This was a wonderfully written piece and a lot of it rings true to me even as a white as you can be person in a smallish state university town in the midwest. But maybe being 6'2" with a big unkempt hobo beard is almost as scary as being black.
I too love walking the streets at night. And I too have to not be myself and behave in very conscious ways to avoid being hassled and detained by the police. Police just assume that if you're out at night you are a criminal.
So much of his descriptions of having to learn to dress a certain way, behave a certain way, and literally go out of my way to avoid scaring people rings true. I get detained by the police a handful of times per year just for walking or being in places at times that most people aren't. I particularly get the police called on me if I walk through in rich neighborhoods. I've had firearms pulled on me just for photographing trees in a public park (at night).
I tried to take up jogging for half a year but I quit and bought a bike after being stopped by police for being suspicious three times in as many months. Apparently jogging while not wearing a joggers uniform means I'm up to no good. No non-criminal jogs in cargo pants and a t-shirt. And that was in the day time. I wouldn't even consider trying it at night.
I'm not trying to marginalize his message that skin color is the cause. But it's certainly not the only cause. The root of the problem lies with the police, and society, villifying anyone who isn't diurnal.
I remember one of those very minor study that had a person trying to dismantle a bike lock in a park. Male with dark skin, male with white skin, female with dark skin and female with white skin.
The man with the dark skin had people tackle him down while calling the police. The other people on the team that was observing had to rush in to disarm the situation. The white man had people stare and point, but nothing dramatic happened. The woman with dark skin was practically ignored by people walking the park. For the white woman several people walked up and offered to help her with the bike.
I am not sure a beard and night time and actually changes this. The assumption about who can and can't be a criminal seems to be based on gender first, race second, and appearance/environment last. Would be very interesting to see a more deep study on that, through I expect they will mirror related studies such as those that look at outcomes from courts and criminal psychology.
What does the raw data about these types of crime say though?
I lived near a university and had multiple bikes stolen. If the data points to a demographic in that area, for example where 0% of bikes are stolen by women, why would people in that area react if a woman is working with her bike?
Raw data may disagree with you, but it's impartial and unbiased. (unless you want to argue the collection and recording of data is biased)
I used to take lots of walks at night before I had a full time job and children. I live in Austria and it seems bizarre to me that police officers would check you out just for walking around at night. I never had such an experience whether I was living in Vienna or my small hometown.
What I did see was black men having to show their ID at subway stations, which to me was a very unsettling thing, because it was pretty obvious that they were looking for drug dealers and focusing on a specific race.
I was held up in Croatia and had to show my ID twice. But I was with a group of people in a party area, so that kind of made sense.
Is taking walks maybe an uncommon thing in the USA?
Is taking walks maybe an uncommon thing in the USA?
In many places, yes. But part of the article takes place in New York, where it isn't.
I have lived without a car for over a decade. Almost everyone immediately assumes that I am simply poor and can't afford a car. This happens to also be true, but I wanted to live without a car for a long time, I'm an environmental studies major and I have terrible eyesight problems. I always hated driving.
In over ten years, only one person ever asked why I gave up my car. Everyone else just assumes they know and assumes it is poverty.
In the US, almost everyone drives everywhere to the point of ridiculosity. I gave up my car while living in an apartment complex where people drove their trash to the dumpster and drove to the mailbox. I lived within a 15 minute walk of three shopping centers. Initially, no one walked. The streets were all deserted.
After I gave up my car and began walking everywhere, walking caught on. But before that, people drove their kids to the pool in the apartment complex and really crazy stuff like that.
> Is taking walks maybe an uncommon thing in the USA?
I once got sent to Plano, Texas, for a week. It was a training course for work. After the course, I went for walks in the afternoon / early evening. And it surprised me at just how deserted the streets felt. There were plenty of cars around, but so very few pedestrians. I didn't really feel unsafe, just more out of place.
Just another anecdote, but mine is a fully different experience.
As a 6'1 white male, I find that I can walk most anywhere without fear.
I often find that I need to reassess my privileged notion that this is normal when conversing with friends who are shorter, darker or female. They describe a world much like the author of this piece does.
That's not to say I've never had trouble on the street. Years ago I was assaulted randomly by someone bigger than me stumbling out of a bar I was passing by. The difference was made clear though when I reacted by getting up and following at a distance, eventually finding a helpful police officer who never questioned my version of events.
A vastly more common scenario is one where I am never in any fear of any kind, I can easily wave at police, and am never interrogated for simply walking.
I often find that I need to reassess my privileged notion that this is normal when conversing with friends who are shorter, darker or female.
I'm about 5'8" and female.* Except for the phenomenon I mentioned in another comment of being hassled for Walking While Homeless, I feel fairly comfortable walking almost any time, almost anywhere.
I don't have an explanation for that. But it makes me wonder about what all factors into the equation, both from the perspective of how others react and from the perspective of how people experience such things.
* And white, which I didn't state because the default assumption is that if you don't state your race/color, then you are white. But I am adding it as a footnote because I am finding myself uncomfortable with reinforcing an essentially racist cultural practice.
I don't know the PIN for my main credit card. I can use PayWave here in AU for anything under $100. When racking up more than $100, I say "I don't know my PIN. Can we put that through as x purchases instead?" or I make up something about needing to split payments for business receipt purposes.
I've never been asked for ID or had anything other than the staff member accommodate without hesitation. I haven't needed my PIN in years now.
But every time, I think, "I bet I wouldn't get away with this if I wasn't a plain white guy."
I used to walk home from my friends' house to mine when I was at university in New Zealand, often drunk or high.
The police would usually stop and talk to me if they drove past.
I always thought of it as a good thing. I lived in a high burglary area (being a student area), so there were a lot of shady characters walking around at night, especially in the back streets. They never actually detained me or even got out of the car, they'd usually just ask me where I was coming from and where I was going.
I never needed to give them exact details, they were happy with me just telling them the general area.
I guess that's the critical difference though: I was never detained. The police never viewed me through the lens of suspicion, they never talked to me in an accusatory tone. I felt more like they were checking that I was OK, rather than checking that I was a criminal.
> The police never viewed me through the lens of suspicion, they never talked to me in an accusatory tone. I felt more like they were checking that I was OK, rather than checking that I was a criminal.
As a European I wonder if this is "because Freedom", that the state-sceptical tradition laid out by the US constitution has created an expectation that police should never interact with anybody who isn't a criminal. That way, the attempt of making the police nicer has made them less nice, by removing nuance (unless you happen to never fall into the area of uncertainty, where nuance will be missed). Any thoughts on this by Americans?
The police in New Zealand and Australia seem to be a lot less agressive than their American counterparts. I don't ever hear of stories like the original post come from either country.
>Police just assume that if you're out at night you are a criminal.
No they don't. What they are doing is noticing things that are out of the ordinary. You do the same thing. If everyone is wearing a suit, and one person is wearing shorts, watch all the heads turn. A black man walking through an all white neighborhood late at night will draw attention from any person in that neighborhood. The same is true if a white man was walking through an all black neighborhood. No different. The police would stop him, too.
I was going to work one morning and, as I got into my car, I noticed my wife's tomato plants had some red ones. Leaving my car door open, I walked to the garden to examine them to see if they could be picked. When I turned around, a policeman pulled up in a squad car. He recognized me but said he stopped because he saw a car with its door open making him wonder if it was a break-in. He then saw this poorly dressed guy wandering around the yard. Both out of the ordinary.
When he saw me, he laughed, and drove away.
I own a restaurant. One night, I got a call from the police that they noticed our back door was slightly open. That's different for two o'clock in the morning. They walked in and notice our cash drawer was missing. Patrol cars were dispatched through the neighborhood, a shopping district where there were lots of people walking around, when they found a guy walking with a metal box under his arm at two in the morning. How unusual.
I believe you make a lot of good points, except for one: Walking as a white man through a black neighborhood, the police won't stop you. And even if they did, their attitude would be very different than if it was the other way around.
Actually sorry, scratch that. I was stopped once, when I was moving from one flat to another, and my girlfriend was sick, so I had to walk both our bikes 6 km to a new flat, late evening. They asked if I'm sure I didn't stolen them and we went our ways.
There's something wrong with your cities if police has to check on you for walking at night.
In my country (The Netherlands) police sometimes check all cars passing a temporary checkpoint. They check if you have open fines, paid your taxes etc. When really expensive cars pass those checkpoints they verify that the owner actually has a job to afford cars like these and if the owner doesn't they can impound the car on suspicion of being paid with criminal money.
Statistics have shown that the highest "risk" group of those crime paid cars is with young foreign male drivers.
A few years ago a (black) rap artist was stopped at the side of the road by police and they basically admitted that this was racial profiling.
The artist made some fuss about it on social media, and it appeared in all news broadcasts and talk shows. People were expecting some big commotion about it; but it turns out that the majority of people actually approved of this method.
It wasn't racism at work here, it was statistics and people were fine with it. It is a thin line though, because to the people on the wrong end of the statistics it really can feel like racism. So where should police draw the line?
As a general rule, the variance within a group is almost always larger than the difference between groups. So, if there is statistical evidence of the effectiveness of racial profiling then I'd like to see it.
A few years ago a (black) rap artist was stopped at the side of the
road by police and they basically admitted that this was racial
profiling.
The artist made some fuss about it on social media, and it appeared
in all news broadcasts and talk shows. People were expecting some
big commotion about it; but it turns out that the majority of people
actually approved of this method.
It wasn't racism at work here, it was statistics and people were
fine with it.
Your conclusion is incorrect. Yes it is racism, and furthermore, the majority of people in a society being fine with it is not only irrelevant as to whether it's racism, it is what makes it structural racism. Something that everyone is fine with never seems questionable to members of the set of people who think it's fine.
Now let's explain why it being statistics doesn't mean it can't be racism. I have used this analogy before:
A woman is murdered in her home. Statistics tell us that when a woman is murdered in her home, it is nearly always her partner. So, why don't we merely arrest the partner and march them off to jail without gathering evidence, following pesky rules about having a lawyer involved, or examining the burden of proof?
Statistics, one might say, reverse the burden of proof. Why isn't it up to the partner to prove that they're innocent?
We can A/B test this application of statistics: Let's say that 9/10 times, the partner did it. In test A, we lock 100 partners up without trial. Presto, we have the right person in prison 90 times, and have an innocent person in prison 10 times, but being right 90% of the time feels pretty good, and we saved a lot of money and bother. Everybody who isn't the partner of a murdered woman feels pretty good about test A.
In test B, we arrest 100 partners, but then we gather evidence and have trials, even though "everybody knows the partner did it." Good news! Of the ten partners in test B who didn't do it, nine are set free. One, alas, is wrongfully imprisoned for a crime the did not commit. But one wrongfully imprisoned person is better than ten, right?
Well, it's not so simple. Of the 90 people who did do it in test B, the evidence wasn't always solid. So in ten cases, they cut a deal for a reduced sentence. In six cases, they "beat the rap in court" and were also set free, despite having done it. Three cases didn't even make it to court for some technicality or other.
So test B is much better for the case where someone is innocent: There is only one person wrongfully imprisoned, instead of ten. But it's worse for the case where someone is guilty. Instead of ninety guilty people receiving the full punishment, Only 71 receive the full punishment. Then get a reduced punishment, and nine guilty people walk free!
In pure, bloodless statistics, A is better than B. A is right 90% of the time, B is only right 80% of the time. But if we want to talk about justice, B is better than A. In terms of justice, one person wrongfully imprisoned is worse than 100 guilty people set free. False positives are abhorrent to a just society, and false negatives (not to mention costly trials) are the price society is willing to pay to ensure justice.
So back to statistics and stopping cars. If statistics tell you that black men are more likely to be illegal immigrants, or have unpaid fines, or whatever, and you use that to stop every black man driving a car, but you don't stop white men, that is unjust for the same reason as locking up the partners without trial.
You have imposed a consequence--not being able to drive without being stopped by police--on some number of innocent black men--because they belong to a class of people who statistically are more likely to have done something wrong.
One can argue that being stopped is not the same thing as being jailed without trial. But it is. When travelling, you might be asked if you have ever been detained by police. Same when applying for a job. In some countries (cough, USA, cough) this perspective on statistics starts with stopping cars, and ends in gunfire.
Even in civilised countries, people reason that if it's ok for the police to stop every black man because black men have statistically committed more crimes, it is ok to not rent to black men, or not employ black men. And if asked, they will say, "I'm not a racist, I'm a statistician.". Law enforcement choices send a strong message about "what everyone thinks is ok."
At some point, though, it comes down to justice. Justice is not imposing consequences upon someone without actual, inspectable evidence. Injustice is imposing consequences upon someone because somebody else who has something in common with them broke the law.
And racism is using statistics to impose injustice on someone because of their race. It's that simple.
That's weird. I'm white, 6'4" with a beard and I have never been stopped by cops while walking at night in my midwestern college town. Maybe because I usually have my backpack with me?
> I'm not trying to marginalize his message that skin color is the cause. But it's certainly not the only cause. The root of the problem lies with the police, and society, villifying anyone who isn't diurnal.
I had similar problems when my hair was long, but I really don't think it's comparable to what black people face. Being white, my problems went away when I cut my hair, nighttime walks or no. And black people get harassed day and night, so I think anti-nocturnalism is a small, small part of the problem, not the root.
Thank you for adding perspective to this issue with police and drawing it out of exclusively-race territory.
I would suggest that perhaps, part of what's happening is that the police are optimizing for a particular metric. We can hope that it's crime reduction, or some number or numbers very close to that.
When you optimize for one metric, other metrics fall.
The police, like most anyone, make errors based on superficial attributes. Even if statistically, arresting tall hobo beard man taking pictures of trees late at night is the best course of action for the police's metrics, you perceive it as a series of stupid errors. This leads to a perception of injustice and harassment.
I'm the kind of person who doesn't mind security check ups and even being stopped by police as long as they are cordial and professional, and, crucially, I understand their reasoning. I recall listening to one black man, I think he was talking to Sam Harris, relating how police would stop black men and grab them. Unprofessional treatment creates a perception of an uncivilized society, and that's unjust.
> When you optimize for one metric, other metrics fall.
This is very true. People often assume that things like machine learning or AI won't have racial biases, but then we find out time and time again that our algorithms are in fact biased. It's not that the bias is intentional (even human bias is rarely intentional), it's that by focusing on metrics, the metric of racial equality often suffers. I'm not sure why you were down voted for pointing this out. This is a key concept to understand if we care about creating a more equal society in an age of big data and machine learning. Google did some research in this area: https://research.google.com/bigpicture/attacking-discriminat... The TL;DR version is that in order to eliminate bias, you have to be aware of biases as metrics and optimize to eliminate them.
I would identify as how the author describes, someone who's slightly nervous at the sight of a black male walking towards him at night. I try to suppress this feeling, and try to act normal, at which point I'm really overthinking. And I'm sorry. I am sorry that this has happened to you and to black people in general, how as a society we have fucked up so much. I am suddenly reminded of the book "The Lathe of Heaven", in which when the protagonist wishes a world without racism, and everyone turns grey-skinned. I wish there were immediate solutions, and a way to not let this drag on for generations.
The fact is, as a black male, I sometimes feel prejudice against black males while walking at night. And I'm someone who is affected by that very same prejudice. I see all the same media as anyone else, which constantly portrays black men as a menace to society.
Is a random black man actually more dangerous than a non-black man, in real life? I have my doubts. But for argument's sake, let's say it's true to a slight extent. That still means a given black man bares very little actual risk. Yet, what sort of psychological damage is done to us by being repeatedly subject to this treatment? It's an invisible tax we pay. I've been fortunate my whole life for so many reasons, but I have my own stories, like most other black men I know.
I feel other types of prejudice too. I think step one is knowing this, step two is empathizing, and step three is advocating.
In the area where I live there aren't very many coloured people. When I (rarely) walk at night I find myself estimating the social category of people. If I see a young man in sweat pants and a baseball cap, I think 'possible Chav' (low class white person here in the UK) and I'm wary. Low income young men are more likely to be a possible source of trouble.
I think in the UK and US since black people are far more likely to be in a low income category than not, race becomes a proxy for that.
Funnily enough, when I see a black person in the street at night here I'm more likely to have a positive attitude. Most of the coloured people living round here do so because they are quite successful. Also because there aren't many black people, such a person is perhaps more likely to feel out of place or potentially feel threatened or need help.
I know the feeling. Where I live (in East Germany), there are now a lot more immigrants/refugees from the Middle East and Africa then there used to be a few years ago. I noticed that when I'm sitting in the tram next to a group of immigrants, my lizard brain evokes a feeling of unease because it's an unfamiliar situation (I don't know any people from this ethnic group in person, I don't understand their language(s), and so on), and I have to make a deliberate effort to override that.
Not that I tolerate it, but I can see why people tend to be resentful against foreigners on a psychological level.
I remember reading an article a few years ago explaining how one's brain tends to react somewhat negatively when hearing somebody speaking a language they don't understand. It's actually "normal" (as in "good luck fighting thousands of years of evolution") to feel unease when around people speaking a language you don't understand.
Funnily, the paper was also mentioning that the same thing happens when hearing somebody talk over the phone. The fact that you can only hear 1/2 of the conversation somehow triggers some defense mechanism in your brain.
I think it's inevitable that people will form snap judgments about others based on appearance. It's human nature. Where we rise above our nature is in making sure we don't act in those judgments to bring harm to others. Suspicion of mysterious (black) man at night, OK. Crossing the street to avoid unpredictable confrontation? Maybe unwarranted, but OK. Preemptively calling the cops on him, not OK. Shooting him first "just in case," not OK.
I've spent time in remote Australian communities, where it's quite common to be peppered with 'white cunt' imprecations if out at night, especially anywhere near the canteen (bar). I found that quite confronting (occasionally frightening) in the moment, but it didn't have a big effect -- the people concerned were usually drunk and in a mess (you'll know what I mean if you've been in such places), I was a kind of foreigner (outback communities are not really 'Australia' in anything other than an bureaucratic sense), and clearly representative (whether fairly or not) of an oppressor. And, importantly, I could leave. A few hours drive, and I'm back in a nation where I'm 'the norm', and the indigenous Australian would be the outsider.
I'm trying to imagine the generalised life trauma that might ensue were I subject to this kind of suspicion and/or hatred all the time, in my own country (I do realise the author of the piece wasn't from the US). Many of course will rise above it more-or-less unscathed, but exceptional individuals are a poor indicator of most people's life chances.
Australia is similar to the US in this respect. Indigenous Australians stand little chance unless they happen to get lucky and land whatever weird combination of genes and upbringing that creates exceptions. In some ways it's worse here, as denial about causes is very close to universal -- there's no real equivalent to the US North/South divide. Our whole nation is locked into a kind of determined fluffy antebellum fantasy, where we didn't have a nation-founding war, but just a kind of sloppy de facto displacement of savages by imported middle-class suburbanites, regrettable certainly, but all too natural (so inevitable).
What a total stuff-up humans have made of everything.
It was more like a genocide. In fact, in many parts of Eastern and Southern Australia, it was a genocide.
>Our whole nation is locked into a kind of determined fluffy antebellum fantasy, where we didn't have a nation-founding war, but just a kind of sloppy de facto displacement of savages by imported middle-class suburbanites, regrettable certainly, but all too natural (so inevitable).
It becomes very obvious whenever someone stirs up the hornet's nest. The last I can think of was when Adam Goodes [0] tried to express his cultural ties.
> more like a genocide. In fact, in many parts of Eastern and Southern Australia, it was a genocide
Certainly. Sports & genocide are Australia's top 2 talents (Tasmania must rank among the world's most classically perfect examples of genocide).
The exact form of the stuff-up varies per domain: genocide here, ecocide there (everywhere). But that humans stuff up everything they touch seems to be a universal. Crap species.
In addition to shedding light on the author's experiences, this is also an excellent piece of writing. It's not what normally shows in HN, but I'm glad it did.
What are peoples thoughts on a guy walking behind a woman. Not intentionally, just it's late and you end up walking up behind a woman on a darkish street.
I always feel I either need to slow right down, so i'm not closing the gap (don't want to speed up as that might seem really dodgy..) Or just cross the road entirely.
I feel we're in this weird place where every guy is perceived as a potential threat, so I understand that I should cross the road or just hang right back from her, but then that makes me feel bad because I'm not a threat to anyone and why should I have to cross the road or change my pace. I just want to get home too.
> I always feel I either need to slow right down, so i'm not closing the gap (don't want to speed up as that might seem really dodgy..) Or just cross the road entirely.
I usually try to overtake them very quickly, so they can see me. It helps that I'm a very fast walker.
I do the same. I walk quickly and as far to the side of them as I can, making a decent amount of noise. That way they can hear my location and be less alarmed.
Yep, I guess that's similar to what's described in the article, although on a vastly different scale - it's a concern to me, but not that often.
Interestingly, this was exacerbated when I was walking with crutches. Even though I was even less of a danger, the ticking sound of the crutches did feel like I was sounding more threatening.
A good but disturbing read. This just stopped me in my (white, European) tracks:
"When he dropped me off and I thanked him for his help, he said, “It’s because you were polite that we let you go. If you were acting up it would have been different.” I nodded and said nothing."
Even the officer who made the effort to be fair, still expected submission.
Isn't that what all police expect, from everyone? Cops here in Ireland are generally friendly, but the best path to a frictionless interaction with them is to demonstrate you already know who's the boss, so they don't feel like they have to demonstrate it to you
edit: Having read now the article, I take that back. You've gotta be submissive with cops everywhere, but what this person describes is pretty extreme
> Isn't that what all police expect, from everyone?
Honestly, I don't know. I've been fortunate to have never had a bad interaction with the police, and when I have had dealings with them they've been helpful and professional. I hope that I know enough about my rights that I would be polite and cooperative but firm if the situation demanded it, but I don't really know whether I could do this in practice.
I live in the UK and we supposedly have "policing by consent" [0] here, but there is abundant evidence that the police tend to exploit the power asymmetry. Armed police who consider themselves "the boss" are one of the reasons I am unlikely to ever visit the US.
>> A lone woman walking in the middle of the night was as common a sight as
Sasquatch; moonlight pedestrianism was too dangerous for her.
Mnyeah. Also known as walking alone while female after nightfall.
I used to do that when I lived in Athens, Greece. There were two distinct
periods of it, because I went through a phase where I had a decidecly
gender-ambiguous appearance (short hair, combat boots, jeans and t-shirt) and
another when I dressed more typically feminine (think your mom when she goes
to the hairdresser's).
When I looked like I could be a boy with weird hair, I thoroughly enjoyed my
nighttime jaunts and I never felt threatened or harrassed. I walked around the
seedier parts of town, where the drug-dealing and the sex-working happened-
because that was the point, to see the night life that crawls out of the
woodwork when all the decent people are safely sleeping at home. Despite all
that I never got into trouble. I guess I looked like a bit of a freak so folks
probably assumed I was out for a fix or something. But who knows?.
When I looked my most femme, the situation was completely reversed, even
though by that time I was bored of the sleaze and stayed firmly in the
better-lit, higher-income parts of town. People would stick their heads out of
moving cars and yell obscenities ("Hey baby, are you making house calls?
MWAHAHAHAHA"). If I stopped, like to sit at a bench for a few minutes, shadows
would detach themselves from the background and slowly amble towards me,
nonchalant like, until I felt insecure enough that I had to get up and march
away. Every single man I met would consider it their obligation to hit on me,
one way or another- tell me how pretty I was (in the dark, sure) offer a ride,
offer to buy me a drink... strangely enough, nobody ever offered to buy me a
souvlaki which is what I actually was after most of the time.
Note that this was Athens city in the period between 2000 and 2005, long
before the immigrants started coming in. I'm just saying. Those people who
made it a pain in the ass for a woman to walk alone at night? Plain,
middle-class white guys in a country with a rate of violent crime among the
lowest in the world.
Well anyway. There you go. It sucks to walk while black, it sucks to walk
while female, also- or at least, while recognisably so.
> (And it is not lost on me that my woman friends are those who best understand my plight; they have developed their own vigilance in an environment where they are constantly treated as targets of sexual attention.)
I can't find it, but I first read a piece about Walking While Black when I was still homeless. It was a different piece, written by a successful American man, a lawyer iirc, whose car broke down not too far from home. So he walked home into his upper middle class neighborhood to his own home and was harassed by the police about it.
I got some very small taste of such treatment while homeless. Walking while homeless is another reason for well off people to call the cops on you or for police to generally assume you must be up to no good.
I don't know how to fix this, but I am glad to see it getting more attention and I am glad to see such compelling writing on the subject.
Readit News
I too love walking the streets at night. And I too have to not be myself and behave in very conscious ways to avoid being hassled and detained by the police. Police just assume that if you're out at night you are a criminal.
So much of his descriptions of having to learn to dress a certain way, behave a certain way, and literally go out of my way to avoid scaring people rings true. I get detained by the police a handful of times per year just for walking or being in places at times that most people aren't. I particularly get the police called on me if I walk through in rich neighborhoods. I've had firearms pulled on me just for photographing trees in a public park (at night).
I tried to take up jogging for half a year but I quit and bought a bike after being stopped by police for being suspicious three times in as many months. Apparently jogging while not wearing a joggers uniform means I'm up to no good. No non-criminal jogs in cargo pants and a t-shirt. And that was in the day time. I wouldn't even consider trying it at night.
I'm not trying to marginalize his message that skin color is the cause. But it's certainly not the only cause. The root of the problem lies with the police, and society, villifying anyone who isn't diurnal.
The man with the dark skin had people tackle him down while calling the police. The other people on the team that was observing had to rush in to disarm the situation. The white man had people stare and point, but nothing dramatic happened. The woman with dark skin was practically ignored by people walking the park. For the white woman several people walked up and offered to help her with the bike.
I am not sure a beard and night time and actually changes this. The assumption about who can and can't be a criminal seems to be based on gender first, race second, and appearance/environment last. Would be very interesting to see a more deep study on that, through I expect they will mirror related studies such as those that look at outcomes from courts and criminal psychology.
I lived near a university and had multiple bikes stolen. If the data points to a demographic in that area, for example where 0% of bikes are stolen by women, why would people in that area react if a woman is working with her bike?
Raw data may disagree with you, but it's impartial and unbiased. (unless you want to argue the collection and recording of data is biased)
What I did see was black men having to show their ID at subway stations, which to me was a very unsettling thing, because it was pretty obvious that they were looking for drug dealers and focusing on a specific race.
I was held up in Croatia and had to show my ID twice. But I was with a group of people in a party area, so that kind of made sense.
Is taking walks maybe an uncommon thing in the USA?
In many places, yes. But part of the article takes place in New York, where it isn't.
I have lived without a car for over a decade. Almost everyone immediately assumes that I am simply poor and can't afford a car. This happens to also be true, but I wanted to live without a car for a long time, I'm an environmental studies major and I have terrible eyesight problems. I always hated driving.
In over ten years, only one person ever asked why I gave up my car. Everyone else just assumes they know and assumes it is poverty.
In the US, almost everyone drives everywhere to the point of ridiculosity. I gave up my car while living in an apartment complex where people drove their trash to the dumpster and drove to the mailbox. I lived within a 15 minute walk of three shopping centers. Initially, no one walked. The streets were all deserted.
After I gave up my car and began walking everywhere, walking caught on. But before that, people drove their kids to the pool in the apartment complex and really crazy stuff like that.
I once got sent to Plano, Texas, for a week. It was a training course for work. After the course, I went for walks in the afternoon / early evening. And it surprised me at just how deserted the streets felt. There were plenty of cars around, but so very few pedestrians. I didn't really feel unsafe, just more out of place.
As a 6'1 white male, I find that I can walk most anywhere without fear.
I often find that I need to reassess my privileged notion that this is normal when conversing with friends who are shorter, darker or female. They describe a world much like the author of this piece does.
That's not to say I've never had trouble on the street. Years ago I was assaulted randomly by someone bigger than me stumbling out of a bar I was passing by. The difference was made clear though when I reacted by getting up and following at a distance, eventually finding a helpful police officer who never questioned my version of events.
A vastly more common scenario is one where I am never in any fear of any kind, I can easily wave at police, and am never interrogated for simply walking.
I'm about 5'8" and female.* Except for the phenomenon I mentioned in another comment of being hassled for Walking While Homeless, I feel fairly comfortable walking almost any time, almost anywhere.
I don't have an explanation for that. But it makes me wonder about what all factors into the equation, both from the perspective of how others react and from the perspective of how people experience such things.
* And white, which I didn't state because the default assumption is that if you don't state your race/color, then you are white. But I am adding it as a footnote because I am finding myself uncomfortable with reinforcing an essentially racist cultural practice.
I've never been asked for ID or had anything other than the staff member accommodate without hesitation. I haven't needed my PIN in years now.
But every time, I think, "I bet I wouldn't get away with this if I wasn't a plain white guy."
The police would usually stop and talk to me if they drove past.
I always thought of it as a good thing. I lived in a high burglary area (being a student area), so there were a lot of shady characters walking around at night, especially in the back streets. They never actually detained me or even got out of the car, they'd usually just ask me where I was coming from and where I was going.
I never needed to give them exact details, they were happy with me just telling them the general area.
I guess that's the critical difference though: I was never detained. The police never viewed me through the lens of suspicion, they never talked to me in an accusatory tone. I felt more like they were checking that I was OK, rather than checking that I was a criminal.
As a European I wonder if this is "because Freedom", that the state-sceptical tradition laid out by the US constitution has created an expectation that police should never interact with anybody who isn't a criminal. That way, the attempt of making the police nicer has made them less nice, by removing nuance (unless you happen to never fall into the area of uncertainty, where nuance will be missed). Any thoughts on this by Americans?
No they don't. What they are doing is noticing things that are out of the ordinary. You do the same thing. If everyone is wearing a suit, and one person is wearing shorts, watch all the heads turn. A black man walking through an all white neighborhood late at night will draw attention from any person in that neighborhood. The same is true if a white man was walking through an all black neighborhood. No different. The police would stop him, too.
I was going to work one morning and, as I got into my car, I noticed my wife's tomato plants had some red ones. Leaving my car door open, I walked to the garden to examine them to see if they could be picked. When I turned around, a policeman pulled up in a squad car. He recognized me but said he stopped because he saw a car with its door open making him wonder if it was a break-in. He then saw this poorly dressed guy wandering around the yard. Both out of the ordinary.
When he saw me, he laughed, and drove away.
I own a restaurant. One night, I got a call from the police that they noticed our back door was slightly open. That's different for two o'clock in the morning. They walked in and notice our cash drawer was missing. Patrol cars were dispatched through the neighborhood, a shopping district where there were lots of people walking around, when they found a guy walking with a metal box under his arm at two in the morning. How unusual.
Actually sorry, scratch that. I was stopped once, when I was moving from one flat to another, and my girlfriend was sick, so I had to walk both our bikes 6 km to a new flat, late evening. They asked if I'm sure I didn't stolen them and we went our ways.
There's something wrong with your cities if police has to check on you for walking at night.
In my country (The Netherlands) police sometimes check all cars passing a temporary checkpoint. They check if you have open fines, paid your taxes etc. When really expensive cars pass those checkpoints they verify that the owner actually has a job to afford cars like these and if the owner doesn't they can impound the car on suspicion of being paid with criminal money.
Statistics have shown that the highest "risk" group of those crime paid cars is with young foreign male drivers.
A few years ago a (black) rap artist was stopped at the side of the road by police and they basically admitted that this was racial profiling.
The artist made some fuss about it on social media, and it appeared in all news broadcasts and talk shows. People were expecting some big commotion about it; but it turns out that the majority of people actually approved of this method.
It wasn't racism at work here, it was statistics and people were fine with it. It is a thin line though, because to the people on the wrong end of the statistics it really can feel like racism. So where should police draw the line?
As a general rule, the variance within a group is almost always larger than the difference between groups. So, if there is statistical evidence of the effectiveness of racial profiling then I'd like to see it.
Now let's explain why it being statistics doesn't mean it can't be racism. I have used this analogy before:
http://braythwayt.com/2016/03/30/racism-is-injustice.html
A woman is murdered in her home. Statistics tell us that when a woman is murdered in her home, it is nearly always her partner. So, why don't we merely arrest the partner and march them off to jail without gathering evidence, following pesky rules about having a lawyer involved, or examining the burden of proof?
Statistics, one might say, reverse the burden of proof. Why isn't it up to the partner to prove that they're innocent?
We can A/B test this application of statistics: Let's say that 9/10 times, the partner did it. In test A, we lock 100 partners up without trial. Presto, we have the right person in prison 90 times, and have an innocent person in prison 10 times, but being right 90% of the time feels pretty good, and we saved a lot of money and bother. Everybody who isn't the partner of a murdered woman feels pretty good about test A.
In test B, we arrest 100 partners, but then we gather evidence and have trials, even though "everybody knows the partner did it." Good news! Of the ten partners in test B who didn't do it, nine are set free. One, alas, is wrongfully imprisoned for a crime the did not commit. But one wrongfully imprisoned person is better than ten, right?
Well, it's not so simple. Of the 90 people who did do it in test B, the evidence wasn't always solid. So in ten cases, they cut a deal for a reduced sentence. In six cases, they "beat the rap in court" and were also set free, despite having done it. Three cases didn't even make it to court for some technicality or other.
So test B is much better for the case where someone is innocent: There is only one person wrongfully imprisoned, instead of ten. But it's worse for the case where someone is guilty. Instead of ninety guilty people receiving the full punishment, Only 71 receive the full punishment. Then get a reduced punishment, and nine guilty people walk free!
In pure, bloodless statistics, A is better than B. A is right 90% of the time, B is only right 80% of the time. But if we want to talk about justice, B is better than A. In terms of justice, one person wrongfully imprisoned is worse than 100 guilty people set free. False positives are abhorrent to a just society, and false negatives (not to mention costly trials) are the price society is willing to pay to ensure justice.
So back to statistics and stopping cars. If statistics tell you that black men are more likely to be illegal immigrants, or have unpaid fines, or whatever, and you use that to stop every black man driving a car, but you don't stop white men, that is unjust for the same reason as locking up the partners without trial.
You have imposed a consequence--not being able to drive without being stopped by police--on some number of innocent black men--because they belong to a class of people who statistically are more likely to have done something wrong.
One can argue that being stopped is not the same thing as being jailed without trial. But it is. When travelling, you might be asked if you have ever been detained by police. Same when applying for a job. In some countries (cough, USA, cough) this perspective on statistics starts with stopping cars, and ends in gunfire.
Even in civilised countries, people reason that if it's ok for the police to stop every black man because black men have statistically committed more crimes, it is ok to not rent to black men, or not employ black men. And if asked, they will say, "I'm not a racist, I'm a statistician.". Law enforcement choices send a strong message about "what everyone thinks is ok."
At some point, though, it comes down to justice. Justice is not imposing consequences upon someone without actual, inspectable evidence. Injustice is imposing consequences upon someone because somebody else who has something in common with them broke the law.
And racism is using statistics to impose injustice on someone because of their race. It's that simple.
Don't use statistics as an excuse for racism. Eliminate racism everywhere you find it. There is no excuse.
> So where should police draw the line?
There should be a line drawn at racial profiling; it is never an acceptable way to predict who might be a criminal.
I had similar problems when my hair was long, but I really don't think it's comparable to what black people face. Being white, my problems went away when I cut my hair, nighttime walks or no. And black people get harassed day and night, so I think anti-nocturnalism is a small, small part of the problem, not the root.
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I would suggest that perhaps, part of what's happening is that the police are optimizing for a particular metric. We can hope that it's crime reduction, or some number or numbers very close to that.
When you optimize for one metric, other metrics fall.
The police, like most anyone, make errors based on superficial attributes. Even if statistically, arresting tall hobo beard man taking pictures of trees late at night is the best course of action for the police's metrics, you perceive it as a series of stupid errors. This leads to a perception of injustice and harassment.
I'm the kind of person who doesn't mind security check ups and even being stopped by police as long as they are cordial and professional, and, crucially, I understand their reasoning. I recall listening to one black man, I think he was talking to Sam Harris, relating how police would stop black men and grab them. Unprofessional treatment creates a perception of an uncivilized society, and that's unjust.
This is very true. People often assume that things like machine learning or AI won't have racial biases, but then we find out time and time again that our algorithms are in fact biased. It's not that the bias is intentional (even human bias is rarely intentional), it's that by focusing on metrics, the metric of racial equality often suffers. I'm not sure why you were down voted for pointing this out. This is a key concept to understand if we care about creating a more equal society in an age of big data and machine learning. Google did some research in this area: https://research.google.com/bigpicture/attacking-discriminat... The TL;DR version is that in order to eliminate bias, you have to be aware of biases as metrics and optimize to eliminate them.
The fact is, as a black male, I sometimes feel prejudice against black males while walking at night. And I'm someone who is affected by that very same prejudice. I see all the same media as anyone else, which constantly portrays black men as a menace to society.
Is a random black man actually more dangerous than a non-black man, in real life? I have my doubts. But for argument's sake, let's say it's true to a slight extent. That still means a given black man bares very little actual risk. Yet, what sort of psychological damage is done to us by being repeatedly subject to this treatment? It's an invisible tax we pay. I've been fortunate my whole life for so many reasons, but I have my own stories, like most other black men I know.
I feel other types of prejudice too. I think step one is knowing this, step two is empathizing, and step three is advocating.
I think in the UK and US since black people are far more likely to be in a low income category than not, race becomes a proxy for that.
Funnily enough, when I see a black person in the street at night here I'm more likely to have a positive attitude. Most of the coloured people living round here do so because they are quite successful. Also because there aren't many black people, such a person is perhaps more likely to feel out of place or potentially feel threatened or need help.
Not that I tolerate it, but I can see why people tend to be resentful against foreigners on a psychological level.
I remember reading an article a few years ago explaining how one's brain tends to react somewhat negatively when hearing somebody speaking a language they don't understand. It's actually "normal" (as in "good luck fighting thousands of years of evolution") to feel unease when around people speaking a language you don't understand.
Funnily, the paper was also mentioning that the same thing happens when hearing somebody talk over the phone. The fact that you can only hear 1/2 of the conversation somehow triggers some defense mechanism in your brain.
I'm trying to imagine the generalised life trauma that might ensue were I subject to this kind of suspicion and/or hatred all the time, in my own country (I do realise the author of the piece wasn't from the US). Many of course will rise above it more-or-less unscathed, but exceptional individuals are a poor indicator of most people's life chances.
Australia is similar to the US in this respect. Indigenous Australians stand little chance unless they happen to get lucky and land whatever weird combination of genes and upbringing that creates exceptions. In some ways it's worse here, as denial about causes is very close to universal -- there's no real equivalent to the US North/South divide. Our whole nation is locked into a kind of determined fluffy antebellum fantasy, where we didn't have a nation-founding war, but just a kind of sloppy de facto displacement of savages by imported middle-class suburbanites, regrettable certainly, but all too natural (so inevitable).
What a total stuff-up humans have made of everything.
>Our whole nation is locked into a kind of determined fluffy antebellum fantasy, where we didn't have a nation-founding war, but just a kind of sloppy de facto displacement of savages by imported middle-class suburbanites, regrettable certainly, but all too natural (so inevitable).
It becomes very obvious whenever someone stirs up the hornet's nest. The last I can think of was when Adam Goodes [0] tried to express his cultural ties.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Goodes#Controversy
Certainly. Sports & genocide are Australia's top 2 talents (Tasmania must rank among the world's most classically perfect examples of genocide).
The exact form of the stuff-up varies per domain: genocide here, ecocide there (everywhere). But that humans stuff up everything they touch seems to be a universal. Crap species.
I always feel I either need to slow right down, so i'm not closing the gap (don't want to speed up as that might seem really dodgy..) Or just cross the road entirely.
I feel we're in this weird place where every guy is perceived as a potential threat, so I understand that I should cross the road or just hang right back from her, but then that makes me feel bad because I'm not a threat to anyone and why should I have to cross the road or change my pace. I just want to get home too.
I usually try to overtake them very quickly, so they can see me. It helps that I'm a very fast walker.
Interestingly, this was exacerbated when I was walking with crutches. Even though I was even less of a danger, the ticking sound of the crutches did feel like I was sounding more threatening.
"When he dropped me off and I thanked him for his help, he said, “It’s because you were polite that we let you go. If you were acting up it would have been different.” I nodded and said nothing."
Even the officer who made the effort to be fair, still expected submission.
edit: Having read now the article, I take that back. You've gotta be submissive with cops everywhere, but what this person describes is pretty extreme
Honestly, I don't know. I've been fortunate to have never had a bad interaction with the police, and when I have had dealings with them they've been helpful and professional. I hope that I know enough about my rights that I would be polite and cooperative but firm if the situation demanded it, but I don't really know whether I could do this in practice.
I live in the UK and we supposedly have "policing by consent" [0] here, but there is abundant evidence that the police tend to exploit the power asymmetry. Armed police who consider themselves "the boss" are one of the reasons I am unlikely to ever visit the US.
[0] One of the "Peelian Principles": https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/policing-by-conse...
Mnyeah. Also known as walking alone while female after nightfall.
I used to do that when I lived in Athens, Greece. There were two distinct periods of it, because I went through a phase where I had a decidecly gender-ambiguous appearance (short hair, combat boots, jeans and t-shirt) and another when I dressed more typically feminine (think your mom when she goes to the hairdresser's).
When I looked like I could be a boy with weird hair, I thoroughly enjoyed my nighttime jaunts and I never felt threatened or harrassed. I walked around the seedier parts of town, where the drug-dealing and the sex-working happened- because that was the point, to see the night life that crawls out of the woodwork when all the decent people are safely sleeping at home. Despite all that I never got into trouble. I guess I looked like a bit of a freak so folks probably assumed I was out for a fix or something. But who knows?.
When I looked my most femme, the situation was completely reversed, even though by that time I was bored of the sleaze and stayed firmly in the better-lit, higher-income parts of town. People would stick their heads out of moving cars and yell obscenities ("Hey baby, are you making house calls? MWAHAHAHAHA"). If I stopped, like to sit at a bench for a few minutes, shadows would detach themselves from the background and slowly amble towards me, nonchalant like, until I felt insecure enough that I had to get up and march away. Every single man I met would consider it their obligation to hit on me, one way or another- tell me how pretty I was (in the dark, sure) offer a ride, offer to buy me a drink... strangely enough, nobody ever offered to buy me a souvlaki which is what I actually was after most of the time.
Note that this was Athens city in the period between 2000 and 2005, long before the immigrants started coming in. I'm just saying. Those people who made it a pain in the ass for a woman to walk alone at night? Plain, middle-class white guys in a country with a rate of violent crime among the lowest in the world.
Well anyway. There you go. It sucks to walk while black, it sucks to walk while female, also- or at least, while recognisably so.
> (And it is not lost on me that my woman friends are those who best understand my plight; they have developed their own vigilance in an environment where they are constantly treated as targets of sexual attention.)
I got some very small taste of such treatment while homeless. Walking while homeless is another reason for well off people to call the cops on you or for police to generally assume you must be up to no good.
I don't know how to fix this, but I am glad to see it getting more attention and I am glad to see such compelling writing on the subject.