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#STOP RACIAL PROFILING
reasoningdaily · 6 months
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Outrage over racial profiling and the killing of African Americans by police officers and vigilantes in recent years helped give rise to the Black Lives Matter movement.
But tensions between the police and black communities are nothing new.
There are many precedents to the Ferguson, Missouri protests that ushered in the Black Lives Matter movement. Those protests erupted in 2014 after a police officer shot unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown; the officer was subsequently not indicted.
The precedents include the Los Angeles riots that broke out after the 1992 acquittal of police officers for beating Rodney King. Those riots happened nearly three decades after the 1965 Watts riots, which began with Marquette Frye, an African American, being pulled over for suspected drunk driving and roughed up by the police for resisting arrest.
I’m a criminal justice researcher who often focuses on issues of race, class and crime. Through my research and from teaching a course on diversity in criminal justice, I have come to see how the roots of racism in American policing – first planted centuries ago – have not yet been fully purged.
Slave Patrols
There are two historical narratives about the origins of American law enforcement.
Policing in southern slave-holding states had roots in slave patrols, squadrons made up of white volunteers empowered to use vigilante tactics to enforce laws related to slavery. They located and returned enslaved people who had escaped, crushed uprisings led by enslaved people and punished enslaved workers found or believed to have violated plantation rules.
The first slave patrols arose in South Carolina in the early 1700s. As University of Georgia social work professor Michael A. Robinson has written, by the time John Adams became the second U.S. president, every state that had not yet abolished slavery had them.
Members of slave patrols could forcefully enter anyone’s home, regardless of their race or ethnicity, based on suspicions that they were sheltering people who had escaped bondage.
The more commonly known precursors to modern law enforcement were centralized municipal police departments that began to form in the early 19th century, beginning in Boston and soon cropping up in New York City, Albany, Chicago, Philadelphia and elsewhere.
The first police forces were overwhelmingly white, male and more focused on responding to disorder than crime.
As Eastern Kentucky University criminologist Gary Potter explains, officers were expected to control a “dangerous underclass” that included African Americans, immigrants and the poor. Through the early 20th century, there were few standards for hiring or training officers.
Police corruption and violence – particularly against vulnerable people – were commonplace during the early 1900s. Additionally, the few African Americans who joined police forces were often assigned to black neighborhoods and faced discrimination on the job. In my opinion, these factors – controlling disorder, lack of adequate police training, lack of nonwhite officers and slave patrol origins – are among the forerunners of modern-day police brutality against African Americans.
Jim Crow Laws
Slave patrols formally dissolved after the Civil War ended. But formerly enslaved people saw little relief from racist government policies as they promptly became subject to Black Codes.
For the next three years, these new laws specified how, when and where African Americans could work and how much they would be paid. They also restricted black voting rights, dictated how and where African Americans could travel and limited where they could live.
The ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868 quickly made the Black Codes illegal by giving formerly enslaved blacks equal protection of laws through the Constitution. But within two decades, Jim Crow laws aimed at subjugating African Americans and denying their civil rights were enacted across southern and some northern states, replacing the Black Codes.
For about 80 years, Jim Crow laws mandated separate public spaces for blacks and whites, such as schools, libraries, water fountains and restaurants – and enforcing them was part of the police’s job. Blacks who broke laws or violated social norms often endured police brutality.
Meanwhile, the authorities didn’t punish the perpetrators when African Americans were lynched. Nor did the judicial system hold the police accountable for failing to intervene when black people were being murdered by mobs.
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Reverberating Today
For the past five decades, the federal government has forbidden the use of racist regulations at the state and local level. Yet people of color are still more likely to be killed by the police than whites.
The Washington Post tracks the number of Americans killed by the police by race, gender and other characteristics. The newspaper’s database indicates that 229 out of 992 of those who died that way in 2018, 23% of the total, were black, even though only about 12% of the country is African American.
Policing’s institutional racism of decades and centuries ago still matters because policing culture has not changed as much as it could. For many African Americans, law enforcement represents a legacy of reinforced inequality in the justice system and resistance to advancement – even under pressure from the civil rights movement and its legacy.
In addition, the police disproportionately target black drivers.
When a Stanford University research team analyzed data collected between 2011 and 2017 from nearly 100 million traffic stops to look for evidence of systemic racial profiling, they found that black drivers were more likely to be pulled over and to have their cars searched than white drivers. They also found that the percentage of black drivers being stopped by police dropped after dark when a driver’s complexion is harder to see from outside the vehicle.
This persistent disparity in policing is disappointing because of progress in other regards.
There is greater understanding within the police that brutality, particularly lethal force, leads to public mistrust, and police forces are becoming more diverse.
What’s more, college students majoring in criminal justice who plan to become future law enforcement officers now frequently take “diversity in criminal justice” courses. This relatively new curriculum is designed to, among other things, make future police professionals more aware of their own biases and those of others. In my view, what these students learn in these classes will make them more attuned to the communities they serve once they enter the workforce.
In addition, law enforcement officers and leaders are being trained to recognize and minimize their own biases in New York City and other places where people of color are disproportionately stopped by the authorities and arrested.
But the persistence of racially biased policing means that unless American policing reckons with its racist roots, it is likely to keep repeating mistakes of the past. This will hinder police from fully protecting and serving the entire public.
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neylavellan · 5 months
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FUNDRAISER:
ANYTHING HELPS ❤︎
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serious2020 · 8 months
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SF to dismiss almost all cases against Dolores hill bomb teens
San Francisco officials to dismiss cases against 79 of the 81 teenagers arrested for hill bomb rioting. Status of arrested adults is unclear. — Read on missionlocal.org/2023/07/hill-bomb-sf-to-dismiss-almost-all-charges-against-teens/
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quenthel · 2 years
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I’m so sad that I will never know my dad’s true heritage bc he never made contact w his dad and the other half of his family mostly got killed in wwII by the n*zis....
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etakeh · 8 months
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police spend much of their time conducting racially biased stops and searches of minority drivers, often without reasonable suspicion, rather than “fighting crime.”
I don't think anyone is shocked, and I don't think anyone expects anything to come from this report other than some campaign promises.
Black people in San Diego were more than twice as likely than white residents to be stopped by sheriff’s deputies, for example.
I know that during 2020, a lot of people who were *not* white said that when they were arrested, their police reports had them down as white.
I wonder how often that happens in other areas, and how the numbers would change if they've been reported correctly.
I guess we'll never know.
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How the NYPD defeated bodycams
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Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. When American patience for racial profiling in traffic stops reached a breaking point, cops rolled out dashcams. Dashcam footage went AWOL, or just recorded lots of racist, pretextual stops. Racial profiling continued.
Tasers and pepper spray were supposed to curb the undue use of force by giving cops an alternative to shooting dangerous-seeming people. Instead, we got cops who tasered and sprayed unarmed people and then shot them to pieces.
Next came bodycams: by indelibly recording cops' interactions with the public, body-worn cameras were pitched as a way to bring accountability to American law-enforcement. Finally, police leadership would be able to sort officers' claims from eyewitness accounts and figure out who was lying. Bad cops could be disciplined. Repeat offenders could be fired.
Police boosters insist that police violence and corruption are the result of "a few bad apples." As the saying goes, "a few bad apples spoil the bushel." If you think there are just a few bad cops on the force, then you should want to get rid of them before they wreck the whole institution. Bodycams could empirically identify the bad apples, right?
Well, hypothetically. But what if police leadership don't want to get rid of the bad apples? What if the reason that dashcams, tasers, and pepper spray failed is that police leadership are fine with them? If that were the case, then bodycams would turn into just another expensive prop for an off-Broadway accountability theater.
What if?
In "How Police Have Undermined the Promise of Body Cameras," Propublica's Eric Umansky and Umar Farooq deliver a characteristically thorough, deep, and fascinating account of the failure of NYPD bodycams to create the accountability that New York's political and police leadership promised:
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-police-undermined-promise-body-cameras
Topline: NYPD's bodycam rollout was sabotaged by police leadership and top NYC politicians. Rather than turning over bodycam footage to oversight boards following violent incidents, the NYPD suppresses it. When overseers are allowed to see the footage, they get fragmentary access. When those fragments reveal misconduct, they are forbidden to speak of it. When the revealed misconduct is separate from the main incident, it can't be used to discipline officers. When footage is made available to the public, it is selectively edited to omit evidence of misconduct.
NYPD policy contains loopholes that allow them to withhold footage. Where those loopholes don't apply, the NYPD routinely suppresses footage anyway, violating its own policies. When the NYPD violates its policies, it faces no consequences. When overseers complain, they are fired.
Bodycams could be a source of accountability for cops, but for that to be true, control over bodycams would have to vest with institutions that want to improve policing. If control over bodycams is given to institutions that want to shield cops from accountability, that's exactly what will happen. There is nothing about bodycams that makes them more resistant to capture than dashcams, tasers or pepper spray.
This is a problem across multiple police departments. Minneapolis, for example, has policies from before and after the George Floyd uprisings that require bodycam disclosure, and those policies are routinely flouted. Derek Chauvin, George Floyd's murderer, was a repeat offender and had been caught on bodycam kneeling on other Black peoples' necks. Chauvin once clubbed a 14 year old child into unconsciousness and then knelt on his neck for 15 minutes as his mother begged for her child's life. Chauvin faced no discipline for this and the footage was suppressed.
In Montgomery, Alabama, it took five years of hard wrangling to get access to bodycam footage after an officer sicced his attack dog on an unarmed Black man without warning. The dog severed the man's femoral artery and he died. Montgomery PD suppressed the footage, citing the risk of officers facing "embarrassment."
In Memphis, the notoriously racist police department was able to suppress bodycam disclosures until the murder of Tyre Nichols. The behavior of the officers who beat Nichols to death are a testament to their belief in their own impunity. Some officers illegally switched off their cameras; others participated in the beating in full view of the cameras, fearing no consequences.
In South Carolina, the police murder of Walter Scott was captured on a bystander's phone camera. That footage made it clear that Scott's uniformed killers lied, prompting then-governor Nikki Haley to sign a law giving the public access to bodycam footage. But the law contained a glaring loophole: it made bodycam footage "not a public record subject to disclosure." Nothing changed.
Bodycam footage does often reveal that killer cops lie about their actions. When a Cincinnati cop killed a Black man during a 2015 traffic-stop, his bodycam footage revealed that the officer lied about his victim "lunging at him" before he shot. Last summer, a Philadelphia cop was caught lying about the circumstances that led to him murdering a member of the public. Again, the officer claimed the man had "lunged at him." The cop's camera showed the man sitting peacefully in his own car.
Police departments across the country struggle with violent, lying officers, but few can rival the NYPD for corruption, violence, scale and impunity. The NYPD has its own "goon squad," the Strategic Response Group, whose leaked manual reveals how the secret unit spends about $100m/year training and deploying ultraviolent, illegal tactics:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/07/cruelty-by-design/#blam-blam-blam
The NYPD's disciplinary records – published despite a panicked scramble to suppress them – reveal the NYPD's infestation with criminal cops who repeatedly break the law in meting out violence against the public:
https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/27/ip/#nypd-who
These cops are the proverbial bad apples, and they do indeed spoil the barrel. A 2019 empirical analysis of police disciplinary records show that corruption is contagious: when crooked cops are paired with partners who have clean disciplinary records, those partners become crooked, too, and the effect lasts even after the partnership ends:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2378023119879798
Despite the risk of harboring criminals in police ranks, the NYPD goes to extreme lengths to keep its worst officers on the street. New York City's police "union"'s deal with the city requires NYC to divert millions to a (once) secret slushfund used to pay high-priced lawyers to defend cops whose conduct is so egregious that the city's own attorneys refuse to defend them:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/26/overfitness-factor/#heads-you-lose-tails-they-win
This is a good place for your periodic reminder that police unions are not unions:
https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/28/afterland/#selective-solidarity
Indeed, despite rhetoric to the contrary, policing is a relatively safe occupation, with death rates well below the risks to roofers, loggers, or pizza delivery drivers:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/27/extraordinary-popular-delusions/#onshore-havana-syndrome
The biggest risk to police officers – the single factor that significantly increased death rates among cops – is police unions themselves. Police unions successfully pressured cities across American to reject covid risk mitigation, from masking to vaccinations, leading to a wave of police deaths. "Suicide by cop" is very rare, but US officers committed "mass suicide by cop union":
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/12/us/police-covid-vaccines.html
But the story that policing is much more dangerous than it really is a useful one. It has a business-model. Military contractors who turn local Barney Fifes into Judge Dredd cosplayers with assault rifles, tanks and other "excess" military gear make billions from the tale:
https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/10/flintstone-delano-roosevelt/#1033-1022
It's not just beltway bandits who love this story. For cops to be shielded from consequences for murdering the public, they need to tell themselves and the rest of us that they are a "thin blue line," and not mere armed bureaucrats. The myth that cops are in constant danger from the public justifies hair-trigger killings.
Consider the use of "civilian" to describe the public. Police are civilians. The only kind of police officer who isn't a civilian is a military policeman. Places where "civilians" interact with non-civilian law enforcement are, by definition, under military occupation. Calling the public "civilians" is a cheap rhetorical trick that converts a police officer to a patrolling soldier in hostile territory. Calling us "civilians" justifies killing us, because if we're civilians, then they are soldiers and we are at war.
The NYPD clearly conceives of itself as an occupying force and considers its "civilian" oversight to be the enemy. When New York's Civilian Complaint Review Board gained independence in 1993, thousands of off-duty cops joined Rudy Giuliani in a mass protest at City Hall and an occupation of the Brooklyn Bridge. This mass freakout is a measure of police intolerance for oversight – after all, the CCRB isn't even allowed to discipline officers, only make (routinely ignored) recommendations.
Kerry Sweet was the NYPD lawyer who oversaw the department's bodycam rollout. He once joked that the NYPD missed a chance to "bomb the room" where the NYPD's CCRB was meeting (when Propublica asked him to confirm this, he said he couldn't remember those remarks, but "on reflection, it should have been an airstrike").
Obvious defects in the NYPD's bodycam policy go beyond the ability to suppress disclosure of the footage. The department has no official tracking system for its bodycam files. They aren't geotagged, only marked by officer badge-number and name. So if a member of the public comes forward to complain that an unknown officer committed a crime at a specific place and time, there's no way to retrieve that footage. Even where footage can be found, the NYPD often hides the ball: in 20% of cases where the Department told the CCRB footage didn't exist, they were lying.
Figuring out how to make bodycam footage work better is complex, but there are some obvious first steps. Other cities have no problem geotagging their footage. In Chicago, the CCRB can directly access the servers where bodycam footage is stored (when the NYPD CCRB members proposed this, they were fired).
Meanwhile, the NYPD keeps protecting its killers. The Propublica story opens with the police killing of Miguel Richards. Richards' parents hadn't heard from him in a while, so they asked his Bronx landlord to check on him (the Richards live in Jamaica). The landlord called the cops. The cops killed Richards.
The cops claimed he had a gun and they were acting in self-defense. They released a highly edited reel of bodycam footage to support that claim. When the full video was eventually extracted, it revealed that Richards had a tiny plastic toy guy and a small folding knife. The officers involved believed he was suffering an acute mental health incident and stated that policy demanded that they close his bedroom door and wait for specialists. Instead, they barked orders at him and then fired 16 rounds at him. Seven hit him. One ruptured his aorta. As he lay dying on his bedroom floor, one officer roughly tossed him around and cuffed him. He died.
New York's Police Benevolent Association – the largest police "union" in NYC – awarded the officers involved its "Finest of the Finest" prize for their conduct in the killing.
This isn't an isolated incident. A month after the NYPD decided not to punish the cops who killed Richards, NYPD officers murdered Kawaski Trawick in his Bronx apartment:
https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/04/kawaski-trawick/#Kawaski-Trawick
The officers lied about it, suppressed release of the bodycam footage that would reveal their lies, and then escaped any justice when the footage and the lies were revealed.
None of this means that bodycams are useless. It just means that bodycams will only help bring accountability to police forces when they are directed by parties who have the will and power to make the police accountable.
When police leaders and city governments support police corruption, adding bodycams won't change that fact.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/13/i-want-a-roof-over-my-head/#and-bread-on-the-table
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Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg
CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
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Tony Webster, modified https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Minneapolis_Police_Officer_Body_Camera_%2848968390892%29.jpg
CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en
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mass-convergence · 1 year
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So about a week or so ago I get stopped by a cop for somewhat legit reasons (my tags were technically “expired” though it was due to some shit with the DMV losing my new stickers in the mail so my registration was valid, i had also just neglected to get it fixed for a week or so and let it hang like a sword of Damocles).
Anyway the cop asks me some weird questions like “where were you born” and “what’s the highest level of education you’ve attained”. And also was saying “you look so familiar have I talked to you before? Have I ever responded to a call at your address? I swear the address looks familiar too”
Which a) were strange af questions and b) I’ve never interacted with this PD ever in my entire life. But I was tired af after getting off work and I also knew I did minorly fuck up for not getting my sticker issue sorted out sooner. Also I mean ……. Cop. So I just answered his questions and texted my mom afterward about getting pulled over - no citation just a warning to get my tags fixed.
The topic of me getting pulled over comes back up again today while my mom and I are out running errands.
I first off need to mention that I’m not white - my mom is white and my dad is south Chinese, he’s got darker skin and I’ve inherited his skin tone. Also I’ve grown up in (mostly) white upper class liberal suburbia (there is a significant Asian pop in my community) - so cops have just never interacted with me before except for one time when there was an incident involving a mental health crisis from one of my family members which got resolved surprisingly peacefully. I bring *that* up because I basically grew up in a privileged bubble until I moved away from home to go to college. That was when I first really encountered the subtle racism and prejudice. Also some of it wasn’t so subtle like when I got grilled by an old guy at Wal-Mart asking if I spoke Chinese. And there was a non-zero amount of times someone asked if I was Native American or Mexican.
ThIs is to say when my mom and I were discussing the traffic stop and the weird ass questions the cop was asking which he said they totalllllyyy ask everyone they pull over these questions. She’s like “I’ve been pulled over multiple times and I’ve never had any of those questions asked to me”.
And it kind of dawned on me for like real that yeah, I probably got racially profiled by a cop who thought I was either Native American (there is a significant Native American population in the town, especially where I was pulled over) or an immigrant. Like he was trying to catch me doing something wrong other than having a serious lapse in having my shit together and accidentally forgetting I needed the right stickers for my plates. Also now I guess I’m technically in their system and they have my phone number so that’s kind of … yeah. Part of me still thinks I’m being way too sensitive but given that my mom was actually kind of freaking out about how I described that stop I’m not entirely sure my weird feelings about it are completely unfounded.
And also … I mean … cop.
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qupritsuvwix · 1 year
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28whitepeonies · 2 years
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I think twitter knows how demented stacking Harry’s tweet above Yolanda’s, on the use of section 60, would drive me
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k3mistryproductions · 2 years
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K3mistry News Brief 📰
The Black Male Boogeyman
The following speaks on false sexual assault allegations made against Black males.
Narrated by: J. Stokes
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cartermagazine · 4 months
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Sandra Bland: Say Her Name
Sandra Annette Bland was a 28-year-old woman from Chicago, who was taken into custody by a state trooper in Prairie View, Texas, following a minor traffic violation on July 10, 2015. Many people consider Sandra’s traffic stop to be a textbook case of rampant racial profiling.
After authorities reviewed the dashcam footage, the white state trooper who arrested Sandra was placed on administrative leave for failing to follow proper traffic stop procedures. He was subsequently indicted for perjury for making false statements about the circumstances surrounding Sandra’s arrest, and he was fired. On July 13, 2015 just three days after being arrested, Sandra Bland was found hanged in her jail cell and her death was ruled a suicide.
Most of us today have suspicions about the alleged suicide.
Rest In Peace… Rest In Power.
CARTER™️ Magazine
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allthecanadianpolitics · 11 months
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Despite the fact that Ontario put a stop to birth alerts in 2020, Quebec child welfare agencies continued to send hundreds of the controversial notifications — which can be used to threaten to or actually seize newborns from their mothers — to Ottawa's largest hospital.
According to internal hospital data obtained by CBC News, The Ottawa Hospital received 298 birth alerts from October 2020 onward. That was when the province ended the practice, saying the alerts disproportionately affect Indigenous and other racialized mothers.
All the alerts issued after 2020 came from Quebec and "were not acted upon," the hospital said.
But Cora McGuire-Cyrette, CEO of the Ontario Native Women's Association, said it's "disheartening to see these numbers."
Full article
Tagging: @politicsofcanada
To be clear, birth alerts have historically been disproportionately used to seperate Indigenous parents from their newborns, based on racial profiling.
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itsthestutterforme · 14 days
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Protect You (Rafe Cameron Drabble)
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Summary: You always made sure that Rafe felt safe around you. It was important to Rafe that you felt the same way with him.
Prompt credit @cosmophoriia : “You’re more family to me than my real family,”
Notes: GIF is not mine, all mistakes are my own, sensitive themes related to police (implicit racism, racial profiling, racial stereotypes), protective Rafe
**
“Baby, what do you think of this?” Rafe rushes to show you a lingerie set on Amazon, bumping the dining room table when he past.
He stops in his tracks when he hears glass shattering behind him.
Peering over his shoulder, his eyes fell to the shards of glass from the flower vase collecting on the floor.
“Rafe, are you okay?” His eyes widen when he hears your footsteps padding into the dining area of the apartment you shared.
You called his name when you neared him and he immediately tensed.
“I-I’m so sorry. I should’ve paid attention to where I was going. I should’ve- fuck, I’m sorry.” He frantically looks for a broom.
“Watch out for the glass. I don’t want you getting hurt,” you tell him.
“No, I deserve it for fucking up. I’ll get you new flowers and a new vase and I’ll-“ you went around the mess and stood in front of Rafe to stop him in his tracks.
His averts his gaze from you and you gently took the broom from his hands. “Rafe,” “I’m sorry,” he whispers, flinching when you go to touch his hand.
“Rafe, it’s just a vase. I can always buy a new one.”
He relaxed when you stood closer to him and took his hands into yours. “It’s just a vase,” you reassure.
“It’s just a vase?” He repeats, his crystal green eyes searching yours for any micro expressions to tell him otherwise. “It’s just a vase, baby.”
“So you’re not mad?” “I’ve done a lot worse than break a vase.” You said with a chuckle.
The two of you took a deep breath and you pressed a warm kiss on his lips.
You reach for the broom but he picked you up to set you on the kitchen counter. “I broke it, I can at least clean it up.” He reasons, sweeping up the glass shards and dumping it in the trash.
“Rafe?” “Hm?” “You’re not a failure. Not to me.” He freezes at your confession, slowly turning to face you.
Sliding between your legs, he places a hand on either side of you. “You’re more family to me than my real family,” he captures your lips in a slow kiss.
“Look at you turning me into a sap,” he taunts, bumping his nose to yours.
**
Rafe’s gears have been turning in his head since he got the text from his dad saying that he needed to talk.
You suggested to meet him in a public place if he didn’t feel comfortable going to Tannyhill or Ward coming to the apartment.
You offered to run some errands in the meantime so he could have some privacy but Rafe insisted you to come with him.
Just your presence alone calms his nerves.
But his anxiety couldn’t help by spike at the thought of meeting his father. His condescending, manipulative father.
You dragged him with you to take a walk around the Square so he could get his mind off things.
He aimlessly followed wherever you were pulling him until he felt you stop in your tracks, yanking his arm back a little.
Pulling himself out of his thoughts, he glanced at you to ask why you stopped.
Your grip on his hand tightened and he followed your gaze to a cop that was parked by the curb, calling you over.
You took a step back, pressing your back against Rafe’s side.
Naturally, he noticed you were uncomfortable and stood in front of you. “Is there a problem, officer?” Rafe questioned.
“No, not at all. We’re just looking for a perp. His name is Ivan Sparks. I was wondering if your girlfriend has seen or heard of him?” The cop asks, his hands wrapping around his belt as he stepped closer to you and Rafe.
“No, sir. I haven’t heard of him.” You answered. “And why exactly would she know him? What, you think all black people know each other?” You squeezed Rafe’s hand in warning and he looked at you for a moment.
You shook your head at him. “You mind if I see some identification, hun? Just as a precaution.”
You inhaled sharply and slowly reached for your purse, a breath hitched in your throat when you heard the keys on his belt jingle.
“Absolutely the fuck not. You have no probable cause to ask for identification. She didn’t do anything wrong.” Rafe snaps, putting a hand over yours to stop your movements.
“Let’s just calm down, son.” The officer mediates.
“You’re the one that needs to calm down. We were just walking and minding our business until you started to racially profile my girlfriend.”
“No one’s racially profiling anyone, son.”
“Right,” the officer’s gaze fell to you a moment and your palms grew slick.
“You don’t have to look at me like that, hun. I’m not gonna hurt you. I just wanted to ask you a question.” He explains.
“A question she already answered.” Rafe defends, staring down the cop until he let out a sigh.
“You’re free to go. Sorry for the misunderstanding.” He climbed back to his cruiser and drove off.
Rafe waited until the officer was a safe distance away before turning to you.
“Are you okay, sweetheart?” He asks you but your gaze fixated on the light the cop made a turn at.
Rafe noticed your breathing starting to pick up and stood in front of you to block your vision. He took off his jacket and draped it over your trembling frame.
“There she is,” he says when you finally met his gaze. “He had no right to ask you anything. And I’m sure me arguing with him didn’t help your nerves. I’m sorry, baby.”
“I..” your mouth started to feel dry.
“Let’s go home, yeah? I can raincheck with my Dad.” “N-no, you don’t have to do that Rafe. It could be something important.”
“You are something important,” “I can just wait in the car-“
“I’m not leaving you alone. We’re going home.” Taking your hand into his, you followed him down the sidewalk.
Neither of you said anything until you reached his car. He opened your door and watched you climbed in, hesitating to close the door.
“Hey,” he starts, wiping some tears that began to fall down your cheeks.
“Look at me,” he waits for you to listen to him before continuing. “I will never let anything happen to you. Not if I’m still breathing, okay?”
You nodded, closing your eyes when he kissed your temple. “I love you,” you said softly when he slid into the drivers seat.
Linking his hand with yours, he kissed the back of your hand, murmuring I love you too against the skin.
He rested your interlinked hands in his lap as you looked out your window replaying the events over and over again.
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serious2020 · 10 months
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Behind Georgia’s Authoritarian Crackdown on ‘Stop Cop City’ Protests - The Appeal
At least 42 people have been charged with “domestic terrorism” under the state’s wide-ranging statute. Legal experts are calling it a “sloppy” and unprecedented attack on constitutional rights to free speech and protest. — Read on theappeal.org/stop-cop-city-protests-domestic-terrorism-georgia/
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narutobrainrotstuff · 2 months
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What makes a good character?
P.S: credit to Dushman-e-Jaan’s amazing extensive analyses of Sasuke’s character. My post is just a summary of what all that I’ve learned from her blog. I continue to analyze canon using her critical approach with Sasuke.
You know Naruto fandom is a bit bizzare in its hatred of the characters due to them being dislikable.
Like Sakura for example, canon Sakura is mean and selfish so she gets a lot of hatred. Not many fans stop to think that this is a deliberate authorial choice so it instead of being analyzed she gets bashed. Her fandom is insufferable as instead of acknowledging her flaws they keep deflecting criticism by throwing buzzwords like misogynist.
Another example is Obito, he gets hate for his grief for Rin and his character is entirely reduced to his love for her even though the author explicitly stated in the manga that’s she’s just a catalyst.
Same goes for Izuna btw as he was a catalyst for Madara’s journey just like Rin. Yet sometimes Madara is entirely reduced to his love for his brother when he’s just a part of Madara’s motivations. He didn’t burn the world for his beloved brother since he ultimately accepted his death.
Kabuto also gets hate but what about his theme (Identity crisis reflecting a tragedy in the shinobi world: Kabuto is an orphan and his identity was stripped from him due to the cruelty of the world he inhabits causing him to go around trying to cultivate a sense of self. This is very similar to Sasuke’s struggle as his identity was stripped of him by being a genocide survivor and after killing Itachi he goes on a journey to cultivate his sense of self as an avenger and carrier of Indra’s legacy. Credit to my lovely mutual @the-real-sasuke-uchiha who pointed out the tragedy of orphans in Naruto in a great post).
I feel like there’s a disconnect in the fandom where the characters are treated as if they’re real and not instruments of an author. Laserfocusing on personality traits is like missing the forest for the trees. You’re not engaging with the purpose of the character and instead focusing on whether their personality appeals to you or not. (Hashirama gets bashed a lot by some parts of the Madara fandom under “criticism” and it’s so easy to tell the difference. It’s mostly done by Tobirama fans).
-What is a story’s purpose?
A story is nothing more than an author’s way to convey themes and characters are instruments of such themes.
The main driver of this manga is the fear and losing bonds which is a reflection of Kishi’s psyche as he spoke in an interview.
So for example Tobirama’s theme is bigotry and through him you understand the psychology of a racist fascist.
Another example is Orochimaru who represents the horror and hypocrisy of the shinobi system. He preys on the victims of the system purely to sustain himself just like Konoha (Again thanks to @the-real-sasuke-uchiha who pointed out this out in a very old post).
A character that you can debate on is an indication that he’s well written.
Madara for example can be debated on (Is he a realist or an idealist/ A delusional fool or an oppressed victim/ is he a terrorist or a freedom fighter/ etc..). Kishi put a lot of thought in his psychology (this man took me writing more than 10 essays to fully break down his twisted mind🤦🏻‍♀️). Madara is fascinating in a sense that he represents violent resistance. You’re forced to confront a true reality with him. When you laser focus on his arrogance or violence you’re disengaging with his character. Also when you bash him for manipulating Obito you’re missing the bigger picture. Obito was exploited along with Rin because they were child soldiers. Madara did nothing more than exploit a situation. Konoha keeps making circumstances favorable for such acts that’s the problem. I just want to add Madara was an oppressed individual so the hate he gets bothers me for this reason as he was racially profiled and politically isolated for being an Uchiha. His visceral anger and the fact that reality is unbearable for him to want to live in dreams should invoke empathy not mockery. Madara lost his beloved brother (the last family member he had) and his very best friend for whom he declined to get revenge for Izuna’s death (many fans don’t know how huge this is please read about blood revenge in Japan) murdered him in addition to predicting his clan’s genocide. I think this is more than enough valid reason to lose your mind no curse of hatred required.
Obito is another beautifully written character. His panels where he was emotionally manipulating Sasuke while telling him Itachi’s truth were absolutely great. Also his characterization is fascinating where his nihilism bleeds into his theme illusions. When you reduce him to simping for Rin you’ve disengaged with his themes that will make you reflect on the horrors of your reality. Sometimes the Obito fandom can be a bit too defensive since some of them dismiss Obito’s wrongdoings as him being manipulated. Was Obito a victim? Yes. Does this justify the fact he started a war and participated in a genocide? Absolutely not.
Same goes for Madara and his war crimes 😂. Him being a victim doesn’t justify his manipulation of Obito.
They’re morally grey and that’s what makes them fascinating to analyze sometimes the fandom babies them a bit too much 😂 (I’m absolutely guilty of this whenever I pick up the manga I’m reminded they’re supposed to be antagonists 😂).
Honestly the best way to read Naruto is without a moral lens to save your frustration 😂. Otherwise you’ll hate everyone. Literally the entire cast even little Konohamaru has blood on his hands no one is safe.
Like acknowledge that Konoha is shit and needs to be destroyed but instead of bashing characters it’s better to analyze them in my opinion.
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i was stopped by a security guard earlier at walmart today because she wanted to check my receipt (i shop as local as much as i can, but it's one of the only affordable options for me to get groceries).
it came a little out of left field, but i sensed there was a reason why she was doing this. it didn't take me long to realize that she only 'asked to see my receipt' because she initially demanded to see the receipt of the Black woman in front of me. when i asked if everything was okay, the woman told me that she was questioning her as to why she was being stopped.
i'd first like to state -par Canadian law NO employee of any business has the right to stop you if they THINK you stole something -they also have NO right to search your bags or check you receipt unless they witnessed you putting something in there in the first place. it's illegal, and you have every right to refuse.
while i stood there, i watched the security guard keep escalating the situation, not the customer -all on her own. then when the guard stated that they always have people stealing and they check from time to time as her only line of defense, i could only laugh because it's just so absurd. like important side note but you work for a multi-billion dollar corporation, and even if the censors went off -employers will not protect you outside of their walls if you ever tried to run after someone if they stole right in front of you (because why the fuck do i care -am i gonna risk my life over someone taking something? absolutely no).
when i tried to tell the security guard that her actions were not warranted, there were already 2 more male security guards approaching and i was so done at that point. i told them it was excessive to have 3 guards here for one woman who was definitely racially profiled in the first place to show her receipt, but to keep her here for this was inappropriate. i also emphasized how this woman was not a threat to the security guard and that she was just defending herself.
moments later, the security guard who started it all walked away after giving a shit ton of attitude to this woman -giving out her name and saying she should go to customer service. shortly after, i told the other 2 security guards that if there was nothing else we would be leaving, and just before we left they had the audacity to say that they didn't mean to offend this woman...
i spoke with this woman for a short time before we went opposite ways to get home, but we spoke briefly about the situation. she will continue going to this store, as she told them not to stop her next time and istfg this racist bigot better leave her alone.
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