Moe beams with pride over Larry’s ability to read a child’s textbook
To be fair to the Stooges their answer to the question was usually not so cut and dry. Still it is interesting that their shorts so often explored this topic. It underlies everything in our society today yet it is rarely discussed openly. The rich honestly believe they are superior to everyone else. The middle class believe they are superior to the poor. The poor believe they are superior to the destitute.
It’s ironic that most Americans are supposedly Christians and yet one’s stature in our society is based almost entirely on the ability to store up treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal. But that’s a thought for another day. Today’s topic is racism.
We are often given very depressing statistics about police persecution of Blacks. Not just persecution by police but our entire legal system. From citizens to cops to mayors to prosecutors to judges to the prisons themselves. As Bob Dylan wrote; if you’re black you might as well not show up on the street.
I’m certainly not going to argue that racism doesn’t exist but it seems folly to me to ignore the economic factors. Blacks in America posses six cents of wealth compared to a dollar for whites. That’s a staggering statistic.
One statistic I do not know but would be very interested in is how do incarceration rates compare for whites who have six cents of wealth to every dollar the rest have?
If I had to guess I’d expect it to still be slanted to show a bias against blacks. Not because they would be more inclined to commit a crime than a white person in the same economic situation, but because it’s far easier to profile a black person than it is to distinguish between poor and non-poor whites. Certainly a ratty backpack and overall unkempt appearance is a good clue but not when compared to the very color of their skin.
I hate to come off as defending pigs. My brother was a cop, but truth be told I can’t stand my brother (though grudgingly I admit he was probably a decent cop). But for most people the reason we want police is the reality that, even those of us who have very little, there are people who would like to take those possessions for themselves. Human beings with souls understand the likelihood someone will break into your home or mug you is not based on genetics but rather their need.
Yes, the rich are crooks. The worst crooks. But it’s unlikely they will burglarize your home or mug you. Millionaires have no need to rob a liquor store by gun point. If they did they would, just as readily as anyone else.
It’s sad to think that racial profiling need not be based on racial hatred but rather economic reality but it’s true.
Please don’t misunderstand. There are racists. There are racist cops. Ours is a racist society. I’m not saying it’s not. What I’m saying is it would be a hell of a lot less racist if there were more economic equality.
I’m near the bottom rung of society but I know I can go through this world more or less unmolested by our law enforcement representatives because I’m white and it’s harder to economically profile whites. Harder, but not impossible.
I last owned a car when I was around 20. I basically made a choice that I didn’t want to drive anymore. What with the Gulf War back then and climate change I still feel that was the right decision. So I walk everywhere. One night, in my mostly white, sort of upper middle class hometown, I walked to the nearest store that was open at that time. It was probably 2 or 3 in the morning but I had run out of diet cola, so the time did not matter. On the way a cop stopped me and asked where I was going. I told him. He ended up giving me a ride the rest of the way to the store. That may sound funny to an African American but frankly I think it’s because he didn’t believe me rather than his simply being courteous. My color didn’t matter, he stopped me because I was walking late at night, something a rich person presumably would not do.
Another time, while I was homeless in the middle of a New England winter, I was walking the same streets to go from a coffee shop to a field where I was going to sleep. A cop stopped me and I lied and said I was going to my friend’s house. I made it to the field and hid as the cop made several passes around the area looking for me. I don’t really know what he would have done if I’d just said “I’m going to sleep on a fucking snowbank in the woods. You got a problem with that, pig?” There are some shelters in the neighboring cities four or five miles away, but none in my home town. (I had no interest in staying in one anyway.) Would the cop have driven me to the town line like Brian Dennehy in Rambo? I wasn’t interested in finding out.
But what if I’d had some pot on me? Would I have run from the police asking me questions? No. But I do understand that it’s safe to assume I would have had a harder time ending the conversation had I been black. Especially in that fucking town.
That was a consistent pattern though. Once I was doing some house cleaning at around 10PM and worked up quite a sweat. So I walked to the corner store to get an ice cold beverage. Cop stopped me and asked me what I was running from. I didn’t realize how sweaty I looked so was very confused by his question. After I told him what I was doing and why I was sweaty he lied and said he was looking for someone in the area who may have cause to be running. Understand my appearance was as whitebread clean cut as they come. I had some hippie friends once who used to joke about how straight I looked. “Narc!” Yet here I was getting hassled by the cops because I don’t like cars. I could have been raping an infant with a stick as I passed him in a Audi and he wouldn’t have given me a second glance. But someone walking down the street at night - well, let’s just plain fishy!
Another time I was riding my bike to a night auditor’s job at a hotel and a cop pulled me over and asked “What are you riding a bike for?”
It just so happened that when I was homeless and hassled I wasn’t committing or planning to commit any crime at that particular moment. But I was destitute. I sometimes didn’t have anything to eat. I was addicted to tobacco and often didn’t have the money to buy my chosen brand of smokes. So, I was a high risk for crime. I had been properly profiled. It would be silly for me to deny that. Being poor I obviously don’t think poverty should be considered a crime but take it from me, when you’re homeless and destitute and there’s a real fear of freezing to death while you sleep any moral reservations you may have about breaking the law tend to be drastically lowered.
So anyway, back to heredity vs. environment. I’m poor and most of the people I come into contact with AFK are poor. So I’m well aware of how stupid the poor are. But that’s stupid as in uninformed. Not stupid as in genetically inferior.
I may be able to read and write some but I can tell you from personal experience that if a child is raised to believe they are a worthless piece of crap they will become worthless adults (Hi!) more often than not. Poverty is literally having no (economic) worth. Children raised in poverty are raised with the reality that their family is (economically) worthless.
When an educated well off person meets someone who has lived their life in poverty it’s natural to feel superior. I can certainly understand where elitist attitudes come from. I’m sure it’s easy for educated people to look down on the things I write here. But if you honestly think you have more natural intelligence than me because I’m poor and uneducated I don’t mind saying I think you’re fucking kidding yourself. If you want to believe your intellect is “elite” try not basing that belief on a ridiculously erroneous misconception.
How much of racism is simply the elitism the upper classes wholeheartedly believe in and preach to us everyday in places like the New York Times? Because, again, six cents of wealth for an African American to a dollar for a white. If you believe the 0.1% were born to rule you must believe Blacks and Hispanics were born to be ruled.
I guess what I’m getting at here is a potential political argument. What would best address the problem of persecution of Blacks in America? A liberal agenda of lessening economic inequality or a libertarian one of lessening governmental policing?
The answer to me is obvious. Because the libertarian agenda would have to do it as it also increased the need for some to steal by furthering economic inequality. That seems fairly illogical to me.
By contrast you can lessen inequality while also making changes to the penal system with a liberal agenda. There is no contradiction there as there is in the libertarian philosophy.
Of course I’m not sure what the word liberal is supposed to mean anymore. If Obama is, as some have argued, further to the right in most things than Nixon was, how can anyone seriously think of Obama Democrats as liberals? Don’t be confused by that. There are so many more interesting things to be confused about here.