DWI, DWC, DWB, and white privilege
Last edited Sun Jun 14, 2020, 12:57 PM - Edit history (1)
Back in the late 70s my friends and I — high school senior girls — attempted to buy beer at age 17 when the drinking age was 18. I was in the back seat and not an instigator, just along for the ride. I am nearly positive that the driver was not drunk or even drinking. I don’t remember the exact series of events, but there was a cop who allowed us to my friends to complete the purchase before making us pour it out in the parking lot. There was some bottle of Boone’s farm strawberry wine, and a friend’s nervous laughter telling the story of “ossifer baker” for the rest of our senior year.
Back in the 70s anything else as possible for white kids in Florida’s relaxed culture. No cameras in parking lots, forgiving police who made sure you got home safely. Maybe even followed you home to make sure you got there safe. A few years later, smoking a little weed might
get you the same treatment if you were a couple of pretty-enough teenagers but just as likely you’d be booked and before a judge if you were an young man.
MADD was working to change the sentencing rules, to make sure that drunk driving was taken seriously. Time to get the drunks off the roads. Horrendous accidents had been killing innocent bystanders on the bridges and highways. Functional and successful papers wrote feature stories about the loss of lives, the tragedies, the statistics.
It did get stricter. Two or three “DUI’s” would cause you to lose your license. Suspended for a while maybe for the first one, revoked if you had a couple. The alcohol blood level limits started high, and got lowered. The culture didn’t change over night. In the 70s “DUI” was a joking matter among the teens and twenty somethings; in the 80s it was a sheepish admission among family members; and then it became a matter of serious personal responsibility. No jokes, just reproach.
Except among the cops. A relative often told me years later about his friend who was a cop, and that a cop who got pulled over by another cop who turned out to be “drunk off his ass” would just get waived home. Maybe other officers would even escort him to make sure he got there safely. They looked out for each other. Didn’t want to cause a record. There was white teen girl privilege, and there was white cop privilege. I think the former has disappeared when it comes to DUI, but the latter still exists.
There has never been any black man privilege. Never any black-father-it’s-my-daughter’s-birthday-privilege. Even if you’re a white teen girl, getting pulled over by the cops is scary. If you’re a black man you’ve seen a hundred images of black men dying in police custody. Too bad Mr. Rayshard Brooks didn’t submit to getting arrested, too bad he panicked and started trying to fight to get away. But also too bad he didn’t have white teen girl privilege, or white cop privilege.
But what was he getting arrested for anyway? Didn’t he do the right thing pulling off the road when he realized he had had too much to drink? Trying to sleep it off? In Driver’s Ed class I was taught not to get behind the wheel if I’d had more than one or two drinks, but also, if I got behind the wheel and realized I was impaired in some way — maybe sleepy, maybe a little too much to drink — to pull over someplace safe and get some sleep.
Wish the cops had said “Well maybe next time please don’t get in car if you’ve been drinking. But you did the right thing pulling over and getting some rest. Do you have a friend who can pick you up? What’s that, you can walk home you said? Do you feel safe walking home? OK then. We’re going to ask the Wendy’s to let you leave your car in the lot For the next 12 hours. You can come back and get it later.”
Maybe we ought to create some black man privilege in our society to start to offset centuries of its opposite. Veterans got special parking at a whole lot of stores. Cops get special passes for their wrongdoing, and free coffee. What can a black men get for special privileges? I know, people say they just want to receive what everybody else gets. But that doesn’t seem to be happening. Maybe they should be entitled to “diplomatic immunity”. A special hotline. Free life insurance paid for by the Police benevolent Association. Membership in some fancy country clubs. Special tax breaks.
Government issued body armor.
He seemed like a pretty nice man. Sad.
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On Edit: Everyone needs to see THIS part of the video: https://t.co/kPs9qZmXm2
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