A number of recent stories have come up where white people called the police about the normal every-day activities of black people.
A common reaction to the public uproar when these stories are reported is, “I wasn’t being racist.”
We’ve also heard: “It wasn’t about race.”
“We don’t want to be racist.”
“He/She doesn’t have a racist bone in his/her body.”
“We are an inclusive (name of enterprise here) and don’t discriminate against anyone.”
Here are some recent events some of which involve the police, some of which are just displays of hatred for humanity at large:
Woman doesn’t like Tennessee Real estate investor
Sneering guy at coffee bean and tea leaf who is afraid of young women
New York man who hates languages
Starbucks — waiting while black
Hobby Lobby — Look Hobby Lobby are just shitty people
Oakland BBQ — self appointed park monitor
Golf course — too slow for face-paced sport of golf
The above listed stories can be divided into three categories:
1.) Blatant racist cretins.
2.) People who decided that black customers are automatically suspicious and not deserving of common courtesy.
3.) Allegedly well-meaning white people who call the police on their fellow Americans who are just going about their own business.
The first category is one we have a handle on. They are not hard to figure out; not hard to read. They are racist scum bags who are “the problem”. This is straight up racism. The push back in all three of these cases is heartening to see.
The second group is a problematic one. These are people who think they are doing right by some entity: The store, public order, protecting the profits of a multinational corporation.
The two Starbucks situations appear to involve the most basic institutional racism in our society. Black people at a coffee shop are seen as lesser than white people. A white guy just using the bathroom is “just a guy using the bathroom”, but a black guy just using the bathroom must be freeloading or somehow getting an unfair advantage through the use of plumbing. Two guys waiting for another guy — you know like one would to at the so-called “third place” that Starbucks so desperately wants to be — would probably go unnoticed if they were white. Two African American men are somehow a threat in the exact same environment.
These employees have made it clear that white customers enjoy a different set of privileges than black customers at Starbucks.
Hobby Lobby is an entirely different story. The Supreme Court has already decided that Hobby Lobby officially enjoys its own set of rights, and even gets to decide that basic reproductive science is wrong. Hobby Lobby’s owners also smuggled 5,500 stolen ancient artifacts our of Iraq. It’s no wonder that Hobby Lobby thinks it can abuse its black patrons. If anyone wants to pretend that this was not intended to harm the customer trying to exercise his rights as a consumer, look to the part of the story where it was decided he would be charged with “trespassing” (note: this is a different link than the one above). The store personnel did not like the customer, and were prepared eager to make his attempt to do business with them result in his arrest.
This is the America that we hear our brethren of color talk about every day. This is the America that they don’t talk about when it becomes too burdensome to discuss.
The third group of stories all involve people who have claimed no racial animus in the situation at hand. (though versions of events in Oakland point to blatant racism, the woman herself claims, “It has nothing to do with their race.”)
And there’s the point. Just because you Think you’re not acting out of racism, there’s a strong likelihood that your choice to call the police if entirely based on race.
For the woman in Rialto, CA, one wonders if 4 white women were all getting into a car with luggage, she would have called the police.
If four other white men were going “too slowly” on the golf course in PA, would the men have called the cops? It seems unlikely.
In both of those situations, the people who called the cops didn’t see a group of fellow citizens going about their business. They saw “black people”. White people have been told that black people are lesser; that black lives don’t matter. The easiest and laziest thing to do is call the police when a white person sees a person of color who is not acting according to the white persons internal set of rules.
The golfers and the lady across from the air BnB house could, of course, just have minded their own business and let their fellow Americans do the same, but they were compelled to report activity that looked wrong to them.
The golf course management has claimed that they are an inclusive club, and everyone is welcome. The reality is that everyone is welcome as long as they are white and preferably men. Everyone else is on probation and can be treated like criminals by the other members on a whim. That’s not inclusive.
The Air BnB neighbor claims that she was not acting out of racial animus, it’s just that the guests at the neighbor’s house didn’t wave back, so it became clear that they were criminals. Her reaction to call the police is, at its core, racist. The paying guests didn’t act they way she wanted them to, so she decided to call the police. There are many other things she could have done to verify that the neighbor’s guests were supposed to be there, but the easiest and laziest thing to do was to call the police.
This happens over and over again in our society. Rather than accept our fellow citizens as people, we white people frequently just call the cops and force people who have every right to live their lives explain themselves to the cops.
The right is all excited about assimilation, but when folks of color try to assimilate or participate in society at large on the same terms as white folks, they get the cops called on them.
Other examples of this are the “Beer Summit” Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates being arrested for entering his own home 2009.
And the gentleman this week who was walking his baby in a stroller in a park in Washington DC and had to explain his existence to the police.
Just because you say you’re not racist, doesn’t mean you’re not racist. Your actions actually have to show that you are willing to live with people who are not like you in our society as equals.
