Going past all of this..if the officer turns out to be black then what's everyone's stand? It's shaky ground and one dimensional to assume that I am safe if I don't do anything wrong. I decide to remain anonymous on the internet but what if I was black? What if I wasn't? Nobody knows me here except a few of my friends so to blatantly put words in my mouth isn't a fair case. I am very much aware that minorities are subject to this kind of abuse.
I didn't say
you, I said "some of you." If the shoe fits, wear it. Some people
are exhibiting a very sheltered worldview.
If a woman is sexually assaulted and your first instinct is to say, "I bet she was asking for it. She probably dressed like a tramp." that response speaks volumes.
And that's part of what we're dealing with here.
Seriously, make a list of all the things that you do every single day to protect yourself from sexual assault. If you're a guy, that's a very short list - and it probably begins and ends with "don't go to prison." So it really takes some nerve to say, of a rape victim, "It's really easy not to get raped. Just don't put yourself in that situation. Plus, I hear she mouthed off and slapped the guy. Big mistake. Once you strike a man, all bets are off." That's garbage.
That's like Geraldo saying, "parents of dark-skinned children should never let their kids wear hoodies." It places the onus squarely on people of color to avoid triggering any irrational, racist fears. It allows prejudice to create the boundaries within which everyone else must live. Even that's no guarantee.
To just sit there and glibly say, "well, if you don't want your kids to be shot at then don't take them in the car with you when you go shoplifting." is like Mitt Romney telling kids who can't afford to attend college that they should just borrow money from their parents. If you didn't know who Mitt Romney was and you just read his "solution" to out of control tuition costs, would it be unfair to suppose that he might come from a privileged background?
If you make an out of touch assumption, that
does say something about your perspective.
And if the officer was black then would it be racial profiling? Then through learned culture he out of anyone would understand best how is people would act?
The point we're arguing here is if it was excessive or not. If this officer were to be black, which is unlikely considering this is such huge news, I doubt he would be scared of "his own kind". Until further evidence shows up we don't know anything so to automatically scream "IT'S CUZ THEY WERE BLACK" isn't fair to the officer nor the victims.
We
don't have all the facts. My position is that you can't rule out race because this incident didn't occur in a social vacuum.
You've gone so far as to suggest that anyone who thinks race is a factor is "playing the race card." How in the world do you know it
wasn't a factor?
If you see racism as a purely individual act, rather than something systemic, I can understand why you might assume that racism is somehow just a matter of "opposites," like the Black Panther Party is just a "bizarro" Klan, etc. etc. Such a view is lacking in context.
It is not rational to assume that a Black police officer would be more likely to shoot a White suspect due to racial bias. If you look at actual search/arrest data, the trend you'll generally find is that officers of color are LESS biased AGAINST people of color - not that their biases are somehow "inverted" and they go around targeting White people. They're still more likely to stop, search, and arrest people of their own race than they are to stop, search, and arrest White people. This speaks, in part, to the culture of law enforcement, but it also speaks to the hierarchical direction of social bias in popular culture as well.
Let's say, hypothetically, that a woman is denied a promotion even though she's more qualified and experienced than the man who wound up getting the job. If the person who made the decision was also a woman, does that automatically rule out sexism? No. It's entirely possible for a woman to be subconsciously influenced by sexism, to believe that male assertiveness is a sign of confidence while female assertiveness makes her "difficult", "catty", or an "ice queen." Are women, as a group,
less likely to allow sexism to influence hiring decisions? Yes, but they aren't
impervious to it. We all inhabit the same society.
Seriously, do you think there's a special version of COPS out there in which all the perps are White? When you watch "Live and Let Die" on Viacom-owned BET, James Bond is played by Yaphet Kotto and he's chasing down a group of White ecstasy dealers in Chelsea?
There are
prevailing social biases that everyone is exposed to. The difference is, not everyone has the same personal experiences to draw from in counteracting these biases.
Carlton Banks might have made the same decision as this particular police officer, for example, and if that were the case could you really sit back and say, "See? Race has nothing to do with it. Carlton's Black. If anything, he would've been more likely to spare a Black suspect and shoot a White suspect." That makes no sense.
So, when we talk about the possibility that race has influenced the officer's decisions, what we're referring to is our knowledge of PREVAILING social biases, not an assumption about where this particular police officer grew up and what his personal beliefs are.
Essential to the calculus in this case is the assumption of a
threat. Under what circumstances is an unarmed shoplifter presenting mortal danger to an armed security guard with police training?
If it seems like an irrational fear... well... what's the obvious source of irrational fear in this case?
If public intoxication is against the law then citizens are expected to abide. Does it happen? No. But offenders are still breaking the law and on top of that resisting arrest? Meth have you ever been in the field and know the perspectives that an officer has? Anything can happen and if the women were to cooperate everything would have been fine and dandy.
Anything can happen?! That's valid to you? If you're suspected of a crime, anything can happen - and that's acceptable?
Again, that's not what the 19 year old kid running out of the frat house thinks. He's resisting arrest. Should he be shot in the back?
What about that recently posted Youtube video of the kid who pulls out his iphone and starts talking back to the cop? In his world, cops exist to serve people like him. He's gonna "lawyer them" and put them in their place. Clearly he's not concerned about being beaten or shot in the face for being less than 100% compliant/subordinate.
No one's saying that it's okay to shoplift, but if you aren't concerned about what this "shoot first, ask questions later" mentality means to you and to your family then clearly you never expect to be mistaken for a criminal. If that's so, good for you.
What about everyone else?
If you're in the wrong place at the wrong time and a guy who's been following you thinks you're the same person who's been burglarizing his neighborhood, the correct thing to do is just lie down on the ground with your hands behind your back - because otherwise
anything could happen?
You could definitely say that the officer was in the wrong and I can't do anything to change your mind but if you tell me race was a large factor in the pulling of the trigger, you're accusing this man of cold-blooded murder based on RACE which I refuse to believe. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty in this country and this forum (I'm hoping since you stress all topics to be within the borders of the law). The thieves however are not innocent...if they were to go to court they would be guilty. Based on the information we have as of today I'm going to try to connect what few pieces of the puzzle we have.
That's just it: this woman didn't GET to go to court; did she? She didn't receive due process. A Walmart security guard was her judge, jury, and executioner.
He decided she was guilty. He decided she was dangerous. He decided that she deserved to die. If he saw those kids - and this was a car, according to the article, so it's not like they were hidden away in the back of a van - then he apparently decided that their safety was of lesser concern than his. If they were driving AWAY, as witnesses claim, then he wasn't truly in any danger and he believed the value of the stolen merchandise was worth more than every single life in that vehicle.
If you don't think there's any possible chance that race could've been a factor there... I'd love to live in your world. Talk about utopia.
I don't necessarily consider this "cold-blooded murder." More likely, this is a person who succumbed to 1) an irrational fear and 2) a subconscious evaluation of the driver and passengers' worth, both of which may have been influenced by race.
Once you place somebody into this non-human category of "violent criminal," then we get something that's very much like what you're talking about - where "all bets are off" and you get into cartoonish good/bad territory where the hero is well within his or her rights to blow away the baddies in the middle of a public street without even a passing concern for due process, excessive use of force, or collateral damage.
Forgive me if I'm troubled by where that leaves us as a society.
This is the same reason why people are so troubled by the way alleged "terror suspects" are handled without any regard for their rights.
If this is how one can reasonably treat criminals... then we'd better all hope that we're never mistaken for a criminal.
And it's easiest to say, "well that won't ever happen to me or my family" if you don't fit the description.