Hillary Clinton told a mixed audience, “I mean, if we’re honest, for a lot of well-meaning, open-minded white people, the sight of a young black man in a hoodie still evokes a twinge of fear.” Before we get into the nuts and bolts of that observation, I’d like to ask a question. Would well-meaning, open-minded white people have a similar fear at the sight of an elderly black man using a walker and wearing a hoodie?
Whether we like it or not, easily observed physical characteristics — such as race, sex, height and age — convey information. That’s because there is often a correlation between those characteristics and other characteristics not so easily observed. Say that you’re a police commander faced with the task of finding vandals responsible for slashing car tires and smashing windows. How much of the city’s resources would you expend investigating 60- to 70-year-old Chinese men? You probably wouldn’t spend resources on any men in that age group. So who is responsible for your decision not to investigate 60- to 70-year-old Chinese men and other men of the same age? If you said it’s the behavioral reputation of that demographic as a group, you’d be absolutely right.
When I had nearly completed my doctorate at UCLA, Mrs. Williams and I purchased a home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, a high-end, exclusive suburb of Washington. Our house was on the corner, and motorists often tossed debris on our lawn adjacent to the street. A Saturday chore was to pick up the trash. One Saturday, an elderly white man offered, “When you’re finished working here, can you come to work at my place?” I responded that I’d be busy putting the finishing touches on my doctoral dissertation and would not have the time. The man was embarrassed and apologized profusely.
The man took for granted, with a high degree of probability, that if one saw a black man picking up trash in Chevy Chase in 1971, he was a hired hand. The man’s action may have been annoying, but it would be an error to classify it as racism.
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4 comments:
SHE invokes more than a TWINGE of fear in me!
If it is a teenage black boy, most people would be afraid, just look at the news every night, these kinds of people are always involved in criminal activity. Just like a Muslim walking around an airport taking photo's of the building, what are most people going to think. Most of us make assumptions on past experiences and news reports.
5:31 is correct, we "Racially Profile" everyone, it is what we do from experience, to protect ourselves.
This was really a balanced article.
Prejudice is everywhere and about everything.
In Salisbury, SU students complain about the "old fogey" neighbors always complaining, when really it was the young mother trying to get her kids to sleep who called and complained about the noise.
Or the folks who complained about the SU students raising hell when it was their neighbors' high schoolers.
Sometimes accusations are accurate, and sometimes they aren't.
We are our experience and our perceptions.
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