Not only have I experienced this as a drug...nerd with black friends, but I've even seen a police officer defer blame for a one-hitter found underneath a seat of a car we occupied pinned on the only black occupant, the irony was that it was neither of ours, but the drivers.
This happened about 10 years ago in Arizona while I was in high school. As I sat in the back of a police car with my black friend, the officer asked whos pipe it was. Our silence got him automatically assigned blame.
I'll never forget the pudgy officer who took in our silence, looked directly at Josiah and said "well, you will probably be blamed for it." He then closed the door and shortly afterwards I was uncuffed and Josiah was taken away on bullshit charges none of us had the balls to take the rap for.
The deck is stacked. In my new town with new black friends they cannot believe that police don't even look at the car when I'm driving.
Regardless of the occupants or color of the occupants, a car with a handicap plate with a young white man driving is apparently not in the profiling training.
I'm sorry, but where I come from you don't speak to the police. You don't snitch. End of discussion I'm afraid.
Josiah could have said whos it was as well, but we were both silent. The problem is not that friends aren't tattling over a fucking weed pipe, but that officers deferred blame to the black kid and not the white adult or the two white kids.
No, we didn't stop being friends over that, in fact we became better friends.
Jeez. You guys really think any of us would have told the cops whos pipe it was?
I can't help but read your comments as sarcasm because of their ignorance to basic street code.
You don't point fingers or speak names, even if you take a bullshit charge.
If they deferred blame to me, I'd have quietly gone as well.
"Street Code" is euphemism for indecency and selfishness. That guy was silent because everyone around him is ready to frame him, not because of "Street Code". I do not believe it for half a second that you or any of the other assumed innocent would stay silent if you were accused.
Not just in America I'm afraid. I live in The Netherlands, and see this hppening at large scale against any non-white people.
As a white male I feel that all I can do is to share this injustice all I can and hope others will become aware (which so far sadly seems not to really happen).
Which city? As a white male myself I was apprehended this year for no particular reason at all ( Groningen ). Excuse for apprehension: I declinded to show my ID for no reason at all.
Many times I've seen "public" ID checks in Amsterdam (especially those in subways) targeting just non-white people.
> Excuse for apprehension: I declinded to show my ID for no reason at all
Yep it becomes more and more a "comply or your guilty" culture. Not going well IMO.
If it's sometimes bad for white people, I only try to imagine how horrible it must be for people who are discriminated against (by public authorities) on a daily basis.
Does Amsterdam require citizens to carry ID with them all the time? When I am out around my home town but not driving myself (using public transit, walking, or rding with friends/family) I often don't carry my ID with me. (I am in the US). If asked to show my ID, I couldn't comply even if I wanted to. It seems strange to me to expect people to have their ID with them at all times.
Even US cops get stop-and-identify statutes wrong. They vary by state, but in states that have them, you are only required to identify yourself if you are the suspect of a crime, and stating your name and address is sufficient--a government-issued photo ID card is not required.
Fast forward to all those YouTube public-accountability activist taking photographs or video of the local cop shop from a public sidewalk, to be eventually arrested for failure to identify, or trespassing, or jaywalking, or loitering, or vagrancy, or resisting arrest.
Knowing who you are and where you live is necessary for the criminal justice system, but the same info may also be used to intimidate those who commit no crimes, but become inconvenient to those in power. Even the act of demanding identification may be intimidating.
As such, Netherlands citizens may wish to push back against the state's power to identify anyone at will, for no readily apparent reason. It's bad enough when the law is on your side and the cops overreach anyway; I can't imagine how bad it could be when the cops start to overreach and the law allows them to go even further.
>At some point in the (very) near future, we'll all be forced to realize that the deck is stacked against you if you're black in America.
Why did you pick race instead of gender? The justice system is far more sexist than racist, and if our society won't come to terms with how far the legal system is stacked against men, why would it ever come to terms with how far it is stacked against minorities?
True: Police kill men with a 22x bias over women. What justification does anyone have for accepting this, and why can't a similar justification be applied to race?
From what I remember of arguments in 2015-16, the differential between "% of violent crimes" and "% of people killed by police" for POC is huge - much bigger than the one for purely "male" (which obviously has an overlap anyway.)
Because even among those who are looking at abuse and discrimination in our legal system, there seems to be a systematic lack of focus on sexism. Is the reasoning due to a lack of awareness of sexism, which seems unlikely given we are talking about the group that is vigilante of police discrimination. Or is the group itself largely unconcerned and thus showing their own biases.
And I use 'group' loosely since it is really more of a sub-culture than a defined organization.
Look at it this way, a black man that is unjustly shot by police is more likely to be shot because he is a man than because he is black. If we want to stop unjust shootings, we should focus on the factors leading most to them, or which racism is second behind sexism (and maybe third behind classism, though since class is less apparent in short interactions than race and gender, it may end up not being as big an influence until we get to the court room).
A group of actors made a youtube video that strongly reminds me of this discussion. They had a black man, white man, black woman and white woman being in a park and dismantling a bike lock.
For the black man, passers by rushed him, knocked him down by force, and called the police.
For the white man, people pointed, talking loudly about "what is he doing", and one person called the police.
For the black woman, people ignored, regardless what she did to the lock.
For the white woman, people went to help her break the lock.
If random people have this sense of justice in regard to a fairly common crime like bike theft, then why should we be surprised if the criminal system have similar bias?
This happened about 10 years ago in Arizona while I was in high school. As I sat in the back of a police car with my black friend, the officer asked whos pipe it was. Our silence got him automatically assigned blame.
I'll never forget the pudgy officer who took in our silence, looked directly at Josiah and said "well, you will probably be blamed for it." He then closed the door and shortly afterwards I was uncuffed and Josiah was taken away on bullshit charges none of us had the balls to take the rap for.
The deck is stacked. In my new town with new black friends they cannot believe that police don't even look at the car when I'm driving.
Regardless of the occupants or color of the occupants, a car with a handicap plate with a young white man driving is apparently not in the profiling training.