rafi-dangelo

Look at this photo.

This is an advertisement running in NYC right now.

And now a quick word:

Dear White Friends,

Whenever you tell me white privilege doesn’t apply to all white people, I usually point you in the direction of statistics like these. Being white is basically giving you the privilege to live your life everyday and walk down the street without being stopped by the police. This is just one of the many ways in which being white positively affects your life without you being conscious of it.

White privilege isn’t about actively seeking out ways to benefit from your whiteness, because you don’t have to. The benefits just come whether you ask for it or not, and our conversations about race will go a lot easier once you accept that fact and move on.

Sincerely,

Black people who have nothing against white people but get tired of explaining the same things over and over.

Murders down 19% in NYC; Police credit “stop & frisk” policy.

DO NOT LET THE NYPD FOOL YOU.

They are looking for any facts, figures, or results even tangentially related to stopping brown people for being brown, and this is just their latest attempt to justify an egregious policy based on race and prejudice.

This is what a stop and frisk looks like.

After the jump is a short film by Video Nation containing what may be the only audio recording of a real-time stop and frisk conducted by the NYPD. In case you haven’t heard, the NYPD’s stop and frisk program gives any policeman license to stop any “suspicious”-looking person, suspicious meaning brown.

And for my white friends who—whenever this topic arises—love to point out that they’ve been harassed by the police at some point too, A) Cops are dicks and B) Please revisit these numbers and then have a seat. Sorry you got stopped, but clearly this isn’t a white man’s problem.

If you have high blood pressure, don’t watch the video until you’ve taken your meds.

NYC Stop and Frisk statistics.

In NYC, the police can stop you for just looking suspicious, which frequently means for being a man of color. In 2009, over half a million people were stopped by the NYPD, 84% of them people of color even though people of color make up roughly half of the population of the city.

Last night I stumbled across this article on the Atlantic Wire:

This Group of 8 Black College Students Has Been Frisked 92 Times by the NYPD
By Dino Grandoni | The Atlantic Wire – Tue, Apr 10, 2012

Sure, it’s an informal survey, but a New York Times reporter’s finding that eight black college students he spoke to have been stopped by police a collective 92 times is still a disturbing reminder of how the NYPD wields its stop-and-frisk tactics too heavily against the city’s minorities. In The Times article on New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly’s aboutface on the efficacy of stop-and-frisk, Michael Powell talked to group of eight black men currently attending the Borough of Manhattan Community College. “Cumulatively, they said they had been stopped 92 times.” (cont.)

None of them had committed a crime and none of them had been in possession of any contraband. One student interviewed is actually the son of a police detective and was made to take a breathalyzer for no reason, while another interviewee was forced to remove his shoes on the subway.

But to really demonstrate what a problem this is, let me break the statistics down for you. With pictures. Because a picture is worth a thousand words.