While all of these incidents are unacceptable, I actually believe that it is happening less than in the past, it is just being video taped more often.
Even assuming that she actually did kill herself, I believe the officer in the Sandra Bland video clearly arrested her because she did not put out her cigarette, which she does not have to do. I am not an attorney, but I believe that when he takes her in for no reason, and refuses to tell her why she is being arrested, I would equate that to a kidnapping charge, and holding a person against their will. He is using his position as a law officer to get even with her personally. That needs to be punished.
Additionally, there need to be clear rights and responsibilities that citizens and officers understand related to traffic stops.
Do the police have the right to demand that I leave my car for any traffic violation?
Do they have the right to search my car?
Do I have to answer questions?
Do they have the right to search my phone?
What legal rights do citizens have? What responsibilities do citizens have (e.g., to provide license, title, and registration).
Clear rules that both parties operate within will make these situations safer for citizens and police officers.
Haven’t many of these questions (in reply #200) been answered by court cases?
Of course, many police officers and ordinary citizens do not know the answers, or actively try to go further than what the court cases say they should stop at, or are just abrasive enough to incite further conflict. Since police are supposed to be trained to deal with these situations as part of their job, it is reasonable to expect a significantly higher standard of behavior in these aspects from them, but it appears the such training and standards are lacking in many police departments.
Dear friends are tall N. Chinese and some of the men look more Latino. Two of them were stopped at various times by the police for no good reason, just because they were fairly big - one really big - Latino looking guys. One is a Federal agent, meaning the kind with a gun and badge. The other is a police officer. DWL, driving while Latino when they weren’t L.
There are many people for whom others’ first impression of racial or ethnic background based on appearance is often incorrect, or where their appearance is such that many others do not associate it with any racial or ethnic background that they know of.
As a young African-American man who will officially be a college student in a week and a half, what frustrates me even more than all these incidents is the fact that the ignorant, snobbish, sheltered upper-middle class white people in my suburban NJ hometown would constantly say that “there was no racism”, or “black-on-black crime is more prevalent”, or dig up the past of the deceased in order to use it as justification for the killing. You have no idea how much I want to choke anyone who says that crap.
The thing is, whites who are constantly on the defensive when blacks accuse ONE white person of racism are WORSE than the actual racists themselves. Those people are what I call “low key racists” - people who don’t physically harm victims, but slightly encourage it to continue. Not only them, but whites who think that we are calling THE INDIVIDUALS WE ARE SPEAKING TO a racist.
In addition, there was a recent FB post I saw in which a white man (who has an AA wife), expressed frustration over FB deleting his post. What was so bad about it? The fact that he called on whites to stop being so defensive during incidents like this. It’s pretty disgraceful that a culturally woke post like that was taken down, but links to Amber Rose twerking is acceptable.
Whites being stubborn, defensive, and ignorant helps absolutely no one. It doesn’t solve any problems, nor does it break down the systematic oppression. It only hurts the cause rather than help it, and masking any problem is a surefire way to make it worse.
You know, I’ve had burned out lights–both tail lights and headlights–lots of times, and I’ve never been pulled over for it.
This statistic did get my attention:
Aside from the disparity, don’t you think that these numbers are actually pretty big, suggesting that maybe the police have some pretty good idea of who to search if they want to find contraband? Or maybe it’s just that a lot of people have illegal stuff.
Re: “Nearly 27 percent of whites who were searched possessed something illegal, compared with 21 percent of blacks.”
Guess it depends on what percentage of people overall (not necessarily those searched) are carrying something illegal (e.g. illegal drugs including underage alcohol possession and prescription drugs without a prescription, fake identification, stolen property, concealed firearms without a concealed carry permit, etc.). But that may be a hard number to come by.
Right - I imagine that, since experienced cops probably have some skill in sniffing out contraband, the cars they searched had a relatively higher likelihood of holding drugs than (for example) the minivan with the family of four in it, the Cadillac with senior citizens in it, or the church van. In other words, it’s likely that the rate of contraband in all automobiles, if we could search them all, would be a good deal less than 27%.
^ The reason for the high percentage of illegal stuff found in cars that are pulled over could be that the cops are good at figuring that out. Or it could possibly be that people who carry illegal substances in their cars are more likely to ignore other laws too, such as speeding, running stop signs, etc. personally, I vote for the latter.
To LBad96, this won’t change and, IMHO, it’s more because human nature puts us in groups and makes us see some people as “other” some of the time. It used to be that being black was always “other”, now it’s that being black is sometimes “other”. If it helps, we all experience this feeling of being excluded by some group at some time but we’re not good at learning from those feelings. Witness the amount of bullying by kids using social media even as bullying has finally become a focus of “don’t do that” thinking instead of being ignored as part of life. But being a visible minority makes it more of an everyday thing or more of “it’s always lurking”.
Jews often feel this: even though we can “pass” as “white”, we know that just under the surface is often incredibly deep and violent hatred and, further, like American blacks (or the Romani in Europe), anything wrong done by one Jew is used to indict us all. That is because we remain part of that group of “other” so we’re all lumped together. Witness the murder of a toddler in Palestine: for all the blather about how “we’re not anti-Jewish, just anti-Israel”, every single news account including the front page of the NYT referred to “Jewish extremists” (and one of my cousins was verbally attacked on the street - in this country - after that). The words that go together are Palestinian and Israeli, Muslim and Jew, not Palestinian and Jew, but when it’s time to label “other” that goes out the window.
We don’t think much about Asian experiences in the US but the Chinese have certainly gone through this, including being banned from immigrating to this country because of actually insane “yellow peril” nonsense. I think that in some ways minorities like the Chinese and the Jews have longer experience with being partially accepted, if that makes sense, while African-Americans were bluntly excluded nearly everywhere in nearly everything until well into my lifetime. For example, I have somewhere a memoir by a Jewish kid from Mississippi whose family owned a store that sold mostly to the black customers. His family sat squarely between the white world and the black world because white really meant Christian Caucasian. But they could prosper in that space because it was unthinkable for the white world to allow black merchants to do this, to deal with both black and white customers, to deal with white suppliers, etc. The Chinese in that area didn’t fit into the same space but were more off to the side: allowed to prosper, allowed to deal with white and black (and the in betweens) as long as they kept their proper distance. That’s what I meant by “partially accepted” and I think that thread has been running through American society through much of my life. I think it has been even more difficult for black Americans because they haven’t had the history that other minorities have of partial acceptance.
I hate when people say racism doesn’t exist and that t does. It because they don’t experience it like we do. They don’t understand there WHITE PRIVILEGE! Then they say well lacks makes up whatever high number of crime. But whites make up around 75% of the sexual assault rape crimes in the U.S. According to the fbi but I yet to hear white men being stopped in the streets and int here cars because they look “suspicious.” Also most of the people who rap and murde pr are men but when a man walks past me I don’t get scared. I don’t call the cops on man just base I feel “suspicious” all men aren’t being treated like criminals. Mostly black men are.It’s even funnier that’s whites are more likely to steal and use drugs yet blacks are more likely to be stopped and searched. Shows you how prejudice people are. And also Native American are the number one race killed by police officers but since their the minority we don’t hear squat. It was an 8 year old native girl who was attacked by 4 white cops in South Dakota and tasked with a 50,000 volt taser. But I’m pretty sure whites will say something like"if she would of not done what she did she wouldn’t not got teased, or they will blame the native girl and not the obvious racist cops) it’s pathetic when cops need to tase and shoot people to death. What the hell is the point of training?
Not sure how this makes your point when news media in Israel and Israel’s defense minister refer to the suspects as “Jewish terrorists” or “Jewish extremists”.
Lergnom, since plenty of Arab Muslims live in Israel and have Israeli citizenship, I think it’s understandable that people refer to “Jewish extremists” in Israel, to avoid any possible ambiguity. (Not that I think there really would be much ambiguity if people referred to “Israeli extremists.”) Also, whether you or I like it or not, the extremism involved is more religion-based than based on nationality.
Seriously? Would anyone interpret a headline referring to “Palestinian Toddler Killed by Israeli Extremist” as referring to an Arab Israeli (Muslim or Christian)? Anyone anywhere?
As for how words are used in Israel, the point is how they’re used outside Israel by people who say, “We’re not anti-Jewish” but who revert to using the word “Jewish” when referring to Israelis. Within Israeli, of course they distinguish by religion and ethnic identity because the readership is actually Israeli. That’s like saying “American kills American” without the qualifier that one is black.
And NFN, but if someone writes graffiti in Hebrew (saying “revenge” and “long live the Messiah”) and kills a Palestinian child, yes I think it is a fair assumption to say they were Jewish extremists. There also were other stories that implicated Jewish settlers more specifically.
Catholics have a doctrine of original sin. It says that simply because you were conceived into the human race you arrive with a starter sin on your soul. You did nothing to acquire this sin, there is nothing you can do to avoid being born with this sin, it is simply a part of you because of what Adam and Eve did in Eden…You can not ‘good works’ your way out of the sin, you can not pray your way out of it, you can not cleanse yourself. The only way you can rid yourself of this stain is by participating in prescribed rituals. And, until you complete these rituals there is not hope for your salvation. Even afterwards you are a flawed individual who only through the grace of a being greater than yourself can hope to not continue sinning.
I get it…White privilege the secular version of original sin. Lots of money to be made in both the spiritual and secular continuation of this doctrine.
PS…I didn’t buy into the doctrine with my kids. I looked at them when they were born and decided - nope - they not arrive with a historical guilt of which they needed cleansing. Nor are they inherently flawed individuals because of their birth. So…take the white privilege and put it right into the same nonsense category. Nice control mechanism…for those who need the power.