Dr. Henry Louis Gates Arrested

[Kevin]

I think the incident is useful in that it does provide a nice springboard for a real nationwide discussion of racial profiling. I think it's a conversation we need to have over and over until something can be done. Listening to NPR yesterday, the DR show had some pretty interesting callers. One pointed out that whites were also the victims of racial profiling, e.g., what could a white person be doing in 'that part of town' at night other than buying drugs or looking for prostitutes?'

It must be an incredibly difficult line for police -- one which I doubt many intentionally cross (but cross anyway) to differentiate between suspicious conduct and suspicion based upon race alone, e.g., a black person sitting in a beat up old car in an affluent neighborhood, seemingly doing nothing.

Because police work is often conducted within grey areas of the law (especially when it comes to obtaining probable cause to search), it becomes very difficult to know what is legitimate and what is not.

At any rate, maybe the conversation should move beyond Gates. He's the not a good example. We all know this goes on, but how to fix it? I'm at a complete loss.

[Munchkin03]

I think a lot of it has to come down to "unlearning" a lot of our assumptions about race and class; I don't know how easy that will be, especially in areas of the country where residential areas are segregated by class in addition to race and ethnicity.

[UGAalum94]

What do you all think is the relationship between profiling and arrest and conviction rate disparities among races ( http://www.cga.ct.gov/2008/rpt/2008-R-0008.htm )

Does racial profiling make non-whites more likely to be arrested and convicted or do the difference in rates by race offer faulty somewhat empirical-seeming justification for why profiling might make sense to the police?

(Senusret, I'm doing what I can to bring you a race war.)

[Kevin]

The only real conclusion you can reach from those statistics is that blacks are much more likely to be caught and convicted and incarcerated for certain crimes than whites. It raises the question of whether this is because blacks commit more crimes per capita than whites or blacks are more likely per capita to get caught and convicted than whites. I suspect the answer is a little of both.

What I think would be helpful would be to have statistics about race when police make contact with the public. I'd like to see statistically how much more likely it is for a black driver to be pulled over than a white driver. Only with information like that can we really make sense of the statistics above.

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by Kevin

What I think would be helpful would be to have statistics about race when police make contact with the public. I'd like to see statistically how much more likely it is for a black driver to be pulled over than a white driver. Only with information like that can we really make sense of the statistics above.

This retains part of the "chicken-and-egg" conundrum, though, since presumably police patrols will be concentrated in the high-crime parts of a given city. So now, we've added another factor: police presence will invariably lead to more arrests, which will lead to a greater police presence, which will invariably . . .

The controls would have to be tighter, something along the lines of "how much more likely is it for a black driver to be pulled over on a specific stretch of road versus a white driver, proportional to the raw totals of black drivers versus white drivers." This kind of data is nigh impossible to obtain, so most of the research is done in "model" form . . . bringing about its own problems, as the assumptions used to design the model affect the outcome.

The earlier issue, of course, leads to another question: for cities in which police presence is concentrated in ____ part of town (where ____ is black/hispanic/asian/white/poor/rich/stupid/ballpark/whatever), why did that start? Why does it continue?

[DaemonSeid]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

The earlier issue, of course, leads to another question: for cities in which police presence is concentrated in ____ part of town (where ____ is black/hispanic/asian/white/poor/rich/stupid/ballpark/whatever), why did that start? Why does it continue?

Because ______ tends to _______ ______ than _____.

[RaggedyAnn]

Sgt. Crowley has made a statement.

http://wbztv.com/local/obama.comment...2.1097782.html

[Kevin]

I don't know about impossible. While we might not be requiring officers to actually record racial data about people they have contact with, that information might be ascertainable through dash cams or other sorts of technology which records an officer's interaction with the public.

Give someone enough funding to do the study and it can get done.

[DrPhil]

There are already studies on racial profiling and racial profiling initatives. The data are collected in a number of ways.

ETA: Now all we need is a dancing Gates youtube clip or internet game referencing the officer's mama.

[agzg]

This may just be me but I don't remember republicans asking if someone was a democrat if that person had criticisms for Bush.

ETA: It's not surprising to me that there are a lot of criticisms for Obama right now. The economy is still in the shitter (something Obama couldn't have avoided but the President always gets blamed) and people are coming down from the high energy and high hopes of the campaign. We're not patient people, so combining all that with the fact that almost all of the things Obama said he would accomplish have not been accomplished, people are getting restless and are not content.

Besides that, all Presidents always face criticism. Sometimes it's not valid (OMG HE HAD A BEER HE HAD A BEER DRINKING ON THE JOB!) and other times it is. We don't make excuses for other Presidents, and we shouldn't make them for Obama.

[DrPhil]

Originally Posted by agzg

This may just be me but I don't remember republicans asking if someone was a democrat if that person had criticisms for Bush.

They assumed the person was a Democrat.

Then people like SWTX and me come along and it blurs people's categories and confuses their brains. They weren't using their brains, in the first place.

ETA to respond to your ETA :

I agree with you that America is finally coming off of the Obama cloud. They should never have gotten on that cloud in the first place because it overrode many people's ability to think clearly and critically. Many were so busy trying to LIKE Obama.

Obama intentionally marketed off of his reputation as a great speaker (which I still don't see). He ran his mouth and made a lot of promises to a DESPERATE population. I knew those promises wouldn't pan out anytime soon, if at all, and that wasn't just the cynic in me who doesn't believe in liking presidents. That was realism. But a lot of people acted like a change was going to come relatively quickly and Obama and his crew didn't focus on the waiting game of change enough. Much of this isn't Obama's fault, just as much of what happened during Bush's administration wasn't his fault, but people don't want to admit that because it's supposedly coolererer to dislike Bush. All in all, I'm not blaming Obama for what's happening in a general sense. I'm blaming him for running his mouth with all of his rhetoric conferences and playing the "make believe game." This is a better thread now that we've gotten over Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

[Munchkin03]

Originally Posted by DrPhil

I agree with you that America is finally coming off of the Obama cloud. They should never have gotten on that cloud in the first place because it overrode many people's ability to think clearly and critically.

You mean, the effects of the Kool-Aid finally wore off?

[agzg]

I think IRL I fall into your category, as well. I changed political affiliations four times before finally moving to a state where I could choose which primary I wanted to vote in based on who is running that year. I was a "swing voter" last year, even though I voted in the democratic primaries.

You know, they're all human, and none of them are perfect. I don't expect them to be. I just expect them to know when they need to check their mouths before their mouths run away on them. I don't think Obama does that, obviously.

PS. I still don't like Bobby Jindal.

ETA: One promise I'd be happy not to achieve was Obama's promise to get the Olympics in Chicago. I was excited about it at first (at that time, I was getting ready to move to the city) but after living here for almost a year, I'm really kindof against the Olympics coming here. After the 4th and how horrible it was to take public transportation during that time (I rely on it to get to work almost completely), I don't want it here at all! Can't take the L, can't take buses, can't drive? If we do get it (which at this point it looks like we won't), I'll plan on taking a vacation around that time. Maybe to Rio or Madrid.

[agzg]

I wouldn't go so far as to say "Oh I knew you would disagree with me" or "Oh I knew that most of the people on here would attack me..." More along the lines of I know that if I confront someone in a certain way it's going to "ruffle their feathers" - at least as much as one can be ruffled from interweb conversations. You can have the feeling that "oh this isn't going to end well with [poster]" - most people would adjust the wording on that particular post. DI just rolls that "I told you so" implication into her insults.

I also don't transfer that to real life. I'm sure if people that post here knew me IRL they'd find me to be a very different person.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by agzg

I wouldn't go so far as to say "Oh I knew you would disagree with me" or "Oh I knew that most of the people on here would attack me..." More along the lines of I know that if I confront someone in a certain way it's going to "ruffle their feathers" - at least as much as one can be ruffled from interweb conversations. You can have the feeling that "oh this isn't going to end well with [poster]" - most people would adjust the wording on that particular post. DI just rolls that "I told you so" implication into her insults.

I also don't transfer that to real life. I'm sure if people that post here knew me IRL they'd find me to be a very different person.

There's no one here that I'd be motivate to find in real life the way creepy people have done in the past, but if I met the people behind the usernames here, for the most part, I'd be more disposed to like them in real life than if I hadn't read their ideas here. There are a handful of people who'd be starting off behind, and another handful who especially intrigue me about what they are like in real life but it's not positive or negative.

(Weirdly, though, I don't think I'd ever go to a real life GC event if there were one. I've met one person in real life from the site and that went really well, but the idea of it just seems like the most awkward thing ever.)

I do think that we share enough of our political and social biases that if you are a regular and long-term user you really can often guess what other users' responses are going to be or at least be like.

It pretty much invariably will make someone mad to say so, but honestly, how often, when you recognize the username, are you surprised by the content of a post?