Profiled

[clevermanka]

Please note! This is not my post. I am posting it from ceanncait who very generously made it public so I could share it. She relates experiences and motivations very similar to my own. I want to write up my own thoughts on this, but in the meantime please check out her good words.

Originally posted by ceanncait at Profiled

Something that I think a lot of people don't know about me is *why* I'm so deeply committed to civil rights and why I will always believe that institutional racism and prejudice is a thing (despite privileged white people insisting it's not).

It's because I have *been* profiled. I have been pulled over numerous times for no better reason than the stickers on my car, or what I was wearing, or where I was going. I have seen people thrown to the ground, kicked, and beaten by police officers wearing no identification. I have been personally threatened by those officers when I demanded their identification. I have been searched and had my car searched based on an officer "smelling something funny" when I never carried pot on my person or in my vehicle in my entire life.

I will not pretend that my experiences as a hippie/Deadhead even come close to what Black and Hispanic Americans experience every day. I always had the option of removing the stickers from my car, changing my clothes, or not going to Dead or Phish shows. They don't have that option.

But to sit on your high horse and claim that these things don't happen? Or that when they do happen they're deserved because they were provoked? Or to claim that the people being harassed must have been breaking the law in the first place? Or that the media is blowing it out of proportion when they're actually not covering the truth at all? Yeah, you can fuck right off.

It. Happens. All. The. Time.

It's a fact of life for millions of Americans. Black, Hispanic, hippies, potheads, the homeless, the mentally ill, punks, goths, skaters, or anyone else who lives outside the mainstream. And I am sick and tired of people claiming that it doesn't. Or that there are "two sides." Or that I should somehow remain complacent and unbothered when journalists are being arrested and peaceful protesters are not allowed to congregate. (People whine all the time about the First Amendment, but when the chips are down and brown people are involved it's crickets...)

I'm angry about this. Flaming, red-hot angry. Angry enough that rationality has temporarily fled and I can't talk about it with friends for fear of pissing someone off to the point of no return. This is my lived experience, and the experience of millions. If it's not your lived experience you have NO RIGHT to deny that it happened, or that it is happening. None.

Comments

[zitronenhai.livejournal.com]

Add to this poverty/income disparity, the war on drugs, and disproportionate sentencing and incarceration, and ANYONE should be able to see there is a HUGE FUCKING PROBLEM.

[pointoforigin.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this. I agree. This is like men saying they don't think sexual harassment is a big deal, because they never see it happening around them, and they're sure they don't know any rapists. There's a saying that used to be used at my workplace--though not when the bosses were around, to be sure: IF IT WAS UP YOUR ASS YOU WOULD KNOW WHERE IT WAS. A thing does not cease to exist because some people have the privilege of not noticing it.

[write-out.livejournal.com]

Thanks for sharing this. It's SO FUCKING ENRAGING.

[chronovore.livejournal.com]

Sing it.

I don't understand how anyone can retroactively rationalize shooting a kid, barely an adult, over some tobacco. The entire incident reeks of "know your place."

[kalimeg.livejournal.com]

Ar WorldCon, someone commented to me that Bejing and China did not have a good human rights record. I pointed out that presently Missouri doesn't have a good record on human rights, either.