A White Woman, Racism, and a Poodle

June 21, 2020 2:21 PM

She couldn't figure out why she kept getting pulled over. "[The officer] looked in the window and flashed his light on Merlin and his demeanor changed. The stern look on his face disappeared, but he seemed…annoyed… I guess is the best word. I thought I was going to get a ticket for Merlin being in the front seat. He didn’t ask if I’d been drinking or had any weapons. He asked to see my license, looked at it under his flashlight and handed it back. Then he explained he pulled me over because I was going 3 miles under the speed limit and was impeding traffic. There were no other cars on the road. I said I was not aware of it. He told me to keep an eye on it and that he was giving me a warning. I thanked him. He walked back to his car." (via @donttrythis)
posted by Kat Allison (55 comments total)

If police officers were more likely to stop black drivers, we would expect black drivers to make up a smaller share of stopped drivers after sunset, when it’s harder to see the driver’s race. That’s exactly what we found — even after controlling for other factors like location and time of day. Barr says there’s no systemic racism in policing. Our data says the attorney general is wrong.
posted by sourcejedi at 2:46 PM on June 21, 2020 [88 favorites]

3 mph under the speed limit is impeding traffic? No, that was their ready-made excuse once they realized that it was not a Black man in the car. Because it happened not just once. Sounds like "impeding traffic" is to go-to after-the-fact reason when they can't really justify pulling someone over.
posted by sundrop at 2:58 PM on June 21, 2020 [42 favorites]

Hopefully a story that will reach folks who might not be able to personally identify with experiences of folks less like them.
posted by rmd1023 at 3:07 PM on June 21, 2020 [21 favorites]

Goddamn, what a story. I already believed it, though honestly it wasn't until a lot of recent reading and watching things that it struck me how entirely pervasive it is, how enraging it must be. I mean, the system is designed so we white people won't notice. I live in Evanston, Illinois, a diverse and fairly liberal town and on a recent Zoom meeting, our Chief of Police defended "warrior training" which you may have read about recently like I did, the pseudoscience of "Killology". It is repulsive. Never would I have guessed that was a thing HERE. (Full disclosure: I was not born here and have not historically kept up on local politics except like many people, a bit more since 2016).

A few weeks ago Amber Ruffin (previously) told a police encounter story each day for four days. These were not her only stories, just a handful from a long list. She is a fairly petite (hilarious) Black woman and I guess I would have thought her stories would be different from those of say, large Black men. Well they are, but they aren't. Here is a compilation of the four stories.
posted by Glinn at 3:21 PM on June 21, 2020 [42 favorites]

RIP Merlin.

We need to get cops of the streets.
posted by synthedelic at 3:26 PM on June 21, 2020 [21 favorites]

This is the behaviour policing algorithms and related "AI" projects are replicating, only they're doubling up on racist policy and biased programming. I read this story and I'm reminded of "random" security checks that the same person gets over and over, or facial recognition that incorrectly identifies one person as a criminal over and over again.

When a process gets something wrong, on purpose or by accident, 5 or 10% (or more) of the time, its' not evenly distributed throughout the population. It's not that 100% of the population gets screwed 5 or 10% of the time, it's that 5 or 10% of the population get screwed 100% of the time.
posted by krisjohn at 3:29 PM on June 21, 2020 [46 favorites]

A fucking C fucking A fucking B.
posted by Frayed Knot at 3:29 PM on June 21, 2020 [51 favorites]

I feel like there's a million-and-one different ways we could enforce traffic laws without such an arbitrary system.

I don't know how often black drivers get pulled over (and how much extra commute time / job search time they require to compensate), but I do know I've been pulled over and let off with a warning so many, many times when I probably warranted a ticket or some serious questions. Like the time I got pulled over for failure to yield to an actual cop car with an insulin syringe tucked behind each ear. My friends in the car gave me crap for that after getting over the shock of it.
posted by BrotherCaine at 3:33 PM on June 21, 2020 [7 favorites]

I feel like there's a million-and-one different ways we could enforce traffic laws without such an arbitrary system.

[whispering] the arbitrary part is the point, the whole entire point [/whispering]
posted by mhoye at 3:37 PM on June 21, 2020 [54 favorites]

I can't help but reflect that in other nations traffic enforcement isn't nearly such a big focus and it often isn't handled by regular police.

In America we try to make police vehicles non-identifiable as police vehicles so that cops can issue more tickets. In America one of the most frequent activities for a cop is traffic enforcement.

I recall that in Ferguson local taxes had been cut to almost zero and the city was making almost all of its budget from fines issued by the police, mostly traffic fines but also miscellaneous fines (too many people in your front yard, stuff like that), almost all issued to black people.

And that's leaving out the straight up robbery conducted by police via civil asset forfeiture.

By making the police a revenue generating organization we've provided the police a powerful mechanism for abusing people of color, and for extracting money from the ethnic groups most likely to be poverty stricken.

Everything in American policing comes back to white supremacy.
posted by sotonohito at 3:53 PM on June 21, 2020 [108 favorites]

I don't think that police officer discretion should be a thing. I'm not sure if prosecutorial discretion is any better, but at least that seems (at least to me) less abused. I personally benefited from police officer discretion once, but it was with a law that was (in my opinion) silly and using discretion to work around it is a band-aid, not a solution. If police officers are required to enforce all violations they see, then at the very least we can have some of the racial bias in police enforcement affect all people. Perhaps it will even lead to writing better laws.
posted by saeculorum at 3:59 PM on June 21, 2020 [1 favorite]

There's the Law.
And then there's Order.
They are not the same thing.
If they were, why mention both?

So maybe you can have one with out the other.
Which would you choose?
posted by rustipi at 4:03 PM on June 21, 2020 [13 favorites]

I used to drive a stretch of interstate near Ferguson on my commute. It's known as a speed trap - something like a dozen municipalities that include a tiny slice of highway, so they can justify pulling people over. Every municipality exists only to have a police department and city officers.

Anyway, being a data dork, I decided to informally poll how many black vs white drivers I encountered on that stretch over a couple weeks. It was about 80% white, 20% black.

Then I tallied up the race of the driver of every car I saw pulled over. It was more than 50% black.

This does not surprise me.
posted by notsnot at 4:10 PM on June 21, 2020 [19 favorites]

Everything in American policing comes back to white supremacy.

The other day, Trump said something along the lines of how he didn't think suburban women wanted to defund police.

A dogwhistle so loud that even my ears hurt from it.

BIPOC women live in the suburbs too, but we know he wasn't talking about them.

I thought of Birth of A Nation and how one of the primary objectives of the Klan as portrayed in that movie was to protect well-behaved white women from black people, all of whom were a viewed as a lethal and critical threat to white safety. Some of those that work forces....
posted by lord_wolf at 4:10 PM on June 21, 2020 [53 favorites]

Sounds like "impeding traffic" is to go-to after-the-fact reason when they can't really justify pulling someone over.

That was the justification for pulling them over. And going 5mph too fast would be another justification for pulling them over, and asking the standard "Slave Patrol" questions. "Where are you coming from? Where are you going? Why are you here?"
posted by mikelieman at 4:25 PM on June 21, 2020 [14 favorites]

By making the police a revenue generating organization we've provided the police a powerful mechanism for abusing people of color, and for extracting money from the ethnic groups most likely to be poverty stricken.

Since the police are a mechanism for abusing people of color, we made them a revenue generating organization to extract money from ethnic groups.
posted by axiom at 4:54 PM on June 21, 2020 [17 favorites]

Well, the dog should have just...

No, I can’t even finish the damn joke.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:57 PM on June 21, 2020 [3 favorites]

Speedometers aren't even that accurate.

I know it's a minor point in the scheme of things. It's an obviously bullshit reason for pulling someone over regardless. But, like, it makes it even more brazen - their bullshit reason for pulling over Black drivers is a rule no one can even reliably follow.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 5:24 PM on June 21, 2020 [9 favorites]

how cars transformed policing

"The overpolicing of cars is a fact of life for people of color in the United States. Although Bland was not killed during the traffic stop, in 2015, the year of her death, 27 percent of police killings of unarmed citizens began with a traffic stop. "

posted by entropicamericana at 5:42 PM on June 21, 2020 [15 favorites]

Armed officer should not be doing traffic stops. Traffic violations should not be a revenue source and should not end in death.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:08 PM on June 21, 2020 [56 favorites]

This NPR article is what really made American racism sink in for me. It details Philando Castile's history of harassment by police: he was pulled over in his car at least 46 times in 14 years, and all but 6 of the times were for invisible reasons. That is, likely because he had dreadlocks.
posted by erinfern at 6:13 PM on June 21, 2020 [30 favorites]

The myth of PerSoNAL ResPoNsbiLitY has utterly ruined this country.

Because that's always the go to excuse from half the nation whenever racism rears its ugly head.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 6:36 PM on June 21, 2020 [14 favorites]

Sounds like "impeding traffic" is to go-to after-the-fact reason when they can't really justify pulling someone over.

What happened to "weaving within your lane"?
posted by thelonius at 7:45 PM on June 21, 2020

When self-driving cars become the thing, we should make dark tinted windows standard.
posted by thorny at 8:02 PM on June 21, 2020 [3 favorites]

I'd bet some of those officers had a strong suspicion she was trolling them.

And if any of them had been sure of it, she'd have gotten a graduate level lesson in what's wrong with American policing. So, privileged... and lucky.
posted by jamjam at 9:10 PM on June 21, 2020 [1 favorite]

The one time in recent memory I was pulled over, (a bit over, ok, yes sure, but many many passing, slowest ever on that stretch actually) didn't get a ticket. But I was giving a ride to a Chem Professor friend that well was born in a central american county. No way to know but still have mixed feelings.
posted by sammyo at 9:17 PM on June 21, 2020

The law invented the concept of officer discretion so white drivers could get fewer speeding tickets.
posted by ckape at 9:34 PM on June 21, 2020 [21 favorites]

I have two relevant stories tot he article that make me believe it 100%

One: I didn't really believe profiling was a thing cops did until I was 20ish and bought a second car and would switch back and forth between the two essentially at random. The car I was already driving was a burgundy '66 Chrysler Windor 2DR hardtop. The new pony in my stable was an 84 Pontiac Fiero painted black.

I never once got pulled over in the '66. Not for anything. Ever. I would get pulled over 2-4 times a month driving the Fiero. I'm not sure I ever went more than a couple weeks without an interaction with the cops if I was driving it regularly. I only got ticketed once (for inoperative equipment (foglights)) in the Fiero but it was constant harassment. Bullshit warnings for speed; warnings for acceleration; conversations about what I was doing in this neighbourhood and where I was going; waiting while officer friendly measured suspension points; discussions about a lack of wheel coverage¹, etc. etc. This despite the '66 having 4.5 times the power of the Fiero and being way more comfortable to crusie at speed in. But the '66 looked like something your grandmother would drive and was completely invisible to cops. And the Fiero was all boy racer and attracted cops like ants to a picnic.

At any rate profiling is totally a thing I've believed in for 30 years now.

Two: my father, El, drove tow truck when I was kid and all the independents in town were using CBs to communicate with their dispatch and each other. One day my mother, Bee, gets this frantic call from one other the other dispatchers, Dee. Dee reports El is stepping out on Bee because her husband saw El driving around with a gorgeous blonde.

This comes as a bit of shock to my mother but things return to normal when it's figured out that El wasn't riding with a blonde of the human variety but rather his Samoyed dog fresh from the groomers.

I don't think that police officer discretion should be a thing.

As it stands now vast swaths of traffic law is discretionary as written. Take for example the BC Stunting law:

"stunt" means circumstances in which, taking into account the condition of the highway, traffic, visibility and weather, the driver or operator of a motor vehicle is driving or operating the motor vehicle without reasonable consideration for other persons using the highway or in a manner that is likely to cause harm to an individual or likely to distract, startle or interfere with users of the highway

Right off the top it references subjective metrics like vehicle condition, weather, and traffic. It throws in modifiers like reasonable and likely. It doesn't define terms like what behaviour is distracting.

Traffic laws are littered with undefined subjective terms like "safe distance", "reasonable and prudent", "reasonable safety", "reasonably possible".

Traffic cops probably encounter 100 or more infractions for every car they pull over. Forcing them to ticket every person who strays to close to the line or exceed the limit by a single kilometre per hour is counter productive.

[1] In my jurisdiction fenders have to completely cover the tire when viewed from the top however an exception is if the factory equipment is mounted which it was on my car which meant like 1 centimetre of tire was exposed. No way you could tell just driving by. It was a bullshit excuse. Either cops knew this car's tires stuck out and were using it as an excuse to pull me over in the first place; or they'd use it as gotcha like the 3 under thing once they had me pulled over.
posted by Mitheral at 11:37 PM on June 21, 2020 [6 favorites]

I can't help but reflect that in other nations traffic enforcement isn't nearly such a big focus and it often isn't handled by regular police.

In New Zealand, that's exactly what used to be the case. But I bet they still profiled based on race. At least they weren't carrying guns, I suppose (and although the police are now responsible for traffic in NZ too, they don't normally carry guns either, so race profiling in traffic is highly unlikely to be a death sentence.) It's still terrible though.

Until we do a LOT better about diversity in agencies that have power over people, and about rooting out white supremacy, passing tasks currently handled by police over to other agencies will not solve most problems other than those that involve firearms (which is still plenty). It's not that I don't support abolishing the police - I absolutely do - but we also need to do something about the fact that social workers, and insurance agents, and lawyers and private security and even neighbourhood mutual aid groups can also be just as racist.
posted by lollusc at 1:35 AM on June 22, 2020 [8 favorites]

The law invented the concept of officer discretion so white drivers could get fewer speeding tickets. If we want to have fair and equitable policing, we’ll have to get over our hatred for speed cameras.

Putting speed cameras on long straight pieces of flat road (which is what road traffic safety authorities almost universally do) is just another way of taxing at random. Worse still when you can only get [x] number of speeding tickets per [y] time period and lose your license in a lot of states. Going 5mph over a few times? Well you're obviously a dangerous menace that needs to be removed from the road for three months.

Traffic enforcement isn't about public safety. If it were we'd have a holistic, evidence based approach to lowering road fatalities. Pedestrian fatalities are at the highest they've ever been along with motorcyclists. How is having any police on the highway even a thing? If anything it's just a shortcut for keeping taxes down. Fix dangerous roads? That costs money. Why do that when you can stick a cop on the safest pieces of road to pull over black people and think you're doing something?

I remember back home there was a road called Reid Hwy. It's a major thoroughfare that is part of a beltway that goes around Perth, Western Australia. For the longest time the highway had intersections. The highway, with a speed limit of 55mph, would go to 50mph upon getting closer to the lights but the lights were at the bottom of an artificial valley. This was graded for the eventual flyovers that would go over the intersections to make them grade separated but what happened every time it rained? Even going legal speed people just hydroplaned into the intersection and crashed.

All of the intersections along Reid Hwy were the most deadly in the state. All of them were black spots. Everyone knew it. So does the government accelerate the construction of flyovers? Nah. Put more speed cameras on the road. Stick them in the middle in between the two intersections. Didn't affect the fatality rate but the government sure got a hell of a revenue spike from it. At least now it's fully grade separated.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 5:28 AM on June 22, 2020 [11 favorites]

Going 5mph over a few times? Well you're obviously a dangerous menace that needs to be removed from the road for three months.

Accurate.
posted by ambrosen at 5:34 AM on June 22, 2020 [3 favorites]

Accurate.

That's what they do to BIPOC though. Everyone goes 5mph over but BIPOC get pulled over for it at vastly higher rates. Then if their license does get suspended they get arrested for driving on a suspended license because they gotta get to work and buses universally suck in 95% of the US. Or worse still they run because they're undocumented and they'll get deported and lose everything. Another BIPOC gets grinded through the criminal "justice" system. Stats look worse for BIPOC, people think BIPOC commit more crimes, "mAYbe tHEy sHOuLD TAkE SOME PeRSOnal RESPOnsIbIlitY".

No. The solution isn't to indiscriminately expose people to this system. This system of broken window public safety is fucking broken. Punishments should not be determined by race or chance.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 5:58 AM on June 22, 2020 [18 favorites]

A friend of my inlaws is a little old lady, on oxygen, who drives herself to the casino on a regular basis. When she got her new car -- a black Cadillac with all the bells and whistles and tinted windows -- she started getting pulled over late at night for no obvious reason (and always released without even a warning) when coming home from the casino, and she bristled when she figured out that the cops were expecting...someone else... in a tricked out caddy instead of a little old casino lady.
posted by AzraelBrown at 6:05 AM on June 22, 2020 [9 favorites]

Well this is sure to help goldendoodle sales

There's already bias against black dogs in the adoption process.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:12 AM on June 22, 2020 [9 favorites]

Mod note: As a quick note: This post isn't about speeders, it's about racism, and cops targeting Black drivers / passengers. Please drop the "but what about speeders" derail. Thanks.
posted by taz (staff) at 6:12 AM on June 22, 2020 [12 favorites]

Something about this doesn't feel exactly right to me. Not that the story isn't true--I'm sure it is. But why is it such a popular story? (I've seen it shared all over social media.) Aren't there already a million stories reported by black people about being continually pulled over for suspect reasons? And that wasn't enough for us. It saddens me that we 'need' this kind of story to make it feel more true that racism exists. We share it on social media and say, see? See? Um. Yes.
posted by BeBoth at 8:38 AM on June 22, 2020 [7 favorites]

Aren't there already a million stories reported by black people about being continually pulled over for suspect reasons? And that wasn't enough for us. It saddens me that we 'need' this kind of story to make it feel more true that racism exists.

That's because the people who need to hear this the most are the ones who discount or dismiss the stories by black people. They need to hear this from "one of their own" to make it clear.

When talking with my family about this subject, I have to pull out the story about being pulled over at night for a rolling stop and then quickly being let go only to see black people pulled out of their cars and being frisked at the same spot time after time later on. They listen then.
posted by charred husk at 8:48 AM on June 22, 2020 [12 favorites]

Pedestrian fatalities are at the highest they've ever been along with motorcyclists.

And it's BIPOC pedestrians who are disproportionately killed by drivers. I can only speak about LA but I'm sure this is true elsewhere, too, but here high-speed corridors were constructed through predominantly Black and Latinx neighborhoods... the roadways enable high speed, low visibility, and a lack of safe places for pedestrian crossings, often in places where a lot of people are walking to reach school, grocery stores, the bus, their church, etc. Specifically to be convenient to the mostly white commuters breezing through at the expense of the people who live there.

When we talk about making roadways safer, we should be talking about reconstructing roads in these BIPOC communities so that people can walk safely. Adding accessible crosswalks and sidewalks, narrowing streets to prevent speeding, etc. Cops on highways issuing tickets have very little to do with saving lives on roadways.
posted by Emily's Fist at 8:55 AM on June 22, 2020 [11 favorites]

I don’t think this story “makes it more true;” it just more deeply exposes just how batshit insane and trigger-happy cops are in their racism. Like, not only do they go crazy when they see an actual Black person, but they go crazy when they see anything that even remotely remind them of a Black person.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:57 AM on June 22, 2020 [10 favorites]

But why is it such a popular story?
Because liberal white social media loves feel-good stories about how a liberal white person Learned About Racism.
posted by TwoStride at 9:33 AM on June 22, 2020 [6 favorites]

they go crazy when they see anything that even remotely remind them of a Black person.

And are visibly disappointed when it turns out it's a poodle.
posted by mikelieman at 9:50 AM on June 22, 2020 [4 favorites]

But why is it such a popular story?
For me, I have told this story to my friends after reading it. And yes, it also surprised me that this is the one I talk about. But I think it's an attractive story, because it's insane, and because it allowed me to highlight how *different* she gets treated with/without her dog.
Other stories share numbers/stats, or just the experience of BIPOC, but this one allows one person to share the experience of the difference of being treated as a white person, and as someone with a supposed BIPOC nearby.


Because liberal white social media loves feel-good stories about how a liberal white person Learned About Racism.
To me this wasn't a feel good story about her learning about racism as well. But perhaps (being a white woman myself), it painted a clearer picture, and in a way shared an understandable experience of how pervasive the unfair treatment of BIPOC is.

(Btw I am not in the US, but I have lived there)
(And I understand it's stupid that I have been more attracted to this story, but as a story, it simply works, perhaps also because it has a funny element (the misunderstood poodle).)
posted by Thisandthat at 11:00 AM on June 22, 2020 [1 favorite]

This story is particularly useful to illustrate racism in policing because there was no reason for the cops to pull her over. Every warning was for obstructing the flow of traffic while driving the speed limit, which is very hard to argue is not a trumped-up excuse. No burnt-out taillight. No tag scraped off the license plate. No rolling stop.
posted by JawnBigboote at 11:38 AM on June 22, 2020 [9 favorites]

But that is my point, JawnBibBoote. There is often no reason for the cops to pull over black people either. But this story is the one that strikes a nerve with people.
posted by BeBoth at 11:51 AM on June 22, 2020 [3 favorites]

It's an appealing story to white people because the reader has to join the dots, which gives them a nice "aha" moment, they get to figure it out themselves, and for all the white people who are uncomfortable with hearing Black people's stories from Black people, they get to hear a story about a white lady and her dog.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 12:56 PM on June 22, 2020

I’ve shared that story for the remedial white people skulking in the back of the room, hoping to get counted, snag a cookie, and sneak out the back. They need these stories so that they can identify, feel the actual justified umbrage and start to see “those other people” as more like themselves. I appreciate that white woman connecting the dots and sharing her story.
posted by amanda at 1:05 PM on June 22, 2020

Driving While Black has been a named thing as an object of study and protest (and membership; there was a club in CA in the 1990s IIRC). But as with much racial justice, it's not really a problem until "a white lady and her dog" experience a problem.
posted by TwoStride at 1:17 PM on June 22, 2020 [6 favorites]

Like, why does it have to be an "understandable experience"? How are imaginations so weak that one cannot see the daily evidence and actually take it in?

This is exactly like the problem of framing female victims as "somebody's mother/daughter/sister"--like, is their only value relational?
posted by TwoStride at 1:18 PM on June 22, 2020 [17 favorites]

I think the appeal of this story highlights how many of us white people still have a subconscious desire to blame the victim of police abuse to avoid the truth about policing as a system. Even people who accept “bad apples,” even people who accept “defund the police.” There are so many white people who would read about Philando Castile’s ticket record and even just subconsciously think of ways to justify it rather than see the horror for what it is. (“I know this is weird but what if he loved to speed? Well maybe he technically was breaking the rules and it was enforced unfairly?”) But this white woman gets pulled over a handful of extra times without even getting a ticket and it’s like “wow how inconvenient for her, that’s so ridiculous.” The cultural desire to defend and protect and believe the white woman kicks in. I don’t know whether that reinforces and strengthens bad instinct or whether it uses that instinct to subvert racism and thus weakens it. But I imagine watching this shareable experience is painful for a lot of people who’ve been talking about this for a long time and seeing how little white people seem to care when the words come out of their mouths, compared to a story about a dog.
posted by sallybrown at 2:49 PM on June 22, 2020 [9 favorites]

Absolutely. It's disgusting. A failure of imagination at best and purposeful racism at worst. But it's a good story for trying to reach those who need reaching. Keep fighting the good fight on all fronts. I want to keep nudging those idiots "on the fence" toward the right thing. And if you are on the fence, then I don't mean you, I mean those other idiots. My partner and I had a conversation about the supposed moderates. The conservatives who are feeling "without a party" and those guys make me so angry. But, here's the thing, the reason they are confused and don't know what to do is because their dominant world view actually doesn't square. It doesn't pencil. Their supposed core values of economics and taxes along with vague moral positioning do not goddamn square with what's going on right now and it hasn't squared for years (if ever).

This woman's story is part of the evidence that the mythical American dream (*reserved for a narrow slice of white people only) doesn't square. You have to build a new better and if you find yourself on the correct side of history using her evidence then I'll take it. People demonstrated after all of these murders of Black people and some things were changed, some policies were enacted, some programs were funded but, again, within the reality of the status quo. It didn't work. I can't say I'm optimistic but I do try to stay focused. You don't have to like this story at all. But, if you need one in your back pocket to try to nudge a person who for some idiotic reason still needs the gentlest of nudges, then this is a pretty good one.
posted by amanda at 4:00 PM on June 22, 2020 [2 favorites]

What TwoStride said. It is atrocious that you have to dress a story up with a white lady and a poodle to access folks' empathy. The act of "meeting people where they are" can be fucking infuriating.
posted by kaelynski at 5:47 PM on June 22, 2020 [7 favorites]

Yeah, it turns out a good way to teach people in a racist society that the racism exists is to use a demonstrative story that contains no Black people so that the people being taught don't have a chance to engage in racism by blaming the victim and excusing the white cops. Because of the racism in the racist society. That is infuriating but on reflection probably not all that surprising. Because of the racism.
posted by axiom at 1:03 PM on June 23, 2020 [8 favorites]

I imagine this story is appealing for the same reason that this story is popular: "What Happened When A Man Signed Work Emails Using A Female Name For 2 Weeks": it gives us a definitive demonstration of the hypothesized phenomenon at work by accounting for every other factor that could possibly affect the outcome.

Studies that prove racism by switching names on top of resumes, for example, use the same principle. Like, the reason that's a convincing experiment is not because white people are all sitting around horrified that some Emily they know would have been discriminated against if she'd happened to be called Lakeesha, right? That's not why folks are convinced by it?

I'm not saying we don't disbelieve and dehumanize Black people and other PoC. Of course we do. I'm saying that disbelief and dehumanization isn't the reason why this story is (imo deservedly) popular. It just has good experiment design built into it!
posted by MiraK at 1:36 PM on June 23, 2020 [10 favorites]

Suppose a person of any race were to claim that not only do white police fear and hate Black people, and tend to attack and even murder Black people when they think they can get away with it (which is most of the time), they will go way out of their way to prevent white women from having anything at all to do with Black men.

A lot of people, including some Black friends of mine, perhaps because knowing you are doomed to live in such a hostile world is a huge and often overwhelming burden, might be inclined to say that claim is a little extreme.

This story is an antidote to that.
posted by jamjam at 2:54 PM on June 23, 2020 [1 favorite]

Years ago a friend tried to do genetic forensics consulting for police. As en example, from a drop of blood you can determine eye color, hair color, ear shape, some ancestry, and a bunch of physical attributes. The one attribute the cops were dying to know and were very disappointed when it turned out to be difficult to predict? Skin color.
posted by benzenedream at 1:48 AM on June 25, 2020 [4 favorites]