NY State Senator Wants to Make Calling 911 on Black Folks in White Spaces a Hate Crime

[MineralMan]

69. The number of such calls seems to be increasing.

I know what you mean by "white spaces," too. It's any place that white people think is only for the use of white people. And that pretty much is defined by places white people happen to be at any given time.

Based on some of the videos I've seen, it looks to me like many of the callers are hoping for an incident where the police cause harm to the person they called about. They want to be able to say, "serves him/her right."

Since it's impossible for me to experience the world as anything but a old white guy, I have to try to put myself in others' shoes as best I can. Nobody has ever bothered me for using a coat hanger to unlock my car on the street. Nobody has called the police when I went into my house through a window because I forgot my keys. Why? Because I'm a white guy. People assume that I'm doing something legitimate.

When I imagine myself doing those things as a person of color, though, I can realize that both of those actions would be very risky behavior. Someone would probably call the cops. And the cops might very well make a similar assumption and make it very difficult for me to make them understand that I'm not doing something illegal.

So, I do get this. I'm not sure a law will do a lot of good, but I sure understand the need for something to be done. There are people who will deliberately put someone in danger of a violent encounter with police, just based on their own bigotry and racism. Such people are more numerous than privileged folks think, I'm sure.

Ugh!