What I learned about stop and frisk from watching my black son
m.theatlantic.com
m.theatlantic.com
My studiomate who is a filmmaker actually spoke with some local teens who were frequently harassed by the stop & frisk policy and I felt guilty that a few meager class signifiers seem to get me off the hook so easily [0].
That said the author's other accounts of having to be cautious of unintentionally provoking police do ring true my experience and stories from my family and friends.
It implies that police are able to discern the difference between "good people" and "bad people", and that "stopping the bad ones" doesn't harm society at large because "the good ones" don't get stopped.
This is hurtful to those who have experienced it first hand, and to those who are seeking equality of all people under the law.
What I am saying is that in my experience NYC police appear to discriminate more based on class than on race.
If they profiled only on race or on class that is obviously bad. And I imagine in some areas there's a correlation between race or class with crime.
But in general I'd expect the police to develop good judgement in being able to read people on sight using whatever cues they can pick up on.
I never get 'harassed' by the police nowadays, but as a middle class white teenager I was being stopped all the time, usually because they could tell from body language or how and where I was driving that I was up to something. Usually they were dead right and usually it was alcohol related.
You should be thankful that corrupt cops are racist because they can't help giving themselves away by mistreating blacks. Until you folks break up the corrupt police brotherhood and take back control of law enforcement, things will only get worse.
Fix the root problem and minority males will cease to have problems like this.
0. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/29/nyregion/bloomberg-says-ma...
There is a law which supports it. But that law might well be unconstitutional, in which case the policy it supports is not necessarily legal.
The end of the article argues that racial profiling allows a majority of citizens to ignore problems with policing because abuses are highly concentrated on "other people". This makes police corruption "not my problem".
The problem isn't complacency with the abuses; the problem is that abuses are concentrated on minorities of the population so that the majority of voters/stakeholders don't have enough skin in the game to care.
Must you begin your comment on an article about discrimination by using a stereotype?
Do we? I'm not sure.
Certainly in recent years there has been a notable increase in the number of well publicized incidents of police corruption (and use of excessive force and various rights violations). But is this because such incidents are becoming more common, or because they are more likely to be reported and/or publicized effectively?
I honestly don't know the answer. I'd be interested in hard evidence on either side.
"Do we? I'm not sure."
Actually I find the parent comment such a wide generalization that's it's almost laughable.
Am I the only one getting extremely tired of the anti-american trolls?
Seriously, please take this nonsense elsewhere, many of us are well aware of the issues regarding law enforcement in this country.
I don't know. With advancements in technology, it's easier to catch and share such incidents. That doesn't necessarily mean there is more corruption though.
If those stop-and-frisk are really needed, then, in my view, they should be applied to different cohorts in the same proportion as those cohorts perform crimes: maybe it's 60% for ages 18-30 and 30% for 30+, could be 90% males and 10% females. Only for population groups where crime rates change significantly, of course. (Race may or may not be one of those.)
Would that make sense?
There are your ratios.
See the problem?
In the US, 90% of men are incarcerated. Sure, maybe it's just because men are suspect more women, therefore are caught with higher likelihood. But, given a random citizen, is the probability that they will commit a crime not significantly higher if they are a men? (Which is of course near 0 anyway, don't get me wrong.)
It's not about the efficacy, it's about the sort of society we want to live in. Because there will always be those that make arguments from pragmatism.
Freedom isn't easy or pragmatic, if you think about it like that.
If the writer is white then the son is arguably as white as he is black, and probably more white than black if the mother is an African American, as opposed to an African immigrant. So why the insistence on the father labeling him as black just because society sees him as such? Society can learn to see him as white if white fathers insist on claiming whiteness for him. Why does the notion of whiteness exclude any racial mixture when black does? Why should whiteness be exclusive and the father go along with that?
The real issue is the way society is programmed by calculated use of language. If the One Drop Rule was switched around most racial discrimination would end, because discrimination would then be based on shade of complexion not race. Whites would be light-skinned whites, mixed race people would simply be medium-skinned whites and most African Americans would be dark-skinned whites from their slave-owning fathers. Or the definition could be reversed and white people would be very light-skinned blacks. The idiocy of this defacto continuation of the ODR is that is that it makes whiteness exclusive and black becomes some kind of genetic taint, some kind of condition/affliction which causes lots people who are 'white' socially, genetically and culturally for all practical purposes to be labelled as 'black'.
That rule was made to ensure that wealth and privilege remained in the hands of white people, to ensure the formation of a predominantly and visibly white aristocracy and check the breeding preferences of resident or immigrant European nobility whose appearance was visibly that of light-skinned blacks. Take this instance of a prince of Liechtenstein http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LMfYsqYUdxY/UCaj_85tH2I/AAAAAAAAEU.... If American had more men like his father in ranking positions, his complexion might even be identified with aristocracy and how often would police harass males like him and risk losing their jobs? By being labeled as black it only helps rationalize the harassment.
What is there to stop white fathers insisting that their sons be seen as white and have all the privileges that come with it and punish policemen who stepped out of line? This father's refusal to view and label his son as white masks a hardly unconscious reluctance to demand the same privileges he has for his son and by extension any other men of a similar appearance. If they got to be seen as white and also married black females the same privilege would be extended to their even darker sons and this issue would simply go away.
The continued use of black to describe mixed race people, even multiple generations of 'blacks' who are mixed is simply a refusal to accept the fact that a white and Nordic-oriented exclusivity in a multiracial America is a myth, downright anomalous and is actually Nazism of the worst kind. Isn't it glaringly obvious how Hispanic is used to pull in lots of people who would be Black, Native American or both under the One Drop Rule, ie 'light-skinned blacks'?
Unfortunately the use of the term black by that white father is just a sop to white exclusivity supremacists.
European is a culture not a race.
If the writer is serious about racism a good start should be to admit that your son is also white then you could write an article entitled "What I learned about stop and frisk from watching my white son" and a generation later your white grandson by his black mother of course. That would get white people to take notice.
The simple rebuttal is: In 1950s America, which water fountain would he be made to use? Which school would he be put in? Where on the bus would he sit?
Mixed race individuals get treated every bit as badly. So making the distinction is not helpful when talking about racial abuse, it only serves to distract from the core issue at hand.
If the writer is white then the son is arguably as white as he is black, and probably more white than black if the mother is an African American, as opposed to an African immigrant. So why the insistence on the father labeling him as black just because society sees him as such? Society can learn to see him as white if white fathers insist on claiming whiteness for him. Why does the notion of whiteness exclude any racial mixture when black does? Why should whiteness be exclusive and the father go along with that?
The real issue is the way society is programmed by calculated use of language. If the One Drop Rule was switched around most racial discrimination would end, because discrimination would then be based on shade of complexion not race. Whites would be light-skinned whites, mixed race people would simply be medium-skinned whites and most African Americans would be dark-skinned whites from their slave-owning fathers. Or the definition could be reversed and white people would be very light-skinned blacks. The idiocy of this defacto continuation of the ODR is that is that it makes whiteness exclusive and black becomes some kind of genetic taint, some kind of condition/affliction which causes lots people who are 'white' socially, genetically and culturally for all practical purposes to be labelled as 'black'.
That rule was made to ensure that wealth and privilege remained in the hands of white people, to ensure the formation of a predominantly and visibly white aristocracy and check the breeding preferences of resident or immigrant European nobility whose appearance was visibly that of light-skinned blacks. Take this instance of a prince of Liechtenstein http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LMfYsqYUdxY/UCaj_85tH2I/AAAAAAAAEU.... If American had more men like his father in ranking positions, his complexion might even be identified with aristocracy and how often would police harass males like him and risk losing their jobs? By being labeled as black it only helps rationalize the harassment.
What is there to stop white fathers insisting that their sons be seen as white and have all the privileges that come with it and punish policemen who stepped out of line? This father's refusal to view and label his son as white masks a hardly unconscious reluctance to demand the same privileges he has for his son and by extension any other men of a similar appearance. If they got to be seen as white and also married black females the same privilege would be extended to their even darker sons and this issue would simply go away.
The continued use of black to describe mixed race people, even multiple generations of 'blacks' who are mixed is simply a refusal to accept the fact that a white and Nordic-oriented exclusivity in a multiracial America is a myth, downright anomalous and is actually Nazism of the worst kind. Isn't it glaringly obvious how Hispanic is used to pull in lots of people who would be Black, Native American or both under the One Drop Rule, ie 'light-skinned blacks'?
Unfortunately the use of the term black by that white father is just a sop to white exclusivity supremacists.
European is a culture not a race.
This is a treatment of a symptom, not of the cause.
Maybe you accidentally hit reply before elaborating on “racial stereotypes exist for a reason”.
Why does it persist? Because culture == behavior. Because profiling works, for better or for worse.
What would be the right thing to do? I think that everyone should be treated equally and all have the same rights as anyone else. Given the data I sympathize with a police force that resorts to profiling. There are likely larger social issues at play here, we are seeing symptoms of other problems.
[1] http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/analysis_and_plan...
You might note that the first thing my comment stated is that I didn't agree with the whole stop and frisk thing.
Assertion #1: common street and property crime, such as mugging, burglary, robbery, car theft, car jacking, and such is more likely to be committed by people who have limited money and limited advancement prospects than they are to be committed by people who have plenty of money and plenty of advancement opportunity.
Assertion #2: due to slavery followed by almost 100 years of legal and often state enforced discrimination against black people, black people have historically been significantly overrepresented among those with limited money and limited advancement prospects. Although this has been improving since the Civil Rights Act and other protections against discrimination, things have not leveled out yet and blacks are sill very overrepresented at the lower ends of the economic spectrum.
If you agree with both of these assertions, then why did you down vote deedubaya? If both those assertions are true, it necessarily follows that black people will be overrepresented among muggers, burglars, car jackers, and the like. When a group is overrepresented in some activity, good or bad, stereotypes tend to develop about that group and that activity. If we pretend there isn't some reason behind the stereotypes, it is harder to address those conditions that led to the stereotype.