Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Robinson

There were two very similar stories in the newspaper Saturday morning.

Nobody was hurt

A man was killed. (not, despite what some of the protesters said, a "boy")

A trifle of perspective: Madison police aren't racists, or the stats would look quite different. But: "While whites seem to await the emerging facts, the first thing African-Americans see is an unarmed black youth killed by a white cop." That's the editor's summary of a more nuanced column--but did the editor have any notion what he was implying?

I can't say the usual suspects were out: you've probably never heard of the Young Gifted And Black group in Madison before. I last heard from them a few weeks ago bitterly complaining about the police presence in black neighborhoods (which, if I recall my oh-so-ancient history correctly, was in response to complaints about crime by the residents a few years back). And at least a third of the people marching down the street past my window were high-school kids, backpacks and all. We'll see if that changes.

1 comment:

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Reducing police presence leads to the victimization of innocents. I'm not sure why the territoriality of young men - in this case black - should be considered more important than the safety of everyone else.