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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]11:46 again with one additional thought -- Something often frustrating is when I hear people insisting there is some systemic problem with police.  I certainly know there's a big problem with some police applying racially discriminatory approaches.  But I can't tell whether it's a systemic problem with the police, or instead a number of "rogue" police officers who are violating their systemic training.  Although the result is regardlessly horrible for the black men who suffer, the solution may be very different depending on which scenario it is.[/quote]

Hats off for an intelligent and respectful response - I agree with just about everything you said.  Still, I can't help but sigh in frustration when people insist on demanding facts and data for an issue that goes much deeper than what statistics can show.  The notion that authorities treat non-white people differently isn't merely a matter of analyzing how many people are arrested in relation to their percentage of the population.  For instance, the New York Times article that initiated this discussion - [i]Library Visit, Then Held at Gunpoint[/i] - no one was shot or arrested so there's no data to collect, but as the article tried to articulate..."What if?"  What if that kids dad wasn't a New York Times columnist?  What if he was just another black kid?  Would we even have heard this story?  Would we have even cared?  If such a situation can arise on a college campus how unlikely is it that in predominately black communities patrolled by on a daily basis by equally "cautious" cops that kids are getting guns pointed at them with regularity and then told to go on about their business without anyone shot or arrested - encounters that don't show up in statistics.  But does that make those confrontations negligible?  And the bigger question...what if?[/quote]

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