A lot of good content surges on Twitter.
It's not user-friendly, even for those who have Twitter accounts.
It's hard for anyone to break up thoughts into small readable segments.
It's also hard for the reader to follow the flow.
For those without Twitter, this is what a Twitter tread looks like...
It's not just about Starbucks. It's about when white people use the police to remove black people from a particular space.
Recall what a McKinney, Texas cop did to a 100 pound, swimsuit-clad black girl when the police were called on a pool party: https://t.co/4zOabDAMEr— Karen Attiah (@KarenAttiah) April 17, 2018
Or the police officer in South Carolina that flipped a black high school girl over her classroom desk and dragged her across the room for using a cell phone: https://t.co/zO6hGWktbD— Karen Attiah (@KarenAttiah) April 17, 2018
A white neighbor called the police after hearing his car windows were smashed. He saw a man in a hoodie and called the police.— Karen Attiah (@KarenAttiah) April 17, 2018
Stephon Clark ended up dead. Shot 20 times. He was unarmed.
The white neighbor says he never wants to call 911 again. https://t.co/Ue7JvgUGc6
In 2009 in Cambridge, Mass., a woman called 911 to report a possbile burglary in her neighborhood.— Karen Attiah (@KarenAttiah) April 17, 2018
The man she called the cops on was black Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates.
He was trying to get into his OWN HOUSE. He was arrested and charged. https://t.co/Xi2gEPVSNU
And with the exception of the Skip Gates example, the only reason why we are talking about these cases are because there are videos.— Karen Attiah (@KarenAttiah) April 17, 2018
Sadly, this is the American way. As @Isabelwilkerson wrote,— Karen Attiah (@KarenAttiah) April 17, 2018
“In the early decades of the 20th century... every four days an African-American was lynched for some perceived breach or mundane accusation — having stolen 75 cents or made off with a mule”https://t.co/85RruKcQQI
It’s great Starbucks will train employees on how to treat black people fairly.— Karen Attiah (@KarenAttiah) April 17, 2018
But who is going to train whites people to not inappropriately call the cops on their black Neighbors?
Who will train teachers to not use police force on black kids for classroom management?
Again, props to @DrJasonJohnson that wrote this amazing piece for @TheRoot about whites in America calling the police on black people: https://t.co/l7B5jLgNUA— Karen Attiah (@KarenAttiah) April 18, 2018
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This isn't The Onion.— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) April 23, 2018
It's the Associated Press.
The owner of the golf course CALLED THE POLICE on Black women who were there golfing because "they were going too slow."
America. 2018. https://t.co/4l92l6nZKa
No drama here, but this example underscores the point. Go to the link for more details. |
Here's another case in point.
It's now May 1. This post is becoming a collection...
It's now May 1. This post is becoming a collection...
I kid you not, this Black couple was seated, given menus, and prepared to order when they were asked to move to a different table because a "white regular" wanted to sit there.— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) May 1, 2018
When they refused to move, of course, they threatened to call the police. @Sambuca360 in Plano pic.twitter.com/WG5NsmlRDT
Another...this link via my Facebook page...
Another one.
This time in Colorado.
Link here to the Twitter message.
Cutting to the chase, AP has the narrative.
Colorado State University is inviting two Native American teenagers pulled from a campus tour by police back to the school, saying it will pick up the tab for them to travel there for a VIP tour with their family.
The school also released body camera footage Friday showing two police officers searching the teens’ pockets and recordings of two phone calls made to police by a woman who described the teens’ behavior as “really odd” but also said she may be “paranoid.”
The school said it would refund the money that 19-year-old Thomas Kanewakeron Gray and his 17-year-old brother, Lloyd Skanahwati Gray, spent to travel to the school for last Monday’s tour.
“Two young men, through no fault of their own, wound up frightened and humiliated because another campus visitor was concerned about their clothes and overall demeanor, which appears to have simply been shyness. The very idea that someone — anyone — might ‘look’ like they don’t belong on a CSU Admissions tour is anathema,” university president Tony Frank wrote in an email to students and staff Friday.
The university is taking several steps to prevent a similar situation from happening again, including the use of lanyards or badges to identify tour guests.
Thomas Kanewakeron Gray said police stopped him and his brother while the tour group was inside a gymnasium. He described the officers’ questioning as aggressive.
Police release video showing them pulling two Native American teens from a Colorado State University campus tour after a woman reported them. Read about the university's apology here: https://t.co/gjiVkRFS6G pic.twitter.com/A2uicHO4MK— AP West Region (@APWestRegion) May 4, 2018
White Woman Calls Cops on Black Real Estate Investor Inspecting House Next Door
It’s news to no one that the Rebeccas and Karens of the world will not cease until they call cops on every single black person in this country for the most minuscule of perceived infractions.
In the past month alone we’ve had incidents of police being called on black people for napping while black, cooking while black, dining while black and moving while black. And now we have real-estate-ing while black.
In a video posted to YouTube earlier this month, Michael Hayes, a real estate investor in Memphis, Tenn., went to a house that was in desperate need of a fixing up to inspect it. It was at that point, he said, that a woman came out of a neighboring house demanding to know what he was doing. Ever affable, Hayes said that he readily showed the woman his investment contract, which showed that he had permission to work on the house, as well as the written permission he received from the homeowner.
Still, Karen the unidentified woman wouldn’t be swayed and called the police anyway.
This collection is getting longer than I had planned. Here is an excerpt from a relevant NY Times op-ed that deserves mentioning.
The selective enforcement of minor ordinances, as many critics note, performs the same work today that segregation laws did in the past. But it would be inaccurate to call this a new form of Jim Crow. What it is, rather, is a form of Jim Crow that whites in the North have been developing since the early 1900s.There is more at the link, of course, but this summarizes the point:
As white segregationists in the South were placing “whites only” signs in the windows of restaurants, in the North, more enlightened (or, rather, more savvy) white proprietors and public officials realized that rules restricting public spaces to local residents and the strict but selective enforcement of laws against things like disorderly conduct and loitering could be used to impose racial segregation.
Take public beaches. In the South, white officials literally drew color lines in the sands and the waters off shore. In the “racially liberal” Northeast, towns devised elaborate, and ostensibly colorblind, procedures for determining who could access public shores, and what they could bring and do once inside, and then proceeded to enforce them for black and brown people only.
In the 1930s, Long Branch, N.J., passed an ordinance requiring all residents to apply for a pass that would allow access to only one of the town’s four public beaches. Town officials claimed the rule was meant to prevent overcrowding. Without exception, though, black applicants were assigned to the same beach and were denied entry to the others.
Most white Americans prefer to consign such naked acts of discrimination to a shameful past that we have supposedly overcome. But in light of these recent incidents, it would be more accurate to call the forms of Jim Crow that prevailed in the Northeast in the early- to mid-20th century the cutting edge in technologies of exclusion, a sign of things that were to come.
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