General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The Starbucks thing... [View all]EffieBlack
(14,249 posts)But I do expect them to be cognizant of racial dynamics and to do their jobs in a context-sensitive manner. And sometimes that means trying to de-escalate situations instead of immediately jumping to the last resort of arresting people. They do it all the time. These arrests werent necessary or even smart. Theyve done tremendous damage to the trust the police need to have in the community and, while they may not look that way to you, to many people, including those they must work with, they look like a bunch of trigger-happy cops who were all-too eager to humiliate two peaceful black men because a lying, now-discredited white woman told them to.
There were other ways t handle it.
This discussion reveals is a perfect example of how institutional racism works. The whole point of it is to allow often (but not always) well-meaning people to continue to perpetuate the racial status quo while giving everyone an out from taking any personal responsibility. So, instead of this being a case of gross racial profiling resulting in the arrest and degradation of two black men, instigated by a biased white woman and enforced with the power and might of law enforcement it is instead blamed on factors unrelated to any human culpability - except where the black men are concerned.
The manager is defended for enforcing a store policy even though no such policy existed and she applied her made up policy only to certain people. And people say, what was she SUPPOSED to do once they refused to leave? She HAD to call the police.
Then, when the police come and arrest them, THEY are defended What were they SUPPOSED to do? Once they were called and the manager said they were trespassing and they didnt leave, they HAD to arrest them! They had no choice!
But the two black men - the victims of the passive collusion between the manager and the cops - are blamed for causing the problem and told what THEY should have done differently.
And everyone who engages in this is SURE this isnt about race because sometimes white people are arrested.
This is classic institutional racism at work. The fundamental aspect of institutional racism - the beauty of it - is that it takes little to no actual or apparent racial animus to have the same effect as outright, explicit bigotry. It allows unconscious bias to trigger results that everyone can later claim were unintended, non-racial and unavoidable - or avoidable only if the minority victims had handled it better.
And it relies on decent people like you to paper over it and explain it away.