Comment by southerntofu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by southerntofu | Hacker News Reader

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> Poor people or non-white do not know how to make an ID is that what you are suggesting?

Many homeless people here don't have ID because to make one you need an address, and to get an address to receive papers you need an ID (circling dependency).

In France, it requires citizenship to have an ID card. Legal immigrants are given a "titre de séjour", while undocumented people (by definition) don't have any of these. As a white person whose grandparents were immigrants, i've never been asked for ID in my entire life (except for official administration stuff or one of the times i was detained by police for political activities) ; this contrasts with my non-white friends who are frequently stopped by police for an "ID check".

The ID check is used by french police as a means of controlling and humiliating popular non-white suburbs. It's not uncommon in these places for cops to know the actual names of the people they're controlling, and the control itself is just another form of harassment.

There has been many anti-racist campaigns in France over the years denouncing "contrôle au faciès" (looks-based checks). If you speak some french, you can see some of the videos from those collectives who will tell you more about this practice.

Now, specifically about elections, asking for ID (not proof of residency) willingly excludes foreigners. All the while forging plausible ID cards is very accessible to bad actors (retail price of a few hundred euros a piece). So no, i don't exactly see the point.

> I am non white and find this very racist.

Sorry to offend you. It was my impression that getting an ID in the USA can also be very complex (leading to many people being undocumented) but i may be wrong about that.

Im a second generation immigrant from a muslim country. I lived 20 years of my life in one of the top 5 cities in france in terms of HLM (projects). Not once I have been humiliated by Police. In some places of my city cops "do not come because they cant drive there". My brother got a knife to his throat for walking there at night. Not once I have been asked to check ID randomly. I've seen many of people that leftists would define as "like me" being "victim" of controle au facies and arrested. they mostly had something in common. Just like the people that the cops arrest for 70% of the crimes of this city, they were dressing like rap singers, swearing to cops, literally trying to beat you if you did not belong to "this project" and if you dared to walk around their hood. They also were seeing education as useless because they could make much more in the hood. So you can imagine that for people of those projects, watching Hip Hop, watching those guys outside make money free from any kind of police repercussion VS going to school and trying to have a side job at macdonald to make enough money to afford stuff it was not a difficult choice. And if you dared not to make this choice they would call you "white guy" or "uncle tom" in the US.

The fallacy of the left is that for them (in France and USA) a black person or a muslim person is of one kind. just like a hivemind we have to be all same and opressed because cops are bad.

What was the issue for me during those 20 years were the rampant religious zealots trying to push their agenda on me. Forcing girls to wears the "right" clothes, building one-way windows hairdresser for women and islamic supermarkets right in the city center. Backed by leftists that again thought of immigrant as some kind of hivemind that all wanted this "religious freedom" they called through their "anti racism" campaigns. Ive seen all those leftist coming to some neighborhood and praising themselves of living among the diversity and sending their kids to private school too so that they don't spend time with the immigrants sons. I am not denying that the police makes mistakes, that controle au facies has some negative effects witht people who dress like rap / hood dudes and have normal decent lives but its more a by product of them tolerating the other side of the "immigrants" because of the lies the left sold them : that they are all same opressed by a society that does not want them. My life shows me that we are all same below the 1% whatever our color those are the people that will make us suffer, lower our wage, push our retirement age. the cops are just a piece of a broken system that are also victim of those 1%. Ive worked through my career with cops and I would never want to do their job in a country like France or the US.

> Not once I have been humiliated by Police

Good for you. I can't say the same, personally, though these humiliations and violence were never "au faciès".

> they were dressing like rap singers

Yes. Just like cops harass and beat white punks, but won't bother a person in a suit: there's an intersection between class oppression and race oppression. Though in the case of muslim women (eg. in birkini) harassed by police, you can't really say that they were "swearing to cops".

> we have to be all same and opressed because cops are bad

Of course all cops are bastards, but of course not people are not all the same and don't live the same situations. Just because individual experiences vary does not mean there isn't some systemic factors at play.

> sending their kids to private school too so that they don't spend time with the immigrants sons

So true.

> we are all same below the 1% whatever our color those are the people that will make us suffer, lower our wage, push our retirement age

We are not the same: we have different experiences and perspectives. But i agree with your point that we all have interests in common against the vampires that profit off of our misery. But i feel like it's important to acknowledge our diversity and differences ; the traditional left in the first half of the 20th century has notoriously failed to incorporate antisexist and antiracist analysis in their worldview, insisting that class struggle is the unique struggle that matters. For women's rights, the situation has been reversed in the second half of the century, despite much hypocrisy and not going very far down this slope. The rise of a new generation of intersectional Left (inspired by eg. Angela Davis) could change the narrative, but this growing movement is not represented in the media or in mainstream (party) politics.

> the cops are just a piece of a broken system that are also victim of those 1%

That is true. Cops are just pawns. Yet they make the conscious decision to become pawns to those 1% and harass, imprison, mutilate or assassinate those who don't fit in this society. They are the armed hand of the State making sure people stay homeless when there are empty flats, or stay hungry when every supermarket has so much food they throw away.

Also, some cops (not all) are very happy to endorse the role of the persecutors and go beyond their role as neutral tools of the State. Police and gendarmes have famously over 60% votes for the national front. Many cops are part of conspiracies with neonazi groups or drug trafficking gangs, and they face few (if any) consequences. This is also related with how police recruitment, education, and equipment has changed over the past decades, but this is yet another can of worms to open. Overall, i would strongly recommend reading Mathieu Rigouste's books on the history of police in France.

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