Originally Posted by
hugepatsfan
I know Barstool sports isn't exactly the go-to for a lot of people's politics but I thought the founder made a great point. He talked about how when he sees police officers, he doesn't feel scared and he was saying our goal needs to be to get to a place where African American people can feel the same way where they view cops as protection and not threats.
I think to get there we need to look at the opposite too. We need to get to a place where cops don't feel threatened by African Americans. There's a deep history of prejudice against African Americans. There's this perception that they're lazy, they're uneducated, etc. But the strongest one is that they're violent or that they're criminals. I don't know how we really break that cycle.
Would anyone here like to be a black man in a hoodie right now walking through a group of cops? I'm sure someone will say "bUt Im Not DoInG aNyThInG wRoNg WhY wOuLd I bE sCaReD???". I'll respond to that ahead of time... take a DEEP look inside and consider everything you've seen in life. Can you honestly say with a straight face that there's not the strong possibility that you're stereotyped and followed, questioned, harassed, or worse?
But now I'm also going to ask another difficult question... would anyone here like to sign up to wear a police uniform and walk by themselves through an inner city, mostly African American community right now? Considering the climate of what's going on right now can you honestly say you feel safe in that situation? Can you honestly say you wouldn't feel some heightened sense of risk there?
I don't think we can have any peace between the police and the African American community until we fix those answers. It has to start with the police. African American distrust of the police is comes from generations of deep rooted racism. That can never go away. The African American community is going to be apprehensive and distrustful of the police for the rest of our lives. We can't skip over that. We can't pretend that's not real. You're not going to snap your fingers and call a truce all of a sudden. That's not real life, it doesn't work like that.
There's no quick fix to systematic issues. I think the first step that any of us can take is to see people as individuals. There's a saying of "I don't see color" that is often criticized for being tone-deaf and ignoring the plight of minorities. I think we need to shift that saying not to that we don't see color but that we aren't influenced by it. I think we should all see people for who they are as human beings. And part of that is acknowledging their color and all that it entails. I think we have to see their color and even if we can never really "understand" what that means we can be empathetic to the climate of the world we're all seeing and recognize what they might think of things.
