"The rice company Uncle Ben’s is to scrap the image of a black farmer the brand has used since the 1940s and could change its name, as companies react to growing concerns over racial bias and injustice.

The parent company, Mars, said Uncle Ben was a fictional character whose name was first used in 1946 as a reference to an African American Texan rice farmer.

The image who personifies the brand “was a beloved Chicago chef and waiter named Frank Brown”, the company said.

Mars also said, however, that it recognised the use of the character was out of step with the times, and pledged to overhaul the brand following sweeping calls for racial equality following the death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter campaign."

Welp. Lock er up!

Verb, you're right the Uncle Ben's Company should have defunded the police and commissioned a study to explore options for reparations. They didn't do what was in their power

pathetic

this tweet should be printed and put in a museum.

shut it, burt. things are looking good in NYC:




... all this awesomeness despite the lockdown. The $1B budget cut will surely help them get a new high score!!!

... Despite the lockdown?

If only the NYPD could still put people in strangleholds.

"Her racist behavior could have had dire consequences for a Black man." Isn't that de Basio admitting there's a huge problem with NYC police? A problem he is doing nothing to address.

Yes I think that's Burt's point.

Sometimes I'm just not sure what Bart's point is other than entertainment. I do like being entertained though.

Are you suggesting the spike in murders and shootings was caused by the lockdown?

Hmm, am I suggesting that three-plus months of historic unemployment and the state's retreat from and/or failure to provide sufficient social insurance might combine to create a rapid decline in state legitimacy, which would reasonably have some positive correlation with an uptick in property crime and/or reliance on extra institutional violence? I dunno man you tell me.

Yes, I am sure the people committing all those extra shootings/murders are doing so because of a Covid driven increased awareness of the illegitimacy of the state.

Strangleholds.

In retrospect assuming you could follow an argument from broad sociological description to immanent causal reasoning was probably asking too much, but if you re-read you'll note that at no point did I say "all," nor did I claim that anyone committing crimes is doing so with a discrete, conscious "awareness" of the state's illegitimacy. Those are misreadings you made, either because you're incapable of understanding nuance or because you want to score a point.

So I'll put it in terms simpler for you to understand: in May of this year New York City reported an unemployment rate of 18.3%, over four times the May 2019 rate of 4.1%. The city lost almost a million jobs that month alone, in the face of which the state offered a labyrinthine unemployment benefit system and a one-time check of $1200. Is every crime being committed in New York City the result of this new economic situation? No, of course not. But let's go back to your wording, and to the claim that started this discussion--that crime was going up despite the lockdown. Why would these levels of unemployment and a growing awareness--conscious or felt--that the state is not going to step in and help not produce an uptick in property crime, or incentivize turning to the kinds of illicit economies where gun violence plays a central regulatory role (to say nothing of acute poverty simply inflaming already-simmering tensions)?

In other words when we say things like "the state's declining legitimacy" it very infrequently means "state's asleep do crimes now!" and very often means an intuited sense that rent's due or you're out of groceries and you are on your fucking own.

I said "despite the lockdown" because literally millions of people were listening to that illegitimate state, holed up sheltering in their homes for months. meaning millions of potential offenders and victims weren't present in the environment. But crime still went up over the six month period, with the largest increases in post-Floyd June. So you might be correct that it was building economic pressure. Maybe. I have no idea on the details of month-to-month changes, how those correlate with lockdown driven unemployment in the offenders and victims, or some intuited plan they to shift to an illicit economy. But I'm not the one implying those were the driving factors and it's not my burden to prove them wrong. It's your burden to prove yourself correct when stating such things, so have at it.