I spoke with a Catholic Deacon in CT who said he had to teach his sons to NOT MOVE when pulled over because of the cops' tendency to look for any excuse to harass blacks.

He also said he was harassed while driving around with his wife when they were just dating manymany years ago. Wasn't speeding, wasn't swerving, but apparently he was driving through a neighborhood police didn't think a black person belonged in.

what a powerful documentary...

Oh, come on. Maybe if blacks didn't cause an absurdly disproportionate amount of violent crime (even non-drug related), maybe the cops would be a bit more polite. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, you better watch out because it might be a duck.

I'm just incredibly disgusted at the black community leaders for failing to fix the gutless, selfish, faux-bravado culture that permeates the black community at all levels. I was hoping Obama's election would be a good catalyst for change as he's said some really interesting things here in the past (almost Cosby-esque), but alas, this huge financial shitfest happened and I fear his attention is going to be pretty much solely focused on that.

I live and grew up in the Midwest and I never understood why more people here aren't upset by the police in general. I have always been untrusting of the police since I saw images from the 60s of police brutality and even modern day stories of unwarranted violence used against people. I don't understand why there isn't more outrage against the sector that is supposed to "serve and protect" using its power to beat the shit out of people. Makes no sense to me.

Also, I've clearly seen racial profiling in the way the cops here treat people. If you're black in this city, you will be 80% more likely to be harassed by the cops for no reason. It is messed up.

Obama's a real credit to his race, ain't he, Duran?

/sarcasm

p.s. I'm a white woman and I sure as hell don't trust the police either.

Duran, how do you know that black people commit more crimes than white people? Every figure I've ever seen indicates that white people commit more crimes than black people but are less likely to be arrested, less likely to be jailed, and more likely to be jailed for a shorter period of time.

Also, as the daughter of a former cop, I have absolutely no doubt that most cops are racist (and sexist). I remember too clearly sitting in the breakroom waiting for my daddy and listening to the racist and sexist "jokes" that seemed to be the only thing they ever talked about. That was back in the '80s but I can't imagine it has changed all that much since then.

"Duran, how do you know that black people commit more crimes than white people?"
I assume he means "commit crimes disproportionate to their population". I have no idea if that's true or not, but that seems to be what he's trying to get at...

@waxghost
I didn't say black people commit more crimes than white people. The phrase I used was "...absurdly disproportionate amount of violent crime..." And it's a well established fact. Read this article on wikipedia for more details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States. Note that the stats in the article are based on US DOJ reports, so they're fairly respectable.

@SarahMC
I voted for Obama, I think he's great. You seem to be implying that I'm racist. I'm not - I believe that black people, white people, Asians, Semites and whoever else are all more or less genetically identical. However, there are CULTURES that are inferior to other cultures in the sense of producing and fostering more violent crime and negative social effects. I submit that the African American subculture in the USA is one of those. Another one is the Arab culture of violence and subjugation towards women.

I'm not all "white power" - I judge a culture not on the color of its adherents but on its effects on the populace, and I can't understand why it's not more commonly done.

So don't imply I'm something I'm not. I'm here to have a reasonable, rationable debate, and if I say something that offends your sensibilities, convince me that I'm wrong, using well attributed data, or ask yourself why you feel that offended at facts.

Duran, if you want to have a reasonable, rational debate then you undermine your intention by coming off so aggressively.

Putting aside your white supremacy towards AAs for a minute, let's address this:

"Another one is the Arab culture of violence and subjugation towards women."

Take the beam from your own eye, and then you will see clearly enough to remove the speck from your brother's eye.

"I judge a culture not on the color of its adherents but on its effects on the populace, and I can’t understand why it’s not more commonly done."

Whites have had a pretty damn detrimental effect on the populace of non-whites both here in America and around the world. Maybe oppression has something to do with the outcomes you witness today. Just a thought.

Thank you for the re-post lisa, and I'm glad you found it useful.

duran wrote: I’m not all “white power” - I judge a culture not on the color of its adherents but on its effects on the populace, and I can’t understand why it’s not more commonly done.

By "judging" the "culture" of which you write in isolation from the broader, white-supremacist context that's helped to form it, you're being myopic. As well as patronizing. At one point you label it a "subculture," but you generally describe it as if it exists in isolation from the corrosive, debilitating effects of the broader, racist societal context.

A few years ago I rented City of God, a movie about the favelas outside Rio de Janeiro. On the extras of the DVD was an interview with the Chief of Police of Rio at the time. It was one of the most straightforward and honest expressions of what the police are all about that I've ever seen, right from the Chief himself.

As an example regarding the disparity of enforcement between the upscale neighborhoods and the favelas, he admitted that of course many of the nice expensive beach condos are full of cocaine (as are many houses in the favelas), but if he goes in and busts the elite or their children he won't be Police Chief very long now will he? He was very blunt: "My job is to maintain the status quo."

On the plus side (well...) I think more and more white people (and especially white kids) are learning to properly distrust the police. Putting officers in schools helps this along nicely. I've always told kids that "No problem is so bad that calling the police can't make it worse," and they invariably regret it if they didn't believe me.

Don't forget that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the police have NO obligation to protect an individual citizen. They exist as a general deterrent to crime and to act as an investigative body after the fact. The ruling protects them from being sued by you when you become the victim of a crime (you can't allege they failed to protect you because they had no such obligation). Seems to me that having "To serve and protect" slogans on some Departments' cars might allow them to be sued for false advertising (but I digress).

Even one of my cousins and an uncle who are both good people AND high-ranking police officers (there are some left) adamantly tell their kids "Whatever you do, don't become a cop!" And they mean it. Trouble is, that attitude (get the hell out rather than fix it) will ultimately result in a low-quality police force to say the least, and in fact we may already be there. Consider how many innocent people have been murdered by police in botched paramilitary-style raids, for example. http://www.cato.org/raidmap/

Iraq is part of it, since a lot of veterans return and ultimately become police officers, and if they were in a particularly screwed up place (like Iraq) they bring the worst of it home and treat US citizens like they treated the residents of Baghdad or Fallujah and the rest, and under the previous administration it was considered ok to use a heavier hand than usual. The citizens of Baghdad should not have been treated like that, but if it makes them feel any better those troops are coming back, becoming cops, and treating Americans just as badly. You might even call it karma.

Anyhow, why do people keep assuming that Obama is some kind of savior for all these problems? Malcolm X pointed out a long time ago that it's all fundamentally an economic/class issue rather than a racial one (though he used more pointed terms). My hope is that Obama opens people's eyes to the fact that whoever stuffs the First Suit is ultimately irrelevant and if we want real change we need to create it ourselves in spite of the government since the government embodies the status quo and therefore strongly resistant to change.

@SarahMC: Sorry, because you're so intent on labeling me, you don't get any more replies.

@ macon d
I agree that the AA subculture (a culture within a culture) can't really be isolated from the broader context of slavery, Jim Crow, and general racism. And for that reason, I don't blame today's black people for that culture any more than I take personal credit for living in a broadly entrepreneurial and inventive culture.

However, my point from like 5 posts ago was that I don't believe the black community leadership is doing anything to address this. It's so blindingly clear that folks like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are having, not positive, but detrimental effects on black culture's ability to move forward. It's 40 years post civil rights, and though black poverty has definitely improved, the growing epidemic of single parenthood and broken families is in some senses even worse!

Isn't it time that black leaders tried a new tactic - something better than these reckless demagogues? And though, as I mentioned, I don't blame black people individually for their culture's negative aspects, I can surely judge the culture on its merits, and in fact hold its unofficial leaders responsible for doing nothing to help.

Remember this controversy? http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jul2004/csby-j14.shtml Why was it even a controversy?

Where and how did I label you, Duran? You are unable to support your racist claims, so you are backing out of the discussion. Understood.

"Judging a culture on its merits" seems to translate to "judging a culture according to my white-centric norms."

I'm curious about what defines "Arab culture," by the way.

Just too funny.

"...any more than I take personal credit for living in a broadly entrepreneurial and inventive culture."

I certainly wouldn't want to 'take credit' for it either, even if I could. Euro-American culture (if that's what you mean) built its tradition of entrepreneurship and invention through the colonial and neo-colonial exploitation (in the European and American contexts, respectively) of much of the world's resources and peoples, and continues to do so through the oppression of working-class peoples and the 'erasure' of their labour, at home and abroad. Why is this less worthy of condemnation than the social problems that disproportionately affect racialized communities (problems which are themselves fostered by racism)? It seems that one of these arrangements is much more harmful to the world at large than is the other...

It's also worth remembering that the 'bravado'-oriented black media culture is primarily consumed by whites (e.g., 70% of rap music consumers are white), and who are in the positions of power (record producers, etc) to decide how 'black culture' will be presented and fed back to the black community. There are many positive black role models who never gain media exposure and promotion because they don't fit the desires of a white audience, who rather prefers to enjoy their 'forbidden' pleasures by 'safely' watching them enacted by non-white subjects, where they don't present a threat to positive white self-concepts.

@Vidya

Oh, come on. Every single major culture has enslaved, brutalized, beaten and exploited some subset of the rest of the world. It just so happens that the Europeans happened to do it on the cusp of fantastic technical progress and were therefore able to perform those feats more globally and extensively. That doesn't make the culture we live in "bad" any more than central Asian culture is "bad" for brutalizing most of Asia in the 13th century.

The trap people seem to fall into here is looking at historical wrongs, rather than present day condition. Growing up in mainstream American culture (which I realize is vague, but bear with me) tends to produce less violent criminals than growing up in mainstream African-American culture. The statistics prove it. It's not about race, since blacks aren't any more predisposed to crime than whites. The only difference is the culture. History may explain why, but it doesn't tell us how to fix the problem of violence. I'm telling you how to fix it: fix the culture.

Why are the vast majority of serial killers white?

Duran: "It just so happens that the Europeans happened to do it on the cusp of fantastic technical progress and were therefore able to perform those feats more globally and extensively."

That implies that any culture, no matter where it originates, is ready and willing to engage in behavior widely considered abhorrent, especially by the victims (slavery, racism, colonialism, etc.). I think that's a correct assessment; no culture has a monopoly on consciousness and so all contain the seeds of these problems. Though all cultures may be ready and willing to commit what we now consider atrocities, only ours was actually able to.

What made Europeans the international (rather than merely local) oppressors of other cultures was the confluence of factors well-documented and explained in the book Guns, Germs, and Steel. In a nutshell, it was about the available resources, domesticated livestock, and geography.

To oversimplify it a bit, if Africa had been where the relevant causal factors had all been present then Europeans would've been the people seeking independence (from their African colonizers). Europeans invented race to try to explain the apparent disparity of the evolution of their respective civilizations, but really it was pure chance.

As far as I understand, from living out in the midwest, the cops are racist/sexist. for example, my sister called the police on her abusive boyfriend that beat her and they dismissed her and the situation as a "lover's quarrel". The boyfriend talks his way out of it since he's got 3 warrants, smokes crack, deals drugs, and steals from her and everyone else yet she can't get him to leave because of how he uses other people and gaslights her and uses his race as an advantage. The guy is pasty as all get out yet folks assume he's 'alright' cos he presents himself as some 'average white guy'.

my sister is an intelligent hard working law-abiding person and gets treated like crap cos of her skin color and that she lives in the ghetto (with her low level state job and her boyfriend drinking/smoking/stealing what little money she brings in for the apartment) and people around her either ignore her or tell her to just deal with it?! The police won't help, no one else will to get this fiend out the house because of their blind assumptions.

Its things like this that make folks of color distrustful of police and most other people in general. Even my sister's neighbors didn't want to get involved even when they saw/heard what was going on, because the police are so corrupt.

Just so you know, not every black person listens to rap and stuff like that folks tend to generalise (my sister is a hardcore metal and punk listener, I listen to speed metal and hard rock myself) and don't talk in ebonics/street slang. Majority of the time we get told that we're the "whitest black people folks know" because of that. Like being well-read and speaking standard english is some kind of problem?! >_<

This reminded me of the poem "What Year Was Heaven Desegregated?" by Jeffrey McDaniel. I'll include it here:

Watching the news about Diallo, my eight year-old cousin, Jake,
asks why don't they build black people
with bulletproof skin?
I tell Jake there's another planet, where humans change colors like mood rings.
You wake up Scottish, and fall asleep Chinese; enter a theatre
Persian, and exit Puerto Rican. And Earth
is a junkyard planet, where they send all the broken humans
who are stuck in one color. That
pseudo-angels in the world before this offer deals to black fetuses, to give up
their seats on the shuttle to earth, say: wait
for the next one, conditions will improve. Then Jake asks do they
have ghettos in the afterlife? Seven years ago
I sat in a car, an antenna filled with crack cocaine smoldering
between my lips, the smoke spreading
in my lungs, like the legs of Joseph Stalin's mom in the delivery
room. An undercover piglet hoofed up
to the window. My buddy busted an illegal u-turn, screeched
the wrong way down a one-way street.
I chucked the antenna, shoved the crack rock up my asshole.
The cops swooped in from all sides
yanked me out. I clutched my butt cheeks like a third fist gripping
a winning lotto ticket. The cop yelled
white boys only come in this neighborhood for two reasons : to steal
cars and buy drugs. You already got wheels.
I ran into the burning building of my mind. I couldn't see shit.
It was filled with crack smoke. I dug
through the ashes of my conscience, till I found my educated, white
male dialect, which I stuck in my voice box
and pushed play. Officer, I'm going to be honest with you. Blah,
blah blah. See, the sad truth is my skin
said everything he needed to know. My skin whispered into his pink
ear I'm white. You can't pin shit on this
pale fabric. This pasty cloth is pin resistant. Now slap my wrist,
so I can go home, take this rock out
of my ass, and smoke it. If Diallo was white, those bullets would've
bounced off his chest like spitballs. But
his execution does prove that a black man with a wallet is as dangerous
to the cops as a black man with an Uzi.
Maybe he whipped that wallet out like a grenade, hollered I buy
therefore I am an American. Or maybe
he just said hey man, my tax money paid for two of those bullets
in that gun. Last year on vacation in DC,
little Jake wondered how come there's a Vietnam wall, Abe Lincoln's
house, a Holocaust building, but nothing
about slavery? No thousand-foot sculpture of a whip. No
giant dollar bill dipped in blood.
Is it 'cause there's no Hitler to blame it on, no donkey to stick it on?
Are they afraid the blacks will want a settlement?
I mean, if Japanese-Americans locked up in internment camps
for five years cashed out at thirty g's, what's
the price tag on a three-hundred-year session with a dominatrix
who's not pretending? And the white people
say we gave 'em February. Black History Month. But it's so much
easier to have a month than an actual
conversation. Jake, life is one big song, and we are the chorus.
Riding the subway is a chorus.
Driving the freeway is a chorus. But you gotta stay ready, 'cause you never
know when the other instruments will
drop out, and ta-dah--it's your moment in the lit spot, the barometer
of your humanity, and you'll hear the footsteps
of a hush, rushing through the theater, as you aim for the high notes
with the bow and arrow in your throat.

I Find this to be extremely  one sided   If I was a cop I would be generally more concerned for my safety when dealing with black people,
Simply because black people are more likely to be criminals and less predictable   if you don't want to be treated like a gangster  dont dress talk and act like a fucking gangstaaaa   You are only as respectable and safe as you look   I am quite sure no black person who is wearing a suit is gonna get harassed or shot.

IF you look like some dodgy gun wielding gangster from the ghetto I would rather shoot you then risk the slightest chance of you pulling a gun out and shooting me. 
(Better you then me) its simple...

P.S. I am not racist and have no issue with black people I would do the same if it was a dodgy looking white guy.

I am not saying some police arent racist I am saying the argument above is just one sided there are reasons and issues on both sides     Why dont we interview the police as well and see what kind of shit they deal with when they enter a ghetto???

HOW manny police get killed by black people VS???

I rest my case,  I cant see how a respectable looking black person has anything more to worry about then a respectable looking white person.  its just that so manny black people dress like a criminal from the ghetto,   your only as trustworthy as you look I think it has more to do with that,  

If you dont want to get treated like a gangster dont dress like a piece of shit 50 cent worth low life,   that goes for white people and black people and everyone in between.  Simple.

Psych ops is very real. The corporate shot caller have to be view in a different way. We have been programmed to see things the way the media has been paid to paint the picture. Globalization and marginalization are at the top of the list of power and control. The media chooses what the narrative of the day should be for you and me. Jobs are important to me, what are they talking about 24/7 in the media? Obama care.The dont give a damn about reality or what is important to the people we are all viewed as cattle. Follow the money? for the last 10 yrs the media has been telling us that the post office is broke and loosing money, and that it needs to be ran like a corporation. WTF is this BS about? Its about privatizing the postal service and its happening now. Today poor black communities are always the target of official oppression. We have overly pious idiots who proudly stand up and pontificate about what they will do or what they wont do as if they were living in the middle of poorest combat zone in America. If you live in a poor white neighborhood in a city Like Chicago the police are not shooting and killing white people. You might be poor but the police are not abusing you and your kids. As a society we cant create jungles for poor unemployed people to live in then, pretend we dont understand why those people act like animals. Crime exist where these is no police presence. Its very simple once government becomes a for profits entity then the tax payers will be abused. In other words when writing tickets becomes more important than fighting crime we all loose. If you research the records you will find that tickets are written by the hundreds of thousands, which brings in revenue for the city. If you research how many home burglary cases have been filed its less than a hundred when thousands of home thefts/burglary's occur each year. Its simple the reason why crime is allow to flourish in certain areas is because their is not police presence number one and most of the police have predisposition of thinking that these poor people are sub human therefore not worthy of life. I know that there are many intelligent white people who really do understand real hate an how it equates to profits, but they are few in numbers. The police are not beginning to treat white people they way they have always treated people of color. But you will never ever hear of a black or Hispanic cop shooting a white man to death then claiming he thought the deceased was reaching for a gun. Why is that when every year in America over 1000 innocent people of color are shot dead by police without and real investigation. Why is that?

All cops are evil

Police have failed black people so many times, it's no wonder we don't trust them.p they're supposed to protect us and be mor ethical than the general public. Instead they're racist scum