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Biden Takes Aim at Religious Freedom
Biden continually subjected us to cruel and unusual punishment with his continual vaccine mandates. Now, the demented clown wants to shred religious freedom as if it’s not a fundamental piece of the Bill of Rights.
FNN explains:
The Health and Human Services Department (HHS) is considering revoking authority the former Trump administration delegated for the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) to prevent violations of religious liberty – prompting concerns about conscience protections under Secretary Xavier Becerra.
A draft memo obtained by Fox News targets two actions related to the the First Amendment from earlier this year, and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which prohibits federal infringements on the free exercise of religion.
The RFRA delegation came on Dec. 7, 2017, in response to the administration’s broader efforts to beef up religious liberty protections. Citing President Trump’s executive order on the issue, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions provided executive agencies with a long list of guidelines on RFRA, free exercise claims, contraception in insurance plans and other issues.
HHS followed by granting OCR authority to, among other things, conduct RFRA compliance reviews and “initiate such other actions as may be necessary to facilitate and ensure compliance with RFRA.”
HHS’ internal memo is expected to be rolled out this week, according to a source familiar. It argues that the former administration may have over-expanded OCR’s authority and signals intent to repeal Trump-era initiatives.
The memo is addressed to Becerra and comes from OCR Director Lisa Pino, a political appointee announced in September.
https://theblacksphere.net/2021/11/biden-takes-aim-at-religious-freedom/
*************************************************An "indigenous voice" for Australia?
The Proposal: A national body made up of elected Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that could provide advice to the Australian Parliament and Government on relevant laws, policies and programs and could engage early on with the Australian Parliament and Government in the development of relevant policies and laws
Peta Credlin
The PM and key ministers (such as the Health Minister and the Treasurer) have been preoccupied by Covid, but not so other ministers. The pandemic is no excuse as to why these significant proposals haven’t been openly discussed with the community, rather than sprung on them just before an election.
Take the Indigenous “voice”. Of course, our Aboriginal heritage should be honoured and respected, and Aboriginal people should fully participate in Australian society. And obviously there’s been past discrimination, injustice and racism against them. But how do we become a colourblind society? How do we become a country, in Martin Luther King’s immortal words, that judges people “by the content of their character not by the colour of their skin” by setting up a special body, with members elected on the basis of race, to give laws meant for all Australians special race-based consideration for just some?
Yes, it’s meant to atone for past racism, but isn’t making racial distinctions wrong? Certainly, that’s what we were asked to think, until Critical Race Theory came along, with its insistence that white people are inherently racist unless they manifest in their lives a kind of permanent, institutionalised apology.
As the First Australians, Aboriginal people could perhaps claim a special status, but this would be much better done through some form of acknowledgment in the constitution – such as Tony Abbott’s suggestion that we include, in the preamble, that Australia is a country with “an Indigenous heritage, a British foundation, and an immigrant character”. Such words would include everyone who has helped build Australia – now and in the past – by defending our flag and freedoms, creating our prosperity, and shaping our institutions as well as those who, in race terms, have been here for thousands of years.
I’m inherently cautious about any institutionalised special treatment for particular groups, especially as Aboriginal people are certainly not the only ones who’ve had a raw deal in the past and continue to face issues: what about women, migrants from non-English-speaking backgrounds, some religions, and people with disabilities?
If every group with a claim for special consideration needs its own special representation to parliament, soon there’ll be a multitude, indeed a babble of “voices” to parliament, and governmental decision-making will be even more gummed up with special pleading, and the overall national interest even more drowned out.
Already, at almost every official event, there’s a “welcome to country”, in a special nod to the 3.3 per cent of Australians who identify as Indigenous, which the 96.7 per cent who don’t normally accept as the courtesy due to the people who were here first.
There are now six (out of 226) members and senators in the federal parliament who identify as Indigenous, with more standing as candidates at the next election. Surely continuing to elect Aboriginal people to parliament (which, after all, is the voice of the whole Australian people) is the best way to ensure that they get the hearing they deserve and is further demonstration that Australian voters are colourblind when it comes to choosing the people best able to represent them?
With its pandemic-driven spending spree, softly softly approach to authoritarian state governments, and commitment to net zero emissions (even though there’s no new policy to deliver it), the Morrison government has already sorely tested the goodwill of its political base.
One Nation, the reconstituted Liberal Democrats and the cashed-up Palmer party are already trawling for first preference votes among the “Howard battlers” who used to be the Coalition’s strongest supporters.
Maybe if the government had better addressed the concerns of conservative voters, via vetoing the incorrigibly politically correct national school curriculum or by supporting nuclear power on land as well as at sea, this wouldn’t matter so much because the splinter party votes would return in preferences.
But legislating a “voice” especially, rather than risking defeat by having a referendum, looks sneaky. Given the pressures on the parliamentary timetable, the only way a “voice” could be legislated before the election is with Labor support.
Asking people to support something they inherently mistrust, and a Labor version of it at that, would be a bitter pill to swallow – and for many could be the last straw.
If there’s an argument for a separate Aboriginal body, then it should be put to the people to decide, not the politicians.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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