Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and White Privilege in Law

Enforcement.


_______________________


I recently sent an email, to a police union's Local steward, featuring this same vid and this same title I used for this thread:







guess what their reply was?

 

This isn't a matter of race. This is a matter of two poorly trained officers. I can post video after video of police shooting white suspects and I can post video after video of police not shooting black suspects when they were well within their rights to shoot them.

 

Stop it.

This was a clear case of, White Privilege, where we saw a suspect carry on in ways which Whitefolk get to do far, far more than Black suspects get to do without being shot.

 

No, it isn't. This is a case of two idiot cops who can't cooperate with each other and are terrible fighters. The lady cop was really the only one who had a clear shot but didn't took it. Maybe she's new, maybe she just hesitant to use lethal force in general, or maybe the fight disorientated her. Either way, you can't take ONE video and say all cops are racist or white privilege. You need statistics and trends before you make such an accusation.

 

Nope.


I think I've gone weeks here, especially recently, proving that most White cops are White Supremacists. The video helps solidify that reality, as you are the only one here falsely accusing me of using one mere video to validate the USA police hatred of Black citizens.

I don't need statistics.


Statistics only reveal the results of, racism, stats to describe how the Racist culture came to be.

 

I don't care how long you've been doing this. For one, I wasn't even aware of your existence up until a few days ago. I only deal with the argument at hand.

Which this video doesn't count. This is a result of a woeful lack of fighting skills and coordination, not because while they were being beaten with a baton, they thought to themselves "better not harm him too much, he is white, afterall."

Yes you do. Otherwise I can play the same game of "look at this collection of videos I found proving my point." I don't play that game. I back up my stance via studies, statistics, and my experience working with law enforcement.

No, statistics show that cops shoot more white people than black.

 

In honor of this thread's title

Yes, that is true. Nonetheless those stats don't show if in fact those White people deserved to be shot whereas those Blacks did not.


That is the elephant in the room which you love to systematically disregard. Same reason why Bo warned that cop, that the cop would regret showing Bo's vid to other rogue cops.

 

Saying that there are white supremacists in law enforcement is not the same as saying most white cops are racist. To use the same logic, does that mean most black cops are Black Panthers?

Black cops are more likely and more quickly to use force against blacks than white cops.

I disregard it because statistics don't support your stance.

 

You are correct. And the FBI findings are correct that more and more cops, are turning out to be, White Supremacists.

That has a real affect, in real time, and we can see that affect in police stats which you cherish and constantly demand to see. Those stats show the resultant of successful police-racism efforts. But your mental capacity does not allow you to think, that far, into the racist-reality which we factually live within as members of law enforcement who are allowed to subjugate Black citizens.

Okay, fair enough.

Now, provide proofs. Lay out evidence that the FBI full of White investigators investigating USA law enforcement, hath discovered Black Panthers just like it in fact discovered White Supremacy. Then I will gladly affirm your argument and ask mods to delete this invalidated thread.

 

That wasn't what the article said. The article said that there was a warning from the FBI 10 years before the article was printed. It asks the question of whether that warning is still valid today. It did not said that more and more white cops are turning out to be white supremacists.

I beg to differ. I believe my mental capacity is more than capable of realizing anything that isn't obviously pointed out.

I was using it as an analogy.

 

Nothing you posted, changes the reality of this threads' theme.

Future Black suspects similar to Tamir Rice or Trayvon or Walter Scott or Marlon Brown they will never be allowed to systematically carry on in this way, without being murdered. If yonder Gary was Black in this same situation, then anytime from the moment yonder Gary got up off of the ground, up until he drove past the male cop...he would've been shot down as a life-threatening danger.

But, he exercised White Privilege. And the FBI link alludes to realities just like this one.

 

Why is Trayvon listed when he was shot by a civilian who is Hispanic? We covered the Rice incident already.

The officer who shot Scott was tried and convicted, the officer who ran over Brown was fired immediately.

You know this, how? Keep in mind, not too long ago a white person was shot because he stole an officer's baton.

Evidence?

I need more than "aludes to" before I label most white cops racist. I have more statistical standing to say blacks are violent killers than what you have to claim that most white cops are racist. This is also from the FBI.

 

...local police allowed him to get away with playing, cop, as long as he was "saving" America from Black males. So he validly gets included. Plus he is Caucasian, yes a White HISP just like the recent FL police chief who was found guilty of having his officers framing only innocent Black males, for unsolved burglaries in the city.

Yes, and you failed to prove Bo wrong. Therefore I shalt continue to validly reference the Tamir case, when solidifying my stances on these types of topics.

That punishment, is not what this is about. It's about the cultural hatred for Black citizens, which causes cops to go to those extremes.


Scott and Brown both, to me, are but a few examples verifying the fruition of that pbs link I keep posting re: the FBI findings.

Of course you do. Because those stats only show you the resultant, I repeat, the resultant of our society's successful police-racism culture against Black people. Stats give the empirical reality of when police-racism it is actually practiced and executed from city to city.

More Black civilians are going to be arrested for more shootings, when they only did the same thing which Whites do in those moments when Whites do not get arrested for shooting. Moreover, look at the recent Patriotic Black citizens who police killed all because cops came on the scene then could not let their minds perceive Blacks as being "good guys" trying to de-escalate a situation and protect citizens.

You seem to lack the mental capacity to think and see, that deeply, into the reality we live within.

 

You have evidence for this? The police cannot control a verdict

I never denied that there are racist cops. I just don't see evidence that most white cops are racist.

Actually I did, with three articles disproving his assertion that modern day police aren't taught time, distance, and cover in some form or fashion.

But Tamir Rice wasn't shot because of racist cops.

Do you have evidence that most white cops are racist?

You only posted it once and refer to it from there. And again, the PBS article doesn't really establish anything.

So, are you saying that the main/only reason why blacks kill each other is because of racist cops?

Evidence?

In both incidents, the actual shooter was black. If both were white, both matched the descrption of the shooter, and both acted in the exact same manner as the actual victims who were shot, they would've been shot. Let's not also forget the victim, who was white, was shot as he was crawling on his knees in the hallway. Cops accidentally shoot people of any race, not just blacks.

Opinion noted.

 

"White privilege" is a pair of work boots and an alarm clock.

 

by Robert Jensen


Here's what white privilege sounds like:

I am sitting in my University of Texas office, talking to a very bright and very conservative white student about affirmative action in college admissions, which he opposes and I support.

The student says he wants a level playing field with no unearned advantages for anyone. I ask him whether he thinks that in the United States being white has advantages. Have either of us, I ask, ever benefited from being white in a world run mostly by white people? Yes, he concedes, there is something real and tangible we could call white privilege.

So, if we live in a world of white privilege--unearned white privilege--how does that affect your notion of a level playing field? I ask.

He paused for a moment and said, "That really doesn't matter."

That statement, I suggested to him, reveals the ultimate white privilege: the privilege to acknowledge you have unearned privilege but ignore what it means.

That exchange led me to rethink the way I talk about race and racism with students. It drove home to me the importance of confronting the dirty secret that we white people carry around with us everyday: In a world of white privilege, some of what we have is unearned. I think much of both the fear and anger that comes up around discussions of affirmative action has its roots in that secret. So these days, my goal is to talk openly and honestly about white supremacy and white privilege.

White privilege, like any social phenomenon, is complex. In a white supremacist culture, all white people have privilege, whether or not they are overtly racist themselves. There are general patterns, but such privilege plays out differently depending on context and other aspects of one's identity (in my case, being male gives me other kinds of privilege). Rather than try to tell others how white privilege has played out in their lives, I talk about how it has affected me.

I am as white as white gets in this country. I am of northern European heritage and I was raised in North Dakota, one of the whitest states in the country. I grew up in a virtually all-white world surrounded by racism, both personal and institutional. Because I didn't live near a reservation, I didn't even have exposure to the state's only numerically significant non-white population, American Indians.

I have struggled to resist that racist training and the ongoing racism of my culture. I like to think I have changed, even though I routinely trip over the lingering effects of that internalized racism and the institutional racism around me. But no matter how much I "fix" myself, one thing never changes--I walk through the world with white privilege.

What does that mean? Perhaps most importantly, when I seek admission to a university, apply for a job, or hunt for an apartment, I don't look threatening. Almost all of the people evaluating me for those things look like me--they are white. They see in me a reflection of themselves, and in a racist world that is an advantage. I smile. I am white. I am one of them. I am not dangerous. Even when I voice critical opinions, I am cut some slack. After all, I'm white.

My flaws also are more easily forgiven because I am white. Some complain that affirmative action has meant the university is saddled with mediocre minority professors. I have no doubt there are minority faculty who are mediocre, though I don't know very many. As Henry Louis Gates Jr. once pointed out, if affirmative action policies were in place for the next hundred years, it's possible that at the end of that time the university could have as many mediocre minority professors as it has mediocre white professors. That isn't meant as an insult to anyone, but is a simple observation that white privilege has meant that scores of second-rate white professors have slid through the system because their flaws were overlooked out of solidarity based on race, as well as on gender, class and ideology.

Some people resist the assertions that the United States is still a bitterly racist society and that the racism has real effects on real people. But white folks have long cut other white folks a break. I know, because I am one of them.

I am not a genius--as I like to say, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I have been teaching full-time for six years, and I've published a reasonable amount of scholarship. Some of it is the unexceptional stuff one churns out to get tenure, and some of it, I would argue, actually is worth reading. I work hard, and I like to think that I'm a fairly decent teacher. Every once in awhile, I leave my office at the end of the day feeling like I really accomplished something. When I cash my paycheck, I don't feel guilty.

But, all that said, I know I did not get where I am by merit alone. I benefited from, among other things, white privilege. That doesn't mean that I don't deserve my job, or that if I weren't white I would never have gotten the job. It means simply that all through my life, I have soaked up benefits for being white. I grew up in fertile farm country taken by force from non-white indigenous people. I was educated in a well-funded, virtually all-white public school system in which I learned that white people like me made this country great. There I also was taught a variety of skills, including how to take standardized tests written by and for white people.

All my life I have been hired for jobs by white people. I was accepted for graduate school by white people. And I was hired for a teaching position at the predominantly white University of Texas, which had a white president, in a college headed by a white dean and in a department with a white chairman that at the time had one non-white tenured professor.

There certainly is individual variation in experience. Some white people have had it easier than me, probably because they came from wealthy families that gave them even more privilege. Some white people have had it tougher than me because they came from poorer families. White women face discrimination I will never know. But, in the end, white people all have drawn on white privilege somewhere in their lives.

Like anyone, I have overcome certain hardships in my life. I have worked hard to get where I am, and I work hard to stay there. But to feel good about myself and my work, I do not have to believe that "merit," as defined by white people in a white country, alone got me here. I can acknowledge that in addition to all that hard work, I got a significant boost from white privilege, which continues to protect me every day of my life from certain hardships.

At one time in my life, I would not have been able to say that, because I needed to believe that my success in life was due solely to my individual talent and effort. I saw myself as the heroic American, the rugged individualist. I was so deeply seduced by the culture's mythology that I couldn't see the fear that was binding me to those myths. Like all white Americans, I was living with the fear that maybe I didn't really deserve my success, that maybe luck and privilege had more to do with it than brains and hard work. I was afraid I wasn't heroic or rugged, that I wasn't special.

I let go of some of that fear when I realized that, indeed, I wasn't special, but that I was still me. What I do well, I still can take pride in, even when I know that the rules under which I work in are stacked in my benefit. I believe that until we let go of the fiction that people have complete control over their fate--that we can will ourselves to be anything we choose--then we will live with that fear. Yes, we should all dream big and pursue our dreams and not let anyone or anything stop us. But we all are the product both of what we will ourselves to be and what the society in which we live lets us be.

White privilege is not something I get to decide whether or not I want to keep. Every time I walk into a store at the same time as a black man and the security guard follows him and leaves me alone to shop, I am benefiting from white privilege. There is not space here to list all the ways in which white privilege plays out in our daily lives, but it is clear that I will carry this privilege with me until the day white supremacy is erased from this society.

Frankly, I don't think I will live to see that day; I am realistic about the scope of the task. However, I continue to have hope, to believe in the creative power of human beings to engage the world honestly and act morally. A first step for white people, I think, is to not be afraid to admit that we have benefited from white privilege. It doesn't mean we are frauds who have no claim to our success. It means we face a choice about what we do with our success.

 

I didn't read your entire post but did your friend gave a specific example of how him being white gave him an advantage? Or conversely, what privilage do you believe white people have?

 

...Here's what white privilege sounds like:

I am sitting in my University of Texas office, talking to a very bright and very conservative white student about affirmative action in college admissions, which he opposes and I support.

The student says he wants a level playing field with no unearned advantages for anyone. I ask him whether he thinks that in the United States being white has advantages. Have either of us, I ask, ever benefited from being white in a world run mostly by white people? Yes, he concedes, there is something real and tangible we could call white privilege.

So, if we live in a world of white privilege--unearned white privilege--how does that affect your notion of a level playing field? I ask.

He paused for a moment and said, "That really doesn't matter."

That statement, I suggested to him, reveals the ultimate white privilege: the privilege to acknowledge you have unearned privilege but ignore what it means.



... I think much of both the fear and anger that comes up around discussions of affirmative action has its roots in that secret. So these days, my goal is to talk openly and honestly about white supremacy and white privilege.

...White privilege, like any social phenomenon, is complex. In a white supremacist culture, all white people have privilege, whether or not they are overtly racist themselves.

...I am as white as white gets in this country. I am of northern European heritage and I was raised in North Dakota, one of the whitest states in the country.

...I grew up in a virtually all-white world surrounded by racism, both personal and institutional.

...Because I didn't live near a reservation, I didn't even have exposure to the state's only numerically significant non-white population, American Indians.

...I have struggled to resist that racist training and the ongoing racism of my culture. I like to think I have changed, even though I routinely trip over the lingering effects of that internalized racism and the institutional racism around me. But no matter how much I "fix" myself, one thing never changes--I walk through the world with white privilege.

What does that mean? Perhaps most importantly, when I seek admission to a university, apply for a job, or hunt for an apartment, I don't look threatening. Almost all of the people evaluating me for those things look like me--they are white. They see in me a reflection of themselves, and in a racist world that is an advantage. I smile. I am white. I am one of them. I am not dangerous. Even when I voice critical opinions, I am cut some slack. After all, I'm white.

...My flaws also are more easily forgiven because I am white.

...Some complain that affirmative action has meant the university is saddled with mediocre minority professors. I have no doubt there are minority faculty who are mediocre, though I don't know very many. As Henry Louis Gates Jr. once pointed out, if affirmative action policies were in place for the next hundred years, it's possible that at the end of that time the university could have as many mediocre minority professors as it has mediocre white professors.

...That isn't meant as an insult to anyone, but is a simple observation that white privilege has meant that scores of second-rate white professors have slid through the system because their flaws were overlooked out of solidarity based on race, as well as on gender, class and ideology.

...Some people resist the assertions that the United States is still a bitterly racist society and that the racism has real effects on real people.

...But white folks have long cut other white folks a break. I know, because I am one of them.

...I know I did not get where I am by merit alone. I benefited from, among other things, white privilege.

...all through my life, I have soaked up benefits for being white.

...I grew up in fertile farm country taken by force from non-white indigenous people.

...I was educated in a well-funded, virtually all-white public school system in which I learned that white people like me made this country great.

...There I also was taught a variety of skills, including how to take standardized tests written by and for white people.

...All my life I have been hired for jobs by white people.

...I was accepted for graduate school by white people. And I was hired for a teaching position at the predominantly white University of Texas, which had a white president, in a college headed by a white dean and in a department with a white chairman.

...I can acknowledge that in addition to all that hard work, I got a significant boost from white privilege, which continues to protect me every day of my life from certain hardships. At one time in my life, I would not have been able to say that, because I needed to believe that my success in life was due solely to my individual talent and effort.

...I was so deeply seduced by the culture's mythology that I couldn't see the fear that was binding me to those myths. Like all white Americans, I was living with the fear that maybe I didn't really deserve my success, that maybe luck and privilege had more to do with it than brains and hard work.

...I believe that until we let go of the fiction that people have complete control over their fate--that we can will ourselves to be anything we choose--then we will live with that fear.

...White privilege is not something I get to decide whether or not I want to keep. Every time I walk into a store at the same time as a black man and the security guard follows him and leaves me alone to shop, I am benefiting from white privilege.

...There is not space here to list all the ways in which white privilege plays out in our daily lives, but it is clear that I will carry this privilege with me until the day white supremacy is erased from this society.

Frankly, I don't think I will live to see that day...

 

there is no "white privilege" in the law... in fact maybe you might get off easier if your a minority anymore....

 

not true, when white folk talk back to police or resist arrest, they are treated about the same... unless they look rich and powerful of course

bad cops are bad cops, let's not try to use "white privilege" to put down all whites if what we want to do is talk about bad cops, if we just want to talk about bad cops, we will probably all agree

 

Robert Jensen didn't put down, all White people, and I agree with him vehemently:

 

That doesn't answer my question. How did he specifically had an advantage?

But your friend never specified how he had an advantage.

Such as?

I highly doubt that's because of your race rather than you simply don't act/look like someone who is untrustworthy. I know plenty of black people who don't look intimidating and they get jobs.

Citation needed.

How so?

Evidence?

If you can give five ways where you can point out that the only reason you were favored was because you're white, I'd greatly appreciate it.

 

You asked if he gave examples, then I specifically quoted real life scenarios he laid out. That's all I can do.

I cannot make you stop 'playing pretend' about real American Life.

 

there is no "White Privilege" in the law, nor "black Privilege"

those some whites and blacks may get off easy by a racist black or racist white judge

 

In all due respect I am going to have to take the FBI's words, over your words, and I think you should do the same thing as me. See, look:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/fbi-white-supremacists-in-law-enforcement


Just like with Law Enforcement's policing Black citizens; no law is racist! So it becomes about how the law is, enforced, which constitutes the results of racism. Same thing Robert Jensen explains, about White privilege, but in his own words.