But the problem is many ppl don't or refuse to understand this.

That's a lot of...something. I'll censor myself for obvious reasons and say nothing more but, wow.

And why would you need to censor yourself, if your argument is valid?

Validity? LOL, doesn't matter what the disagreement might be. See previous statement.

However, I might start with the definition of the word "fact" in the OP and work my way down.

Last edited Fri Dec 26, 2014, 01:43 AM - Edit history (1)

The police's fear of black men:

Sting's group, notwithstanding.

But is a fact that individual police officers are afraid of black men.

It sounds as if you're trying to pressure everyone into agreeing not to alert on anything you might positively post here.

None of the rest of us get that kind of deference...why should you?

What special expertise and knowledge do you alone possess that entitles you to act as if any alert that might be made in response to your post is inherently illegitimate and unfair?

Just say what you've got to say already.

And if you get alerted on, man up and accept it as just part of how life works.

It's not like you're a victim of persecution here.

Really?

What do you call those who alert something to which you might have alerted? Just curious…

Interesting response.

Making every effort to not resist arrest, assault an officer, or point a gun at the police will greatly reduce one's chances of being killed by them. The number one rule should bnto avoid contact with law enforcement all together, that can be almost impossible for black men in poor urban areas though.

You know, when police have been shown to pull over Black drivers in non-urban areas in higher numbers for no reason to harass us in hopes of writing citations and making arrests. Or when we are driving in urban areas.

Putting the onus on Black people to prevent police violence and harassment is insulting and dismissive of the problem.

There's no opportunity to do what they're told. And it's impossible for African Americans to avoid contact with law enforcement when they're racially profiled over and over and over again.

Are you just naive?

Thats the only logical explanation for that response.

And tommorow there will be a rainbow with a pot of gold and a leprechaun with shamrocks flying out of his ass. That's what I thought when I read that.

I'd say that most non-blacks in this country have a fear of black people. They really feel uncomfortable in black neighborhoods or anywhere else where most of the people around them are black. I used to feel that way for a long time. I moved to this majority-black neighborhood 7 years ago, and I was scared as hell when I first moved in.

The fear of black people in this country is instilled at an early age. When your family avoids black people and then the white people and black people at school don't mix or even sit with each other in the cafeteria at school, you pick up cues that blacks are people to be feared and basically shunned for the most part. You might have one or two black friends at school, but how often do you go to each other's houses after school? It hardly ever happens.

Then, when you get older, you watch the news and see the crime reports and even though they talk about white people committing violent crimes too, the black murderers and rapists and thieves stick in your head. You get to be just like your parents are, and when you have kids, you raise them just like you were raised and nothing ever changes. Until white people and black people start spending time together and start talking to each other, things are going to remain just as they are.

Once a friend traveled to Harlem ( a mostly Black neighborhood in New York - now it is gentrified, this was before gentrification.)
She is a very progressive activist.
When she told me about her trip, she was all "I made it. And I didn't even get mugged".
It was disgusting, but it was just instilled racism as Luvnewcastle says.
I told her that the people in Harlem were like the people everywhere else - working, going to school, loving their families, trying to make it.
She was abashed and realized she had internalized racism in some ways, even tho consciously she is an anti-racist.

I can attest to the truth of what you say LuvNewcastle. When I moved to Newark NJ, many people I know were shocked. They were sure I was going to get murdered.

If anyone doubts that racism is alive and well: One time I was thinking of moving to Detroit, so I went to this forum where people tell you the good and bad things about cities.
How are the schools... etc.
It's very useful.
So... when I mentioned Detroit - I literally got tens of posts which were telling me "Where the white people live". Which is not the info I was seeking. It was totally shocking, but shouldn't have been.

Are all black cops afraid of black people? No. Are all white cops afraid of all black people? Of course not. For those cops who are afraid of some black people, is their fear inherent or learned? Learned. course. Is their fear legally enforced? No, there are no legal penalties for not being afraid of black people.

Okay, and that's just the title.

Would you be as kind enough to watch it and then post a response?

I'd appreciate that.

I do wish she had said something about the percentages of her interviewees that feared black men. Also, Rice interviewed only cops in the LAPD during the 1990s. So her interviews don't tell us much about police forces other than the LAPD in the 1990s. A more scientific study would be necessary to make generalizations about police forces and the extent to which racial fears influence police behavior. But I thought that what she had to say was definitely worth saying.

There is no doubt that many cops have racial fears and other prejudices. And having grown up in the Los Angeles area, I was aware of the dangers of dealing with cops in certain precincts. In Torrance my dad's AA colleague was consistently stopped for no reason by the police as he rode his bike through a white neighborhood to work even though he was wearing a suit and tie. Getting cops to get to know the people in the communities they serve certainly seems like a common sense way to reduce fear and distrust. It might also help address the general problem of assholish behavior on the part of cops that tends to exacerbate problems rather than defuse a situation.

I'm wondering how many violations of his civil right to be free from undue harassment it would've taken for the cops in that community to get to know him better.

And it's quite clear that the cops are paid and rewarded for being assholes. It's condoned by their command structure and many of these "best practices" are shared from department to department, taught by way of private law enforcement contractors.

I would think it foolish for any black person in this country, especially black males between the ages of 18-22 to regard the police throughout America with anything other than extreme caution. That's just the way that America feels about black people and the it's up to the police to make threat assessments of those young black males who may be engaging in "suspicious" behavior, (i.e., seen in public being young black males).

accompanied by her black daughters, a black son, their babies and one black son-in-law I asked her to consider the situation in America before they all take the chance of traveling half way across the country to visit with us. I do not want anyone killed.

The irony of this is that one of her daughters and her son-in-law are doctors. We are actually afraid that two doctors are not safe because of skin color. Sad.

and that learning leads to assumptions being made in order to anticipate/lean forward/be prepared. And sometimes that preparation is wrong and fuse-shortening.

Getting out in front of the situation is seen as key. And that includes sanctioned profiling, which is stereotyping under the cover of law enforcement. People projecting tough guy know-it-all attitudes like Rudolf Guliani revel in its use.

You can argue that it's sometimes a useful practice, and you can argue about by how much the margins of "sometimes" are more or less than half the time, but you can't argue that using profiling doesn't put the cop in a state of mind that sees the profiled person as the stereotype.

That's the point where profile fitting assumptions about black people leads to stopping, frisking, and even strip-searching them on a public sidewalk for nothing more than walking while black. It's the point at which skin color, 'ink' and 'colors' a person is wearing lead to hands on pistol grips. It's the point where women are stripped and cavity searched on the side of a highway.

And the profiled "suspects" are expected to always be completely, and instantly compliant. If they aren't, well, things can get very ugly and very deadly, very fast.

The threshold of police over-reaction is breached under auspices of learned assumptions about danger and the urgency with which danger must be countered.

Crossing that line is the mistake by which a deaf person gets shot for not following verbal commands, it's the critical mistake where a driver slipping into diabetic comas get dragged out of the car and beaten for not responding to commands. It's the instant of programmed response that leads to an elderly grandfather shot to death for jumping up off his couch in response to his front door being mistakenly kicked open by SWAT drug raids. It's the deadly irony of a mentally ill person in a emotional crisis getting shot in seconds by police called for assistance because the person was manifesting symptoms of mental illness.

The movement that's growing is against very real events of miss-policing, it's against real abuses and brutality of a mind set that sees police as being at war within society. It's not against police, per se.

The discomfort experienced by police and expressed by leaders of police unions is about feeling profiled, stereotyped, and thrown under the bus of social disdain.

In large part, it is a bit of what it feels like to be a citizen in those profiled shoes.

not sure I have EVER read a more broad-brushed attack on DU.

As another appropriately stated . . . .'WOW'.

Especially any black person that they would regard as a "suspect" is dubious at best.

The police aren't paid to respect or honor anyone's rights, especially since much of police work consists of violating said rights in order to investigate, cite and arrest people.

He told my friend, "White people, you don't have to beat them when you arrest them because they aren't very tough. Mexicans, you have to knock them around a bit because they are pretty tough, but blacks you have to beat them down really hard because they are super tough"

There are a lot of non-white cops. Does this apply to them as well?

Blue.

Not sure if you are both using it to mean the same thing.

Thanks, Mr Scorpio.

I have seen examples of this in real life and I am very very white. I was put a jury once for a dwi even though I told the judge during voir dire that my father had been killed by a DWI. I was surprised that the defense attorney fought to keep me on the jury and I did tell the judge that I would be fair. During the trial, I found out that the reason why I was on the jury was that the defendant was stopped for driving while black in a white neighborhood. After a day and half of testimony, the judge dismissed the case due to there being no probable cause for the arrest. If this case had gone to the jury, the defendant would have been found not guilty or there would have been mistrial in that the attitude of the sheriff deputy was wrong.

Cops are not treating non-whites the same as whites in a host of circumstances.

AA folks? Just asking because not all cops are white, especially those in the city where things seem to happen more so than the suburbs. I see lots of diversity in NYC Police and that diversity is suppose to represent the population within NYC.

The two cops who were killed, one was Asian and the other Hispanic..

When white people say there is no racism. Just like it infuriates me when males say there is no sexism. Yeh, for YOU, maybe. But for people of color and women, racism and sexism is so in your face, it's hard to deny its existence.

As a gender non-conforming white female from a blue collar, lower middle class New England background, I have come to believe that MOST whites are racist. And it's not people using the 'N' word - most people know better. It's the 'othering' of people of color - Those People are always up to no good. They're lazy, stupid, have too many babies, etc. We've all heard it all before.

You know how you think white people are racist when people of color are not around? Well, you're right, they are. I work a blue collar, low paying job with mostly other white people. And the men I work with feel quite free to spew their casual racism. The women aren't as bad, in fact, I don't think I've heard any of the women making the kind of comments the men make. It's probably just this subset of people I know because I know damn right well women are just as racist as men. Maybe they're just not as vocal about it. I don't know the answer to why men are the more outspoken racists, in my experience.

I'm not perfect, I can see sometimes, how the society in which I was raised and influenced by is racist to its core. When I find myself buying into what our racist society is selling, I check myself.

So, why am I so special? Why am I not racist when I am accusing MOST (and yes I am going there) white people as racists?

It's simple. When I was a child (until 13 or so) we had a black family who lived next door to us. I played with black children and I always saw them as human beings. My town of 40000 people had two black families. Most white people didn't interact with black people on a daily basis.

It's easy to make people who look different to you and who you do not interact with into 'other' And when people are 'other' they are easy to stereotype and fear.

The anti-segregationists of the 50's and 60's were on to something, there, and t wasn't just about equal access.

When you have friends of different backgrounds, you are less bigoted. It seems so simple.

I've stopped reading my newsfeed on FaceBook because I can't take the casual racism of the people I am "friends" with. I am involved in dog sports - obedience, barn hunt, conformation (that's the beauty pageant side, LOL) and have a lot of people on my friends' list who are also involved in dog sports. So many of them are tea party types - and guess what, ALL of them are racists. It's a 100% overlap between the ones who post right wing memes, hate Obama and think cops should be killing more people. Go figure, right?

I have a whole bunch of relatives who are part Ojibwe, being racist would mean hating members of my own family.

However they love to escalate a confrontation so they can kill them.

see the guy was holding a gun. It was utter bullshit.

Cops killing a kid literally 2 seconds after stepping out of their police cruiser like they did proves you right. Negotiate in 2 seconds? There is no time in 2 seconds.

complaining about a 'broad brush' and 'sweeping generalizations' please go take a social psychology course.

Jesus.

Yes, studies show cops are more likely to shoot black men in nearly every single circumstance. I think one study even showed they were more likely to shoot a black guy with a cell phone than a white guy with a gun. This is deeply ingrained racism and it exists and is pervasive. To claim otherwise is denial or ignorance.

Because you pretty much hit 0% accuracy describing how my I and those around me worked.