When the police system of Finland, for example, is raised as a shining model for a US police reform… it makes criticising the Finnish system more difficult. The police system here is racist, and does lots of things that harm individual people as well as communities. It makes me sad and frustrated when people look at one fact like the kill statistics and go “yay this is how the police should be”. No, that’s not the whole picture.
Using this “reform the US police to be like the good cops of Finland / German / whatever” rhetoric might help the US to have a police that is little less bad. It sure is a soft approach, a stepping stone change that is likely easier to push through than abolishing the police. Unfortunately, as far as I can see, it also complicates the work of those elsewhere demanding the problems of the local police to be addressed. (And this rhetoric not questioning the existence of police in general is another issue.)
I think it would be better to avoid suggesting any other police system is copied over to the US. We can point out the specific things going better than in the US but that shouldn’t equal to a blind acceptance of the police systems of other places, which it often seems to do.
(I’m not an expert here so if you have constructive criticism of this argument, feel free to offer an alternative way to look at it! I do know this blind acceptance and praise is not the goal for almost anyone who shares the posts/tweets comparing the police in different countries. I’m just saying that as someone who discusses the topic with people in one of the common comparison countries, this is the effect I’m seeing.)
Yeah this. Denmark has a system pretty much identical to the other countries mentioned here, but we still have issues with racism and police brutality towards non-white people. It’s not talked about much and the few times it is it’s presented in the media as a singular exceptional event when in reality our non-white citizens have been talking about this all the time.
White Scandinavians, myself included, didn’t believe we had those police brutality issues for a long time (I only learned about them a couple of years ago) because my experiences with cops have been largely positive - when I was a kid I wasn’t scared of the patrolling police cars in my tiny Icelandic village, because the most they’ve done “to” me is stop me and ask why I wasn’t wearing a bicycle helmet (mandatory by law for under 18yos) and offer to drive me home to get it. In Denmark as an adult it’s been stuff like, being mostly alone on public transport at night, feeling followed after getting off, and then just walking up to the nearest police car…who’d then just drive me home and admonish me to stick to well lit areas.
Non-white citizens get very little of this protection. Nightclubs call the cops on young people standing in line to get in just because they’re brown. Police rough them up. protests and demonstrations (which I’ve attended a lot) - which are largely peaceful in Denmark - usually have police present to protect the protestors from aggression, yet there are numerous examples of the police treating non-white protestors in those groups as threats and roughing them up and arresting them. Our prisons might be nicer than American prisons, but the percentage of non-white prisoners is out of proportion with the percentage of non-white citizens in the population - a factor that drives racism and islamophobia bc if so many of them are in jail, then they really are all criminals, the whole bunch of them, amiright? No. Scandinavia and Finland have massive problems with racism, including in our police forces and justice systems, and we need to remember that in this discussion.
i hope this makes sense but i always get kinda uncomfortable when people talk about colonization and put a huge emphasis on the accomplishments of the people who were colonized as if that’s the reason they shouldn’t have been subject to colonization. like when talking about sustainable farming practices or gender equality some folks still have this gross mindset, kind of like “these people shouldn’t have been colonized because they meet MY standard of a progressive society”. there are always people who won’t meet that standard and while it is important to talk about the history and culture of precolonial societies its so uncomfortable to see us to zero in on the ways these societies are “better”. like maybe my ancestors weren’t kings, maybe they weren’t agriculturally savvy, maybe their accomplishments wouldn’t impress an outside audience but no matter what they did not deserve to be enslaved and have their nations and land decimated. yall get me??
Tibetan women’s braids.
For centuries, Tibetan women have plaited their hair in 108 braids (or as close as possible) to represent
the 108 teachings of the Kan Djur, the Tibetan holy book.
“Since Hamilton’s debut, Miranda has become a household name and rock star to the NPR set. He used this reserve of cultural capital to advocate for the passing of PROMESA [Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act], which along with forming La Junta gutted social services in Puerto Rico, eliminated pensions for public-sector employees, and closed over 500 schools. The bill’s effect on the whole range of public programs and institutions in Puerto Rico rivals the violence of austerity measures imposed by the E.U. on the Greek people.”
people should really read the whole article both for context of the economic crises in Puerto Rico but also about what the above quote really means. LMM didnt just support a shitty bill, he comes from an enormously influential family in NY, PR, and WDC politics that at every turn has sought to privatize and exploit Puerto Rican industry, infrastructure, and people. He is literally being instrumentalized here as the cultural arm of his father’s many foundations and political goals. fuck this man for so many reasons.
“In 2017, Lin-Manuel announced his intention to perform a limited run of Hamilton at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, under the pretext of raising funds for the performing arts through the creation of the Flamboyan Arts Fund with his father’s Flamboyan Foundation. This proposal was met by fierce protests, as students rebuked him for his advocacy of the PROMESA bill. Students would later stage a second and third protest in the beginning of 2019, this time joined by faculty, to protest the musical that celebrates the same settler-colonial power with its neoliberal boot at the neck of Puerto Rico. In response, the performance was moved to the Centro de Bellas Artes, a change of venue facilitated by Governor Rosselló himself.
This all occurred amid the University of Puerto Rico’s desperate attempts to fend off privatization efforts, in part by doubling tuition costs. Primary schools were also facing similar economic restructuring under Secretary of Education Julia Keleher, who was brought to Puerto Rico to consolidate public primary schools while implementing a charter school system. Luis Miranda’s Flamboyan Foundation is listed as a client and collaborative partner of Keleher’s firm, Keleher and Associates. She is currently under federal investigation for conspiracy to commit fraud, theft, electronic fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy to money launder during her time in Puerto Rico in this role. While Lin-Manuel proposed a palliative performance of mainland U.S. history played by people of color, his father was in the wings collaborating with a corrupt conspirator seeking personal gain from Puerto Rico’s economic crisis. ”
Now is as good a time as any to remind you that you shouldn’t buy Hamilton when Lin-Manuel Miranda tries to sell it to you as a movie next year. It’s not just something that’s “cringe” this man and his family have had a real and devastating impact and the last thing you should be doing is giving them more money.
I learned in a Latin Studies class (with a chill white dude professor) that when the Europeans first saw Aztec cities they were stunned by the grid. The Aztecs had city planning and that there was no rational lay out to European cities at the time. No organization.
When the Spanish first arrived in Tenochtitlan (now downtown mexico city) they thought they were dreaming. They had arrived from incredibly unsanitary medieval Europe to a city five times the size of that century’s london with a working sewage system, artificial “floating gardens” (chinampas), a grid system, and aqueducts providing fresh water. Which wasn’t even for drinking! Water from the aqueducts was used for washing and bathing- they preferred using nearby mountain springs for drinking. Hygiene was a huge part if their culture, most people bathed twice a day while the king bathed at least four times a day.
Located on an island in the middle of a lake, they used advanced causeways to allow access to the mainland that could be cut off to let canoes through or to defend the city. The Spanish saw their buildings and towers and thought they were rising out of the water. The city was one of the most advanced societies at the time.
Anyone who thinks that Native Americans were the savages instead of the filthy, disease ridden colonizers who appeared on their land is a damn fool.
Also, please remember that the idea of a nomadic or semi-nomadic culture being “less intelligent”, “less civilized” (and please unpack that word) was invented by people who wanted to make a graph where they were on the top.
Societies that functioned without 1) staying exclusively in one location or 2) having to make complicated, difficult-to-construct tools to go about their daily lives… were not somehow less valid than others.
This is why I fucking hate it when Europeans make jokes about how they have “more history” than the Americas. “This church is older than your country hahaha.” Actually, it’s older than the country you put there, massacring millions in the process, but go off, I guess.
if you’re a blacksmith you can just craft yourself a magic ring. nothing wrong with that. they make it seem like it’s a big no no. but you gotta ask yourself why they don’t want you to have a magic ring
my spanish teacher in high school was from cuba and he told us to ignore vosotros because nobody uses it and i said “but they still use it in spain, right?” to which he replied “okay, nobody that matters”
Do u ever think about how dogs, who have 2 colour receptors, see an apple as grayish yellow, while humans have 3 and see it as red, and mantis shrimp have 12, and see it another monstrous colour altogether?
How none of us are necessarily correct, and the apple itself, is not really any colour, it’s just a fruit minding its own goddamn business??
If you think about it just a bit too much like I did, you’ll reach the conclusion that nothing really tastes, sounds, looks, feels or smells. It’s just your brain’s interpretation of chemical composition, vibrations, the way things reflect light, more vibrations and chemical composition again
Reality can’t be proven to exist outside of our ability to perceive it through our senses but our senses can’t be trusted so basically nothing is real do what you want
look. i don’t think my stretch marks are beautiful. i don’t think they’re tiger stripes or natural tattooos. i don’t think my acne is beautiful. i don’t think the bags under my eyes are beautiful. i just think they’re human. and i don’t think i have to be beautiful all of the time in order to be accepted and loved and sucessful. i don’t think every small detail of my outer appearence needs to be translated into prettiness.
fun fact: this POV is actually called “body neutrality” and it’s SO MUCH more accessible/realistic for a lot of people. it’s based on the idea that the way we look is the least interesting/important thing about who we are, and that our bodies are worthy of respect regardless if they fit the mold of the current beauty ideals.
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