4 ms·

> I'm sure you can guess what he looks like. Until you said that I was picturing a white person. Maybe there is a natural tendency for people to picture thems

> I'm sure you can guess what he looks like. Until you said that I was picturing a white person. Maybe there is a natural tendency for people to picture themselves in the shoes of the story. There is definitely a stereotype that police pick on African-americans more. But they also pick on a lot of all of people in general and there are way more white people in the USA, so I don't immediately assume that a person being picked on by police is black. There is also the stereotype that blacks are not attentive fathers, so the setting (picking a kid up at daycare), would have at least canceled out the police stereotype IMO. I'd be surprised if most people had the same assumption about skin color that you had. Either way, I think calling attention to his skin color in the way you did is petty and rude.

gambiting 9y ago
As a Polish person, it has absolutely not even crossed my mind that the person in the story would be black. HN is read all over the world and not everyone understands the same assumptions.
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BearGoesChirp 9y ago
On a related note, is there any good date on how sex plays into this instead of (or in combination with) race? I wonder if a white male or a minority female faces greater police harassment. I'm also guessing age and appearance of wealth play significant factors as well.
grasshopperpurp 9y ago
The stereotype that police pick on black people more than white people stems from reality (not just in America); the stereotype that black men are not attentive fathers stems from racism. It's important to understand the difference. But, why do you think it's rude? https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/01/10/the-dangerous-myth-of-the-missing-black-father/?utm_term=.bfc25b20f1be https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/01/10/... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/27/police-are-searching-black-drivers-more-often-but-finding-more-illegal-stuff-with-white-drivers-2/?utm_term=.18064a293096 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/27/polic... http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-cops-race-injury-20160725-snap-story.html http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-cops-rac... http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/black-people-stop-and-search-six-times-police-racist-a7383591.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/black-people-...
- randyrand 9y ago
  > the stereotype that black men are not attentive fathers stems from racism. Non preset African american fathers also stems from reality, just like the police stereotype. The Washington post source you gave actually did not dispute the absent fatherhood statistics - the article was about explaining why. in the USA, 18% of non-Hispanic white fathers do not live with their children compared to 30% of hispanics, and 42% of blacks. Rephrased from here: "Non-Hispanic white men aged 15–44 had the largest difference between those with coresidential children (37%) and those with noncoresidential children (8.2%). The difference was smallest among non-Hispanic black men, with 33% having coresidential children and 24% having noncoresidential children. Among Hispanic men, more than twice as many had coresidential children (44%) than had noncoresidential children (18%)." https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr071.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr071.pdf
  - grasshopperpurp 9y ago
    That's my mistake. Here is the article I meant to post: Now to the mythology of the black male dereliction as dads: While it is true that black parents are less likely to marry before a child is born, it is not true that black fathers suffer a pathology of neglect. In fact, a C.D.C. report issued in December 2013 found that black fathers were the most involved with their children daily, on a number of measures, of any other group of fathers — and in many cases, that was among fathers who didn’t live with their children, as well as those who did. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/08/opinion/charles-blow-black-dads-are-doing-the-best-of-all.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/08/opinion/charles-blow-blac...
    - randyrand 9y ago
      That source has some good points , but it too does not dispute the statistics. Just explains some of it. The one statistic it gave that disputes for more daily activity was for children under age 5, for certain activities, and only for black fathers that live with their children - not on the whole. Very bad cherry picking and bad reporting. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr071.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr071.pdf
jccc 9y ago
> Either way, I think calling attention to his skin color in the way you did is petty and rude. This line was not in the reply I got by email (via HN Replies). I'm glad I caught it here because it illuminates a core problem with these conversations about policing and race. I did not at all mean or knowingly suggest that the individual officers are bad people who thought bad things about this man because of his race -- i.e., these bad racist officers need to be removed and replaced with good non-racist officers, if any such unicorns exist. But I understand why it might seem that way to family, friends and other defenders of police because so many critiques of policing do demonize them personally. I wasn't trying to make this point, but good people acting in concert can easily end up behaving very badly, and even bring out the worst of human nature and its often false, reflexive assumptions about others. This ought to be particularly true for police, who confront the worst of humanity more than the rest of us. You may disagree that black Americans are disproportionately victimized in this way by the police or that this played into what happened here, but that argument is not a personal one.

gambiting 9y ago

As a Polish person, it has absolutely not even crossed my mind that the person in the story would be black. HN is read all over the world and not everyone understands the same assumptions.

deleted 9y ago

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BearGoesChirp 9y ago

On a related note, is there any good date on how sex plays into this instead of (or in combination with) race? I wonder if a white male or a minority female faces greater police harassment. I'm also guessing age and appearance of wealth play significant factors as well.

grasshopperpurp 9y ago

The stereotype that police pick on black people more than white people stems from reality (not just in America); the stereotype that black men are not attentive fathers stems from racism. It's important to understand the difference. But, why do you think it's rude? https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/01/10/the-dangerous-myth-of-the-missing-black-father/?utm_term=.bfc25b20f1be https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/01/10/... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/27/police-are-searching-black-drivers-more-often-but-finding-more-illegal-stuff-with-white-drivers-2/?utm_term=.18064a293096 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/27/polic... http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-cops-race-injury-20160725-snap-story.html http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-cops-rac... http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/black-people-stop-and-search-six-times-police-racist-a7383591.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/black-people-...

randyrand 9y ago
> the stereotype that black men are not attentive fathers stems from racism. Non preset African american fathers also stems from reality, just like the police stereotype. The Washington post source you gave actually did not dispute the absent fatherhood statistics - the article was about explaining why. in the USA, 18% of non-Hispanic white fathers do not live with their children compared to 30% of hispanics, and 42% of blacks. Rephrased from here: "Non-Hispanic white men aged 15–44 had the largest difference between those with coresidential children (37%) and those with noncoresidential children (8.2%). The difference was smallest among non-Hispanic black men, with 33% having coresidential children and 24% having noncoresidential children. Among Hispanic men, more than twice as many had coresidential children (44%) than had noncoresidential children (18%)." https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr071.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr071.pdf
- grasshopperpurp 9y ago
  That's my mistake. Here is the article I meant to post: Now to the mythology of the black male dereliction as dads: While it is true that black parents are less likely to marry before a child is born, it is not true that black fathers suffer a pathology of neglect. In fact, a C.D.C. report issued in December 2013 found that black fathers were the most involved with their children daily, on a number of measures, of any other group of fathers — and in many cases, that was among fathers who didn’t live with their children, as well as those who did. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/08/opinion/charles-blow-black-dads-are-doing-the-best-of-all.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/08/opinion/charles-blow-blac...
  - randyrand 9y ago
    That source has some good points , but it too does not dispute the statistics. Just explains some of it. The one statistic it gave that disputes for more daily activity was for children under age 5, for certain activities, and only for black fathers that live with their children - not on the whole. Very bad cherry picking and bad reporting. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr071.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr071.pdf

jccc 9y ago

> Either way, I think calling attention to his skin color in the way you did is petty and rude. This line was not in the reply I got by email (via HN Replies). I'm glad I caught it here because it illuminates a core problem with these conversations about policing and race. I did not at all mean or knowingly suggest that the individual officers are bad people who thought bad things about this man because of his race -- i.e., these bad racist officers need to be removed and replaced with good non-racist officers, if any such unicorns exist. But I understand why it might seem that way to family, friends and other defenders of police because so many critiques of policing do demonize them personally. I wasn't trying to make this point, but good people acting in concert can easily end up behaving very badly, and even bring out the worst of human nature and its often false, reflexive assumptions about others. This ought to be particularly true for police, who confront the worst of humanity more than the rest of us. You may disagree that black Americans are disproportionately victimized in this way by the police or that this played into what happened here, but that argument is not a personal one.