Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken Maltby
Hmm... anyone of sufficient years would note that society has been changing.
Taking your example, it is just as likely that the "cop" would have himself
been black.
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Yes, I should probably have mentioned that discrimination is as likely to be practiced by minorities on 'themselves' as by others. IMO it's a cultural bias, not individual-and you're right that it is changing. Less quickly in law enforcement IMO, particularly small town law enforcement where all except egregious cases get little publicity. (In the case I remember it seems to me that one of the blacks was nationally known. A blogger, maybe? Wish I could remember more of the details. But that's why it got publicized.) And you're right, the cops do (sometimes) get into trouble over it-when it gets publicized. Too often senior cops are allowed to retire rather than being punished for wrongdoing-unless it's flagrantly criminal. As I said in the cited situation, the cop had a very believable excuse-the problem was the frequency with which that excuse was used. Discrimination which relies on a 'pattern' is much harder to prove than an individual case. It doesn't matter that 'everybody knows' it's discrimination-the problem is that 'everybody' doesn't care. Society mostly approves of discrimination-they just disapprove of publicity. Although the case I mentioned was racial there's also sexual-and that's even harder to prove. A case that I recall on that was a woman who felt threatened because her (male) boss wouldn't stop his male employees from congregating by the water cooler that was next to her desk. So she sued for sexual harassment. The men weren't doing anything, mostly they weren't even talking to her-but she felt threatened by their presence. How do you prove 'silent intimidation'? That's something cops need to be particularly aware of. There have been a few confessions thrown out because the 'perp' confessed before being given his Miranda warning. That wasn't due to interrogation, the court found that the 'perp' caved under the 'intimidating' presence of the cops. So it happens-but it can be very hard to prove whether the cops (or others) were actually trying to intimidate or whether the intimidation was self-generated. The same is true of discrimination-was the cop actually discriminating or were the victims feeling put upon simply because 'they got caught'?