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Walking While Black

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Re: Walking While Black

#141

Post by diddid »

braythwayt wrote: post #118
diddid wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The partners are always the first SUSPECT and the police do their due diligence to RULE THEM OUT. Even on the 1/10 where the weren't the murderer, the police still intrude on them to try to find the truth. Being a SUSPECT != SENT TO JAIL. The rapper in the story was a SUSPECT, they weren't SENT TO JAIL which makes your analogy not an analogy at all, because well, they aren't anologous. If anything I feel your argueme…

Ah, you are correct that there is a missing element to the analogy, and this is it: The woman lies dead in the murder case. When the rapper was pulled over, there was no case of a Ferrari stolen by a dark-skinned man. The police were not acting on a tip that the rapper was smuggling narcotics in his car. They stopped him for driving while black. If we want to add the missing link, we then say that the police, knowing…

I also think your explanation here isn't exactly what happened, at least from what I gathered. What I read it as whas "We stop all people in expensive cars at this checkpoint and validate their income." So society wasn't ok discriminating against him because he was black, they were ok discriminating against him because he was in a nice car.

Re: Walking While Black

#142

Post by faitswulff »

simonh wrote: post #58
acjohnson55 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for saying this. The fact is, as a black male, I sometimes feel prejudice against black males while walking at night. And I'm someone who is affected by that very same prejudice. I see all the same media as anyone else, which constantly portrays black men as a menace to society. Is a random black man actually more dangerous than a non-black man, in real life? I have my doubts. But for argument's sake, let's…

In the area where I live there aren't very many coloured people. When I (rarely) walk at night I find myself estimating the social category of people. If I see a young man in sweat pants and a baseball cap, I think 'possible Chav' (low class white person here in the UK) and I'm wary. Low income young men are more likely to be a possible source of trouble. I think in the UK and US since black people are far more likel…

> aren't very many coloured people

Highly recommend using "people of colour," instead.

Re: Walking While Black

#143

Post by faitswulff »

mcherm wrote: post #94

So the societal patterns this article describes are true, and they are not acceptable. As a white male who lives in this society, I have one question: What can I do to help change this?

This is a common question, but as a person of color, I would push back on it - this question has the effect of adding more work on the backs of the marginalized, underrepresented, and oppressed to educate you.

My personal answer would be to ask that you read, make it a habit to educate yourself before relying on the labor of people of color, and keep an open mind whenever you have kneejerk responses to anything racially charged.

Re: Walking While Black

#144

Post by faitswulff »

kyria wrote: post #89

>> A lone woman walking in the middle of the night was as common a sight as Sasquatch; moonlight pedestrianism was too dangerous for her. Mnyeah. Also known as walking alone while female after nightfall. I used to do that when I lived in Athens, Greece. There were two distinct periods of it, because I went through a phase where I had a decidecly gender-ambiguous appearance (short hair, combat boots, jeans and t-shirt…

Relevant from the article:

> (And it is not lost on me that my woman friends are those who best understand my plight; they have developed their own vigilance in an environment where they are constantly treated as targets of sexual attention.)

Re: Walking While Black

#145

Post by crispinb »

ImaCake wrote: post #69
crispinb wrote: post #50

I've spent time in remote Australian communities, where it's quite common to be peppered with 'white cunt' imprecations if out at night, especially anywhere near the canteen (bar). I found that quite confronting (occasionally frightening) in the moment, but it didn't have a big effect -- the people concerned were usually drunk and in a mess (you'll know what I mean if you've been in such places), I was a kind of fore…

It was more like a genocide. In fact, in many parts of Eastern and Southern Australia, it was a genocide. >Our whole nation is locked into a kind of determined fluffy antebellum fantasy, where we didn't have a nation-founding war, but just a kind of sloppy de facto displacement of savages by imported middle-class suburbanites, regrettable certainly, but all too natural (so inevitable). It becomes very obvious wheneve…

> more like a genocide. In fact, in many parts of Eastern and Southern Australia, it was a genocide

Certainly. Sports & genocide are Australia's top 2 talents (Tasmania must rank among the world's most classically perfect examples of genocide).

The exact form of the stuff-up varies per domain: genocide here, ecocide there (everywhere). But that humans stuff up everything they touch seems to be a universal. Crap species.

Re: Walking While Black

#146

Post by Symbiote »

michaelgrafl wrote: post #76
skissane wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is taking walks maybe an uncommon thing in the USA? I once got sent to Plano, Texas, for a week. It was a training course for work. After the course, I went for walks in the afternoon / early evening. And it surprised me at just how deserted the streets felt. There were plenty of cars around, but so very few pedestrians. I didn't really feel unsafe, just more out of place.

A friend of mine who worked on a plant site in Alabama for a couple of months told me he would get weird stares from the locals when he was going for runs in the morning/evening. I never knew whether to believe him, but everything in this thread seems to underpin his story.

I read 'Notes from a Big Country' by Bill Bryson during my second visit and first road trip in America as a child.

I could entirely believe what he wrote on this topic, which fortunately is extracted here [1]. We covered a huge distance, so understandably my dad didn't really want to drive any further once we had arrived at each day's motel. However, there was rarely any alternative.

There were a couple of occasions where American tourists were part-impressed, part-worried to see children walking. (There's a well-known metamorphosis stage in American teenagers; at 15 they grow legs ready for learning to drive.)

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/brysons-ame...

Re: Walking While Black

#147

Post by creep »

ergothus wrote: post #129
sureaboutthis wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have read numerous stories and heard accounts of white people in black neighborhoods who were stopped because it is assumed they are only there to buy drugs. Why would a white person be in such a neighborhood? Sure, there are valid reasons, but it is generally still out of the ordinary.

So your claim of equality is that a black man in a white neighborhood is assumed to be stealing from good (white) people, while a white man in a black neighborhood is assumed to be visiting drug dealers? This still seems like a problem to me. I agree with your above statement about cops reacting to what isn't "normal", but the problem is that normal and perception of normal are not the same.

A black man in a white neighborhood is presumed up to no good, just as a white man in a black neighborhood is presumed up to no good.

Re: Walking While Black

#148

Post by creep »

ImaCake wrote: post #67
toomanybeersies wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to walk home from my friends' house to mine when I was at university in New Zealand, often drunk or high. The police would usually stop and talk to me if they drove past. I always thought of it as a good thing. I lived in a high burglary area (being a student area), so there were a lot of shady characters walking around at night, especially in the back streets. They never actually detained me or even got out o…

The police in New Zealand and Australia seem to be a lot less agressive than their American counterparts. I don't ever hear of stories like the original post come from either country.

Same in Canada (where I live). We have a few higher-crime neighborhoods in my city, mostly occupied by non-white people, and the police don't really patrol around those areas. They come out if you call them.

The police in my city mostly target native americans, which commit the most crime here. But the cops aren't violent or forceful from what I've seen. Most of the time they just come out because someone is drunk and being a nuisance, so they come out and talk to the person/people and get them to move on from the area.

I'm not sure what happens with reserve police. You have to get a warrant to enter reserve property if you are city police or mounted. I think mostly they don't even bother.

Re: Walking While Black

#149

Post by creep »

ubermonkey wrote: post #114
ImaCake wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The police in New Zealand and Australia seem to be a lot less agressive than their American counterparts. I don't ever hear of stories like the original post come from either country.

I'm a cyclist, and one of the big cycle equipment blogs is DCRainmaker. He ran a story about a run-in with some Australian cops while on a ride that is just mind-blowing in how different it is from similar run-ins with American police. See here: https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2018/03/getting-pulled-over-by-f...

That was very pleasant.

Re: Walking While Black

#150

Post by AnimalMuppet »

RobertRoberts wrote: post #122
TheCoelacanth wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I'm sure that the passersby had data about bicycle thief demographics that they looked at before they chose how to react.

Statistically speaking, if 100% of bike thieves are male (in a certain location) then the inherent, and justifiable, bias from the population would be towards males. No data lookup needed.

How many people in that area know that 100% of bike thieves are male? I sure don't know such statistics for my area. That's the "data lookup" that's needed - to make decisions based on statistics, you have to know the statistics.
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