Roger the Skiffler:
As you are probubly aware, driving while black is a potentialy leathal act here in the States as well. A friend of mine, a Black court cleark, a very good job - high pay here, lives in a majority Black neighborhood because he is comfortable with people of his own culture. As a well dressed Black man, in an expensive car, he can count on at least two rough searches by local police a year. Even with his status as an employee of the courts, he has lost faith in making reports of his treatment, and counts himself luckey when his police encounters are not violent. As a teaching assistant, my professor, Derek Bell, told me a story of a white student of his, (a Harvard law student) who was dating a Black med student, I believe also at Harvard. While driving through Rode Island, they were stopped for no expressed reason, though they assumed it was because they were an inter-racial couple, and as they were questioned about their destination, the offier kept the barrel of his gun pointed at the Black fellow's head. A similar stop resulted in a case that a colege of mine is currently litigating, where a Black teen age driver was afraid to stop, also in Rode Island I believe, or near by, he is a resident of Ct. He attempted to drive to a populated location to stop when being followed by a cop car on a deserted rural road. He found himself surounded by cop cars and he got out with his hands raised. A cop triped and his gun went off, and a ring of cops opened fire hitting the young man numerous times, and he survied by luck, loosing part of his privates. The reason for his intitial stop, was a concept in American poicing, I heard defended by my criminal proceedure professor at NYU, being racialy out of place, a person of one race being found in a neighborhood wherein the majority is of another race. Funny enough (not really funny at all) a white man in America, is never out of place.
Really appreciated Bartholomew's comments. Racalism in the US acts as a great pressure valve on class unhappyness in the US, as it produces a permant sub working class, which can be blaimed as the naughty class, justifying our huge prison popluation, taking the attention away from those at the top creating the missery. Without race conciousness, we might have class conciousness...
Larry