It's All About Perspective

I hope no one agrees with this nut.

We don't all see the news the same. That's obvious. One man's looter is another man's protestor. For some, looting can even be good. We just don't all come at it from the same perspective. I got that in reading a TPM letter from a reader who starts out by saying she was disappointed in the Rolling Stone story falling apart. Yes, Rolling Stone had to retract their story of a gang-rape at UVA. For some, this reinforced their world view that we discuss rape too much. For others, it tore down a chance to address this issue.

Whether it be in Ferguson, New York, UVA, or any other story that made headlines this week, perspective at the start is a big part of where we end up on the story. If you began believing we have a police brutality issue, the events of the last two weeks reinforced that for you. If your image of police is the NYPD charging into the World Trade Center wreckage to save people then you are seeing a lot of unwarranted suspicion.

Or worse, if you're from the view point that black people "create their own issues," then you might do this:

The one thing that is striking is that Eric Garner's case, thanks to film, generally seems to be less controversial, but even here, you see the people above mocking it. How could they you ask? How could the Indianapolis Police do so either?

If you start from the position that there are huge problems in the world, such as between one and two million women being raped in this nation (reportedly- I'd suggest the number is more like three million), you see these events as a further proof of the power-relations problems in our nation. If you see the number of women raped as between one and two percent, well, you see that. Both are technically right. One's position just leads to an inaction that doesn't move society forward.