Maybe this happens to
hipsters as they
grow up age - you think you've encountered something new and obscure, you're really on to a new niche here, and then you learn that all those old people down at the senior center have known about this since like forever. Sort of like my
Dad drinking
PBR.
Say you're a privileged mainstreamer - you're the norm, plus/minus one standard deviation. Bad things are happening to another, smaller group in society. Do you respond? Do you resist? Or, if it doesn't affect you directly and you're busy, do you move along?
These bad patterns persist for decades. The malefactors become more rigid in their behavior, and as they train the successive generations those habits become dogma. Sheriff
Jim Clark trains Deputy Inspector
Tony Bologna in the way things really work, and they themselves are
dehumanized by the experience.
Is it possible that after 50 years, the abuse of the minority becomes so accepted that, under stress, the power structure extends it to the majority? Does the military training, equipment, and mindset given to once-civilian police departments after 9/11 accelerate the trend?
... this sort of abusive behavior is reported routinely by people of color and by people of lower economic status. Yet their complaints are routinely dismissed or ignored in the media. Sometimes it takes middle and upper class white people getting hurt to get the media moving (Fallows)
Congratulations. Post 9/11, now we're all Black. And Palestinian.Not to say that we're familiar with their issues, understand their culture, and can converse with them - nowhere near that.
But that cop/soldier, who's been treating Black people and Palestinian people that way for a long time, has reached a place where he's going to start treating you that way. Not all cops/soldiers, just the fringe. The Tony Bolognas and the John Pikes see you that way.
You think you've discovered a new problem, but "some people" have been dealing with it for a long time. Kind of educational, isn't it?
Gosh. If "we" had known back in the day, maybe we could have avoided this.
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