It doesn’t matter what they’re thinking, what’s important is the effect of their actions. This cop issues marijuana citations way out of proportion to the rest of the city. He also issues citations to black people way out of proportion. This results in black people being disproportionately targeted by drug laws - and I think we can all agree that’s unjust.
Now, you could claim that he’s not personally trying to single out black people, so therefore he’s pure of racism. But his actions are getting black people in trouble with the law while whites remain relatively undisturbed. So what gives? How can you ever know if someone is racist, when they can always come up with some tortured explanation for how in their heart that’s not what they feel?
This is the problem with viewing racism as a personal characteristic, rather than a system. The social, political, and economic systems of the US (and much of the world) are racist in that they privilege white people above others. Personally, our character is defined by our position towards that system: are we actively in support of it, opposed to it, or are we neutral - i.e. content to passively let it continue?
This officer - regardless of whether he personally holds anti-black views - is obviously not opposed to the system of racism, otherwise he would stop taking actions which disproportionately punish black people. His personal views on race are no more relevant than a soldier’s views on war. It’s what he does that counts, not how he feels about it.
That isn’t really how you tell if he’s biased against race or not. You would have to take the number of people he encountered smoking pot vs how many he ticketed. If ~36% of the people he encountered were black, then having ~36% of the tickets would be right.
A big reason why we passed our own “weed should not be important to police in this town” referendum is that most of us recognize that it’s racially motivated/targeted, and our community doesn’t support that shit. Not like we have the money for that BS, either. If the jails are crowded with every kid caught with a roach in the car ashtray, there isn’t room for the asshole who just shot his girlfriend, or the jackass who broke into 20 houses.
I’m not arguing that he’s pure of racism. I’m not even arguing that he’s not a racist bigot. He very well might be, and it wouldn’t be surprising. I’m arguing that calling him racist - which is explicitly what the original post said - is indicative of a common problem where ‘racist’ is the new ‘communist’. Compare that to the actual source, which was like ‘it disproportionately targeted african americans’ - a much more neutral, accurate statement (although still potentially flawed as per comments on his patrol area/etc).
Mostly I agree with what you’re saying, I would agree that racism is institutionalized. I do disagree that only what he does counts, because racism is defined pretty clearly by the Oxford dictionary as:
The belief that all members of each race possess characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.
Calling someone racist is clearly saying “this person believes other races are inferior and takes actions to promote a racist ideology”, and modern society is using that term WAY too casually, and the BB post that I replied to starting this is a perfect example of this.
As an example, if this officer believed that marijuana was a dangerous substance and that it was his civic duty to write these tickets, even if that disproportionately impacted a black community, it wouldn’t make him racist. It would make him an idiot, but not racist.
Once again, I think this subject of race is needlessly muddled because it’s lacking a generally-understood distinction between racism and culturalism (consider the difference between meeting someone of another race with a foreign accent, and someone of another race who shares your accent). The spellchecker tells me it’s not even a word (but apparently ‘spellchecker’ isn’t either).
Since I consider the concept of cultural equivalence to be plainly nonsense, I suppose that makes me a culturalist (as in, I’m prepared to make value judgements regarding elements and structures of culture). But I wouldn’t admit to racism, except as it applies to physical traits I consider attractive.
Hang on, that rang false. I have to admit to some degree of racism, since I find some races more attractive than others and I’m aware of the cognitive biases that I don’t completely have a handle on. What I won’t admit to, is prejudice (how about we bring that word back?) based on race, even though I reserve the right to refer to the odd stereotype for a variety of benign purposes: commentary, humour; Art.
Two tabs of acid and a good long word with themselves in the bathroom mirror would be a splendid prescription for authoritarian dickheads the world over, aye.
Gotta disagree. I live in Colorado, where weed has been legal for half a year. When you are outside, cigarettes smell bad if you are withing a few feet. Weed, you can smell for dozens of yards if the wind is blowing the wrong direction. That stuff smells HORRIBLE.
I honestly have to problem with weed. I just don’t want to have to smell the stuff. If you use marijuana in public, at least ingest it so others don’t don’t have to put up with the stink.
Yeah. I work weekends so I’m home a few weekdays a week and sometimes one of my neighbors apartments just fills my apt with pot smell for the entire goddamn day. I don’t think it should be illegal but it’s certainly irritating.
I’m OK calling a person or policy racist if there’s good evidence for it - if we had to actually know what people were thinking, we’d never get anywhere: Do we know what Hitler was thinking? Strictly speaking, no. But we have some darned good evidence that he was a racist.
But I totally agree with you that we don’t have that evidence here. You brought up the point that his beat could be disproportionately African-American. We also don’t know what percent of “public pot users” (the group to whom this dude issued citations) are African-American… if it’s close to 36%, maybe there’s nothing racist about this.
Well, Hitler very clearly said stuff that was racist in nature - the jews are evil and subhuman and black people are inferior. Stuff like that makes racism very clear and it’s perfectly fine to say that he was absolutely racist.
Right, just realized it was a bad example. But you get the point!
Update: A (hopefully) better example of when evidence is enough to determine racism even when we don’t know what someone was actually thinking is this Bertrand and Mullainathan study: http://www.chicagobooth.edu/capideas/spring03/racialbias.html
They sent fake resumes to prospective employers that were identical except for the names of the the job seekers, and found that typically African-American names got fewer calls for interviews than typically white names.
Speak for yourself about cigarettes only smelling bad for a few feet. I can smell that shit, and more importantly, get a headache, from a cigarette 100 yards away.
I suppose one’s opinion on how bad/good weed smells may have something to do with the number of skunks in your area. We have many skunks, weed smoke is often indistinguishable.
Hahaha! I actually had that experience, but with mushrooms. It was just me, a good friend and a videotape of Dr. West laying it down like a stone cold professional. Permanently reconfigured some synapses that night.
But you get the point!
