Why DO so many of my fellow whites automatically defend ANYTHING cops n' judges do to black people?

[haele]

32. Couple reasons so far as I can see -

1. If the person identifies with "heritage" or some other such tribal organization, it's because they automatically view people who aren't with their tribe as threats and/or criminals, and those non-tribe members are animals who don't deserve any rights or due process.

2. If the person is uncertain about people other than him or herself, yet claims to be educated, liberal or a "live and let live" type, they would not tend to question profiling or bullying based on race - (or added for the sake of those who complain about the term "privileged", any other obvious characteristic that could reflect a different social status than "normal people&quot - because they don't want to admit they are afraid of people that aren't like them, and don't realize that because they are afraid of people who aren't like them, the automatic reaction is that those people are a threat to them, and thus somehow deserve whatever they get.

and finally 3. The average person don't understand that police, judges, supervisors, politicians, pastors - or any other persons who are in legal positions of power or authority - are people first, and the job second.
Positions of power are attractive not only to the helpful do-gooders who really like people and want to make the world a better place (the idealized "default" person for the above type of work), but to people who are control freaks, cowards, or otherwise looking for a position that they don't really have to work hard at for the reward they seek once they get the job.
People who are naturally not thinking about the make-up of other people doing the dirty work governing and policing will typically think of those people as "Andy Griffith", "Barney Miller" or "Judge Harry T. Stone (Night Court)" - the genial, fair minded grown-ups who are the type of people you could sit down and comfortably catch a ball game or have a beer with. This is especially true for your average middle class dude and dudette, doing their fairly stable 9-to-5, raising their 2.5 kids, and unconsciously living with the privilege of being considered "normal US citizens".
The legal authorities they typically identify as Andy, Barney, and Judge Harry aren't:
- dealing with the latest round of frustrating personal issues that can be transferred onto the next person they have to deal with on the job rather than taking care of, or
- either should have stayed home sick, hung-over or hopped up on steroids or some other substance instead of plopping themselves into a patrol car, on a court bench, or behind a government-provided desk, or
- are so full of themselves and their own sense of importance that any bit of resistance to their "awesomeness" needs to be met will overwhelming total force...
- and aren't employing a method of profiling in which potential criminality threat begins with "looks like most criminals around here (profile - race)", then goes to "acting impaired (profile - acts impaired or lost)", then goes to "doesn't belong (profile - appearance;"out of area" markers like license plates, accents, or style)", then ends up with "looks like a potential prey or someone who can be bullied (profile - gender or class)"

Unlike for "normal" people who don't stand out and meet enough of the above profile markers to have to interact with the law, to the general population of all the "others" Andy, Barney, and Judge Harry are fiction, and their reactions and interactions are as scripted as a politician's speech.
And to most people who aren't prone to thinking much about almost everything that crosses their path, if they didn't experience it, it doesn't exist. Bringing up some other group of people's problems in comparison to what they would experience in pretty much the same situation does not sync up in their brains, causes a conflict which causes a discomfort, which can be perceived as a direct attack, even if it is simply a legitimate statement of a problem for that other group of people.
Frankly; because White people (and I include myself here) don't usually start at the beginning of the profile queue, most don't understand how race tends to be the primary method of all legal profiling, because they don't experience it.
White people start getting profiled at the second level, not the first. So unless there's a personal connection to something that pisses off or attracts the police, prosecutor, judge, social worker, or any other person in authority, we don't get noticed unless we do something that actually has the potential to be of legal concern.

We don't get pulled over for DWB because the automatic assumption due to the skin color is that we belong to the Crips or the Bloods - or that we stole the car; we white people get pulled over for no apparent reason when we look like out-of-towners or slacker hippy dope fiends, or because the cop was bored or needed to make his/her ticket quota and we committed a minor traffic violation.

Just my two cents.

Haele