General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The Starbucks thing... [View all]EffieBlack
(14,249 posts)who ARE interested in actually learning something.
You claim the cops could have done something different, and you offer no real alternatives except more talking, which is exactly what the cops actually did. The two men refused to leave, and were in fact trespassing, according to their own lawyer and to the cops who asked them to leave. You refuse to understand this, and seem intent on proving that the police somehow acted in a racist manner.
This is exactly the problem with these discussions. At no point did I say the cops "acted in a racist manner." In fact, I consistently have stated that the problem here is that institutional racism is perpetuated without people having to "act in a racist manner."
I have no idea what the cops' racial views or motivations were. That's not the issue. The problem is that, by acting based solely on the word of the manager, without making any effort to determine if the manager's allegation was truthful or to find any alternative solution short of arrest, the cops allowed their power to be used to discriminate against these men while disclaiming any intent to do so. But the issue is not their intent, but the result - institutional racism is designed to achieve a certain result, regardless the intent of the people involved. That's exactly the point.
And, while it's pretty rich to start a discussion about an incident of discrimination and then complain about participants' attempts to "educate" others about the history of such discrimination because it supposedly has no bearing on the topic, it's also very instructive of the complexity of the problem, given how common this effort to separate out each incident from the pattern that gives it heft and power and thereby, thwart efforts to address it, is among those who should be our allies in the struggle.