This was a wonderfully written piece and a lot of it rings true to me even as a white as you can be person in a smallish state university town in the midwest. But maybe being 6'2" with a big unkempt hobo beard is almost as scary as being black.
I too love walking the streets at night. And I too have to not be myself and behave in very conscious ways to avoid being hassled and detained by the police. Police just assume that if you're out at night you are a criminal.
So much of his descriptions of having to learn to dress a certain way, behave a certain way, and literally go out of my way to avoid scaring people rings true. I get detained by the police a handful of times per year just for walking or being in places at times that most people aren't. I particularly get the police called on me if I walk through in rich neighborhoods. I've had firearms pulled on me just for photographing trees in a public park (at night).
I tried to take up jogging for half a year but I quit and bought a bike after being stopped by police for being suspicious three times in as many months. Apparently jogging while not wearing a joggers uniform means I'm up to no good. No non-criminal jogs in cargo pants and a t-shirt. And that was in the day time. I wouldn't even consider trying it at night.
I'm not trying to marginalize his message that skin color is the cause. But it's certainly not the only cause. The root of the problem lies with the police, and society, villifying anyone who isn't diurnal.
I remember one of those very minor study that had a person trying to dismantle a bike lock in a park. Male with dark skin, male with white skin, female with dark skin and female with white skin.
The man with the dark skin had people tackle him down while calling the police. The other people on the team that was observing had to rush in to disarm the situation. The white man had people stare and point, but nothing dramatic happened. The woman with dark skin was practically ignored by people walking the park. For the white woman several people walked up and offered to help her with the bike.
I am not sure a beard and night time and actually changes this. The assumption about who can and can't be a criminal seems to be based on gender first, race second, and appearance/environment last. Would be very interesting to see a more deep study on that, through I expect they will mirror related studies such as those that look at outcomes from courts and criminal psychology.
What does the raw data about these types of crime say though?
I lived near a university and had multiple bikes stolen. If the data points to a demographic in that area, for example where 0% of bikes are stolen by women, why would people in that area react if a woman is working with her bike?
Raw data may disagree with you, but it's impartial and unbiased. (unless you want to argue the collection and recording of data is biased)
Statistically speaking, if 100% of bike thieves are male (in a certain location) then the inherent, and justifiable, bias from the population would be towards males. No data lookup needed.
But also, I think that it wouldn't matter the race or sex, if someone was in your home who you did not invite, or know them. And based on their behavior, skin color, clothing, would determine if you said "hi, you must be my daughter's friend?" or "What are you doing in my house, I am calling the police!"
But no one wants to admit they make judgements about anything, because that's sexist/racist/something-ist.
How many people in that area know that 100% of bike thieves are male? I sure don't know such statistics for my area. That's the "data lookup" that's needed - to make decisions based on statistics, you have to know the statistics.
I guess nobody knows, but what is the explanation for people's reaction? If the town only had women bike thieves, do you think the experiment would have gone the same?
Being tall is correlated with playing basketball, but you'd have to be pretty dumb to watch a short guy shooting hoops right in front of you and conclude he wasn't playing basketball.
I can't quite figure out the argument you are making. I've had to work on my bike lock because it was "stuck", and it could look like "stealing", but I wasn't. Did I understand you correctly?
If it's the same clip I watched, one of the (white) male passers-by asks what the (young, white) lady is doing and she says outright that she's stealing the bike. He proceeds to offer his help!
I used to take lots of walks at night before I had a full time job and children. I live in Austria and it seems bizarre to me that police officers would check you out just for walking around at night. I never had such an experience whether I was living in Vienna or my small hometown.
What I did see was black men having to show their ID at subway stations, which to me was a very unsettling thing, because it was pretty obvious that they were looking for drug dealers and focusing on a specific race.
I was held up in Croatia and had to show my ID twice. But I was with a group of people in a party area, so that kind of made sense.
Is taking walks maybe an uncommon thing in the USA?
Is taking walks maybe an uncommon thing in the USA?
In many places, yes. But part of the article takes place in New York, where it isn't.
I have lived without a car for over a decade. Almost everyone immediately assumes that I am simply poor and can't afford a car. This happens to also be true, but I wanted to live without a car for a long time, I'm an environmental studies major and I have terrible eyesight problems. I always hated driving.
In over ten years, only one person ever asked why I gave up my car. Everyone else just assumes they know and assumes it is poverty.
In the US, almost everyone drives everywhere to the point of ridiculosity. I gave up my car while living in an apartment complex where people drove their trash to the dumpster and drove to the mailbox. I lived within a 15 minute walk of three shopping centers. Initially, no one walked. The streets were all deserted.
After I gave up my car and began walking everywhere, walking caught on. But before that, people drove their kids to the pool in the apartment complex and really crazy stuff like that.
I find that really interesting. People here start driving their kids to school, which would have been unthinkable when I was a teenager 20 years ago.
Most of my friends who live in Vienna actually don't have a car. It's just so much more of a hassle compared to taking public transport, let alone expensive. Even if they have a car, it's probably parked in some rural area during the week and just used for the weekend when parents are visited, on outings, etc.
I wish I wouldn't have to own a car. That's one of my biggest gripes with living in a suburb.
> Is taking walks maybe an uncommon thing in the USA?
I once got sent to Plano, Texas, for a week. It was a training course for work. After the course, I went for walks in the afternoon / early evening. And it surprised me at just how deserted the streets felt. There were plenty of cars around, but so very few pedestrians. I didn't really feel unsafe, just more out of place.
A friend of mine who worked on a plant site in Alabama for a couple of months told me he would get weird stares from the locals when he was going for runs in the morning/evening.
I never knew whether to believe him, but everything in this thread seems to underpin his story.
In American articles, pro environment types sometimes mock how Americans will drive to the gym, drive home to get ready for work, then drive to work creating extreme time stress. The punchline is usually to the effect of "Why not just bike to work? It would be cheaper, take less time and be better for the environment."
One justification for going to the gym is the poor outdoor air quality in some places. It seems list on a lot of people that driving everywhere is a cause of poor air quality.
In the years I have lived without a car, my example of walking everywhere has tended to popularize walking wherever I lived. (Yes, even when I was homeless.) After seeing an uptick in walking, you could see visible evidence of improved air quality, such as healthier plant life in the area.
Crime also went down. In the apartment complex where I gave up my car, the cops stopped staking out the entrance on weekend evenings. In another city, helicopter manhunts and similar police activity trended down.
> In the years I have lived without a car, my example of walking everywhere has tended to popularize walking wherever I lived. (Yes, even when I was homeless.) After seeing an uptick in walking, you could see visible evidence of improved air quality, such as healthier plant life in the area.
> Crime also went down. In the apartment complex where I gave up my car, the cops stopped staking out the entrance on weekend evenings. In another city, helicopter manhunts and similar police activity trended down.
This is a pretty fantastic, and frankly unbelievable claim.
Perhaps you aren't familiar with Jane Jacobs' work. Her position was that eyes on the street was the key to safety in urban areas. This is that mechanism in action.
> Her position was that eyes on the street was the key to safety in urban areas.
I'm sure that's true. However, the unbelievable part was the influence you ascribe to yourself. I do not believe that you, personally, set in motion a chain of events "wherever [you] live" that "lowers crime" and causes "healthier plant life."
I read 'Notes from a Big Country' by Bill Bryson during my second visit and first road trip in America as a child.
I could entirely believe what he wrote on this topic, which fortunately is extracted here [1]. We covered a huge distance, so understandably my dad didn't really want to drive any further once we had arrived at each day's motel. However, there was rarely any alternative.
There were a couple of occasions where American tourists were part-impressed, part-worried to see children walking. (There's a well-known metamorphosis stage in American teenagers; at 15 they grow legs ready for learning to drive.)
Just another anecdote, but mine is a fully different experience.
As a 6'1 white male, I find that I can walk most anywhere without fear.
I often find that I need to reassess my privileged notion that this is normal when conversing with friends who are shorter, darker or female. They describe a world much like the author of this piece does.
That's not to say I've never had trouble on the street. Years ago I was assaulted randomly by someone bigger than me stumbling out of a bar I was passing by. The difference was made clear though when I reacted by getting up and following at a distance, eventually finding a helpful police officer who never questioned my version of events.
A vastly more common scenario is one where I am never in any fear of any kind, I can easily wave at police, and am never interrogated for simply walking.
I often find that I need to reassess my privileged notion that this is normal when conversing with friends who are shorter, darker or female.
I'm about 5'8" and female.* Except for the phenomenon I mentioned in another comment of being hassled for Walking While Homeless, I feel fairly comfortable walking almost any time, almost anywhere.
I don't have an explanation for that. But it makes me wonder about what all factors into the equation, both from the perspective of how others react and from the perspective of how people experience such things.
* And white, which I didn't state because the default assumption is that if you don't state your race/color, then you are white. But I am adding it as a footnote because I am finding myself uncomfortable with reinforcing an essentially racist cultural practice.
Speaking from my own experience, there's a degree of 'blending in' that is distinct from the more obvious race/gender/affluence 'visible' factors, and more to do with behavior.
I've spent quite a bit of time in various dangerous neighborhoods, cities in general and other parts of the world. In quite a few of these places I should stand out and/or be a target, being a scrawny/weak and very white person.
Yet somehow, I can count on one hand the number of times I've actually run into trouble. What's even stranger is that quite a few of the locals I'd spend time with would be bothered or even robbed during my stay with them.
The only thing I can point to that was different about these locals was that they (understandably) had a bigger fear of 'the streets', were raised in a much more sheltered way than I was, and just stuck out like a sore thumb in the way they carried themselves.
I've experienced a few occasions where, for example, the local's insistence on crossing the street to avoid trouble actually drew attention. Or they'd pull out their fancy phone right in sight of a group of 'loitering youth'. Or stop and act like they didn't know where they were going. Or make (fearful) eye contact. etc.
Could be maybe you're also better at the way you 'carry' yourself, aside from other factors that might make you blend in or stand out?
Could be maybe you're also better at the way you 'carry' yourself
This is possible.
I come from a multicultural background. I never entirely fit in anywhere, so I always feel a little "alien," yet I am not easily intimidated, I generally like people and I am comfortable socializing with all kinds of people. I certainly don't actively broadcast that I'm scared, and I actively downplay any special privilege or assets that I have which might make me a target.
I don't know the PIN for my main credit card. I can use PayWave here in AU for anything under $100. When racking up more than $100, I say "I don't know my PIN. Can we put that through as x purchases instead?" or I make up something about needing to split payments for business receipt purposes.
I've never been asked for ID or had anything other than the staff member accommodate without hesitation. I haven't needed my PIN in years now.
But every time, I think, "I bet I wouldn't get away with this if I wasn't a plain white guy."
I used to walk home from my friends' house to mine when I was at university in New Zealand, often drunk or high.
The police would usually stop and talk to me if they drove past.
I always thought of it as a good thing. I lived in a high burglary area (being a student area), so there were a lot of shady characters walking around at night, especially in the back streets. They never actually detained me or even got out of the car, they'd usually just ask me where I was coming from and where I was going.
I never needed to give them exact details, they were happy with me just telling them the general area.
I guess that's the critical difference though: I was never detained. The police never viewed me through the lens of suspicion, they never talked to me in an accusatory tone. I felt more like they were checking that I was OK, rather than checking that I was a criminal.
> The police never viewed me through the lens of suspicion, they never talked to me in an accusatory tone. I felt more like they were checking that I was OK, rather than checking that I was a criminal.
As a European I wonder if this is "because Freedom", that the state-sceptical tradition laid out by the US constitution has created an expectation that police should never interact with anybody who isn't a criminal. That way, the attempt of making the police nicer has made them less nice, by removing nuance (unless you happen to never fall into the area of uncertainty, where nuance will be missed). Any thoughts on this by Americans?
As a white American, I carefully watch what I say around police and generally do not trust them.
Most police are incentivized to "solve" crimes, not solve crimes. They are exposed to the worst our society has to offer and this takes a toll on them. We as a society also feel that every crime can be solved and that an inability to solve the crime is incompetence.
Sometimes the evidence doesn't quite match the person the police strongly feel committed the crime, so words get twisted, evidence gets adjusted to make things fit a little better.
That conversation you had the other day telling an officer about your vacation in Florida can be turned around and then used as evidence against you in your trial for a murder that took place in the vicinity of the hotel you stayed at.
It doesn't matter that you told the officer you were with your family the entire time, he may not remember that or remember it a bit differently than you. Now it's your word against his in court. Who is a jury going to believe?
Of course, they would have to have other evidence to convict, some of it possibly slightly adjusted also. Even if you are cleared of the charge, that's not something anyone wants to go through. The humiliation, the cost, the damage to your relationships as people start to doubt you.
The less info the police have about me and the less interaction I have with then, the lower the chance my name might pop into their heads when they're looking for a "person of interest."
I'm not saying police want to send innocent people to jail. I'm saying their internal biases and desire to hold someone responsible for a crime causes them to twist the facts to ensure that the person they suspect gets convicted.
If you have the time, you should watch this[1] video. It may provide some insight into the American criminal justice system.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
So, does that imply a skepticism of the state?
Yes and no.
Yes, in that if the police are interacting with you, they should have a reasonable belief about your involvement in a crime or that you have information which could reasonably aid their investigation.
No, because the reality is the vast majority of police interactions in the US are brief, professional, lawful, and friendly.
The police in New Zealand and Australia seem to be a lot less agressive than their American counterparts. I don't ever hear of stories like the original post come from either country.
I'm a cyclist, and one of the big cycle equipment blogs is DCRainmaker.
He ran a story about a run-in with some Australian cops while on a ride that is just mind-blowing in how different it is from similar run-ins with American police.
Great to see some anecdotes to support my gut feelings on this! I am amazed that Americans would consider this pleasant police behaviour. As an Australian, I consider this unnecessary and heavy handed, although it gives me more than a little pride that the cops were able to admit to being wrong.
It's horrifying when you stop to think that any police car going by could end with a bad interaction to some degree, completely depending on how the officer feels about you or in general. Baring extraordinary circumstances, that officer will completely get away with it as well.
Same in Canada (where I live). We have a few higher-crime neighborhoods in my city, mostly occupied by non-white people, and the police don't really patrol around those areas. They come out if you call them.
The police in my city mostly target native americans, which commit the most crime here. But the cops aren't violent or forceful from what I've seen. Most of the time they just come out because someone is drunk and being a nuisance, so they come out and talk to the person/people and get them to move on from the area.
I'm not sure what happens with reserve police. You have to get a warrant to enter reserve property if you are city police or mounted. I think mostly they don't even bother.
Yes. Australian police are racist specifically against indigenous peoples. To even suggest this is really dangerous in Australia, which is why it continues to happen without most people noticing. It's terrible.
>Police just assume that if you're out at night you are a criminal.
No they don't. What they are doing is noticing things that are out of the ordinary. You do the same thing. If everyone is wearing a suit, and one person is wearing shorts, watch all the heads turn. A black man walking through an all white neighborhood late at night will draw attention from any person in that neighborhood. The same is true if a white man was walking through an all black neighborhood. No different. The police would stop him, too.
I was going to work one morning and, as I got into my car, I noticed my wife's tomato plants had some red ones. Leaving my car door open, I walked to the garden to examine them to see if they could be picked. When I turned around, a policeman pulled up in a squad car. He recognized me but said he stopped because he saw a car with its door open making him wonder if it was a break-in. He then saw this poorly dressed guy wandering around the yard. Both out of the ordinary.
When he saw me, he laughed, and drove away.
I own a restaurant. One night, I got a call from the police that they noticed our back door was slightly open. That's different for two o'clock in the morning. They walked in and notice our cash drawer was missing. Patrol cars were dispatched through the neighborhood, a shopping district where there were lots of people walking around, when they found a guy walking with a metal box under his arm at two in the morning. How unusual.
I believe you make a lot of good points, except for one: Walking as a white man through a black neighborhood, the police won't stop you. And even if they did, their attitude would be very different than if it was the other way around.
I have read numerous stories and heard accounts of white people in black neighborhoods who were stopped because it is assumed they are only there to buy drugs. Why would a white person be in such a neighborhood? Sure, there are valid reasons, but it is generally still out of the ordinary.
So your claim of equality is that a black man in a white neighborhood is assumed to be stealing from good (white) people, while a white man in a black neighborhood is assumed to be visiting drug dealers?
This still seems like a problem to me. I agree with your above statement about cops reacting to what isn't "normal", but the problem is that normal and perception of normal are not the same.
This is something that I have experienced. I'm white and I worked summers doing construction-related work. I was often questioned by police if they saw me sitting in my personal vehicle before work started in a black neighborhood.
Actually sorry, scratch that. I was stopped once, when I was moving from one flat to another, and my girlfriend was sick, so I had to walk both our bikes 6 km to a new flat, late evening. They asked if I'm sure I didn't stolen them and we went our ways.
There's something wrong with your cities if police has to check on you for walking at night.
In my country (The Netherlands) police sometimes check all cars passing a temporary checkpoint. They check if you have open fines, paid your taxes etc. When really expensive cars pass those checkpoints they verify that the owner actually has a job to afford cars like these and if the owner doesn't they can impound the car on suspicion of being paid with criminal money.
Statistics have shown that the highest "risk" group of those crime paid cars is with young foreign male drivers.
A few years ago a (black) rap artist was stopped at the side of the road by police and they basically admitted that this was racial profiling.
The artist made some fuss about it on social media, and it appeared in all news broadcasts and talk shows. People were expecting some big commotion about it; but it turns out that the majority of people actually approved of this method.
It wasn't racism at work here, it was statistics and people were fine with it. It is a thin line though, because to the people on the wrong end of the statistics it really can feel like racism. So where should police draw the line?
As a general rule, the variance within a group is almost always larger than the difference between groups. So, if there is statistical evidence of the effectiveness of racial profiling then I'd like to see it.
A few years ago a (black) rap artist was stopped at the side of the
road by police and they basically admitted that this was racial
profiling.
The artist made some fuss about it on social media, and it appeared
in all news broadcasts and talk shows. People were expecting some
big commotion about it; but it turns out that the majority of people
actually approved of this method.
It wasn't racism at work here, it was statistics and people were
fine with it.
Your conclusion is incorrect. Yes it is racism, and furthermore, the majority of people in a society being fine with it is not only irrelevant as to whether it's racism, it is what makes it structural racism. Something that everyone is fine with never seems questionable to members of the set of people who think it's fine.
Now let's explain why it being statistics doesn't mean it can't be racism. I have used this analogy before:
A woman is murdered in her home. Statistics tell us that when a woman is murdered in her home, it is nearly always her partner. So, why don't we merely arrest the partner and march them off to jail without gathering evidence, following pesky rules about having a lawyer involved, or examining the burden of proof?
Statistics, one might say, reverse the burden of proof. Why isn't it up to the partner to prove that they're innocent?
We can A/B test this application of statistics: Let's say that 9/10 times, the partner did it. In test A, we lock 100 partners up without trial. Presto, we have the right person in prison 90 times, and have an innocent person in prison 10 times, but being right 90% of the time feels pretty good, and we saved a lot of money and bother. Everybody who isn't the partner of a murdered woman feels pretty good about test A.
In test B, we arrest 100 partners, but then we gather evidence and have trials, even though "everybody knows the partner did it." Good news! Of the ten partners in test B who didn't do it, nine are set free. One, alas, is wrongfully imprisoned for a crime the did not commit. But one wrongfully imprisoned person is better than ten, right?
Well, it's not so simple. Of the 90 people who did do it in test B, the evidence wasn't always solid. So in ten cases, they cut a deal for a reduced sentence. In six cases, they "beat the rap in court" and were also set free, despite having done it. Three cases didn't even make it to court for some technicality or other.
So test B is much better for the case where someone is innocent: There is only one person wrongfully imprisoned, instead of ten. But it's worse for the case where someone is guilty. Instead of ninety guilty people receiving the full punishment, Only 71 receive the full punishment. Then get a reduced punishment, and nine guilty people walk free!
In pure, bloodless statistics, A is better than B. A is right 90% of the time, B is only right 80% of the time. But if we want to talk about justice, B is better than A. In terms of justice, one person wrongfully imprisoned is worse than 100 guilty people set free. False positives are abhorrent to a just society, and false negatives (not to mention costly trials) are the price society is willing to pay to ensure justice.
So back to statistics and stopping cars. If statistics tell you that black men are more likely to be illegal immigrants, or have unpaid fines, or whatever, and you use that to stop every black man driving a car, but you don't stop white men, that is unjust for the same reason as locking up the partners without trial.
You have imposed a consequence--not being able to drive without being stopped by police--on some number of innocent black men--because they belong to a class of people who statistically are more likely to have done something wrong.
One can argue that being stopped is not the same thing as being jailed without trial. But it is. When travelling, you might be asked if you have ever been detained by police. Same when applying for a job. In some countries (cough, USA, cough) this perspective on statistics starts with stopping cars, and ends in gunfire.
Even in civilised countries, people reason that if it's ok for the police to stop every black man because black men have statistically committed more crimes, it is ok to not rent to black men, or not employ black men. And if asked, they will say, "I'm not a racist, I'm a statistician.". Law enforcement choices send a strong message about "what everyone thinks is ok."
At some point, though, it comes down to justice. Justice is not imposing consequences upon someone without actual, inspectable evidence. Injustice is imposing consequences upon someone because somebody else who has something in common with them broke the law.
And racism is using statistics to impose injustice on someone because of their race. It's that simple.
The partners are always the first SUSPECT and the police do their due diligence to RULE THEM OUT. Even on the 1/10 where the weren't the murderer, the police still intrude on them to try to find the truth. Being a SUSPECT != SENT TO JAIL. The rapper in the story was a SUSPECT, they weren't SENT TO JAIL which makes your analogy not an analogy at all, because well, they aren't anologous. If anything I feel your arguement argues for pulling the rap artist over.
Ah, you are correct that there is a missing element to the analogy, and this is it:
The woman lies dead in the murder case. When the rapper was pulled over, there was no case of a Ferrari stolen by a dark-skinned man. The police were not acting on a tip that the rapper was smuggling narcotics in his car. They stopped him for driving while black.
If we want to add the missing link, we then say that the police, knowing the statistics of men who assault and/or murder their partners, stop men at random in society and ask them to provide evidence that their partners are safe and sound.
When put that way, the case is even stronger against stopping the rapper on a "fishing expedition." If men were stopped at random to check whether they had assaulted their partners, nobody would be shouting that "SUSPECT != SENT TO JAIL."
Society would not stand for the notion that all men are suspect for the actions of a few, whether or not the statistics show that men are disproportionally more likely to kill their partners than women, or that the leading cause of violent death amongst women is men.
The very notion of all men being permanent suspects of a crime would rightly be considered abhorrent. And so it is here with people of colour.
I also think your explanation here isn't exactly what happened, at least from what I gathered. What I read it as whas "We stop all people in expensive cars at this checkpoint and validate their income." So society wasn't ok discriminating against him because he was black, they were ok discriminating against him because he was in a nice car.
Stopping all cars is absolutely a different thing. Of course, if it only happens in certain neighbourhoods, one might pause, but here in Toronto, for example, we have drinking-and-driving sweeps where the police set up checkpoints and stop all cars regardless of occupant or car.
That seems reasonable.
Of course, here in Toronto they also like to "card" people in certain neighbourhoods of certain colours, and there is an ongoing set of protests against how they choose to implement this practice.
But I am personally ok with a certain amount of checkpointing.
That's weird. I'm white, 6'4" with a beard and I have never been stopped by cops while walking at night in my midwestern college town. Maybe because I usually have my backpack with me?
> I'm not trying to marginalize his message that skin color is the cause. But it's certainly not the only cause. The root of the problem lies with the police, and society, villifying anyone who isn't diurnal.
I had similar problems when my hair was long, but I really don't think it's comparable to what black people face. Being white, my problems went away when I cut my hair, nighttime walks or no. And black people get harassed day and night, so I think anti-nocturnalism is a small, small part of the problem, not the root.
Thank you for adding perspective to this issue with police and drawing it out of exclusively-race territory.
I would suggest that perhaps, part of what's happening is that the police are optimizing for a particular metric. We can hope that it's crime reduction, or some number or numbers very close to that.
When you optimize for one metric, other metrics fall.
The police, like most anyone, make errors based on superficial attributes. Even if statistically, arresting tall hobo beard man taking pictures of trees late at night is the best course of action for the police's metrics, you perceive it as a series of stupid errors. This leads to a perception of injustice and harassment.
I'm the kind of person who doesn't mind security check ups and even being stopped by police as long as they are cordial and professional, and, crucially, I understand their reasoning. I recall listening to one black man, I think he was talking to Sam Harris, relating how police would stop black men and grab them. Unprofessional treatment creates a perception of an uncivilized society, and that's unjust.
> When you optimize for one metric, other metrics fall.
This is very true. People often assume that things like machine learning or AI won't have racial biases, but then we find out time and time again that our algorithms are in fact biased. It's not that the bias is intentional (even human bias is rarely intentional), it's that by focusing on metrics, the metric of racial equality often suffers. I'm not sure why you were down voted for pointing this out. This is a key concept to understand if we care about creating a more equal society in an age of big data and machine learning. Google did some research in this area: https://research.google.com/bigpicture/attacking-discriminat... The TL;DR version is that in order to eliminate bias, you have to be aware of biases as metrics and optimize to eliminate them.
Interesting way to frame it. If I could restate in slightly more colloquial terms, the police's goal is typically something like "to protect and serve", where "serve" is
serving the public by upholding public ideals or principles.
Racial profiling might satisfy the "protect" clause, but it fails the "serve" clause, because it fails the portion of the public that is profiled.
I too love walking the streets at night. And I too have to not be myself and behave in very conscious ways to avoid being hassled and detained by the police. Police just assume that if you're out at night you are a criminal.
So much of his descriptions of having to learn to dress a certain way, behave a certain way, and literally go out of my way to avoid scaring people rings true. I get detained by the police a handful of times per year just for walking or being in places at times that most people aren't. I particularly get the police called on me if I walk through in rich neighborhoods. I've had firearms pulled on me just for photographing trees in a public park (at night).
I tried to take up jogging for half a year but I quit and bought a bike after being stopped by police for being suspicious three times in as many months. Apparently jogging while not wearing a joggers uniform means I'm up to no good. No non-criminal jogs in cargo pants and a t-shirt. And that was in the day time. I wouldn't even consider trying it at night.
I'm not trying to marginalize his message that skin color is the cause. But it's certainly not the only cause. The root of the problem lies with the police, and society, villifying anyone who isn't diurnal.