I find questions on race to be both fascinating, and revealing. And, no, this is not intended to be some method of back-handed questions / thoughts which are little more than poorly veiled racism, themselves, but rather, simple statements and questions on race in our society. Here are a couple of thoughts on the matter, feel free to add your own. 1. Why is it the height of insults for a white person to do black-face (see Ted Danson), but not for a black person to do "white face"? Example: 2. I'd like to see the Freakonomics guys do a study on the incarceration rate in the U.S., particularly as it relates to black people only representing about 15 of the American population, but a staggering 70%+ of our prison population - by comparing it to large city data derived from parking tickets. By definition, a person who receives a parking citation for being absent from their motor vehicle. This means that no racial profiling could be possible, as the citing officer would be completely unaware of the owner's race (or gender, for that matter) when issuing the citation. What might it mean to learn that 90% of all parking tickets were issued to white people? Or, conversely, to blacks? Outside of racial profiling and a racist criminal justice system, how else might we explain that black people represented less than 70% of all parking tickets in a given city, in comparison to their rate of incarceration? There are about 1,000 ways to go with this, but those are my first questions on the matter. 3. Abraham Lincoln was a racist, and never set about to free the slaves. In fact, he stated in his first inaugural speech that if keeping slavery meant that the Union would be preserved, then he would support a constitutional amendment to that effect. He desired for all slaves to be repatriated back to their native lands, and even went so far as to attempt it in Central / South American (to calamitous results). Considering this, why does he remain to be such a revered and renowned leader amongst black people? And if it is just a measure of their not knowing these facts (most Americans don't likely know these things, regardless of race), do you think that their opinions would undergo any large change, if it became widely known? 4. Would President Obama have been elected were he not 1/2 black? Given his three years in office, would be be re-elected if he were white? 5. Is affirmative action racist? 6. In the movies "House Party 1 & 2", I always preferred Play, instead of Kid. Does that make me racist?
1. Double standard to a degree. Take the movie title White Men Can't Jump. Change that to a black stereotype and folks go apeshit. I know about the oppression. I know there are still some racist idiots out there, but at some point we ALL have to be willing to move on and judge folks by what's in their heart and not the color of skin. 2.I don't have a clue. My only guess is that if the meter maids only ticketed Caddys with dubs and hydraulics, then one might be able to play the profiling card. (That is meant to be a joke of sorts) 3. You are correct about Lincoln.He never once advocated for nor did he believe that former slaves should have the same rights as whites. He did have a plan to 'repatriate' most former slaves to their 'homeland'. Liberia in Africa was colonized starting in the 1820s by former slaves with the help of American whites who thought that they had a better chance at freedom there rather than being a freedman in the US. Many aspects of Liberian culture reflect the southern experiences of these former slaves in the Antebellum South. The homes they built were smaller versions of plantation houses. Here's a good short read on how much American culture influenced Liberian life: Culture of Liberia - history, people, clothing, women, food, family, social, dress, marriage Here is a picture of the Liberian flag: Look familiar? Lincoln gets credit for being a Civil Rights leader simply because he led the war that did away with the institution of slavery. Had he not been assassinated and allowed to put his plans in motion, I truly think that we would have a much different view of Lincoln as a Civil Rights leader. It is the same with Kennedy. They both are regarded as great Presidents because they were killed before all the 'dirt' was able to come out on them. You know we Americans love to romanticize fallen leaders. 4. Yes. I feel that anyone with a face and was half way articulate would have won after Bush. Depending on who the Rs nominate, He has a decent chance of winning in a walk. Even if Romney wins the nomination, it will be very closely contested. Most polls show Obama leading all Republican candidates. The gap has been slightly widening also. Still, a lot can change from now till November. 5. Whenever one group is treated differently based completely on race, there is an element of racism involved, imo. 6. Yes. It also qualifies you to become a Grand Wizard of the KKK.
I thought the blackface issue was a reference to a somewhat common occurrence back in the day of having a white guy paint his face black and act like a buffoon so folks at a party could get their rocks off laughing at a negro. Now, I think that is somewhat of an obscure reference of which a lot of whites are unaware. For instance, I don't think those fraternity guys that went to a party dressed as the Jackson 5 had any idea that their costume was going to be offensive. Similar situation about Lincoln. Hardly anyone knows about the stuff you mentioned. There's the Gettysburg Address, Emancipation Proclamation, and a theater assassination. That's what we know about Abe.
Money disparity. The African American population has lower income. More African Americans take the bus, and thus don't have cars. How can you get a parking ticket if you don't have a car? Money disparity. White people typically have and get better legal protection, even for the same offence. Location disparity. If you found that suburban kids are more likely to drive drunk, would you block off (Blue Crush) a neighborhood that has, on average, $350k homes? Nope. Would you do it in a run down area that has on average, $30k homes? Yup. Drugs. Legal care. Location disparity and environment. If cops kick in the door of a middle class family, and find an ounce of pot, are they going to charge anyone but me? Probably not. If the same happens to a lower income family, they might charge everyone present. I've heard it said many times that if a cop can't find something to stop you for after following you for 15 minutes, they aren't working. Cops tend to follow the poor. They can't raise hell about it as well. In other words, the system looks for crime in predominantly minority areas, even though crime is everywhere.
"Cops tend to follow the poor" I got consistantly followed from age 16 to around 30 where i got pulled over a couple of times a year at least for complete BS. after that I've gotten completely left alone.
I agree with everything fl0at, but not so sure about that following the poor stuff. You have any studies or anything relating to that? My personal experience (which i admit arent worth a hell of a lot) run contrary to that notion. Chick I knew in high school that drove a Z3 got a million speeding tickets. Another guy I knew drove a fancy sport car and got pulled over so many times his dad went down to the station and raised hell. Meanwhile I drove like an absolute bat out of hell from 16-20 and never had any type of traffic violation.
Germantown, TN. Who gets pulled over, you in an old beat down two door pickup or the Z3? Location is everything. In Germantown, the beater gets pulled over. Every time. Why? Because the Z3 lives there. If I drive into North Memphis... I'm probably getting pulled over. Because I don't live there. So, take that for what it is worth.
You took that too literally, and that might be my fault. I don't mean to say that cops, in their vehicle, only follow the poor. I was trying to use two comparisons, together. If a cop follows ANYONE, in their car, they should be able to make a stop after 15 minutes. No matter what, something will be done wrong. Therefore, a probability of a law being broken found out... is directly proportional to the time the cop spends. Following? Thus, if cops spend more time in poor areas, they will find something to arrest someone for. And this is true in any neighborhood, anywhere. The extend of the law being broken, differs, of course. In the suburbs, you get DUI, paraphernalia possession, speeding and possibly possession. Urban areas, you get the same, and more likely weapons and stolen goods. The thing is, though, cops spend more time in poor areas. Which is what I meant by "following the poor." I didn't mean "tailing the poor." My bad with lack of clarity.
Germantown has gone down a lot. Or maybe it just seems that way because I haven't been there as often as I used to be, but for the most part, older cars are what I see get stopped. The main speed traps are Poplar past Kirby until Germantown Rd. From Methodist until Forest Hill Irene. Germantown parkway past Humphree. And Humphree until Memphis city limits. You didn't get out East much did you? These locations may be meaningless, but the major speed traps are on major roads, that you'll be familiar with: Poplar, Germantown Parkway and Humphrees. (Road that shoots off Walnut Grove right before Shelby Farms). Not really residential. MPD loves residential speed traps, though.
Nah, didn't get like going to Germantown. Traffic was brutal. I'd usually head to Southaven if I needed to do some shopping. Always avoided West Memphis, though. It's a damn third world country once you cross the Mississippi.
I went on a ride along with KPD about 7 years ago who patrolled East Knoxville. It was eye-opening, to say the least. 1. First call was to a home with an 80+ year old woman who called 911 claiming that she believed there to be "aliens" in the woods behind her house. It was never identified if she meant "immigrant aliens" or "extraterrestrial aliens". We ended up walking around some wooded area for about 5 minutes, unsurprisingly, seeing nothing. Lesson learned: cops spend a lot of time doing a lot of stuff that has little crime-fighting significance simply to make the public / people / persons feel safe. 2. Throughout the night (shift was on a Friday, and ran from something like 6pm to 6am, I think), the cop would point out house after house that was "known" to be selling drugs. I say "known" instead of known because the cops knew that they were selling drugs, but couldn't get enough to get a warrant or thought that they'd eventually do something stupid and get busted. He wasnt apathetic about it, by any means, but just well-aware of how those things typically go, i assume. Lesson learned: they can know where the bad guys are, and what they're doing, but that doesn't mean that they can do anything about it. 3. Went to a domestic violence call (actually, they called 911 and hung up). All was pretty calm when we arrived, and the male quickly agreed to leave for the night to stay with a friend. As we were about to leave, officer sees a bag of weed sitting on entertainment center. Male admitted it was his. Officer thanks him for being honest, and says that he won't cite the guy or arrest him for possession, and will just confiscate it instead. Man tells officer that today (Friday) was payday, and that he had just bought that weed - and wants to know if he could keep it, instead. I don't recall the officers exact reply, likely while I was too busy how he could wear normal pants with two obviously elephant-sized balls, but it was a "No". Upon hearing this, Male (black) accuses the officer (white) of being racist, ostensibly, for cutting him a break. Officer essentially reminds him of this, and we leave. Lesson learned: the American populace - black, white, lesbian, Republican, young, old, rich, poor - are just as stupid as we fear, and maybe worse. 4. If you are white and in a predominantly black neighborhood, you're getting pulled over - and when they talk to you (I'd sit in the patrol car for traffic stops, but could hear cop's audio from microphone for recording purposes), they make absolutely zero - read: ZERO - effort to deduce why you are there. It is presupposed that you are there to buy drugs. Right, wrong or indifferent - it is. And while far from a scientific survey, in every case that white people were pulled over, they either admitted that they were there to buy drugs or had some form of paraphanalia on them. Without exception, from approximately 15 or so cars we pulled over and which had white drivers. 5. Let me be clear about this one: I only observed a single officer (the one I was riding with) doing this, and even then, on that one night I was there. I also had 2 other officers tell me that they did the same, when we stopped to talk to them at some point during the night. So I am not, by any means saying that this is a universal practice, or even a routine one, either for cops in general or even these particular officers. Its not earth-shattering thing, in any regard, but I did find two things which were particularly surprising: The first is the number of tags that they run (they have in-car laptops) in a given night is enormous, almost to the point of being beyond belief. It didn't matter who you were, what you were driving, where they saw you, how long they followed, etc - if your tag was at any point readable - even when going the opposite directon (the officer could read it in his mirror) - it was ran. They drive with a hand on the keyboard, and literally, could carry on a conversation while entering tags. As I understand it, seeing the same car in a certain area "x" number of times may meet some burden of probable cause to pull someone over, but I could have that wrong. They don't "follow" people, per se, you know, like cloak and dagger shit .......but if you catch their eye, for any reason, theyre talking to another officer about it, and later, when someone else spots you, they update everyone else as to where you now are, what you're doing, etc. so the next time you think, "Damn, there's a lot of cops around here.", most likely someone has caught someone's eye and they're just hanging around. Or, perhaps it's you - and that first cop car you saw 4 hours ago has mentioned you to others. It's not some insidious plot, just a very advanced way to observe and report, and likely, which most are completely unaware. 6. The guys i rode with or met were genuinely good dudes who were just trying to do an incredibly tough, often thankless and entirely essential job - and not a single one was an asshole or seemed to suffer from any mental deficiency (dickishness, for a clinical example), whatsoever. Although admittedly, it was an incredibly small sampling size.
New method I see around town is the infra cameras on the top of cop cars. It runs plates automatically. I probably get ran 6 times a day just by that thing alone
Back to the original point #3 about Lincoln. The "Lincoln is a racist" idea has gained traction recently (Mostly, I think, for political reasons), but I don't necessarily agree. I've got to jet in a minute or two, so I'll just throw it out that Lincoln was very much against slavery and that his quotes on slavery as a politician must be thoroughly analyzed through the context of that time period's political environment. Lincoln was foremost a political animal, one of the best in our nation's history, and knew that overt anti-slavery ideas and black equality pronouncements were a political loser. There's no way he could've advocated the racial beliefs of today and been elected Dog Catcher, much less President. He may be mythologized, but his ideas about race and slavery were very progressive for his day.
I don't think Lincoln was an overt racist in that he hated blacks. I know that he did NOT favor equal rights. Neither did Andrew Johnson. Johnson just didn't have the political pull that Lincoln did. Lincoln kept the Radical Reconstruction elements in check (Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stephens). Johnson couldn't keep them in check resulting in the radicals taking control of Reconstruction and implementing a punitive reentry for the South sans Tennessee who was spared military occupation because they ratified the 14th Amendment where the other Confederate states didn't. Lincoln favored an easy reentry with forgiveness and a desire to move forward as a united nation being his main goal. Lincoln did think that slavery was an evil that had no place in America. He also thought that blacks were not on the same level of whites in terms of civil rights. He also is on record stating that he felt that it was impossible for whites and blacks to live together in harmony (segregation if you will). The result of these beliefs was his voluntary colonization of former slaves in Africa. His views were really middle of the road for the time period not as progressive as you are stating, imo.
Lincoln's racial views were constantly evolving throughout the last 20 or so years of his life, especially during the Civil War. The colonization ideas he expressed in 1862 had dissipated by the end of the war and he was influenced by the actions of black soldiers quite a bit. Lincoln had moved to a point were he likely would've promoted civil rights in his second term. I don't think he would've been as radical as the faction that took over, but he would've been far more politically astute than Johnson to navigate Reconstruction with Congress.
