RE: Some instance I wanted to share with you
October 16, 2016 at 12:26 pm
(This post was last modified: October 16, 2016 at 12:41 pm by Kernel Sohcahtoa.)
(October 15, 2016 at 9:29 am)abaris Wrote: The other day I used the sub to go to work. The platform was pretty crowded and there were two cops present. The stopped and frisked the only black guy standing there. I'm a bit ashamed to only have watched what unfolded, but our cops are pretty much the same as in every other country. Stick your nose in their affairs and they will come after you out of spite. Because you don't show them the proper respect they think they deserve.
The black guy took it remarkably calm. Nothing came of it and he was on his phone a few minutes later. Probably a seasoned veteran of things like that happening.
I'm only mentioning this because I'm growing pretty tired of all these questioning white privilege threads cropping up like turds these last few months. This is how reality looks like. The cops do racial profiling, for whatever reason. And I'd hate to be on the receiving end.
IMO, implicit bias, a trait common to humanity, plays a part in this problem. The AF user, Aroura, created an excellent thread going into the details of implicit bias. In particular, some crucial aspects of implicit bias are cultural starting points, stereotypes, and generalizations, which we form to make sense of others and our environments. Naturally, as we experience our lives through whatever cultural lenses we've been brought up in, our implicit biases are subconsciously ingrained into our minds and become synonymous with normalcy. IMO, If we want to grow beyond these biases, then we've got to acknowledge their existence in each of us and be open to the criticism of others when they point out our particular biases (substituting curious introspection for reactive defensiveness is crucial here). More importantly, if people can embrace the fact that their particular sense-making processes do not constitute an objective normalcy/worldly truth−but are simply ways for them to construct meaning and normalcy in our world−then perhaps it will make us a more mindful, accepting, and advanced species.
References
Lustig, Myron., & Koester, Jolene. (2013). Intercultural Competence: Intercultural Communication across Cultures, 7th ed. Boston: Pearson.
