Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by wyager 87 days ago
And California keeps adding these bizarre racialized versions of amber alerts

https://www.chp.ca.gov/news-alerts/alerts/Ebony-Alert/

https://www.chp.ca.gov/news-alerts/alerts/Feather-Alert/

10 comments

How are those even real?! I was just telling someone about this and they couldn't believe I wasn't joking. Wowzers.
How do people supposedly trying to fight racism and sexism always manage to be the most racist and sexist?
To fight a thing, you must think about it.

The best way to avoid an -ism is to forget about it.

The fighters cannot forget, so they fall into a trap of their own making.

These are symbolic actions.

In the same way Trump claimed to be the President of Peace, supposedly "left" or "progressive" politicians will push these measures forward while also pocketing money from businesses/organizations who benefit from various social/fiscal causes being ignored.

These are the legislative equivalent of the Dem leadership doing the kneel with the Kente cloth around their necks.

These politicians would never push to end qualified immunity, audit overtime usage, investigate police unions, etc. That requires actual change your donors might not like.

Same thing here, no work needs to be done determining why black/native women go missing at higher rates. That's hard, that's a deeper societal problem. It might just implicate a Sheriff or two or illuminate rape kits going unprocessed.

Apparently they are yet to be successful - https://www.chp.ca.gov/news-alerts/Success-Stories/
Native American groups seem to think Feather alerts have been successful: https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/feather-alert-for-mmip...
I'm glad at least Yellow Alert isn't what I assumed it was after reading all the other ones.
Oh the other funny part about calling these new alerts by a certain color.. Amber alert was about a girl named Amber[0] -- not the color "amber".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_alert

Feather is a color?
no, but ebony, silver, blue and yellow are. hope that helps!
What do you find bizarre about them?

36% of missing person cases in the US are black women and children, even though only 13% of the population is black, but those cases get much less media attention and are treated less urgently than missing white people.

Creating a separate alert for those cases is meant to bring more attention to them.

There is a similar issue with Native Americans, who go missing at an even more disproportional rate than black women and children, and receive much less attention and resources than white cases.

I am actually floored that they called the one for Indigenous people "Feather Alert"
are they actually that bizarre...? why so?
One bizarre thing I read in both is a proposition that women aren’t people.
The odd language is a result of sloppy back and forth fighting over the specific legislative language around scope that largely was a result the fact that the driving concern from the main group that sought the adoption of the alert (the California Tribal Families Coalition) was the incidence of both rape victimization and becoming missing affecting indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit.
"A Feather Alert is a resource available to law enforcement agencies investigating the suspicious or unexplainable disappearance of an indigenous woman or indigenous person."

That is so bizarre. How embarrassing.

WTF is wrong with the US
The same thing that is wrong with every country: they contain people (some of which are racist).