If all you know is being hassled by police - especially if you are perceived as being the wrong color for a neighborhood - how is it bias to avoid that?
I will be very upfront and say I have NEVER had a pleasant run in with police until very recently. And I am one of the lighter skinned people in my family. And a woman. But in my 41 (ack) years, the vast majority of interactions have been with rude, arrogant, and needlessly antagonistic cops. I won't even get into that crap I've seen males have to deal with. Awful. When someone can have their head slammed into a cruiser hood repeatedly until they are bloody, and then be charged with "resising arrest", all because they said "what'd I do?!", when the cops can speak to you like you're a piece of dirt an question your presence because they think you don't fit in the neighborhood profile... Just for two examples... Something has to change.
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As a pasty white WASP, I want to say I appreciate you sharing your experience/perspective.
I think of all the times at stores like Walmart, where I have my receipt in hand, prepared to give it to the checker so she can verify I purchased everything in my cart, only to be waved on because I don't "look" like a shoplifter. Or getting pulled over for speeding and being given a "warning" rather than the ticket I probably deserved.
I should be more thankful of the passes I have been given in my life. And I do not say that to make light of your experience, but to acknowledge it.
This may sound cheesy, but there was a movie called "White Man's Burden" with John Travolta. Maybe early 90's? Anyhoo, the premise was your typical story of the bias towards the "lower" classes, only in this movie, the socio-economic elite were primarily people of color, while the disenfranchised were mostly white. Same scenarios played out as those in real life, but it was really weird, as a middle-class white woman, to see the races reversed. In fact, it made me angry. And then I thought, "what if that were my REALITY and not some movie?"
See, we AREN'T the same. Our experiences shape us, and a big part of our experience is due to our race/ethnicity/location. Not to say that we don't all have challenges, but until I have walked a day in, for instance, your shoes, I cannot appreciate where you are coming from in terms of viewpoint. I can try to understand, and hear what you have to say, but that is not me living your life.
I guess that is why talking about racial issues is important and like another poster said, I have never been afraid to engage in a discussion about it. That's how we learn about one another. Pretending that we do not see our diversity is just silly, IMO.
Sorry for the O/T but I think if we had more open discourse about race, then it would be a non-issue and fall flat as a defense in cases like these.
