I was speaking strictly to your comment about being followed around and treated like you are a thief.
I don't think the crime statistics have anything to do with it. Again, I think it's a bull argument to talk about crime rates and racism in the same breath. Besides, the stop and frisk numbers speak for themselves: In 2013, New Yorkers were stopped by the police 191,558 times. 169,252 were totally innocent (88 percent). 104,958 were black (56 percent). 55,191 were Latino (29 percent). 20,877 were white (11 percent).
No, first you'll have to believe that you're being distrusted solely because of your skin color. Maybe the store owner is distrustful in general of all people with their hands in their pockets.
I went and looked at some stats, and it shows the majority of street crimes and violent crimes are committed by black people. That certainly doesn't mean all black people commit crimes, but it helps explain why black people are profiled. Is it right? No, but my parents owned a convenience store when I was a kid and it was robbed 3 times. All 3 times it was by a black person. My parents started to assume every black person coming into the store was there to rob them, and I'm not sure how you can fault them for that.
And so is your proclamation that every time a black person goes into a store with his hands in his pockets hes eyeballed.
We're predisposed as pattern-seeking mammals. Negative outcome patterns, we adjust. Simple as that. It's a defense mechanism at that point.
I think this is a little unfair. At least for me, if I see a black man in a suit and a white man in a suit, I see a man in a suit. If I see a black man with jeans around his ass walking like he's been shot and "looking tough" and a white man dressed the same way I see a man I need to wary of. I'm not sure it's as much a color thing as much as an image thing. For me anyway, the one group of people I have the most wide spread bias over are middle eastern people. If I am flying somewhere, I HATE when middle eastern people get on my plane. Fair? Absolutely not. But because middle eastern people blew up planes, I feel uneasy. Stop blowing shit up ad I have no problem with you.
How do you know what race I am? Is my viewpoint on this unsatisfactory for your cause, thus you assume?
That is not true. I've been followed around stores. I've been asked if I can afford something before I bought it. One time a black guy started cussing me and a friend out because he thought we were store security and we were following him. He stereotyped us LOL. I get what you are saying though. I have to go a couple days without shaving before I start getting followed or watched closely.
Which was my point exactly. It happens to EVERYONE at some point in life. Yet, dviss1 continues to proclaim that white people with their 'privilege' are immune to such prejudice. It's complete nonsense.
Yeah, I mostly agree with what dviss1 is saying about "white privilege", but he talks about it like we are all presented a card at birth that we can present at any moment to get an advantage over minorities at anytime. I use mine to cut in line at Arby's btw. Racial issues in the USA are some complex shit and not so "black and white."
