Thought you might enjoy reading the comment I put up on a friends thread. Hopefully, she did, too, despite how long winded I was. I know she is staunchly opposed to racism. In fact, I began by quoting her: This is not about making systemic injustices against minorities about white people...its about getting white people to notice the injustices. YES. This. When white people dismiss black perceptions of the shooting deaths of unarmed black men as unlikely to have been anything but justified--basing it on their own experiences with police--they are acting in a manner that denies their privilege. As a middle class, middle-aged white lady with straight white teeth, I can be reasonably confident that during a routine traffic stop, I wont be shot. If a police officer approaches me on the street, he almost certainly will not require me to show him ID (which is good, because if Im on foot, I probably wont have any with me). And if he does, he even more certainly will not frisk me after doing so. My experiences with police have been almost all positive. In that, Im similar to most white people--who are routinely TREATED by police as if they are innocent until proven guilty. This is not the black experience, however: 45% of black Americans report they have been harassed by police. And policys like NYCs Stop and Frisk are carried out differently against whites and blacks, with almost 80% of black men frisked after being stopped, and virtually no white men. (This despite the fact that drug use is not markedly different across racial lines.) When white people say, Im race blind, what that often translates to in reality is a willful blindness to the different experiences of those who are not white. Like the black man gunned down in a Wal-Mart for holding a toy gun... in an open carry state. The refusal to indict the cops who shot him came down from the grand jury yesterday. Wanna bet if it had been a white man killed, the response would have differed? I do. But then, Im aware of the privilege that makes it unlikely that a young man Im related to will become a statistic at the hands of police... like the one black man killed every 28 hours in this country, at the hands of police, security, or vigilantes. Privilege. Its my privilege to deny that reality if I choose. I just dont choose it any more.
Posted on: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 22:41:02 +0000
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