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But it's misplaced responsibility. If that person is a dim-witted asshole then that is their problem and why does anyone else have to try and make amends for that?
O'rly? If some emotionally unstable knobler decides on some dark rd in Poplar on a Sat night to hit me with his Dad's 7 series BMW, whilst his fat passenger leans out of the window yelling fucking cyclist cunt, whose problem does it become? That fat fuck that threw the punches my way for nothing but throwing anti cyclist and racial epithets my; whose problem did that become?
When I had a trainee pushed off her bike whilst riding by a bloke that was clearly fed up with RLJers and cowardly decided to teach her a lesson rightly or wrongly, whose problem did it become? (I thought she was a lot closer to me than she was hence she just followed and ended up rljing.)It's like if someone you knew got mugged by an some Asian kid and then decided that they hated all Asian kids. You wouldn't think that was ok. Not in this world, let alone an ideal one.
Are you posting from the same postcard as the others? I've looked on google maps and can't find this ideal world of which you speak.
And the answer to that not being ok is for that imaginary person you knew to stop being a racist asshole. Not to go around telling Asian kids that they need to straighten out their act because there's people out there who will judge them as a group rather than on an individual-by-individual basis.
And yes, the imaginary Asian kid did a bad thing and shouldn't have mugged the imaginary person you knew. But not because it would make other imaginary Asian kids look bad and "dear god think of the responsibility you have towards your people", but because mugging people is wrong*.
Similarly, yeah, you shouldn't ride like a dick. But only because riding like a dick is in itself dickish. That's the end of the story. Dick moves are dick moves. This collective responsibility nonsense is exactly that.*except for grannies obvs. Mugging grannies = lulz.
Black Americans are still largely an out group there. Every comment section from there with any hint of colour divide quickly distills to eugenics.
You know and I know it aint right. But it happens. You know what else happens? Unarmed black children still get shot to death by their Police servi...FORCE. Sadly many of the low lives have surfaced and again looted their own fucking town. Do you want to tell Michael's mother that collective responsibility is someone else's problem? How about those that turned up for peaceful protest, how do you think their lives will be affected by their skin and postal code association?
For anyone to pretend that the small number of young black youth that violently mugged people during my teens didn't affect me in any way at all is at best disingenuous and at worst wilfully fucking stupid. It happens. It aint right. The day we become the in group is the day when all of this dissipates. I just feel for those up against the resistance of the mass whom fight tooth and nail to resist their joining of the in group.
MultiGrooves-
Do you want to tell Michael's mother that collective responsibility is someone else's problem?
I'm not sure what your point is here, but it kind of sounds like you're saying that some of the responsibility for the death of Michael Brown lies somewhere other than in the hands of the racist police who shot him. Like maybe if some sections of the black community weren't "low lives" then those police wouldn't have had reason to be racist and randomly shoot an innocent black guy. If that is your point, then we are never going to see eye to eye.
Also, whilst we're bandying around accusations of utopian thinking, if you really believe that in the unlikely scenario that tomorrow morning every cyclist hits the street and never breaks another law or contravenes a section of the highway code again, if you believe that scenario would have some massive impact on the amount of shit cyclists get from motorists then you are Thomas More AICMFP.
Motorists who hate us don't hate us because some of us skip red lights. That's just an after the fact rationalisation they come up with to justify their irrational bullshit. If we all obeyed the law, they'd hate us for not paying road tax, or because we wear lycra or because we're on roads they perceive as belonging to them, slowing them down and making them uncomfortably aware of how lethal their normally reassuring car can be.
Eejit
But it's misplaced responsibility. If that person is a dim-witted asshole then that is their problem and why does anyone else have to try and make amends for that?
It's like if someone you knew got mugged by an some Asian kid and then decided that they hated all Asian kids. You wouldn't think that was ok. Not in this world, let alone an ideal one.
And the answer to that not being ok is for that imaginary person you knew to stop being a racist asshole. Not to go around telling Asian kids that they need to straighten out their act because there's people out there who will judge them as a group rather than on an individual-by-individual basis.
And yes, the imaginary Asian kid did a bad thing and shouldn't have mugged the imaginary person you knew. But not because it would make other imaginary Asian kids look bad and "dear god think of the responsibility you have towards your people", but because mugging people is wrong*.
Similarly, yeah, you shouldn't ride like a dick. But only because riding like a dick is in itself dickish. That's the end of the story. Dick moves are dick moves. This collective responsibility nonsense is exactly that.
*except for grannies obvs. Mugging grannies = lulz.