i made the mistake of reading the comments section at the end of an article in the new york times online. the article was posted today under the headline: majority in city see police as favoring whites, poll finds.
unsurprisingly (to anyone who regularly reads the new york times), this article was a disappointment. the poll had a large margin of error, and i'm dubious of the research tactics. however, the article itself is the real letdown. there is very little 'new' in this 'news' story. in two pages, the journalist takes readers through very tired conversations and arguments: the stop and frisk policy isn't perfect but something must be done, at least new york is dealing better with crime than detroit, and, the kicker, white people commit less crime. this last argument is the one that lingers. this last argument is the one the article is really about.
the article points to the glaring racial divide in opinions about the stop and frisk policy. with less emphasis, it also notes the glaring racial divide in how the stop and frisk policy is implemented. underlying this divide is the false belief that white people just commit less crime. fueled by this inaccuracy, white people across the nation, but specifically in new york for our purposes, contend that people of color should be stopped and frisked more frequently. it's about proportions, really.
of course, this argument is based on false ideas of criminality and an overwhelming lack of attention to institutional racism. do these white people really believe that people of color are that much more likely to commit crimes? because they're, what - bad people at heart? or is it possible that people of color are dealing with a different system than white people? and that 'white people crime' doesn't seem to register with society, like corporate crime? i mean, what is more likely - people of color are inherently more prone to commit crime than white people or there is something going on an institutional level?
the racist arguments which are hinted at but not fully explored by the article are delved into more fully (and bluntly) in the comments section, where suddenly everyone has a statistic about the crime rates of young black men. i wasn't surprised by what i read, but honestly, how depressing is it that i'm not surprised by rampant racism?
