McKinney has a history of racial tension over swimming pools, and some of the worst enclaves of racism today are the suburbs which were populated by white flight. As we’ve been learning, the police in general are racist enforcers of the white status quo. So I am not surprised by what happened, and I believe the teenaged girl who hosted the party that her neighbors are basically racist assholes.
Tatiana Rose, who lives in the Craig Ranch neighborhood and hosted the party with her siblings, said a woman and man who live in the neighborhood showed up and called their friends “black f*ckers” and told them to return to their Section 8 housing.
The 19-year-old Rose said most of her friends who attended the party live in Craig Ranch — which sits along a golf course.
Rose said one of her younger brother’s friends — a white girl named Grace Stone — scolded the neighbors and told them it wasn’t right to use racial slurs.
“So then they started verbally abusing her, saying that she needs to do better for herself, cursing at her, and I’m saying, no that’s wrong – she’s 14, you should not say things like that to a 14-year-old,” Rose said.
She said the woman, who she identified as Kate, told her to go back to her government-assisted housing and smacked her in the face when she stuck up for the younger girl, and she said another woman also attacked her.
They called police, and white partygoers said the officers ignored them and chased, tackled, and pointed guns at black, Hispanic, or Arabic teens.
This also tells us how deep the problem runs. “Fixing” the police won’t make the problem go away.
No.
Fixing the police won’t make the problem go away.
But when the police remove and, if appropriate, arrest people who are on someone else’s property uninvited specifically to harass the invited guests, and do NOT harass the party goers merely because some random trespasser has slapped the property’s legal resident and/or an invited guest,
THEN the power of the state is not propping up the power of the word N*.
Man, if all we had to deal with was racial prejudice and not racism, it would be a very welcome world.
I’m put in mind of this segment of West Wing where one of the regulars (Toby, I’m pretty sure) has a conversation with a random dad and hits on the idea that there should be no cap on the tax deduction for post-secondary tuition. The guy isn’t objecting to working to pay for his daughter’s school. He’s proud of her accomplishments and actually likes that his daughter needs him to help her. He wants to take part in the realization of her dreams. But he’s a bit overwhelmed by the total cost of post-secondary. This, he says, would make it a bit easier.
“We don’t have to do it for them, we can’t do it all for them, but we can make this easier. And if we can, we should.”
There’s no direct parallel or anything (and yes, there’s some unhealthy, yucky patronizing from the unseen college attendee’s dad). I’m just thinking of my descendants living in a world where they don’t have to confront racism, but they still have a mission to end racial prejudice. I can’t solve all the worlds problems. There’s going to be a bit of tikkun-ing for my kids’ olam.
But it would be nice if i could just help end racism before I die. Just making it so that the state enforcers aren’t backing up racial prejudice? That would be good.
Fucking hell. I read the Buzzfeed story earlier and linked to it in the “look at all the white people” thread. It does not give all the detail, and the reality is even worse than I thought. The police were actually called on the abusive white folks, and still chased the black teens? Fucking hell.
It seems a little unclear exactly who called the police. The next bit after what PZ quoted is:
Which makes it sound like it was the racist asshats that called the police.
Remember though, white privilege doesn’t exist. I’m white, so the odds are I could start a fight with a black child, call the police, and the police would hassle and quite possibly arrest the kid while leaving me alone. But white privilege? It’s a myth.
According to the McKinney water tower, it’s “Unique by Nature.” Why does it seem so depressingly normal.
anthrosciguy — Heck, in Florida you could stalk the black kid with a gun, start a fight and then shoot and kill the kid, claim “stand your ground” rights, and walk free. See, no white privilege here at all. Nope. None. Perfectly normal.
A part that really stood out to me was the reference to section 18 housing. I had actually looked at some subsidized housing for my mum in a different part of the Metroplex several years back, and it’s not real common that part of the Metroplex. North Dallas is traditionally very affluent, but the housing is cheaper by half in McKinney than it is in Dallas proper. $600k will get you a two-to-three bedroom house in the 1200sqft range in Dallas. Go the hour north to McKinney or south to Haltom and that price drops to around $100k. That same $600k gets you a miniMcMansion in McKinney.
My point being that the “go back to section 8 housing” comment made by the white woman(?) is fucked up on multiple levels. Firstly, if you aren’t super wealthy, McKinney is cheaper than trying to live in Dallas, provided you can find a job (good luck with that though). Secondly, if you are living in McKinney and *driving* in to Dallas to work, you are probably pretty well off as the only way to get from McKinney to Dallas is one of two not-cheap private toll roads, which is often still more cost effective than trying to live in Dallas itself.
Gah, I hope I’m making sense. This is before coffee, so that isn’t helping.
TL;DR: “go back where you came from/belong” in a town like McKinney just isn’t sensical as it is a town that has only recently been growing *because* it’s a cheaper alternative to living in Frisco or Dallas.
I originally saw the report on this via Google News linking to ABC news. Interestingly, ABC news managed to completely elide the racial angle. It was just “cop suspended for being too rough on a teenager in a bikini” but the picture of a white-skinned guy tackling a brown-skinned woman was front and center.
I suppose she could have had a weapon in that bikini, she’s lucky the cops didn’t call in an air strike.
I grew up in McKinney, TX and this surprises me not one bit. I moved back there for a single year after being out of state for a while and I just couldn’t take it. I couldn’t take the casual racism, the conservatism of Collin County, the sheer ugliness of the de facto racial segregation. My wife and I moved to Austin
McKinney had one high school when I was a student there, but has since built two others. The old high school is predictably where most of the kids in the poorer east side are sent and the newest, of course, is where all the kids (and tax dollars) of the residents in the two affluent subdivisions go.
As I said, this sort of behavior is sadly not at all surprising to someone who has lived there for a bit more than a decade.
TL;DR: “go back where you came from/belong” in a town like McKinney just isn’t sensical as it is a town that has only recently been growing *because* it’s a cheaper alternative to living in Frisco or Dallas.
It makes sense if you remember that the people in the affluent subdivisions think they’re living the good life and have forgotten that they moved out to this shitty suburb because they cannot afford to live the lifestyle they feel they deserve in the city.
@Henry Case, Yeah you have a point. I’m from the opposite side of the Metroplex, down south of Fort Worth and my town was a largish farming community that didn’t truly switch to being a suburb in type and culture until I was on my way out of high school. So it’s entirely possible I may be projecting incorrectly on the nature of the northern suburbs.
I’ve been seeing that slur “black f*ckers” more often online recently. It’s happily applied to Obama, of course. I fear it’s the next iteration of n*ggers. Thugs doesn’t work too well because as we saw in Waco that’s a colorblind slur. You know, there are a lot of places on this planet that I do not care to live in — almost anywhere in the Muslim world, Putin’s Russia, large swaths of Central America, Antarctica, though I do like penguins, and most definitely not Texas. Even blue Austin does not hold any magic for me. I’d feel like I was living on an island surrounded by a sea of piss.
http://indigenousrights.net.au/civil_rights/freedom_ride,_1965
Australia’s just had the 50th anniversary of the freedom ride (inspired by the US freedom bus), and while things have changed, it’s not even remotely hard to find the sorts of things described in the OP in Australia in the 21st century.
The most heartbreaking thing I’ve personally experienced was getting off at Redfern station (a traditionally poor, inner-city suburb, with a large aboriginal population). A young aboriginal boy (3 or 4 years old) came up and wanted to play with me: he grabbed hold of my legs and tried to wrestle me. He was clearly just a little boy trying to play, so I just tussled his hair and kept walking. His big brother saw us and called to the boy: “Look out bro, he’s twice your size, he’ll smash ya!”. We both laughed and agreed that his little brother’s eyes were bigger than his stomach.
So far nothing remarkable. The thing that put it in perspective was what I overheard as I walked away: I could see that he was trying to make sure his brother learnt not to get into trouble. His warning, to his 4-year-old brother was, “You got a lot of jail in you boy!”. I realised then that there was a problem here that was entirely outside of my experience, and that I’d never even had to consider. The terrifying thing is that the elder brother was right: If the little boy got into any sort of trouble at all, once he was more than a couple of years older, he’d almost certainly end up in the police cells, if not jail, for petty things that I personally got away with as a kid, with nothing more than a stern warning.
Aboriginal and Torres-strait islander people make up about 2.4% of Australia’s population, but 30% of its prisoners.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Australians#Demographics
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/mf/4517.0
Until then, I was mostly able to ignore the periodic race riots in Australia, but I realised that I’ve got no right to ignore this stuff, as a white Australian.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Redfern_riots
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Palm_Island_death_in_custody
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Cronulla_riots
Sorry if that was a bit long, but I wanted to share that events like this do sometimes wake people up from their bubble of privilege. For me, personally, simply becoming aware of the reality made a huge difference.
The original news reports I read all said that the police responded because of a call that a fight broke out at the party. They implied that it was a fight among party-goers and not some non-privileged white woman neighbor who attacked people at the party.
Jon Stewart slammed this pretty hard last night. Good.
Punch line: “It’s progress because a cop pulled a gun on a bunch of black people and nobody got killed.”
Sad but true. Meanwhile, cops are circling the wagons. Cops need to be more original in their response to this sort of thing (hint: pink slips).
Update on my end: Husband has been hearing reports that there was a DJ playing music “disturbing the peace” loud and posting on Twitter for people to come join the pool party-in a gated community. And that there were kids hopping fences into neighboring pools.
I have no idea to the truth of that, just adding here as the version of the story that is going around in that part of Texas.
I don’t have any links either so take it as the hearsay it is.
This quote just seems very appropriate for McKinney. And Baltimore. And . . . .
Follow up:
After being suspended and condemned by the police chief, the cop has resigned and apologized.
qwints
I’ll give him the apology, but the ‘not targeting minorities’ statement seems incongruous with what was observed by other (white) people at the scene.
Rawnaeris
The party was given by a girl living in that community for other children in that community. I don’t know about jumping fences (which may have happened) or the loud music (perhaps take it up with the DJ?), but I do know that the police officer’s response was absolutely inadequate. As were the racial comments that started the initial fight that led to the 911 calls.
If you Ctrl+F from comment 398 onwards, you can find several articles on this incident, with variations on the details (I know, I know, it’s a lot… sorry :( ). Nothing, none of it, supports pulling a gun on kids in bathing suits, much less dragging a teenaged girl down to the ground by her hair, and then holding her there.
Also, qwints, want to (could you please) link to that article at the link in my previous comment? :)
As if on cue…
Apartheid-style swimming pools in Israel: Soldiers expel 200 Palestinians from pool to allow settlers to bathe
(In case you thought the Bantustans of Gaza and the West Bank were awful enough already.)
So, who wants to read about a breathtakingly racist 4th grade teacher’s opinion on the McKinney incident?
But she remembered to include “#I’mnotracist, and pre-empt the inevitable backlash against her “opinion”, so that’s OK. The school district is aware of the post, and… she’s still a teacher.
Why can’t the police talk in a civil manner to citizens? I didn’t hear any profanity from the teenagers, but plenty of “fuck”, “ass”, etc. from the deranged cop. I have seen this in all the videos of the last year when police interact with blacks. I haven’t heard it once when they interact with a white offender. In the present case, there weren’t even any offenders.
AS to #20 theopontes, the IDF = SS.