““I don’t remember any of those boys going to jail” – it’s a truth universally acknowledged that white kids rarely pay the price that their counterparts of color do. Heck, just days ago we followed criminal cases here on CC where a white defendant got a dramatically lower sentence than a Latino accused of the same crime.”
that is just silly and not true. it sounds great in an echo chamber but is not based in reality.
Whose reality?
If teen burglars and dealers aren’t charged, but just given a stern warning, it isn’t counted as criminal activity anywhere as far as I know.
Sometimes their parents sent them to special boarding schools in hopes of straightening them out.
@cobrat, Imagine what happened to the recruit on the rifle range at Parris Island who turned around and faced all of us with a loaded M-16 pointed right at us as he asked the DI a dumb question. He never graduated and was on the next flight home.
I never wandered those same streets of Boston during the wee hours, but I did teach in elementary schools in Roxbury, Dorchester, South Boston, and Columbia Point. Only one day was I relieved to reach the school door because of who was in my path.
I still feel bad for those kids today. Society gave them a raw deal and told them how good it was going to be (school busing).
Half of all homicides in LA and Chicago are gang murders. Up to 80% of all crime is gang related. 2,000 people every year are killed in gang murders. Most of these are minorities. This is what needs to be the priority. Otherwise, it is like worrying you are going to die by being struck by lightning when your body is riddled with cancer.
The parents who send them to special schools to try straightening them out sound far more responsible than the parents of the drinking and vandalizing teens in my uncle’s upper/upper-middle class NNJ.
Not only were the parents not doing anything to straighten them out…it seems many encouraged/condoned their wayward teens’ behavior because they did the same back when they were teens and their parents likewise and they were all allowed to get away with it because they were upper-class, White, and had strong connections with local/regional authorities going back several generations.
Only when the parents were criminally sanctioned along with their wayward teens in higher-level/Federal Courts did this decades-long condoning of such criminal behaviors stop.
That’s just completely not believable. In upper/upper-middle class neighborhoods, the residents are not going to tolerate persistent vandalism. Ain’t happenin’
@zobroward what isn’t true about that statement?
@zobroward – sorry to burst your bubble:
“While youth incarceration has declined sharply over the last decade, racial disparities have actually increased. This report reviews the nationwide and state-by-state status of racial and ethnic disparities in commitments and the likely impact of growing racial disparities in arrests.”
No matter where you look, or the types of crimes you examine, white kids get off lighter than black kids. That’s just the facts.
Oh, and before you dismiss my post above as liberal propaganda, here’s a quote to consider from NONE OTHER THAN NEWT GINGRICH
" If you are a normal white American, the truth is you don’t understand being black in America, and you instinctively under-estimate the level of discrimination and the level of additional risk."
Hell has frozen over, I know.
A young relative was recently busted for drugs. Went to drug court, his extremely white and UMC mom told all about the bullying he has endured in the past (true and sad), everyone was dressed in the right clothes. He was given probation and a deal that the record will be expunged. Another white crime that won’t show up in the statistics. Just this past spring, a (white) student told me the same story. That’s the norm.
When I worked at a college of predominately black, low SES students. That never happened. I was a counselor to them, and I knew the stories.
Two justices.
Cobrat, in a discussion about the wrongness of stereotyping (blacks as violent criminals, cops as black-haters, whites as not caring about anyone other than themselves), it’s extremely aggravating when you persist in stereotyping affluent white suburbanites as being a certain way. Despite what you think, affluent white suburbanites do not “condone” vandalism, petty crime, etc.
Without video some of us would have been willing to believe Castile and Sterling were justifiably killed because they threatened the lives of the police involved. They would have been labeled criminals. There were a whole lot of decades (centuries) with no video. I have to believe many labeled criminals were not criminals. So I am skeptical about some of these statistics.
Bad parenting is bad parenting and knows no racial or socio-economic boundaries although the facts, circumstances and reasons behind it may differ. We have friends who live in a very affluent area where their $1,000,000+ 54 foot sailboat that they paid cash for is nothing special. It is just bizarre how many kids there are getting into trouble with drugs, alcohol, wild parties that lead to vandalism, B&E for parties, etc because mommy and daddy are too busy leading the lifestyle of the rich and famous to be real parents (my friends are an exception). When these events occur, it is a “surprise” to many because it is inconsistent with the stereotype of white upper middle/upper economic class society and is often attributed to “issues” the kids have and not to enabling by the parents. When these same things happen in working/lower class minority communities, the stereotypical perception is that it is due to bad parenting and bad cultural environment causing the kids to go bad. There is a clear socio-economic and racial bias that occurs.
Perhaps this has been discussed elsewhere, but if my significant other was shot and bleeding in the car, I’d ask permission to to take my hands off the wheel and tend to my SO, not just videotape the incident.
I agree that video has changed the investigation of these incidents. IMO they should be used as a portion of the investigation , but many times they are considered absolute proof. Different vantage points provide different evidence. When people use one video to determine absolute guilt or innocence problems arise .
I have no idea, but have been imagining she hoped that by live streaming she might protect her child and herself from any further violence. I know I would have been worried about my child, more than anything else, with someone shooting into the car.
Obviously, I’m projecting. I have no way to know what she was thinking. I applaud her actions.
Perhaps the COP should have tended to him, like someone sworn to serve and protect should?
It’s ironic that if she had done as you suggest (not that it would have mattered, he died quickly) we’d never know what went on in that car. Or, she’d have been shot too, since he also asked the cop if he could get his license (as she wasn’t rolling videotape yet I guess we can’t know that for sure).
Absolutely true. I think that’s why she was able to remain calm too, good moms go into mom mode instantly.
Exploring the alternative…
She asks for permission to tend to her SO. Officer tells to keep her hands where they are, gun still drawn.
Where did that get her?
I’m happy she kept the video streaming. People could see. People who she felt could help her and do something given the fact that she was in a game of “freeze tag” with the officer’s gun.
I’ve been in a few instances where things get a bit sketchy and quickly Snapchatting your whereabouts before various things hit the fan seems like a good thing to do. I, too, applaud her. It was clever. Never thought of Facebook live stream.
One can only speculate what happened before the shooting as the live Facebook feed started after the shooting. I’ve heard that there is also Dashcam footage that is being reviewed
I just can’t imagine the circumstances that justify shooting into a car containing a four year old. I just can’t.