Hi Marc: yes. I‘m challenging that claim which as we both know is positively unthinkable in this climate.

I have committed the ultimate crime against groupfeel: I have let data tutor my emotions. I also trust my Black colleagues & friends who have vastly different experiences. https://twitter.com/marcbodnick/status/1283806521936064512

And you are wrong, in my opinion, on many fronts. As a mathematician, I believe in transitivity. I cannot tell the difference, as it happens, between the racial motivations in the stunningly similar deaths on video of Tony Timpa & George Floyd yet.

Curiously: How can you do it?

As my skin is akin to Timpa’s and Timpa’s death is akin to Floyd’s, by transitivity I can see myself dying under some cop who is listening to me say “I can’t breathe” and doing nothing to stop me from dying. And if the Cop weren’t Jewish, I wouldn’t be able to say the motivation.

As for my neurological differences and how they inform my empathy, the killing of Daniel Shaver is an excellent fit. I generally can’t follow directions because of how I process information differently.

I believe I would have been executed. Here you go:

Those f—-ing cop instructions were like a deadly game of hokey pokey or Simon says where the penalty is death. My son, brother or myself would also have likely died in that incident.

So yes. I can empathize. I’ve had a CHP draw a gun on me for not following directions properly.

Lastly there is a problem of police violence for all of us. It IS elevated for our Black brothers over our White ones. But it‘s also adjusted for differential criminality. What concerns me even more is our racial bias in selective prosecution of young Black men for minor crime.

So to sum up, feel free to keep going. But know that I just disagree w/ you. My Black American friends inform my positions, so in some ways you are arguing with them through me and with data. And quite frankly I take exception to that. There isn’t one Black American perspective.

You might find this conversation illuminating:

It is far closer to my interactions with Black Americans looking at the data than the BLM, ACAB, “Defund the Police”, CHAZ, ANTIFA and other similar convos on Twitter.

We have to end racism. That’s my way.

Lastly let me just say this: I am an absolute heretic for believing we can understand each other’s “Lived Experience.” Not perfectly, but my friend @Tmillerpoetry, can speak to my heart even when we disagree.

Like here:

She’s good right? Be well Marc.