Again, are you scared because they're black or because of codes that generally signify someone is up to no good? Your hoodie example, let's say a hoodie with the hood up at night not making eye contact or hanging out near alleys, definitely signals someone being up to no good regardless of their race. The problem is when you base your actions upon race, color, religion, and so on and not upon symbolic codes (gang colors, hoodie up at night, etc.) and actions (acting nervous, touching a waistband frequently like they're checking that something is still there) that generally denote criminal activity.
I think it's a combination of these factors. If
one of those factors is the person's race, and that combination of factors rises to the level of what someone might deem 'scary', is it still racist? Can race even allowed to be considered a factor? This sort of 'racism calculus' is amusing, but I can't help but feel that this is all really just about being able to cry "racism" whenever humanly possible. Are people allowed to filter all these factors through their experiences with various races? Or is that also racist? Has anyone, ever heard of a black person being shot by a white person, and someone calmly saying, "Well, the black person was wearing gang colors and acting very suspicously." and not had their life and career ruined by the 'black leadership'?
It's never happened. Those extenuating circumstances never matter to the racial arsonists,
never.The person being shot is black, and the shooter was white -- case closed.
I agree that there are people of all races who will fit into the behaviors you described. White people who wear gang colors, who dress like thugs and touch their waistbands, or expose their underwear to the world, they're lowlifes. Sorry, brah. White people like me refer to those sorts of people as 'white trash' and feel little to no kinship with them -- there's no solidarity at all, not in my family. They may be white in a technical sense, but not culturally, not at all. I'd rather live as the only white guy in a neighborhood filled with Bill Cosbys than live with them, because I have more in common with Cosby.
But if I feel the same way about a black person who acts the same way as white trash, I'm a racist. Maybe it's not their race and their behavior that's 'scary'? No, no, not possible -- I must be a racist. What I'll never understand is why black people who share my values put up with black people who act as described above, and give them moral coverage. Black people with great values have to stand up and say that those 'gangster' sort of blacks, aren't really 'black' they're something else entirely. But to date, I don't feel they have.
Well, actually Bill Cosby did:
http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~schochet/101/Cosby_Speech.htmBrown Versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person’s problem. We’ve got to take the neighborhood back (clapping). We’ve got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It’s right around the corner. (laughter) It’s standing on the corner. It can’t speak English. It doesn’t want to speak English. I can’t even talk the way these people talk. “Why you ain’t where you is go, ra,” I don’t know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk (laughter). Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English. Everybody knows it’s important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can’t land a plane with “why you ain’t…” You can’t be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they’re moving ahead on this. Well, they know they’re not, they’re just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you’re just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out.
