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Walking While Black
- ukulele 9y agoIn addition to shedding light on the author's experiences, this is also an excellent piece of writing. It's not what normally shows in HN, but I'm glad it did.
- lokopodium 9y agoNot hacker, not news.
- yashap 9y agoThat goes for plenty of articles here, I’ve always felt that Hacker News was for any articles that people in tech might find interesting. I thought this was a great piece, and really well written, I’m glad it was posted here.
- pthreads 9y agoI second that. Also, as a bonus it was through this article that I found out about lithub.
- rrdharan 9y agoSame. I’m also cynically surprised GitHub hasn’t sued them for trademark infringement...
- bonesss 9y agoThey'd have to prove marketplace confusion -- that an ordinary consumer might buy some LitHub services and believe them to be GitHub services. If GitLabs changed their name to 'GitHlub', they'd be too close. But a shipping company named GIT-HUB might be totally ok if their logos and ads were distinct.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- 40four 9y agoAs per the HN guidelines, on topic posts = "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity". Maybe it doesn't qualify as news but the writing is fantastic & it certainly satisfied my intellect! I'm happy to see this here.
- shard 9y agoUnlike you, I found that the author discussed many instances of hacking in the article. He hacked social conventions in order to walk freely in places where otherwise it could be dangerous for him to walk. Social engineering is a very appropriate topic for Hacker News.
- kazinator 9y ago> Social engineering is a very appropriate topic for Hacker News. Certainly, if you take "hacker" to be the mainstream definition corresponding to "cracker".
- kalleboo 9y agoThe Y Combinator application form famously has this question on it: "Please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage." A case of social engineering would certainly be a valid response
- kazinator 9y agoPerhaps due to my imagination being feeble, I can't see how that could be about anything but some sort of con job.
- twblalock 9y agoWho put you in charge?
- dang 9y agoPlease don't be rude, even if another comment is wrong. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- TheCoelacanth 9y agoFrom the guidelines about what is on topic: > anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity
- mrarjen 9y agoExactly, having anyone expand their hacker bubble and see the world in new ways.
- throwawayh9i 9y agoI swear, comments like this only come out of the woodwork on articles about things like racism or sexism.
- dang 9y agoPretty sure that's sample bias. People definitely make such complaints about other articles that don't match their expectation of this site.
- jasonkostempski 9y agoI'm a flaming flaggot around here (I truly thought I just coined that expression, but [1]). I almost flagged this one, but a black friend of mine recently had Walking While Black story of his own, so I read it. Lo and behold, the story covered his scenario, waving to a cop, first thing. I hear about things like this all the time online; from rappers and comedians; occasional news story; once in a great while, a first-person story from a colored friend. I usually rationalize it away thinking: "That's really only a problem in backwoods towns, far, far from here. Here you get the obligatory asshole cop every now and then, of course, but it's not the norm." This story made me realize A) it doesn't have to be the norm, it just has to be enough to cause someone to ALWAYS be on alert, to be a life altering problem B) No matter how quick I get at dismissing the instinctual thought pattern "different person is scary", the fact remains, I have those thoughts and they likely affect my actions in a way noticeable to other humans. Neither of those realizations are a surprise to me, but this story convinced me I haven't thought critically enough about them. Getting this stubborn old mind to reconsider it's position is an epic hack. [1] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=flaggot https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=flaggot
- michaelmrose 9y agoWhen I was growing up I remember the pride our educational system tried to instill in us and it seems so fake in retrospect. It's impossible to be proud of a nation that is only a land of opportunity for those who are white and middle class. Its not that I'm not proud to be an American so much as I don't consider myself one I'm just a person who happens to reside here because I don't have better options.
- darepublic 9y agoI don't think its true that it only affords opportunity for the white and middle class. I think you would find many Americans who fit into other categories who disagree with you. Not to say cynically that 'if you don't like it leave', but I'm curious when you say you just happen to reside here for lack of better options -- is there a country in the world you consider to be the ideal, a place more just than America? I ask for the sake of discussion, not rhetorically.
- whack 9y agoRacism in America varies greatly, depending on where you live. The following is the most objective metric I could find for racist tendencies in America: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/12/08/across-america-whites-are-biased-and-they-dont-even-know-it/?utm_term=.815b8c97ade3 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/12/08/acros... Looking at the map, the Pacific Northwest is one of the least racist, and the south is one of the most racist. This matches pretty well with what I would have expected. Interestingly, NY state itself ranks pretty highly in racist tendencies, which is a major part of the author's experiences. In contrast, here's the same map of Europe: http://theconversation.com/this-map-shows-what-white-europeans-associate-with-race-and-it-makes-for-uncomfortable-reading-76661 http://theconversation.com/this-map-shows-what-white-europea... If you put any stock in this data, the UK, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium are all less racist than NY-state.
- darepublic 9y agoI don't find this IAT stuff very convincing. As a counterpoint: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-false-science-of-implicit-bias-1507590908 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-false-science-of-implicit-b...
- jccalhoun 9y agogreat article. Very happy to see this on Hacker news even though it isn't the typical story found here.
- DoreenMichele 9y agoI can't find it, but I first read a piece about Walking While Black when I was still homeless. It was a different piece, written by a successful American man, a lawyer iirc, whose car broke down not too far from home. So he walked home into his upper middle class neighborhood to his own home and was harassed by the police about it. I got some very small taste of such treatment while homeless. Walking while homeless is another reason for well off people to call the cops on you or for police to generally assume you must be up to no good. I don't know how to fix this, but I am glad to see it getting more attention and I am glad to see such compelling writing on the subject.
- cannam 9y agohttp://jay.law.ou.edu/faculty/Jmaute/Lawyering_21st_Century/Paul%20Butler.pdf http://jay.law.ou.edu/faculty/Jmaute/Lawyering_21st_Century/...
- DoreenMichele 9y agoThank you very very much.
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- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- superkuh 9y agoThis 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.
- tailrecursion 9y agoThank 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.
- the_greyd 9y agoI would identify as how the author describes, someone who's slightly nervous at the sight of a black male walking towards him at night. I try to suppress this feeling, and try to act normal, at which point I'm really overthinking. And I'm sorry. I am sorry that this has happened to you and to black people in general, how as a society we have fucked up so much. I am suddenly reminded of the book "The Lathe of Heaven", in which when the protagonist wishes a world without racism, and everyone turns grey-skinned. I wish there were immediate solutions, and a way to not let this drag on for generations.
- acjohnson55 9y agoThank you for saying this. The fact is, as a black male, I sometimes feel prejudice against black males while walking at night. And I'm someone who is affected by that very same prejudice. I see all the same media as anyone else, which constantly portrays black men as a menace to society. Is a random black man actually more dangerous than a non-black man, in real life? I have my doubts. But for argument's sake, let's say it's true to a slight extent. That still means a given black man bares very little actual risk. Yet, what sort of psychological damage is done to us by being repeatedly subject to this treatment? It's an invisible tax we pay. I've been fortunate my whole life for so many reasons, but I have my own stories, like most other black men I know. I feel other types of prejudice too. I think step one is knowing this, step two is empathizing, and step three is advocating.
- simonh 9y agoIn the area where I live there aren't very many coloured people. When I (rarely) walk at night I find myself estimating the social category of people. If I see a young man in sweat pants and a baseball cap, I think 'possible Chav' (low class white person here in the UK) and I'm wary. Low income young men are more likely to be a possible source of trouble. I think in the UK and US since black people are far more likely to be in a low income category than not, race becomes a proxy for that. Funnily enough, when I see a black person in the street at night here I'm more likely to have a positive attitude. Most of the coloured people living round here do so because they are quite successful. Also because there aren't many black people, such a person is perhaps more likely to feel out of place or potentially feel threatened or need help.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Jaruzel 9y agoNorth America's attitude towards people of colour, absolutely disgusts me. I simply do not understand why that a country that was founded on on the principles of freedom continues to act this way. The fourth amendment clearly states that all citizens should be treated equally if suspected of a crime, yet this simply does not happen. Yeah, the UK (my homeland) has it's problems, but in the main, racial in-equality is not one of it's major ones. Every country does have 'ghetto' type areas, where things aren't as black and white as they should be (no pun intended) but, come on America, you need to do better than this. On the article itself:- A well written piece, and an real joy to read despite it's content. Things I had to look up, though: Clark's Desert Boots: https://www.clarksusa.com/desert-boots/c/o203 https://www.clarksusa.com/desert-boots/c/o203 Half Pint's 'Greetings': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2UdEasSWP0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2UdEasSWP0
- beaconstudios 9y agowe actually do have this problem in the UK - for example, with the police targeting black teenagers/young adults for stop-and-searches in London. It seems a lot less pervasive/severe than in the US though.
- grkvlt 9y agoI remember watching the Metropolitan Police (bringing you Institutional Racism since the 1950s) checkpoints at the 'ring of steel' in the City of London during my smoke breaks - I can't recall any time they stopped anyone white, it was always blacks. The stated purpose of the checkpoints was to prevent IRA terrorism, and young black men have never really been known to be active Irish Republicans and Catholics...
- jayess 9y agoYou should visit Latin America. Everyone is judged by their skin tone. The darker you are, the more you are regarded as "the help." Parents are excited when their children are born with light skin. My in-laws are all Mexican and I can say that they are far more racist than any US citizen I've met. I'm not even sure it's really "racism." But I do know that it's considered completely normal to think of others this way.
- crispinb 9y agoI've spent time in remote Australian communities, where it's quite common to be peppered with 'white cunt' imprecations if out at night, especially anywhere near the canteen (bar). I found that quite confronting (occasionally frightening) in the moment, but it didn't have a big effect -- the people concerned were usually drunk and in a mess (you'll know what I mean if you've been in such places), I was a kind of foreigner (outback communities are not really 'Australia' in anything other than an bureaucratic sense), and clearly representative (whether fairly or not) of an oppressor. And, importantly, I could leave. A few hours drive, and I'm back in a nation where I'm 'the norm', and the indigenous Australian would be the outsider. I'm trying to imagine the generalised life trauma that might ensue were I subject to this kind of suspicion and/or hatred all the time, in my own country (I do realise the author of the piece wasn't from the US). Many of course will rise above it more-or-less unscathed, but exceptional individuals are a poor indicator of most people's life chances. Australia is similar to the US in this respect. Indigenous Australians stand little chance unless they happen to get lucky and land whatever weird combination of genes and upbringing that creates exceptions. In some ways it's worse here, as denial about causes is very close to universal -- there's no real equivalent to the US North/South divide. Our whole nation is locked into a kind of determined fluffy antebellum fantasy, where we didn't have a nation-founding war, but just a kind of sloppy de facto displacement of savages by imported middle-class suburbanites, regrettable certainly, but all too natural (so inevitable). What a total stuff-up humans have made of everything.
- ImaCake 9y agoIt was more like a genocide. In fact, in many parts of Eastern and Southern Australia, it was a genocide. >Our whole nation is locked into a kind of determined fluffy antebellum fantasy, where we didn't have a nation-founding war, but just a kind of sloppy de facto displacement of savages by imported middle-class suburbanites, regrettable certainly, but all too natural (so inevitable). It becomes very obvious whenever someone stirs up the hornet's nest. The last I can think of was when Adam Goodes [0] tried to express his cultural ties. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Goodes#Controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Goodes#Controversy
- 9y ago
- LandR 9y agoWhat are peoples thoughts on a guy walking behind a woman. Not intentionally, just it's late and you end up walking up behind a woman on a darkish street. I always feel I either need to slow right down, so i'm not closing the gap (don't want to speed up as that might seem really dodgy..) Or just cross the road entirely. I feel we're in this weird place where every guy is perceived as a potential threat, so I understand that I should cross the road or just hang right back from her, but then that makes me feel bad because I'm not a threat to anyone and why should I have to cross the road or change my pace. I just want to get home too.
- Vinnl 9y agoYep, I guess that's similar to what's described in the article, although on a vastly different scale - it's a concern to me, but not that often. Interestingly, this was exacerbated when I was walking with crutches. Even though I was even less of a danger, the ticking sound of the crutches did feel like I was sounding more threatening.
- majewsky 9y ago> I always feel I either need to slow right down, so i'm not closing the gap (don't want to speed up as that might seem really dodgy..) Or just cross the road entirely. I usually try to overtake them very quickly, so they can see me. It helps that I'm a very fast walker.
- degenerate 9y agoI do the same. I walk quickly and as far to the side of them as I can, making a decent amount of noise. That way they can hear my location and be less alarmed.
- DONT_BE_A_MORON 9y agothis is hacker news not weird race guilt news
- mason182 9y agoThis guy is a total liar, I knew him in New Orleans. He benefited from so many people's generosity, mainly white peoples. He went to Tulane and has mostly white friends who drove him many places because he didn't have a car. Sorry you are buying into such lies that feed a fake divide. The police chief and mayor at the time were both black and it's a democratic blue city.
- andyjohnson0 9y agoA good but disturbing read. This just stopped me in my (white, European) tracks: "When he dropped me off and I thanked him for his help, he said, “It’s because you were polite that we let you go. If you were acting up it would have been different.” I nodded and said nothing." Even the officer who made the effort to be fair, still expected submission.
- circlefavshape 9y agoIsn't that what all police expect, from everyone? Cops here in Ireland are generally friendly, but the best path to a frictionless interaction with them is to demonstrate you already know who's the boss, so they don't feel like they have to demonstrate it to you edit: Having read now the article, I take that back. You've gotta be submissive with cops everywhere, but what this person describes is pretty extreme
- andyjohnson0 9y ago> Isn't that what all police expect, from everyone? Honestly, I don't know. I've been fortunate to have never had a bad interaction with the police, and when I have had dealings with them they've been helpful and professional. I hope that I know enough about my rights that I would be polite and cooperative but firm if the situation demanded it, but I don't really know whether I could do this in practice. I live in the UK and we supposedly have "policing by consent" [0] here, but there is abundant evidence that the police tend to exploit the power asymmetry. Armed police who consider themselves "the boss" are one of the reasons I am unlikely to ever visit the US. [0] One of the "Peelian Principles": https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/policing-by-consent/definition-of-policing-by-consent https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/policing-by-conse...
- spodek 9y agoThe article and this thread explicitly call out racism. The terms race or racism show up a dozen times (now more), but sexism only appears once. In terms of criminal justice, men are treated significantly more harshly. The man's sex seems at least as important as his race, but it seems we don't see or talk about that bias as much. Are we blind to sexism when it hurts men? How can we do anything about it if we don't talk about it?
- thex10 9y agoPerhaps the conversation you are looking for is the one about what’s known as “intersectionality”
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- kyria 9y ago>> A lone woman walking in the middle of the night was as common a sight as Sasquatch; moonlight pedestrianism was too dangerous for her. Mnyeah. Also known as walking alone while female after nightfall. I used to do that when I lived in Athens, Greece. There were two distinct periods of it, because I went through a phase where I had a decidecly gender-ambiguous appearance (short hair, combat boots, jeans and t-shirt) and another when I dressed more typically feminine (think your mom when she goes to the hairdresser's). When I looked like I could be a boy with weird hair, I thoroughly enjoyed my nighttime jaunts and I never felt threatened or harrassed. I walked around the seedier parts of town, where the drug-dealing and the sex-working happened- because that was the point, to see the night life that crawls out of the woodwork when all the decent people are safely sleeping at home. Despite all that I never got into trouble. I guess I looked like a bit of a freak so folks probably assumed I was out for a fix or something. But who knows?. When I looked my most femme, the situation was completely reversed, even though by that time I was bored of the sleaze and stayed firmly in the better-lit, higher-income parts of town. People would stick their heads out of moving cars and yell obscenities ("Hey baby, are you making house calls? MWAHAHAHAHA"). If I stopped, like to sit at a bench for a few minutes, shadows would detach themselves from the background and slowly amble towards me, nonchalant like, until I felt insecure enough that I had to get up and march away. Every single man I met would consider it their obligation to hit on me, one way or another- tell me how pretty I was (in the dark, sure) offer a ride, offer to buy me a drink... strangely enough, nobody ever offered to buy me a souvlaki which is what I actually was after most of the time. Note that this was Athens city in the period between 2000 and 2005, long before the immigrants started coming in. I'm just saying. Those people who made it a pain in the ass for a woman to walk alone at night? Plain, middle-class white guys in a country with a rate of violent crime among the lowest in the world. Well anyway. There you go. It sucks to walk while black, it sucks to walk while female, also- or at least, while recognisably so.
- faitswulff 9y agoRelevant from the article: > (And it is not lost on me that my woman friends are those who best understand my plight; they have developed their own vigilance in an environment where they are constantly treated as targets of sexual attention.)
- mcherm 9y agoSo the societal patterns this article describes are true, and they are not acceptable. As a white male who lives in this society, I have one question: What can I do to help change this?
- faitswulff 9y agoThis is a common question, but as a person of color, I would push back on it - this question has the effect of adding more work on the backs of the marginalized, underrepresented, and oppressed to educate you. My personal answer would be to ask that you read, make it a habit to educate yourself before relying on the labor of people of color, and keep an open mind whenever you have kneejerk responses to anything racially charged.
- AnimalMuppet 9y agoI acknowledge your point. And yet, I would suggest you should reconsider, for two reasons: First, it feels (to me, at least) like someone is genuinely wanting to be helpful, and you throw it back in their face. Your point is valid, but you could be turning away potential allies. Second, you are opening the door to people thinking, "Right, we white people will figure out how to solve all the black peoples' problems" - with all the paternalism that implies. I recognize that you are very much not saying that. But it seems likely that someone will take it that way, either because of malice or just because they are bent toward taking it that way.
- faitswulff 9y agoI will not reconsider telling people that they're asking victims for additional emotional labor. The very attitude is poisonous. Instead of "take over and solve the peoples' problems" it is, like UX research, mostly an act of listening to people of color, not of declaring themselves the arbiters of the solutions. All it takes is letting go of one's ego to center the conversation around listening to people of color instead of deciding to take control of the conversation or of their "salvation."
- vorhuts 9y agoThe injustice of race is such a small issue compared to the injustice between genders.