Friday, August 15, 2014

"Why I Generally Won't Call the Police on Black People"

I'm not sure why Emily Bazelon, the Truman Capote Fellow at Yale Law School,  is limiting her comments to black people in a recent Slate commentary. It really doesn't make sense to call the police in most cases, against anyone, but here is Bazelon with her politically correct view:
 If I have a choice about whether to involve the police in the life of a black person, I will try to choose not to. I’m not saying that I won’t call 911 and pray as hard as I can for the police to come if someone, whatever race, breaks in to my house. But much of the time, our choices are made in a far hazier gray area. To go back to the story of Debra Harrell and her daughter, who wound up respectively, getting arrested and going into foster care: If I saw a 9-year-old black girl alone in the park, and she said her mom was at work, I would not call the police. I would ask that girl if she was OK and try to talk to her mom. Because, once the wheels of the bureaucratic state start to turn, they can grind people up. Maybe the police want to help but don’t have discretion. Maybe “the law is an ass,” as my colleague David Plotz put it on the Gabfest. Whatever the cause, I would rather stay away from bringing its weight to bear on someone else, especially when I know that person is likelier to get an unfair shake...

The arm of the government that is meant to protect them instead poses a danger, to their lives and their futures. Keep that in mind the next time you consider calling the cops.
Again, I am not sure why Bazelon is singly out blacks for protection against government police. If you call police on anyone, it may not turn out very well. The police and their ability to use force against anyone who defies them is the problem, blacks, whites etc.

It is police power, in general, that must be shrunk, as a fist step on the way to elimination, not just use of power against a politically favored group.

-RW

1 comment:

  1. Government monopoly on force has to be ended of this will continue

    ReplyDelete