4 ms·
Please don't do a dismissive handwave over what's really an important element to this story. That the victim is a person of color is absolutely relevant to this
by ndespres 11y ago
Please don't do a dismissive handwave over what's really an important element to this story. That the victim is a person of color is absolutely relevant to this story; it demonstrates a bias on behalf of the DEA agent, or perhaps simply a cynicism: they know what they can get away with in the eyes of the public.
Of COURSE race is an important element of how law enforcement interacts with citizens. Race is part of these issues. The very term "race card" is offensive and marginalizing, even if you didn't mean it that way.
- SixSigma 11y ago> a person of color There's one of your problems. Am I a person of no colour? Your (and this isn't a direct attack on you) use of language contributes to the situation while it is trying to be softly softly.
- ndespres 11y agoWe should not define people in terms of what they are "not" or lump them into a group of who they are different from ("minority"). So no, if you are white you can be just that. Maybe it doesn't have as much play outside the U.S. but the term PoC seems to work well here. For the whole semantic argument I'll point to http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_color http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_color .
- SixSigma 11y agowe're even more positive, blacks are called black. No messing about. We also have IC codes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IC_codes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IC_codes Code Ethnicity IC1 White - North European IC2 White - South European IC3 Black IC4 Asian (in the UK Asian refers to people from the Indian subcontinent like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal) IC5 Chinese, Japanese, or other South East Asian IC6 Arabic or North African IC9 Unknown And, just to polish things off, the European Union has declared that there is no such thing as "race".
- konradb 11y agoOf course it is very likely race was a factor here, but it may well have been that he was the only poor soul who they could find with an envelope of cash.
- hippich 11y agoi don't think i was marginalizing it. if anyone, it was parent and article writer tried to make it look like assets forfeiture affects only some groups of people. It does not. And making it look like it is makes it only harder to fight against. As soon as you try to divide public into groups - you get less power to fight. I am foreigner, so I can see it from different perspective than regular american person, who grew up with the notion "we, whites, are oppressing black men, and we should feel guilty". As soon as you guys realize that whites/blacks/asians/whatever word you come up with for arbitrary characteristic of a group of people, who live same life, live in the same country, has on a daily basis more or less similar issues, and, in case of assets forfeiture, all likely to get abused with it, may be then you understand that you need fight back, and not try to differentiate yourself from your neighbor. Just a random overview from a guy without blurred picture of what is going on in your country.