Micah Xavier Johnson identified as Dallas police shooting suspect

[Igel]

10. There are two ways forward.

The first is confrontational, where each group fights and kicks and screams for self-validating concessions. "Look what we managed to force the _______________ to do."

The second is introspective, where each group looks inward to see exactly how they've dehumanized and produced more fear and distrust of the other group.

I mean, I've already read a post here whining that the police killed the suspect who was armed, killed some cops already, said wanted to kill more cops, and was barricaded in. He deserved a trial to show he was guilty, and the police were racist and wrong to end the situation that way. We built that kind of hate, brick by brick.

Sadly, introspection can be derailed by this kind of thing because it requires placidity, not outrage. Introspection requires two paths of reasoning--the first is to examine distrust and why we have the distrust. The second is to examine why the other side's distrust exists and where we might have contributed to it. We usually think of the "proper" course as them trying to work out why we distrust them and our trying to work out why we're distrustful and what they can do to fix it. It's all their fault, in other words. Some concern last night over the Dallas shooting was precisely to this point: If the shooter was a black man, crap--it's hard to hold this POV and it changes the narrative. It's distracting from the real issues, but the only real issues are our issues.