I give up.

The point is that it was racist behavior by a police officer. It does happen. It does not mean that all police officers are racist. I never said that. I worked with a lot of police officers who showed remarkable restraint and professionalism. Police departments know it is a problem and the good ones try to address it with training and education and with their hiring practices. I just listened to interviews with police officers in the state where I live, talking about how they try to deal with this issue. It is the responsibility of the leadership of any organization to set the tone and standards. Some do and some don't and it is not sounding to me like this was a priority in Ferguson. The question is not whether racism exists in our justice system, it is what should we do about it and what is being done in a lot of places. I gave a rather small example of racist behavior by a police officer. It was resolved. My point was that if you are white you are not very likely to observe things like this because it does not happen to you and why, because of where I worked and what I observed. I do not dismiss it out of hand. And instead it becomes all about why a fifteen year old did not stay on the sidewalk. If police departments can acknowledge that this is a problem what is the big deal about the rest of us doing it? But it seems like some people just can't. If I were to respond to your example based on the response I was given this would be where I start questioning what was wrong with your nephew, how he must have provoked what happened, that maybe there was a history that played into it that you could not know about, how do you define "tiny" and on and on and on... that the principal was just trying to do his job...I might bring up other examples of fights in schools where things were not as they appeared. I might talk about a white principal being unfair to a black student, as though that has anything to do with what happened to your nephew. In other words, I would try every way I could to deny that your nephew could have been treated unfairly by a biased authority figure based on the color of his skin. But that would be irrelevant. It would just be me not wanting to believe you because it goes against my own need to not want it to be true.

I worked there for four years and there was not another kid brought in for trespassing from that community. That was one of the things that made it so weird. In fact, it would have been weird to have any kid locked up for trespassing, tickets or notifying parents or charges or whatever, but locking up a kid for trespassing was just not something that happened. They were treating this kid differently because he was black. It was clear to all of us and the judge and they had to stop. So I guess that my boss took issue with it and the judge intervened means that justice won in the end and I will call that a success for the system. Focusing on why this kid didn't stay on the sidewalk is just a way to not deal with the fact that he was treated differently than a white kid would have been. That is what makes it racist. It is about a differential treatment by the police. That is not right. There is no way to make it right. Tell me fifty more trespassing hypothetical situations and it still won't be right. Tie yourself in knots arguing about the seriousness of trespassing and the stupidity of this particular kid and it still won't be right. Clearly you need it to somehow be right.

No white kids ever LOCKED UP for trespassing. The police make the call about detention. Anyone could call the police and complain. They do not get to determine what happens to a juvenile. If your kid cuts across my lawn (in town, we are not talking about farmland) I do NOT get to determine whether he is locked up. The judge dismisses every one of them as not having merit, but the kid still has to be locked up for twenty-four hours. The police control whether to arrest and lock him up for that first 24 hours and that is what they chose to do over and over again until a judge told them to knock it off. They get to determine that first twenty-four hours and after that it is a judge. The standard for detention at the time was a danger or a flight risk. He was neither.

No. Why is it so hard for people to believe me?

I guess he didn't understand that when you are a white kid cutting across a lawn it is called "taking a short cut" and doing when you are black it is called "trespassing."

I dislike anyone who believes their own personal moral compass is the one everyone should be using. I also find this particular statement to be particularly nasty. I wish he would shut up but I think he is probably too much in love with himself and the sound of his own voice to ever do that.

Cognitive therapy has been helpful here.

There was not more to the story. And knowing that makes me less likely to summarily dismiss people when they describe similar situations. So many of us (white us) have no experience with this, do not see it, and so don't believe it or maybe don't want to believe it. Who wants to believe this kind thing happens to our fellow citizens on a regular basis (and worse)? If we believe it then we might feel the need to stand with them and DO something, much more comfortable to tell ourselves that there must be more to the story and then go about our business, smug in the belief that they must have deserved it. We worked with several different law enforcement agencies. Some were good, professional and competent. Some were not.

If you get a coupon saying you have been randomly selected to get 90% off one item at amazon don't get excited. It is a scam to get your amazon login information. Dh had one in his in box this morning. He recognized it be the bad grammar lol. But had it been me I might have been to excited about some of the stuff on my wish list to notice.

Hurrah!!!!!

You are so much nicer than me lol. I have been five starring everyone who likes me or visits my profile (assuming they have come to give me five of course).

There is no way to make Faceborg anything other than annoying. And having strong feelings about making it better just means you have been assimilated, so very sorry.

Dd is building a cardboard maze for her zuzu pets, that would be her engineering class for today.

I believe I will got to Hobby Lobby today and flash some cleavage while not buying anything.