Recent media stories make it look as like when cops roll up on a black male they are extra twitchy and unholster their guns and take the safety off.
Just WTF do they think is going to happen? They act like they have rolled up and become informed the suspect has mutant powers or something. I mean is there any empirical evidence that a traffic stop or suspect interaction with an African american(hate that term) male is more likely to turn violent or bad?
I’m not getting it, I mean I get racism I just don’t understand the fear and paranoia.
It’s a hard question - basically what you’re asking is what causes racism, which eventually leads back to what causes hatred of the “other.” In this case, the “other” is someone with a darker skin pigment than yourself, but it applies to anything - race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, etc, etc. It starts with stereotypes. Black people are like this, whites are like that; Jews are like this, while Christians are that. You stick big labels over massive groups of people, and that dehumanizes them. They all start to seem the same; not literally speaking, but the actions of one person from whatever group represents the actions of them all. After a while, people from the group you favor are easier to sympathize with, easier to see as genuine people with feelings and emotions. You give them the benefit of the doubt, cut them slack you don’t cut for the “other.”
In this case, it’s especially pronounced because black males, for whatever stupid, ancient reason, are stereotyped as violent and unstable. This might be being too kind to the cops in question, but I don’t think most of their thought processes are “hey, that guy’s black, he’s probably a criminal.” It’s an unconscious bias, a little alarm in the back of their heads that make them go for their guns. Conscious or not, it’s still inexcusable.
My dad tolerates animals (cats, dogs, etc.) but he is not 100% comfortable around them because, you see, they are animals. And animals aren’t like people. Animals are liable to be calm one minute but then sinking their teeth in your neck the next minute. Animals are unpredictable, mindless, impulsive, and can easily hurt you.
When cats approach my father, he gets tense and nervous. When they touch him he freaks out. Any fast movement on their part and he reacts fearfully. Intellectually, he knows cats are harmless because he’s surrounded by mom’s and they pay him no mind. But the reptillian part of his brain can’t relax around them because it’s programmed to see them as threats.
It’s not just cops. Our society strongly associates black men with violent crime, and unfortunately the police and legal systems play into that: black people are more likely than white people to be arrested for crimes even if blacks and whites commit them at similar rates, and they get sentenced more often and more harshly. There’s evidence that judgment against black people begins far earlier than that, too, as they are more likely to be suspended from school, too. Crazy as it sounds, it’s a phenomenon people have started calling the preschool to prison pipeline. (You can read details and cites for several of those points here.And here.) And it goes without saying that cops often have to deal with criminals and find themselves in dangerous or potentially dangerous situations. So the answer is that it doesn’t have a lot to do with police. It doesn’t mean every cop or even most cops are racist and it doesn’t mean all of these things are intentional. In fact part of the problem is that a lot of these biases can’t be conscious. It’s about society in general, and while individual incidents might not mean much, it’s easy to see that there’s a pattern to these kinds of things. So when there are systemic problems with policing, in the broader scheme that reflects the society the police are a part of.
It’s no secret that some black males are aficionados of “thug” culture, which is anti-police, pro-gang, and pro-gun. This doesn’t mean there aren’t other ethnic groups that also have anti-police leanings, but I can see why cops might be wary…
Not that I disagree that glamorization of thug life isn’t helping matters at all. But cops have been shooting up black people for way longer than thuggery has been hip.
“There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved… After all we have been through. Just to think we can’t walk down our own streets, how humiliating”
You know, I like to judge the trigger happy cops as much as anyone else, but then I don’t have strong aversions to specific types of people so I didn’t understand. But in light of this comment, if we had to share our lives with spiders I’d be the grand daddy dragon of the KKK-style organization dedicated to tormenting and eliminating the little bastards. I would certainly rather kill one than deal with interacting with it, and that is in fact how I conduct myself today. Still. I can’t imagine feeling a similar revulsion for a person. Not even my ex.
