[Shepp]

Originally Posted by nol

Where the privilege/arrogance comes in is when someone like MBBF is able to pat himself on the back because he once got pulled over without cause and didn't escalate the situation. Two of my friends from St. Louis have related their experiences of being pulled over without cause multiple times (most commonly Ferguson and Ladue, so this isn't related to the demographics/crime rate in a particular locality). They've handled these instances even better than MBBF or anyone else here has; anyone can make a free throw, but going 20-20 is a different story.

For everyone playing the "not all cops handle things perfectly" card, that goes double for any other group in society that isn't specifically trained in how to handle potentially lethal situations. If some small fraction of the cops one could encounter are hotheads who take things too far and some small fraction of people are hotheads who will escalate things further, there will be a certain proportion of situations (1 in 10,000 encounters, whatever you want to call it) that result in a needless loss of life. Loss of privilege is knowing you have to prostrate yourself in the face of law enforcement, no matter how unjust the circumstances, because your skin tone and the neighborhood you're in already means you're on strike 2.

It's the feeling my friends have when they know that just because it's happened to them 15-20 times and they've dealt with it the "right" way each time, they can't pat themselves on the back because the exact same thing will happen again. It's the feeling my friends have where they think back on the 15-20 times they've been stopped without cause and realize that if they were having a bad day one of those times and deviated in the slightest from just sitting there and nodding, that could have been all some officer needed to claim that some amount of force (lethal or otherwise) was justified. It's the feeling that in those situations, their prior history (which includes graduating from Ivy League universities and attending medical school, for the dog whistle crowd ready to post the usual crap about "durr they'll see where that victim mentality gets them in life") means nothing and they're just as expendable as any other black kid.

So you are saying that in a town that is majority black, that when the police stop someone who is black, it is because the officer is picking on them?