As a black NYC resident I'm actually surprised by this. Stop and frisk is a major violation of the rights of those stopped without cause but I have generally viewed it as more of a class issue than a race issue. I have never been stopped by the police in this manner. I was once stopped by the police on the iffy charge that I was in the park after dark while walking home late and I told the officer I was cutting through the park because I had work in the morning and I heard about muggings in the neighborhood and the park seemed the fastest and safest way home. The cop seemed to be caught off guard and quickly ended the confrontation. Furthermore, none of my (very middle to upper middle class) black friends have complained about being victims of stop and frisk.<p>My studiomate who is a filmmaker actually spoke with some local teens who were frequently harassed by the stop & frisk policy and I felt guilty that a few meager class signifiers seem to get me off the hook so easily [0].<p>That said the author's other accounts of having to be cautious of unintentionally provoking police do ring true my experience and stories from my family and friends.<p>0. <a href="https://vimeo.com/87532909" rel="nofollow">https://vimeo.com/87532909</a>
Typical Americans.
You have a growing problem with police corruption in your country and you can only talk about race relations. Cops who do the things described in the article are breaking the law in other ways when you aren't watching. Recent events in New Mexico are a case in point.<p>You should be thankful that corrupt cops are racist because they can't help giving themselves away by mistreating blacks. Until you folks break up the corrupt police brotherhood and take back control of law enforcement, things will only get worse.<p>Fix the root problem and minority males will cease to have problems like this.
I totally share the author's view.<p>If those stop-and-frisk are really needed, then, in my view, they should be applied to different cohorts in the same proportion as those cohorts perform crimes: maybe it's 60% for ages 18-30 and 30% for 30+, could be 90% males and 10% females. Only for population groups where crime rates change significantly, of course. (Race may or may not be one of those.)<p>Would that make sense?
I don't believe that Stop and Frisk is effective, but even if it was, I don't want to live in a society which trades our liberty for that benefit.<p>It's not about the efficacy, it's about the sort of society we want to live in. Because there will always be those that make arguments from pragmatism.<p>Freedom isn't easy or pragmatic, if you think about it like that.
I just got my first taste of HN censorship from my earlier comment about the reason why a white father insisting on describing his mixed race son as black is quite wrong and the subconsciously racist intent underlying it, love of offspring notwithstanding. I am rephrasing it and restarting it.<p>If the writer is white then the son is arguably as white as he is black, and probably more white than black if the mother is an African American, as opposed to an African immigrant. So why the insistence on the father labeling him as black just because society sees him as such? Society can learn to see him as white if white fathers insist on claiming whiteness for him. Why does the notion of whiteness exclude any racial mixture when black does? Why should whiteness be exclusive and the father go along with that?<p>The real issue is the way society is programmed by calculated use of language. If the One Drop Rule was switched around most racial discrimination would end, because discrimination would then be based on shade of complexion not race.
Whites would be light-skinned whites, mixed race people would simply be medium-skinned whites and most African Americans would be dark-skinned whites from their slave-owning fathers. Or the definition could be reversed and white people would be very light-skinned blacks. The idiocy of this defacto continuation of the ODR is that is that it makes whiteness exclusive and black becomes some kind of genetic taint, some kind of condition/affliction which causes lots people who are 'white' socially, genetically and culturally for all practical purposes to be labelled as 'black'.<p>That rule was made to ensure that wealth and privilege remained in the hands of white people, to ensure the formation of a predominantly and visibly white aristocracy and check the breeding preferences of resident or immigrant European nobility whose appearance was visibly that of light-skinned blacks.
Take this instance of a prince of Liechtenstein <a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LMfYsqYUdxY/UCaj_85tH2I/AAAAAAAAEU4/sa2MkgV1wkE/s1600/black_princess_angela.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LMfYsqYUdxY/UCaj_85tH2I/AAAAAAAAEU...</a>. If American had more men like his father in ranking positions, his complexion might even be identified with aristocracy and how often would police harass males like him and risk losing their jobs? By being labeled as black it only helps rationalize the harassment.<p>What is there to stop white fathers insisting that their sons be seen as white and have all the privileges that come with it and punish policemen who stepped out of line? This father's refusal to view and label his son as white masks a hardly unconscious reluctance to demand the same privileges he has for his son and by extension <i></i>any other men of a similar appearance<i></i>. If they got to be seen as white and also married black females the same privilege would be extended to their even darker sons and this issue would simply go away.<p>The continued use of black to describe mixed race people, even multiple generations of 'blacks' who are mixed is simply a refusal to accept the fact that a white and Nordic-oriented exclusivity in a multiracial America is a myth, downright anomalous and is actually Nazism of the worst kind. Isn't it glaringly obvious how Hispanic is used to pull in lots of people who would be Black, Native American or both under the One Drop Rule, ie 'light-skinned blacks'?<p>Unfortunately the use of the term black by that white father is just a sop to white exclusivity supremacists.<p>European is a culture not a race.
If you are white your son is mixed-race not black. Why does the notion of whiteness exclude any racial mixture when black does? Why should whiteness be exclusive?<p>If the writer is serious about racism a good start should be to admit that your son is also white then you could write an article entitled "What I learned about stop and frisk from watching my white son" and a generation later your white grandson by his black mother of course. That would get white people to take notice.
While I don't agree with the stop & frisk policy, let's all be honest: racial stereotypes exist for a reason, fair or not.<p>This is a treatment of a symptom, not of the cause.