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quote:Originally posted by StrWM no problems/potus:
I would hardly say that the story was an anecdote (as it is) not as if it were funny. I will pass on you(r) concerns to the parties involved.
From the Oxford English Dictionary:
Anecdote: 1) (pl.) Secret or hitherto unpublished details of history. 2) A narrative of an amusing or striking incident.
I'm well aware of the presence of institutionalised racism. If you had actually read one of my previous statements you would have noted that I did mention discussion of the Stephen Lawrence report which did deal very heavily with this.
The Macpherson report is summarised here, discussed here, and the police response is notedhere and here. Your previous statement was read. But if the mere referencing without evidence of actual knowledge of texts were taken as a sign of superior understanding and inte-shit. Rumbled.
I'm not sure where you (are) going with the rest of it, but then again, as you've clearly pointed out, I'm stupid so what does it matter. You attempted correlations eluded me as somewhat unrelated to each other.
Perhaps if you could explain it in simpler terms I may be able to understand.
Switchboard etiquette precludes the suggestion that you are too stupid for it to matter. However, I would humbly suggest that you are not particularly interested in any dialogue beyond passive-aggressive self-justification. Which is really more suited to the Conversation.
However, let us try again. To begin, a possibly useful comment by black police officer Paul Charlton, discussing his experiences:
I've been stopped in my own station before and asked for ID in uniform. I've been stopped driving an unmarked police car and had the keys taken out of the ignition by a police officer who asked me to get out of the car, knowing that no radio check had been done on the car.
One of the most embarrassing incidents was when I went to Wormwood Scrubs to take a prisoner out to an ID parade. I was driving an unmarked police car, with a white colleague in the back who was handcuffed to a black prisoner. We drove into the back of the station and all of a sudden a rapid response car drove right across my path. A WPC got out and banged on the window shouting, "Do you mind telling me who you are?"
Let's look at "no radio check had been done on the car". Obviously, in this case it would have revealed that the car was a police car. However, it would also presumably have revealed that your friend's car had not been reported stolen, something of an oversight even for the flakiest of queens. Since that was not done, the assumtpion that there *was* something to be investigated (evinced by the police car drawing level) was made on the strength of the occupants being black. A very easy process with which to distinguish suspect from object (of police persecution) was discarded in favour of a judgement based on the colour of the driver's skin. To say "this could be seen as fair, as it applies to all equally", as you did, is patently nonsensical, as in this case such a maxim would be "if you are black, you should expect your habit of driving to attract greater interest than if you are white". And thus would be fair only if people were able to exercise the universal choice to be white while driving if they so desired.
Other examples are concerned with the idea that standing near people on demonstrations while they smoke dope is necessarily going to make you more liable to and less enfranchised to complain about police persecution. And, if so, does being at a demo where you *might* find yourself near to some spliffers, and being aware of this fact, make you likewise fair game. It's not quite a reductio ad absurdum, but it does raise some questions. For example, if you are close to an embezzler physically, are you less enfranchised to protest subsequent persecution? And if you look more culpable (by not dressing neatly, being black, looking stoned or like a flaky queen - "Oh my God! It's the police! Get me my dress and my kneepads, Mandy, and cancel lunch!"), are you then again less entitled to protest if the police see you looking perilously proximitous to a wrongdoer and decide to run you down to the cells on an off-chance.
In essence, it is an attempt to make you and others consider the wisdom of the idea that there are a set of simple rules that reduce the likelihood of being clubbed over the head by a truncheon, and failure to follow these is basically the individual's fault - if they knew the score like what Potus does, they would have no problem. It questions both that assumption, particularly with reference to the fact that Potus has a lot of cultural brownie points in the eyes of current police porcedure to start with, and the implication that this is somehow "the way it is" and if people do not behave in manners least offensive to police sensibilities they are asking for it, and it is further their fault if the police also show less awareness of or sympathy for their predicament (see SFD's very moving and apposite post above, which to be honest deserves a better standard of discussion than this).
Any clearer?
[ 09-01-2002: Message edited by: The Haus of Rain ] |
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