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Comment by mgraczyk | Hacker News Reader

"I love it when white people ..."

It's unclear to me why race has anything to do with this. Are you implying that you expect non-white people to handle "their first arrest" more casually, as if it is something they are familiar with and know will happen?

If we really want things to improve, we need to stop complaining about how "white people don't see how bad it is for the rest of us." Focus on what we have in common, not what you arbitrarily perceive as what makes us different. The system is shitty for everybody. Your argument would have been just as informative and a lot more pleasant to read if it didn't begin by partitioning your readers by race.

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I'm white. Systematic injustice has a funny way of being swept under the rug for years, decades and centuries when it doesn't inconvenience us or when powerful people of our race benefit from it.

Swaths of people go through this regularly or are targeted and treated, much, much worse than this guy for the sole virtue of being the wrong race. Somehow, many white people, especially those in the upper class, never have to see this injustice ever.

There's a reason MLK's strategy during the civil rights movement worked. It inconvenienced or scared white people into seeing the injustice of the system they are a part of and control.

Police brutality and injustice is a side of America we are privileged to be mostly excluded from. When it becomes our problem, the system at least attempts to correct itself.

As an aside, for many people I know, the whole police brutality meme really started brewing when it became common knowledge that cops can come into your house and shoot your dogs. It doesn't and didn't matter that has been going on for decades to those of the wrong race or religion, often with deadly consequences.

I don't think it's entirely unfair. I'd venture that in the US, black people (and likely other minorities) are much more likely to have heard about and clearly understand what's in store for them if they get arrested. Most probably have a family member or close friend that has dealt with this injustice.

Almost none of my white friends understand the terrible truths in the system beyond reading accounts like this in the media. I include myself among them. Part of it is probably population realities - when a minority segment of the population suffers the majority of indignities, it's more likely to hit close to home.

Yeah, I'd like to remove black and white from many conversations. White guilt feels almost vogue, I have to hear about it so often from white friends and colleagues. But when it comes to the criminal justice system...

The system is shitty for everybody and an appeal to a common humanity is absolutely critical for any reasonable expectation of humane social structures.

However, to suggest that the experience of the system is the same for everybody is naive at best. I read task_queue's comment more as the following:

"Societal structures do not change until those with more (social, political, economic, etc) power experience the inconvenience and injustice that people without the power to effect change experience on a more regular basis. That this is true is unfortunate."

1791: Haitian slaves ask very nicely to be freed and are immediately liberated by all those reasonable white people.

https://thenib.com/great-moments-in-peaceful-protest-history...

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