Just thinking what I would do if I was a young black.

Discussion in 'Political Opinions & Beliefs' started by jbander, Jul 31, 2020.

  1. ChiCowboy

    ChiCowboy Well-Known Member

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    No, police are the government. Citizens are to be respected. Our rights are to be respected.
     
  2. yabberefugee

    yabberefugee Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    If you have not committed a crime, pursue justice. Running assumes guilt to an officer who has a very difficult job in discerning. Law abiding citizens want to make their service less difficult. It is the lawless that wants to make it more difficult.
     
  3. garyd

    garyd Well-Known Member

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    Wrong, if lying about a nonexistant crime is a felony the so is running from the cops. Oh and the underlying predicate that cops routinely harass black people for no reason is false.
     
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2020
  4. yabberefugee

    yabberefugee Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You are right to a degree.......If citizens don't support the police, they are powerless. Do you enjoy a lawless society? Portland for instance?
     
  5. MJ Davies

    MJ Davies Well-Known Member

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    Basically, as hard as it is to admit, and I KNOW this from personal experience...a cop has to maim or outright kill a person before they are ever truly investigated and/or charged with a crime. They will cover just about anything else up.
     
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2020
  6. ChiCowboy

    ChiCowboy Well-Known Member

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    I don't live in Portland, so I can't comment on that. We had minor incidents of looting. Didn't affect me one bit.

    Supporting the institution of law enforcement is one thing. Supporting the methods in practice is another.
     
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  7. Adfundum

    Adfundum Moderator Staff Member Donor

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    How many times have any of us been in a fight or flight situation like that? The thing I would point out is that until we've experienced something, we really don't know what our reaction would be. That seems to be one of the problems people have when they think people should just go limp when a cop shows up. I'm not promoting anything, just saying that imposing our expectations on others without our own common experiences is a bit prejudicial. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't run--too old for that--but reactions can be a thing that happen to us before we realize it's happening.
     
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  8. LoneStarGal

    LoneStarGal Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I don't have regional studies, but it seems like the bias would be far higher in a few notable inner-cities with neighborhoods which are predominantly black and high-crime. So if you have a high rate crime going on in these neighborhoods, and police are looking for a suspect in a robbery, rape, or whatever crime and all police have is "suspect is a 6' tall black man in his 20's, last seen wearing a hoodie and red Air Jordan tennis shoes," then a lot of innocent young men will fit the description and be detained for "no reason". The rates of crime and homicides in these inner-cities are so high, that even when they get averaged in across "all of America" these handful of locations may push the statistics to show that blacks are discriminated against "everywhere".

    My hypothesis, then, is that blacks would have a similar experience with police as other races when they live in a black neighborhood which does not have a high crime rate and/or for blacks integrated into white neighborhoods with low crime rates.

    The correlation is number of police to number of crimes where the police get called, rather than a correlation that "race" causes the police presence and resulting perception or reality of unfairness.
     
  9. LoneStarGal

    LoneStarGal Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Hmmm....yeah. Who do the cops call when they "need the police". I think the "brotherhood" is somewhat understandable, even if it leads them to covering up any bad deeds within their group. They're fairly isolated. Nobody likes having an interaction with police, even for a traffic ticket, but most people think they should be there to stop "other people" from breaking the law.
     
  10. MJ Davies

    MJ Davies Well-Known Member

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    It is true to assume this is understandable given a high crime area and the number of people that may fit the description of the suspect.

    This is not true relative to black people living in middle to middle-upper class neighborhoods. There are constant complaints of cops stopping people for being in their own neighborhood. Some are stopped for driving "too nice a vehicle". I am not saying it happens ALL THE TIME, but it does happen more than it does for (comparable) white people in those same situations.

    I do not blame this SOLELY on the police. It's also the community. I had a friend in college that locked her keys in her car. She didn't have roadside assistance so she tried to open it with a coat hanger. About twenty minutes, failing at it, the cops drove up and asked if it was her vehicle. They reasoned that it was her car because a criminal would have got it open in the time it took for them to arrive. They also told her they received at least 15 calls from neighbors to report someone trying to break into a car. It was a positive encounter for her but she wondered if anybody would have called the cops had she been white. No one knows but it's not likely.

    Police officers are being trained to be less biased and it's getting better but it's not all okay. Minorities (of every group) are still being unfairly stopped and often bullied by cops. Not all cops are bullies and not all those stopped are innocent. Nobody is questioning that. I cannot speak for all people, but, I am personally referring to the number of times minorities are stopped for no reason other than the color of their skin. I think the average person, unfamiliar with the system, would be floored at just how often it happens.
     
  11. MJ Davies

    MJ Davies Well-Known Member

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    This is why I advocate for police officers and military personnel to have a safe, anonymous way to seek help for mental health concerns before it escalates to them becoming substance abusers or bullies (taking out their angst on anybody convenient). It is getting a bit better. I recall a guy that lived next door to my grandmother when we were coming up. He was military police and had to be discharged. He would sit in a kitchen chair in their front yard and talk to a tree all day long. At least, today, there are more options, but not enough to properly address the situation without derailing one's career.
     
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2020
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  12. Adfundum

    Adfundum Moderator Staff Member Donor

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    But when we create that stereotype of Black males, it gets often gets applied to Blacks universally, especially those who dress as described above. That's the real problem. It would be great if they didn't dress to fit that stereotype, but at the same time, not thinking prejudicially based on stereotypes would be great as well. If we could separate poverty from this, it would be great because poverty produces that same problem of crime, no matter the skin color.
     
  13. LoneStarGal

    LoneStarGal Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Fair enough. I have no data or stats on that.

    Aren't police often assigned to the same neighborhoods and shifts fairly regularly? I ask because I could see discriminatory and implicit bias in an officer pulling over a black man for "too nice a car" is his own middle-class neighborhood, but only once if the same officer is assigned to that neighborhood. Once verified that the man is the owner of the car and a resident, I would doubt he'd be pulled over again and again. Unless the officer pulls every resident to verify ownership of their vehicle does indicate systemic bias, but I wouldn't think it would happen repetitively to the same person.
     
  14. MJ Davies

    MJ Davies Well-Known Member

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    Cops are scheduled on 1 of 3 shifts (morning, afternoon, midnights). It rotates so the same cops are not on the same shifts all the time. Yes, they do get to know the people in their neighbors and it's likely the same cop won't pull over the same minority for the same suspicion (driving too nice a car and/or being in the "wrong" neighborhood, etc.) but that's not what's happening. As a WHOLE, minorities are stopped more than non-minorities for no real reason. And, it's not just a race matter. It happens all too often to poor people. They have nowhere to turn for real help because nobody is policing the police.
     
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  15. Adfundum

    Adfundum Moderator Staff Member Donor

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    You make good points. Yet one issue that concerns me is the movement of policing to something similar to a military style tactical force that takes on a dictatorial attitude towards the public. The amount of force being used to arrest people may be a reason why so many react so negatively.
     
  16. LoneStarGal

    LoneStarGal Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    But it isn't necessarily "prejudice" on the part of the police if they are only given generic things like height, weight, age and "last seen" wearing whatever clothing. I also wouldn't categorize "hoodie and tennis shoes" as a stereotype. People in their 20's tend to put more emphasis to "fitting in" with their peers, including what to wear. In my 20's, I was a lot more fashion conscious about "what's cool to wear" and what clothes might make me "look like a weirdo" according to my peers. lol Hoodies and name-brand tennis shoes are the "cool thing", so I wouldn't expect young black men to start walking around in business suits and bow-ties so they aren't stereotyped. ;)
     
  17. MJ Davies

    MJ Davies Well-Known Member

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    For sure, there are no easy answers to all this. There was a time when the police did "serve and protect" and citizens felt safe with their presence. It has been since the invent of the internet, how fast news is reported and everyone owning a phone with a camera are they now being called on the carpet.

    I believe the implementation of military style tactical forces is going to plummet the public's view of the police more. People do not want to be afraid of the very people who should be there to help them feel safe. I think, once things die down and there is some kind of plan in place to address police brutality that is more than lip service, the militia type units will be removed or significantly decreased.
     
  18. Adfundum

    Adfundum Moderator Staff Member Donor

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    I'm not using prejudiced to suggest racism, just pointing out reactions based on how people fit a stereotype. If a Black person is wearing those clothes and visually fits the stereotype, he is likely to be judged on that appearance. If that person has done nothing wrong, should he be stopped and questioned? And while it's true that certain fashion trends in certain areas are quite common, something like a "hoody" usually triggers a reaction based on stereotypes.

    Unless it's Rocky Balboa.
     
  19. LoneStarGal

    LoneStarGal Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Media coverage the last two months is driving extreme perceptions which don't match reality. They're only covering the small incidents which are the "dumpster fires" of the political protests. On one hand, Fox is showing statues being pulled down, buildings graffitied and set on fire, lootings, occupations of city blocks, and increasing murders as cities tell their police to stand down. That makes the right dig in to strong support of law and order and justify more police action to stop the damage. On the other hand, CNN/MSNBC are focusing on airing incidents of police using their batons, shoving an old man over, tear gas and pepper spray against people who don't "appear" to be doing anything other than being peaceful. The left digs in on "All police are corrupt and brutal".

    I think the truth is that there are far more scenarios going on across the country where we have peaceful protests happening with peaceful police standing at the sidelines. What happens "most of the time" is mundane, boring, and does not get media ratings.
     
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  20. LoneStarGal

    LoneStarGal Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Well, if I lived in a high-crime neighborhood and most of the crimes were committed by people who "look like me", then I probably wouldn't be surprised if I got pulled over or stopped on the street and questioned more often than would people who "don't look like me". I could only test that theory if I were motivated to start up several gangs of 60-ish year old white women to go out and commit a bunch of crimes in my hood and then see if there is any correlation of innocent old ladies getting stopped for no reason.
     
  21. Adfundum

    Adfundum Moderator Staff Member Donor

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    So true. I've noticed too that they're either protests or riots, depending on who is doing the talking. It's really hard to find the truth because the coverage of this is so polar. And yes, boring news doesn't sell.
     
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  22. Adfundum

    Adfundum Moderator Staff Member Donor

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    Ha! I think I'd avoid dressing to fit in because that's a huge part of the stereotype, and people's first impression. It would be interesting to see what would happen if low income inner city Blacks started dressing just like upper-middle class suburban Whites.
     
  23. jcarlilesiu

    jcarlilesiu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Because of that, we should just have anarchy!
     
  24. jcarlilesiu

    jcarlilesiu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Because of that, we should just have anarchy!
     
  25. Ronstar

    Ronstar Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    They to often assume they are engaged in criminal activity, just cuz they are black.
     

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