<p>“Meanwhile, he is making a lot of social media noise which is not at all surprising and unfortunate.”</p>
<p>Not as unfortunate as mistakenly being detained by the police.</p>
<p>I’m not clear on how to parse your last sentence, Flossy, but if you meant, “He is making a lot of social media noise, which is not at all … unfortunate,” I certainly agree.</p>
<p>From the jury’s point of view, if this individual was actionably mistreated by the police, it doesn’t matter whether it was racial profiling. If a lot of black people end up winning lawsuits about police brutality, the cops will sit up and take notice.</p>
<p>Well, I’m in the camp that doesn’t see anything racial in this, yet. Of course, I agree six hours is a long time to be held but I haven’t heard anything to indicate that being black slowed down the process. Brutality? Hardly. And, that’s the linkage I find unfortunate. I’m pretty sure innocent white people get detained for questioning but nobody makes it a “thing” because it just isn’t. </p>
<p>Flossy, if you’re looking for the police to twirl their mustaches and say, “Because you’re black, Mr. Blacky McBlackerton, we’ll just handcuff you and make you sit in the hot sun for an hour and then arrest you and then not bother to check the video to see if we’ve got the right guy, BWAHAHAHA!” you’re not going to find it. </p>
<p>But if you think about it, you’ll realize that is not the only way racism can manifest itself. We can also say to ourselves, how are white suspects treated in this case? Are they held for six hours, not read their rights, denied a call to a lawyer? Do the police ignore clear, easily available exculpatory evidence, if the suspects are white?</p>
<p>So, you think the BHPD officers look at each other and look at the suspect and come to some nonverbal agreement to dawdle because he’s black. I’ll need more facts to reach that conclusion. Sorry.</p>
<p>Not sure where you got the idea of a nonverbal agreement among the police. Certainly not from anything I wrote. I don’t think that police treating black suspects differently than they treat white suspects requires any kind of agreement, nonverbal or otherwise. Police acting according to their individual inclinations can produce this effect.</p>
<p>Ah hah, we finally have the usual observations from the usual suspects in the peanut gallery.</p>
<p>I have one comment on this discussion. If you have a hundred examples that show something, that something isn’t debunked by showing that one of the examples isn’t so clear.</p>
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<p>What is this supposed to mean? People b*tch on social media all the time–celebrities, politicians, business leaders and just regular people. What’s different (or more “unfortunate”) here?</p>
<p>I agree with Hunt. This example isn’t so clear but it’s becoming a poster child incident and being distorted to fit the desired narrative.</p>
<p>I think you missed Hunt’s point, Flossy.</p>
<p>No, I didn’t. But, I will admit to a tendency to want to analyze each case on it’s individual merits rather than just throwing them all into the same big bucket despite the fact that the facts sometimes don’t quite fit. I also like to wait for all of the facts because as more come out many of these stories change quite a bit but unfortunately by then everyone has picked a side and doesn’t really care. It’s a problem, imho.</p>
<p>Gluttons for punishment may be interested in this old thread: <a href=“Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates arrested - Parent Cafe - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/750372-harvard-professor-henry-louis-gates-arrested-p1.html</a></p>
<p>To restate my point: I think it would be hard for any fair-minded person to deny that black people are still treated worse than white people in this country in many situations on average. This includes in hiring, by police, in stores and elsewhere. You can’t really refute this truth by picking apart a particular incident. Indeed, in the Henry Louis Gates case, I wasn’t convinced that racism was involved. It also appears to me that the really dramatic cases often include some murky facts that tend to polarization. But we don’t hear much about the case where the black man driving a BMW is pulled over and questioned, as long as he doesn’t get shot.</p>
<p>I would add that police officers do bad and unconstitutional things to both black and white people, and the fact that they’re doing it to a black person doesn’t necessarily mean that’s it’s because the person is black. However, I think it’s pretty clear that they are doing certain things disproportionately to black people, and that, on average, black people are treated worse than white people in similar situations.</p>
<p>So, there is an inherent difficulty in addressing this problem by focusing on the outrage du jour–if it turns out to be less outrageous than it seemed at first, in allows people to deny that there ever was a problem in the first place.</p>
<p>Question for the OP:</p>
<p>Out of curiosity, why did you choose this particular incident to hone in on? There are many incidents to choose from, so why this one?</p>
<p>Flossy, hope Hunt cleared it up for you:</p>
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<p>LasMa, I thought this thread was about the incident in the the title. Sorry. If you want to start a thread about generalities, fine. But, specific cases have a unique set of facts and if you are using a case to prove a theory it should not be hard to find a better example. This one has obvious issues. And, I still agree with Hunt.</p>
<p>But see, Flossy, whether you mean to or not, you also generalize from this incident to minimize the idea that black people are disproportionately mistreated by police. For example, you said:
So, while for some people this incident is proof that blacks are mistreated, for you the details are proof that they aren’t.</p>
<p>This is why it’s not a good idea to hang too much on one incident. However, people’s imaginations are not captured by statistics, or by stories of somebody who is stopped in his BMW and then allowed to go on his way. Note that the Ferguson situation has sparked some people to question police bias, but it has also sparked a different group of people to question police over-armament. That isn’t going to happen if a cop in a military Hummer pulls over a black guy in a BMW for no reason but lets him go.</p>
<p>One more thing: this case was picked up in part because the guy was a solid citizen (a Hollywood producer or something). Does anybody think this case would have been national news if the guy had been an unemployed dishwasher who lived in the ghetto? He’d probably still be in jail.</p>
<p>Well, not quite. I am beginning to see that people are assuming for some reason that this is proof for me that it never happens. Not true. And, I never said anything of the sort. Of course, it happens. Ferguson also has the same sort of social media induced outrage over a not quite true backstory. And, yeah, that bother me. I’m fine with outrage over reality, though. Strangely, somehow “I’m not convinced this was racism,” gets morphed into, “Racism doesn’t exist.” They are not the same thing… And, I still agree with most of your posts. Believe it or not. </p>
<p>FYI - The guy is an NAACP activist. He was before this and he is now. He knows how to get attention. That’s a fact.</p>
<p>You mean the same NAACP that methodically worked in the courts to end Jim Crow? The same NAACP who employed brilliant legal tactics to get judges to see how the constitution must be upheld and enforced? The same NAACP whose members in the south risked life and limb if their names where found on a membership list by the segregationists and corrupt brutal sheriffs? Oh yeah, that NAACP! I’m very glad they were “activists!”</p>
<p>Flossy, Hunt is right that statistics don’t grab people’s attention, but they do have the benefit of being factual. I’d post some for you, but I have a feeling you’d find some way to discount them, so I won’t bother. Still, if you’re interested, just google.</p>