<p>"Are you claiming that only white cops expect people to be deferential?? A black cop wouldn’t have expected Gates to step outside, wouldn’t have expected him to defer to him?</p>
<p>Are you serious?"</p>
<p>There is a sense of entitlement that comes with the position of being a police officer in that having that kind of power leads to people expecting others to be deferential to them in unreasonable ways, and can lead to police --of any race – abusing their power. Example of how this can happen: </p>
<p>“The Stanford prison experiment was a study of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The experiment was conducted in 1971 by a team of researchers led by Psychology Professor Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University. Twenty-four undergraduates were selected out of 70 to play the roles of both guards and prisoners and live in a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. Those selected were chosen for their lack of psychological issues, crime history, and medical disabilities, in order to obtain a representative sample. Roles were assigned based on a coin toss.[1]
Prisoners and guards rapidly adapted to their roles, stepping beyond the boundaries of what had been predicted and leading to dangerous and psychologically damaging situations. One-third of the guards were judged to have exhibited “genuine” sadistic tendencies, while many prisoners were emotionally traumatized and two had to be removed from the experiment early. After being confronted by Christina Maslach, a graduate student in psychology whom he was dating,[2] and realizing that he had been passively allowing unethical acts to be performed under his direct supervision, Zimbardo concluded that both prisoners and guards had become too grossly absorbed in their roles and terminated the experiment after six days.”
[Stanford</a> prison experiment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment]Stanford”>Stanford prison experiment - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>White privilege also can lead to an imbalance and grossly different expectations and perceptions in the kind of situation Gates experienced, and it adds another overlay to the situation that Gates was in. </p>
<p>From an essay by University of Texas professor, Robert Jensen, who is white:</p>
<p>"What does that mean? Perhaps most importantly, when I seek admission to a university, apply for a job, or hunt for an apartment, I don’t look threatening. Almost all of the people evaluating me for those things look like me–they are white. They see in me a reflection of themselves, and in a racist world that is an advantage. I smile. I am white. I am one of them. I am not dangerous. Even when I voice critical opinions, I am cut some slack. After all, I’m white.</p>
<p>My flaws also are more easily forgiven because I am white. Some complain that affirmative action has meant the university is saddled with mediocre minority professors. I have no doubt there are minority faculty who are mediocre, though I don’t know very many. As Henry Louis Gates Jr. once pointed out, if affirmative action policies were in place for the next hundred years, it’s possible that at the end of that time the university could have as many mediocre minority professors as it has mediocre white professors. That isn’t meant as an insult to anyone, but is a simple observation that white privilege has meant that scores of second-rate white professors have slid through the system because their flaws were overlooked out of solidarity based on race, as well as on gender, class and ideology.</p>
<p>Some people resist the assertions that the United States is still a bitterly racist society and that the racism has real effects on real people. But white folks have long cut other white folks a break. I know, because I am one of them…"</p>
<p>[Robert</a> W. Jensen–White Privilege](<a href=“http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/freelance/whiteprivilege.htm]Robert”>http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/freelance/whiteprivilege.htm)</p>