It's Time to Boycott Arizona

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by BornBronson

I wouldn't like it,but I know my civil rights and do get very loud in public if my rights are violated in anyway or form in America..my mamma taught me to be like that.

The fact that you 'get loud' if your civil rights are violated tells me that, despite your Native American card you are not treated--on a day-to-day basis--as anything other than white in this society. Why do I know that? Let's compare three circumstances---your hypothetical having your civil rights violated, my *actually* having my civil rights violated and a prominent non-white person having HIS civil rights violated.

So you would 'get very loud' in public.

Now, I was standing on the lawn of my parents house, getting ready to do my paper route--as wholesome a bit of Americana as you can imagine in the early 80's--when a cop pulled his weapon on me and demanded to see my identification to establish "what I was doing in this neighborhood". We'd lived in that neighborhood for 14 years at that point. It was the only *other* house I'd lived in. The only reason it didn't go really hard on me (I didn't have an ID on me because I was 15 and my ID consisted of a bus pass, a library card and a student ID card--all upstairs) was that I was able to name drop a superior court judges' name because of the prominence of my family in Sacramento.

Henry Louis Gates was *in his own home*, was insulted by a police officer demanding that he provide some proof that this was his own home and he got arrested!

Now, one of these incidents is not like the other. One of these incidents isn't the same. What do you think the difference could be? When I have to talk to the police I don't 'get loud'. No matter *how* scared I am, I stay calm, my tone of voice is measured, reassuring the officer that I am not getting angry no matter how pissed off I am, I keep my hands in plain view and restrain my tendency to gesticulate when I talk. Why? Because any other behavior is a fantastic way of, if I’m lucky, spending the night in jail and if I'm not lucky being late--as in the late Adrienne Davis.

Now, this might come as a surprise to you but the experience of Hispanics with the police is closer to my or Skip Gates experience than it is to yours or my wife's experience.