Discussion for article #230813
I remember one time when a bunch of us in a salsa band needed to ask for directions. It was late. It was dark. We were overdue for the gig. We found a small country bar. One of the guys said to me: “Emilio, you’re light enough to pass. Go in there and find out where the hell are we.”
And sometimes EVEN I was not light enough.
I recall the time when I was heading from Arizona to the Great Lakes states in the mid 1990s. The little car I was driving was on vapor. But I wasn’t about to stop at some of those towns I passed by.
Not until I got to the Interstate.
When un-white, one learns to deal with it and, for the most part, it is accepted of a sort (so as not to go mad). But the idea that present-day Right Wing Confederates are trying to sell of “white-males-as-vicitims” is just that.
A sell.
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I was just at a gas station and I paid at the pump. I kind of chuckled at the fact that despite the sleet and rain I had to stand there and wait for the receipt. None of my white friends even bother with the receipt, but I know of no one black or brown who doesn’t make certain they get that receipt. Why? Because if the white guy pumping gas next to me steals gas and we both drive off at the same time even though the clerk may say it’s a white guy in a white truck, the police are might very well stop me.
It’s funny, most every black or brown person I know spends every day actively trying to avoid going to jail. You don’t want to drive too slow or too fast because you might get pulled over and hauled off to jail. You don’t want to look threatening or angry because you’ll be stopped and asked where you’re going, what you’re doing. It’s a constant and exhausting battle. If white folk were subjected to half of what minorities experience there would be an all out civil war again.
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I know I’ve related my years having been bused to a desegregated junior high school in late-60s Miami.
That the culture there was formative.
So much so-- for many years after my family left Miami-- that I had very much the same type of paranoia-- while drivrng/hanging out as a teen-- in an upper-middle-to-upper-class part of Atlanta (kinda makes sense now doesn’t it?).
Matter of fact-- I still treat traffic stops the same way I did as a teen-- yessir/no sir-- hands 10&2-- windows down, dome light on when approached-- regardless of the age or race of the officer.
And as I still drive fast just about everywhere (Houston sprawls!)-- I get stopped once/twice a year.
I think the style of my compliance is almost confusing to white cops. Though the black and brown ones seem to see it for what it is.
jw1
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I think there was a book about this:
Black Like Me.
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Minority paranoia is intense. At home, we’re constantly looking out the front and back windows. When driving, we’re constantly checking the rear view. When walking down the street, we’re constantly looking around. I really do believe that deep-seated paranoia (is it really paranoid when folks really ARE out to get you?) is why black folks run from the police. They’re not running to necessarily avoid catching a case, but because folks are genuinely afraid.
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If Bo and Luke Duke had been black, they wouldn’t have lived to the second episode.
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Someone needs to edit together a short video of these accounts (and others like them) and post on youtube and let it go viral. Because it would.
I don’t think they would have had a flag of treason on the roof of their car.
Fuck, these threads make for incredibly depressing reading. Especially as a white person who grew up in places that were overwhelmingly white, where one could be oblivious to this, and now lives in a place where whites are in the minority (and blacks far fewer), and disproportionately underrepresented among the police at that.
Those criticizing the “criming while white” tag seem to be missing part of the point IMO - it’s not just that blacks are treated unfairly (as is made obvious by “alivewhileblack”), but it shows the sometimes shocking degree of things that white people are allowed to get away with.
More than anything, everyone black, white, red,brown ,yellow KNOWS this is going on but we don.t have the courage in “the greatest country on earth,ever and forever” to even have a rudimentary dialogue about how to address, Body cameras and armored troop carriers are not the solution. Equality under the law as established by the Constitution should be a given but in the oligarchy known today as 'Murica…the common citizen need to grovel for it’s rights as granted by a diseased,malevolent power structure that pretends to have wisdom and morality,
jw1 - trust me - although it is different in so, so many ways - a number of middle class white guys of same age have similar response to traffic stops - (dry mouth, hands shake, feels like the voice squeaks & quivers like a teenager) - maybe is is simply a lack of familiarity with such situations - or maybe because you never know what kind of attitude is going to be standing outside of your window - will it be the ideal public servant? or will it be some edgy guy with power issues who views every interaction as an opportunity to demonstrate dominance?