General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The Starbucks thing... [View all]EffieBlack
(14,249 posts)Im not saying youre doing it intentionally. My very point is that institutional racism creates systems that allow people to defend racism without even knowing it, by defending systems and processs that perpetuate racism.
In this case, insisting that the cops only option was to just arrest these men because the manager wanted them to allows a biased and possibly racist person to harness the power of the police department to discriminate against and degrade African Americans with and then claim it was no ones fault. They had no choice.
But they DO have a choice. The only way to stop systemic racism is for people to DISRUPT it before it happens. The cops didnt have to arrest those men. They arent robots and they arent required to make arrests whenever theyre called. They had a choice.
And YOU - WE - have a choice. We dont have to say, Well, I dont like what happened, but the police were only doing their job when they arrested those men. THATs where the papering over racism comes in - even though you surely dont intend to. We need to call them out and demand they look around, use their common sense and discretion, and make better choices.