You’re not wrong, but it’s damn hard to get that stuff right under pressure.
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Whoosh…
Seems like you people in the USA need to be drilled in these responses until they’re as automatic as conditioned responses. Which they will of course be. Best start young.
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There’s cops in all the schools now. And schools are constitution-free zones, so students have no right to refuse to answer questions…
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There’s also the “survival” aspect to consider. For certain groups of Americans, failing to immediately and respectfully comply with any and all law enforcement requests can be fatal.
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They do that to everybody…not just “certain groups”…
As I’m sure you’re well aware, certain groups of Americans are much more likely to get killed by cops than others. A 50-something white guy in a suit who fails to comply with a law enforcement request is not putting his life in as much risk as a 20-year-old black kid in street clothes.
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That’s why I practice this every time the cops get in my face, especially when I don’t need to. If you can’t remember all that, the cliff note version is simply “I refuse all searches and I will not answer any questions. Am I free to leave?”
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That’s a false equivalency.
Compare 20 year old white and black kids, both in street clothes.
Cops will happily shoot both…
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You’re hopelessly naive if you think either
- White people are as likely to get shot as black people under identical circumstances
- Black people are as likely to have the means to escape the circumstances that make them more likely targets for law enforcement
White people aren’t immune to harassment or abuse from law enforcement, but that doesn’t mean we face anything CLOSE to the amount other groups get.
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That’s certainly debatable.
The hitch of this, pragmatically, is that merely having no recognized right to refuse still does not get them any answers. Too bad, better luck next time!
.
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Might I suggest a flash mob of people wearing these shirts around that area?
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Very good, but here are some potential responses that they may provide:
“They were resisting arrest so I shot them”
“They didn’t respect my authority so I shot them”
“They got uppity so I shot them”
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Not all cops are white, you know.
And not all criminals are brown. What’s your point?
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९/११ <—
People here don’t want to admit that disparities in enforcement mirror economic faultlines, not color lines, and would prefer to focus on the fact that the poor are disproportionately non-white. Don’t fight it unless you have limitless tolerance for condescending misunderstanding of anything you might say.
I’m sure the reaction to the shirt being discussed had everything to do with economics. Or to put it another way, it doesn’t have to be either or. I think those lines might be blurrier than your statement suggests.
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The disparities mirror both, and they are largely self-perpetuating. People with criminal records have less opportunity for economic advancement, so negative encounters with law enforcement are also one of the factors that keep non-white people poor.
Even when you adjust for income dark-skinned people are much more likely to get harassed by law enforcement than white people. Take two guys driving identical cars through the same neighborhood: one driver is white, the other black—statistically speaking the black guy is more likely to get pulled over. Or take a Harvard University professor entering his own home: If he’s white nobody bats an eye. If he’s black somebody calls 911 and he is hauled away in handcuffs.
Racial profiling is real. It’s just not fun to think about.
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I sure didn’t mean to be condescending. I really wanted to know what she meant.
Did I do it wrong?
