Shocked.
I am privileged by the random nature of my birth, and I deeply acknowledge that. I also wish I had answers for this problem, other than Donāt Shoot People and Donāt Arrest Just Cause Theyre Different.
At least thereās some ambivalence in white response rather than an overwhelming echoing of the redstate line of fascist garbage. Itās not enough. Itās overwhelmingly conflicted, which may be a tiny good sign in the massive pile of demographic excrement that is three generations of white Middle America.
Well, all of the police we see are so nice and helpful. To us anyway.
I donāt know what DK is, but I imagine if DK=BB the stats would skew the other way.
We really need a catchphrase for posts like this (like we have the āChrist, what an assholeā phrase for pendejos grandes).
Iām going to suggest āIn other NO FUCKING SHIT newsā¦ā
How about āChrist, what assholes.ā
I really try not to blame people for things outside of their experience. I.e. if youāve grown up and the police have always had your back, and have ābeen on your sideā, then Iām not surprised that you believe cops to generally be on the side of justice, and donāt blame you if you buy the party line that the police are your friends.
A lot of these people, through the vagaries of birth and fortune, probably have no reason not to have confidence in the police. They do not belong to a population regarded by the police as āthe enemyā, and are more likely than not have been the recipients of the benefit of the doubt in past interactions with the police.
So, I wouldnāt call them āassholesā per se, just perhaps people that havenāt been exposed to the whole picture.
You made a funny, which I belatedly noticedā¦
In other news, pope shits in woods, bear wears silly hat.
I suspect that the āWhiteā view is based on an idealized notion of a police roll and the āBlackā view is based to a greater extent on unwanted and largely unjustified interaction. Probably neither is really based on the reporting or I would expect everybody to be concerned and to have little confidence. Having said that I am always amazed that we divide everything in the US, or at least the reporting of everything, into Black and White. It sounds like there was a third Hispanic stripe (It states āBlacks and Whites include all those who are not Hispanicā) which maybe didnāt show a striking result. It would seem relevant to include it or at least an other as it would indicate where the anomalies are.
What Iāve learned is that itās possible to be an asshole even if one is ignorant of being one, or of knowing to the degree one is being an asshole. Itās part of the white experience.
I agree. Itās kind of hard to get beyond skin color when skin color is all everyone seems to be concerned with.
im white. i ride a motorcycle, i am not a fan of the MAN. iāve seen stuff. not nice stuff. being different is bad to āthe MANā
I wish that were shocking, but unfortunately itās completely consistent with the conversations Iāve had with random people. Black people usually have at least one first- or second-hand story of police abuse, while white people have either a vaguely apologetic blank look or a glowing report of how the cops have really ācleaned upā some area and itās so much ānicerā now.
We are the new South Africa.
It really depends on your zip code as well. As a home owner in Marin County, my Latina skin suddenly became so pale, youād think the police of Marin thought I was a white chick, but since Iāve been renting south of Oakland, it feels like my skin color, the the economic status of myself and my neighbors has made us all constant suspects of some ongoing crime investigation. Itās enough to inspire one to conspire themselves. Iāve an idea to make a new 10 point plan, similar to the White Panthers 10 point plan to support the Black Panthers 10 point program. Itās not really conspiring as it is planning in reading, and sharing. So here goes. The culmination of being a conspirator. Iām winning hearts and minds. Possibly making them angry. Iām doing something to hearts and minds. Itās making me feel better.
Total assault on the culture, anyone?
Behold our history.
This is the problem, it is a cover all for what is probably unconscious racism and all other *isms you will find with the police and officialdom. There is the thin blue line which is protects even the corrupted bad apples who spoil the whole barrel, there are the civilians, who happen to be mostly white, who have enough influence to bless or curse the police agency or at least individual officers, and there are those who can probably be abused without consequence.
Didnāt you learn anything from the whole Zimmerman thing? Hispanics are apparently now āwhiteā.
In college I saw some white guy bolt from the cops and they snatched him by the collar, swung him into the middle of their circle, and four of them were laying into him with their nightsticks in a fraction of second. Those guys were much much faster than they looked.
To me, the most significant point about this is that to a lot of people a feeling of interracial community just doesnĀ“t exist. The indications, and sometimes evidence, for police abuse and murder of black people happening is quite overwhelming, so if there was such a feeling, everyone should be affected the same by events like in Ferguson. A lot of white people just donĀ“t seem to be bothered by police abuse and shooting of black people beacause there is no āweā, just āusā and āthemā.
Thereās a weird disconnect between the Tea Party goobers with their Gadsen flags who think they are being threatened by the federal government not their local law enforcement agencies. And this is despite the fact that white people have been getting shot fairly regularly by militarized local cops. I think itās more that these guys are deep into a fantasy world where they will kill their political opponents, black and white. And they donāt want to see the cops stop shooting blacks because they want to be able to kill blacks themselves, like in NOLA after Katrina. And these guys are maybe 20% of the population, which seems to be the usual percentage of hard core Fascists.
