Rioting in the U.S.

See I hear this a lot, and I've heard it in this thread. What nobody can explain is why that is a privilege. In general, white people are treated fairly and not looked at with suspicion, true. Are you saying they should be looked at with suspicion? If not, then that's not a privilege. Isn't it the hope that all people will be looked at without suspicion, meaning treated fairly? If that happens, is everyone suddenly privileged? What I'm saying is, being treated the way you should be treated is not a privilege.

Well we know more white people are killed every year by police than black people. What rate are you looking at? Population or crime rate? They're both important I assume?


“ Things are getting worse, not better, and I believe that continues so long as we continue to make skin color such a huge factor”
I think the KKK is pretty irrelevant by now. There's a lot more hate out there than they could be responsible for from all races. It's just not organized.

What does profiling stem from?

This came up earlier in the thread, but yeah, it's obvious the objection, at least in this case, is that "privilege" implies somebody is getting something unfair, when the reality in those examples is someone isn't getting something they should.

I can't really get a clear answer on what the term does other than make people feel attacked for being treated the way everyone should. That seems like the kind of phrasing you'd choose if the goal was to put people on the defensive, rather than the phrasing you'd choose if your goal was simply to maximize understanding and bring about positive change.

Racial or ethnic profiling is the act of suspecting or targeting a person on the basis of assumed characteristics or behavior of a racial or*ethnic group, rather than on individual suspicion.

This is true,it can be perceived as such and often it is used as such as well. But that wasn’t it’s original intent and I certainly hope when I attempt to explain it it isn’t ever perceived as an attack. More of the latter, less of the former.

What about prior results? When the FBI is looking for a serial killer and they try to put a profile together, the first thing they do is say it's most likely a man. The second thing is that he's most likely white.

That’s obviously not an example.

I answered a few other questions in there but I mistakenly added them inside the quotes 😑

How do we really know that black people get 'profiled', I.E. followed by security in stores just because they are black? I live in a very racially diverse area and I go to grocery stores, department stores, etc...I see all types of people shopping, and I've never seen black people being followed around by store security, and I'm very observant of human behavior.

But I do know someone who was often targeted by store security and followed around....me! When I was in my mid 20s I had very long hair, think Seattle grunge look, that was me. I remember going into a small pet store to buy some tropical fish, I was with my brother and he was in a big hurry so we walked really fast to the back of the store where the fish were. The owner of the story, sees us and literately jumps from behind the counter and follows us like we were criminals. Another time I went to the bank with a $15,000 cashiers check and wanted to cash it, they treated me like I was a drug dealer and questioned me way more than another person would've been. Yet another time I was with my brother driving to Canada and they made us get out of the car and open the trunk, they didn't do that to any other cars I seen, just us. The point is I'm white and that unfair treatment happened to me, so it can happen to anyone, not because of their skin color, but because of their appearance and behavior.

We know it because they have admitted to it. It has long been on record that cops have admitted to doing so.
Edit*
I’ve also been treated before Due to my appearance, but these aren’t necessarily debunks to the racial profiling. Our experiences aren’t necessarily evidence that it does t exist after all

I've seen a UFO, ergo they must be true. Many people have seen UFOs so they must be undeniably true. See how that works.

UFOs are everywhere and they must stop. Think I'm being silly? Nope, in the 1980s people were freaked out that UFOs were making crop circles, mysteriously removing the organs out of cows and abduction people. This erroneous belief got repeated so many times that it became a 'truth' for a lot of people and many lived in fear of the UFO threat.

Why not? Different racial groups are more likely to commit different crimes.

Doing nothing wrong is a bit extreme. Maybe they need more training because a bunch of officers can't handle one drunk guy? A guy is dead. That's the bottom line here. Now they are willingly letting people be assaulted, robberies happen and ignoring break ins....I can't help but feel it's like a child throwing a tantrum. More people are going to be hurt because of their current negligence.


Oh, but they will respond to officer down. Are they more concerned with their own? Looking out for their own selves and not the public?


Again, the shooting is up in the air, I'm not saying its murder, I just dont think its clean cut like you think and the aftermath is causing more problems.


So I do blame them.

Regarding "white privilege," it's not so overt as the ways people visually treat other people as it is the things white people generally take for granted because we do not have to even consider such things in our day-to-day interactions. Out of sight, out of mind, and nothing really plays out comparably for us to take notice of directly. Instead, we only learn of it through external observation and, depending on our personal biases, those observations may be filtered to lessen the lesson if not dismissed outright.

Dynamics exist that, on the surface, may not really be observable or even measurable by some standards. Even so, those dynamics may not even feel so significant. For sure nothing that can compete with the sensationalism of headlines like, "white cop shoots unarmed black man," or what have you. But these are things that, over time, compound a sort of unspoken awareness (or dismissal, depending on which side of the social line you stand) that can help perpetuate crap some of us have to deal with or crap that some of us really can't even comprehend until it's experienced. And it's that we likely won't experience it to even begin to understanding it or empathizing with it (whatever "it" may be).

I listened to an interview on NPR the other night from the show Fresh Air.. The interview was of a female author (white) who adopted two black children. The interview goes into a few experiences she had learning of certain assumptions and situations that she had never questioned before until having children of color in her household. These examples range from simple shopping experiences of trying to find band-aids that match the skin of her children compared to the countless options that match her skin tone, to more extreme situations where she had called 911 due to a noise in her backyard. In that situation, the police searched her yard and asked to search the house as a precaution. Not even questioning it, she allowed the search. This was a late night encounter and her two black children were already in bed. Thing is, the oldest heard the noise, got scared, and ran down the hallway to his parents' room. That was upstairs and the police had not worked up to the second floor at that point, but it was only then that the mother even considered that had the two officers (with weapons already drawn) been upstairs when the son ran through the hallway, that things could have turned very wrong.

It was only in that very specific moment of experience and empathy did she even realize the potential risk here. The officers were looking for a possible break-in. The woman who called 911 and who the officers met at the door was white. They had weapons drawn as they searched the house. Then a tall, pre-teen black kid (likely looking older than he was) runs from one room through the hallway to another in fear. The mother took for granted that she had her two children upstairs and were safe, instead of recognizing that her two black children were upstairs, potentially changing the optics dramatically in this very specific context. She had not at all considered this from the officer's perspective just as likely the officers would not have even considered that maybe this black male running through the house might actually be her son. Likely, they would have seen a teenager/young adult of color running in fear in a "white woman's" home with a call to 911 on a noise in the yard.

That is the subtle privilege people so clumsily stumble past, distracted by social media hype. That she had to consider and proactively choose to announce that her child is black, should another situation like this present itself, is something most of us will never have to worry about let alone be mindful for other people. It is not that a white cop did some thing to a black man. That's just the end of that particular road that has been padded with unspoken social acceptance (note for a call back, later) over generations of inequality plus about a hundred other social issues that exist also. (BTW, to call out racial injustice does not by default mean every other problem suddenly doesn't exist or that they are somehow in competition. I'm always blown away by how binary people can make anything to justify a single point of view as if that is reality. Seriously? 'Oh? You're offended by a white cop shooting a black guy? What about black on black crime, huuuuuh?' Yeah. They're BOTH problems. Because one exists doesn't excuse the other. Period.)

Back to my note a few sentences earlier, I typed "acceptance" but that's really not the right word as it implies an awareness of such inequalities from which one could make a conscious decision to choose to accept it. No. I mean very specifically dynamics that we don't even consider to realize we have a choice to accept or not. Those dynamics just are. Or that we can't see them yet because we haven't experienced them. And I mean "we" very broadly. You, personally, may have experienced it. Unfortunately, "you" are not all of society and we do not really have a collective mind to instantly know how one person can relate or not. It's society and across the board that such awareness has to take root and grow. As long as we're all screaming distractions and preference, nothing happens.

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Yes, as an example of reductio ad absurdem.
You honestly don’t believe racial profiling exists when they have admitted to such? I don’t get your argument here.

Becuase the example you provided ignores the basic premise of racial profiling which draws assumptions based off of ethnic and color of skin, where your example provides background information on the suspect to support the conclusion.

You think they should have used more force?

I got you, but where do the assumptions based on race come from?

From perceived stereotypes basically.

More force does not equal better. Just be better trained, more tactical. How many officers should it take for one drunk? There was more than enough to handle it better.

I don't really disagree with you. I was surprised to see the one guy overtake two of them.