This piece is good. Jason Whitlock has the best analysis I've yet seen. The idea should be that a person's safety when out in public is his own responsibility. Being afraid of the police is not peculiar to black Americans. All of us are a little afraid of the police. It's necessary. You may say hello to one on the street in passing, but generally, if they know who you are, it's for a reason you wouldn't want. When the police pull you over in your car, deescalation is a collaboration. Both you and the police need to keep it as the goal. (And I'm not familiar with the timeline of events in the tragedy of Tyre Nichols. I'm just saying generally.)
It's hard for me to imagine parents of any race not discussing with their kids the need to cooperate and comply with the police. That being said, there are definitely situations where even cooperation is not enough to keep you out of trouble, but I believe those cases are not the norm.
I also have some suspicion there were other issues involved besides a simple vehicular stop in this particular case (personal vendetta of some sort?) but I could be wrong.
I have no problem with the broader discussion of police brutality and improper policing techniques, but to blame every bad encounter on racism will not help.
Agree. Look at the stage we are in right now. People get on their soapbox and proclaim 'being white, you never had to hear the deadly serious talk about how you must mind your P's and Q's when encountering the police' and we are expected listen politely. It is impossibly arrogant for them to claim they might know such a thing. I don't recall any microphones around the kitchen table broadcasting our conversation to the public.
Nor were fears about being on the wrong end of abuse of other kinds of authority unheard of. My brother would tell us of friends who got slapped around by their faculty, hall monitors and others, in Catholic school. You could be in world of trouble if they didn't care for the way you were speaking to them.
The whole conversation has morphed into a type of mania.
To your other point: the person who has the option to use force and never falters in judgment is a popular myth. Lucas McCain, for example. But that's fiction. Again, keeping peaceful society is a collaborative effort. We have to remember that while the police can be miscreants, more often, they are just humans possessing the standard imperfections.
This piece is good. Jason Whitlock has the best analysis I've yet seen. The idea should be that a person's safety when out in public is his own responsibility. Being afraid of the police is not peculiar to black Americans. All of us are a little afraid of the police. It's necessary. You may say hello to one on the street in passing, but generally, if they know who you are, it's for a reason you wouldn't want. When the police pull you over in your car, deescalation is a collaboration. Both you and the police need to keep it as the goal. (And I'm not familiar with the timeline of events in the tragedy of Tyre Nichols. I'm just saying generally.)
It's hard for me to imagine parents of any race not discussing with their kids the need to cooperate and comply with the police. That being said, there are definitely situations where even cooperation is not enough to keep you out of trouble, but I believe those cases are not the norm.
I also have some suspicion there were other issues involved besides a simple vehicular stop in this particular case (personal vendetta of some sort?) but I could be wrong.
I have no problem with the broader discussion of police brutality and improper policing techniques, but to blame every bad encounter on racism will not help.
Agree. Look at the stage we are in right now. People get on their soapbox and proclaim 'being white, you never had to hear the deadly serious talk about how you must mind your P's and Q's when encountering the police' and we are expected listen politely. It is impossibly arrogant for them to claim they might know such a thing. I don't recall any microphones around the kitchen table broadcasting our conversation to the public.
Nor were fears about being on the wrong end of abuse of other kinds of authority unheard of. My brother would tell us of friends who got slapped around by their faculty, hall monitors and others, in Catholic school. You could be in world of trouble if they didn't care for the way you were speaking to them.
The whole conversation has morphed into a type of mania.
To your other point: the person who has the option to use force and never falters in judgment is a popular myth. Lucas McCain, for example. But that's fiction. Again, keeping peaceful society is a collaborative effort. We have to remember that while the police can be miscreants, more often, they are just humans possessing the standard imperfections.