I think you have to be honest though and admit that a good chunk of the prejudice that the black community faces is rooted in fears of criminality. If that problem were solved, that chunk would go away. I am not at all suggesting it would end prejudice entirely.
The reason I, affluent white suburban woman, don’t have to worry about a cop getting trigger-happy during a routine traffic stop is partly rooted in white privilege but it’s also partly rooted in that I am a demographic not likely to be causing trouble.
I think it must be very hard to always have to feel that you are a reflection not just of yourself, but of your community. I’ve said on here before that when I, as a white woman, go out and run errands in sloppy sweatpants and what-not, I’m just a frumpy middle aged white woman, but when a black woman does, she’s evidence that they don’t know how to hold it together.
^Right. But that’s a perceptive problem that we–white people–collectively have to solve. It is not the black community’s job to assuage our generalities.
Suppose the unequal treatment of black people during routine traffic stops, etc. got solved tomorrow and every police officer did the right thing at all times. Yay!
But no one still is home free when there is still violent criminality.
There are very dangerous majority white areas too, don’t be in the by-far-majority-white meth and heroin areas of depressed Appalachia or Cali on the wrong street at the wrong time.
According to FBI data, 40% of cop killers are black, disproportionate to their percent of population.
Young black males commit a huge percentage of the murders and other violent crimes in this country, again far more than their population percentages.
This makes an encounter with a young black male more fraught with danger to the police and increases tensions.
I’ve been stopped many times by police, three times when I legitimately had no license plates on the car. Just a paper plate in the window. The police officer said there had been a rash of car thefts in the area. Now I as a middle aged white female are not the usual car theft suspect, I had not commited any crime, there was no BOLO out for a older white female, but I was sympathetic to a police officer just doing his job.
The cop involved in shooting Philando Castile has been identified as Jeronimo Yanez. From that and a posting by a FB friend who is a professional journalist, he’s not Asian though he was misidentified as such earlier.
That’s not to say Asian cops have not been involved as the Peter Liang case in NYC proved.
I’ve personally taken a lot of heat from some quarters for arguing that former officer Liang received a slap on the wrist and shouldn’t be trying to argue to have the charges and his guilty verdict dismissed as he’s been trying to do.
Especially considering the killing of Akai Gurley was instigated by exceedingly careless handling of his service pistol in a manner that several former military personnel including my own father have said would have gotten him in his position as the platoon commander* and possibly his NCOs/COs chewed out and punished through military judicial proceedings up to and including a court-martial.
Heck, if I had handled a firearm the way former officer Liang did in front of a classmate’s 20 year Marine/Vietnam Vet/former drill sergeant father who took me and his son to a firearms range and drilled basic firearms safety into us, I’d have been chewed out harshly as if I was a Marine recruit who caused a serious screwup which jeopardized the lives of other recruits at Parris Island even given the fact I was 8 years old at the time.
As my father opted to complete his 2 years of mandated military service after college in the '50s when there was a shortage of company grade commissioned officers in the ROC(Taiwan) army, he completed his as a conscripted commissioned officer.
146 - That's really ironic since the Bahamas has a much higher murder rate than the United States. They have the 12th highest murder rate in the world.
“The cop involved in shooting Philando Castile has been identified as Jeronimo Yanez. From that and a posting by a FB friend who is a professional journalist, he’s not Asian though he was misidentified as such earlier.”
The woman in the car said he was Chinese, which probably means that he has Asian features.
It is very possible a name such as Jeronimo Yanez is Filipino.
149 those stats are based on half of one year. There are only 24 cases, which may not be statistically significant and in some of those cases, the suspect grabbed the police officers gun. I am looking for more comprehensive stats.
A recent study shows that states with higher gun ownership have higher rates of police who are killed while on duty. It is quite striking, apparently police are in 3X more danger in high gun ownership states.
So again, what we are afraid of isn’t always what we logically and statistically should be afraid of. The high violent crime neighborhood is not a good thing, but a domestic violence call is more dangerous to a cop.
That’s what folks who have such perceptions and the dominant mass media narrative would make it appear on the surface.
However, some historians have argued this perception has far deeper roots in far less savory aspects of our past such as tension and fear among many Whites in the 19th century and before over violent slave uprisings and centuries of mass media narratives of Black people being “violent untamed savages”. Heck, there are still some groups and a few prominent politicians like a few cited on this and the Sterling shooting thread who push that centuries old narrative.
Most people fear the here and now. Most Americans have so little understanding of history, that they have no idea of “Whtie tensions in the 19th century”, have no knowledge of violent slave uprisings. But they do know what is going on on television every night.
BLM and other similar movements need to address the high crime rate among blacks. More blacks are being killed on the streets of just Chicago than are killed by police officers.
Don’t get me wrong. No one should be shot unnecessarily by a police officer. But gang killings and drive-bys are a bigger problem numbers-wise for the black community.
The influence from past mass media narratives i described in my prior post plays a major part in what stories are chosen to be covered and the manner in which they are covered and how many LEOs perceive and handle suspects.
Both are playing to and influenced by the “Big scary angry Black” narrative which has been used for centuries in mass media portrayals playing to popular prejudices among the White majority throughout US history. To act/believe this only originated due to recent news coverage of crimes is to not only be ignorant of such history…but also putting the cart before the horse. That narrative came first and influences how mass media chooses the stories it covers and the manner it is covered and the implicit biases American society as a whole has against Black Americans…including LEOs.
One good case in point of both is how despite the fact Mark Hughes and his brother wasn’t involved in the sniper attacks against cops and BLM protesters* in Dallas, the DPD and mass media irresponsibly passed around his pictures and named him a suspect.
To make matters worse, the DPD still left the internet posting about his being a suspect complete with his picture AFTER HE WAS CLEARED OF ANY INVOLVEMENT.
To add insult to injury, Hughes’ not only hasn’t received any apologies for being wrongfully labeled…he’s been receiving death threats AND according to one report I’ve read…DPD officers threatened his attorneys with arrest and one even went for his holstered pistol for the mere crime of inquiring as to where their client was being held.
Yes, he was also shooting at BLM protesters as well.