I'm going to drop this here...

[hfojvt]

145. is it such a terrible thing

when some stubborn fool refuses to see things your way?

It is, apparently for some people.

I have a sorta funny story about profiling. Although, of course, it is just a story. I was working with this young black man, about nineteen years old. He told me one day he was gonna drive home. Because of previous conversations I said "I thought you said you don't have a driver's license. It's not worth it to drive and get caught." He said "Oh, I will drive careful." I said "Careful's got nothing to do with it, you could get stopped for DWB."

My point being that at least one young black men I met, had no experience or knowledge of people being stopped for Driving While Black.

Ironically enough too, as a poor person I have quite a bit of experience being pulled over for trivial reasons, and profiled at stores. Many times I have been told "you cannot have that backpack in here" at stores where I have been a regular customer. Well, as a bicyclist how else am I supposed to get my groceries home?

Those tend to be rather trivial problems though, which is kinda my point, especially about the social media. Social media can inundate you with stories in a way to make you think a molehill is a mountain. As I posted on FB, according to crime statistics on an average day in America 4 times a day a person murders their parent, child, spouse or sibling. Imagine if you read four such stories every day. And that's only a portion of the total homicides.

There's no way, in my view, to unpack statistics where a 1 in 100,000 chance of getting killed by a cop (many of whom were simple NOT minding their own business - although some in the media will report it that way. Mile Brown, after all, was just walking while black.) and a 1 in 10,000 chance of getting killed by another black person makes "I am afraid of getting killed by the police" any kind of logical fear. A few rude encounters in a year do not equate to slavery. I don't buy that people should be rioting in the streets or gearing up for war and taking no prisoners.