When we first moved to New England this was big news here:
At the time we lived on a five home cul-de-sac and fave an open house/housewarming party and invited the neighbors. Three couples showed up (we later found out the fourth family never socialized with the other three) These were a roofer & SAHM, a fireman & nurse and a landscaper & day care provider. All Irish-American (one couple was first generation the rest three or four down) all “originally from Dorchester. A part of Boston that was heavily Irish until school busing when it became predominantly black, Hispanic and Asian.
All of them except the nurse thought the cop who Lilo Kenney shot had it coming. And the day care provider’s brother was a Statie! But they were 100% sure that every police shooting in Dorchester was 100% justified because they (Black/Brazilian/Vietnamese) were all gangbangers.
This from a group of families where over the next few years, two teenage boys were jailed for criminal trespassing (breaking into abandoned buildings, “not a big deal”), one teenage girl busted for distributing drugs (“set up by her [Black] boyfriend”) and one of the adults developed an opioid addiction (“illness”) and eventually died of an OD (“tragedy”). The guy who was in and out of drug rehab for years continued to work with heavy machinery until his death!
My observation is that blue collar white people see white petty crime in a very different light than black petty crime. Only one of them is properly addressed by “broken windows” policing, throwing the book at them and so on.
We now live in a much more affluent area and we still had an issue where a 19 year old with a hunting rifle was trespassing while riding his four-wheeler (basically using peoples yards as a cut through to get to the hunting area). He even pulled down a section of fence (or some of his buddies did). After repeated warnings cops were called and everyone was up in arms (even literally) over the “overreacting” homeowner. The 19 year old was consistently described as a “good kid doing what kids have done for generations” on the Town Facebook page. The cops didn’t even arrest the guy, just gave him a ticket of sorts.
There isn’t a big campaigning organisation working to bring attention to police killings of white and Hispanic people, so you don’t hear about them nearly as much.
And the media has a narrative. They like to tell a story, and they publish things that fit that story. Ten years ago (or 20?) there was not much focus on any police killings. They were reported, but as isolated incidents. Now, thanks to BLM, the media has a narrative and so they get talked about. But the narrative is police killing black people, not police brutality in general, so the media is only interested in killings that fit that pattern.
theres also a white mentaltiy of" well white people know better so they had it coming" while the same person thinks the black guy was clubbed cause he was black"
This is very true and important to bear in mind with all news. Even the most trustworthy news sources are reluctant to push stories that go against an existing narrative and/or the audience’s understanding. Over time, all nuance is lost and many people have a simplistic caricature of certain aspects of society, economics, geopolitics etc.
When it comes to police brutality, it’s pretty clear that it is a significant problem in the US, and that blacks are disproportionately targeted, I hope no one misunderstands me on that. But the point about the news is important to keep in mind.
Yes, I agree with that. There’s another question, which is whether there would be more enthusiasm for police reform if it was highlighted that the problem does affect all races, even if it’s to a lesser degree. But there seems to be a lot of resistance to doing that.
I would say that the folks calling to “defund the police” are looking at the problem you mention. They want to shift some funding from the police to mental health and other areas, so that the cops aren’t called to try and solve problems they aren’t trained to. Two out of three of the white guys killed in the post above were autistic and would probably have done better if mental health professionals showed up instead of the police.
Of course, the same people who scream “all lives matter” purposely misinterpret “defund the police”, so those police reforms are going nowhere.
Once again, we cannot ignore the FBI report of some 15 years ago that showed some concern about police forces around the country becoming heavily infiltrated by White-Wing types. This is a non-small component of the issue.
Stack this with Ehrlichman’s revelation that Nixon’s establishment of Schedule One and the DEA was squarely aimed at black people. When there is talk of legalizing “drugs”/ending the war on them, the police uniformly oppose the idea.
DemonTree I totally agree with you. I’m old enough to remember when there were no commercial time on the 3 network news shows. Instead of showing stories they thought the viewers wanted to see they ran stories viewers ought to see. There is a big difference. No Anna Nichole Smith or " happy stories".
Twenty years ago, everyone wasn’t carrying handheld video camera with them everywhere they went. When the cops killed someone, we usually just had their word for it that it was justified.
Yeah, that makes a big difference. And now a lot of them wear body cameras, too.
Still, I’m sure we’d have already heard of the cases I linked above if they had been black kids. I only found one of them because it popped up when I was searching for video of the other. That’s why there are articles about two different autistic boys being shot by police. But they don’t fit the narrative.
These things do get addressed. We have a couple of Pit threads on the subject of controversial encounters with LE, and the subject matter is not constrained by race. There is discussion in those threads about white people being maltreated by police.
But the thing is that racism and the deprecation of uppity non-whites is a real concern in the US. If BLM bothers you, are you OK with the hundreds of groups around the country that promote White Pride? If so, why?
I’m talking about the media, not what people talk about in the pit, which could be much more wide ranging for all I know.
Who says BLM bothers me? It was created to focus on a particular issue and it’s doing a good job of that. If you try to do everything you end up doing nothing.
However, I would much prefer to have a media that was less prone to jumping on bandwagons and ignoring any stories that don’t fit the story they are telling. The media should not be in the business of pushing a particular agenda, but ideally would focus on informing the public.
The media is a business. Its primary business model is to obtain revenue by means of advertising. They do this by presenting material that will attract readers/viewers: the content is a means to get you to notice ads, which are their revenue source. You are not a client of the media, you are the product that they deliver to their advertisers. If you want to complain about the media, complain to their sponsors.
A lot of the media is moving to a subscription model these days, in which case you are the customer. It’s still a business though; albeit a very important and influential one for society.
No. You may be a customer, but you are not the only customer, nor are you their primary customer. In fact, you are paying for the privilege of being advertised to.
