{"id":47,"date":"2008-08-05T16:49:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-05T21:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/2008\/08\/05\/the-invisible-nypd-race-problem\/"},"modified":"2008-08-05T16:49:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-05T21:49:00","slug":"the-invisible-nypd-race-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/2008\/08\/05\/the-invisible-nypd-race-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"The Invisible NYPD Race Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>I often find it difficult to convey to my students why data matters.  &#8220;They&#8217;re just numbers&#8221; is a common refrain.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.racismreview.com\/blog\/\">Racismreview<\/a> has a good <a href=\"http:\/\/www.racismreview.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/05\/this-is-not-helping\/\">post<\/a> on the elimination of racial data from reports on NYPD police shootings after 1997.  Pre-1997 the NYPD did keep these records. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/08\/05\/nyregion\/05police.html?ex=1375675200&amp;en=fcfc75b7816201e3&amp;ei=5124&amp;partner=permalink&amp;exprod=permalink\">New York Times<\/a> speculates that the move to stop collecting this data by race was done during the <a href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/reference\/timestopics\/people\/d\/amadou_diallo\/index.html?inline=nyt-per\">Amadou Diallo<\/a> controversy.  The key passage from the post:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>if you bury knowledge about racism and racist practices (such as the NYPD\u2019s abysmal record), then you effectively subvert efforts to combat racism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I frankly have never understood arguments in support of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Race-blind\">colorblind<\/a> policies.  Societies can recognize race and racism as distinct realities of social life without descending into tribalism.  There are times in my life where I want to be color blind and times when I want to be color (read &#8211; group) conscious.  What would art or music or literature be without color consciousness.  <i><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Invisible_Man\">The Invisib<\/a><\/i><i><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Invisible_Man\">le Man<\/a><\/i> would become the <i>Just as Visible or Invisible as the Next Guy?<\/i><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Invisible_Man\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/9\/9f\/Invisible_Man.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I often find it difficult to convey to my students why data matters. &#8220;They&#8217;re just numbers&#8221; is a common refrain. Racismreview has a good post on the elimination of racial data from reports on NYPD police shootings after 1997. Pre-1997 the NYPD did keep these records. The New York Times speculates that the move to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}