What white people can learn from the Starbucks arrests - The Washington Post - 0 views
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imagine that these two black men came forward to say they had been wrongly arrested, but there was no video and no white people in the Starbucks corroborated their story. My guess is that a good percentage of white people would assume they had done something to provoke the cops. They were probably too loud. Maybe they were harassing other customers. Perhaps they tried to take something without paying. Much of white America just isn’t ready to believe that black people can get arrested, harassed by cops or beaten for doing little to nothing.
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many white people tend to think that for a cop to shoot you, or beat you, or arrest you, you must have provoked them in some way. Don’t want police attention? Don’t commit crimes. Don’t hang with the wrong crowd or project an aura of violence and intimidation. Be polite and courteous when interacting with police. Do what you’re told, and you’ll be fine
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We can’t empathize with the person who was shot because we can’t imagine a scenario in which a cop might consider us potentially dangerous. And that’s because we just don’t do the sorts of things that cause cops to shoot people.
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