I am not American so I don’t understand how all this can happen. But question for the white folks. How do you guys feel when these black murders occur? Do you feel like you can’t do anything about it? Kinda like how you’d feel if you saw a world vision poster of a starving kid in say, africa? What do you think you can do or do you feel powerless just as the black people feel?

Maybe we should consider the type of people who are drawn to an authoritative position of power and justified violence, such as a police officer. There are thousands and thousands of great cops, and periodically there are awful ones who step out of line and do something like this.

However, despite how awful it is, you MUST understand volume statistics and frequencies and media selection bias. There is a media narrative to blow up this kind of story over others, and if you dont admit that then we cant get far into this issue. It will FEEL like this type of thing happens all the time because of high profile cases.

However, this is really a state by state and department by department issue. Dont lump together entire racial groups of people or all officers because of individual incidents. It does not necessarily indicate a systemic problem the way some people may insinuate (or hope) it does.

People need to question our relationship with police and how authority is bestowed on individuals and how we keep them accountable. That officer is 100% going to jail, but it takes time to put a case together. All these people jumping to diagnose structural societal issues probably didnt think very hard about it

So my father after he got out of the Navy went to law school and became a prosecutor. I spent time in junior high and high school riding along with police officers in a relatively affluent County outside Washington DC that still had a few bad neighborhoods with drugs shootings and stuff like that.

One thing that amazed me was the change in personality from guys I saw when I was in seventh or eighth grade to the cops four years later when I was a junior or senior.

The thing that struck me (and I would advise anyone that cares about this issue to try to do a ride along) was just how negative their worlds became by virtue of the fact that they were seeing the worst in humanity daily.

(No I’m NOT excusing them I’m rather asking for your solutions to a problem that I saw firsthand.)

I felt like all day every day they dealt with bad people. They were seeing three and four domestic violence incidents a day, robberies, thefts, drugs, deaths, etc. They weren’t interacting with good people as doing so is fundamentally not part of the job. Or if they did it was certainly the exception rather than the rule and probably at a ratio about 1 to 10 or 1 to 15.

As consultants we all agree that a repeated message can change behavior i.e. marketing and advertising. The problem is for many of them that repeated message evolves from some of the people I deal with are bad, many of the people I deal with are bad, almost all people I deal with are bad and it finally becomes all people are bad. And sadly many of the people they were dealing with were POC so they increasingly viewed POC through that lens. I just don’t know how you unravel that but every one of them that I got to know, their cynicism and view of their fellow citizens (especially POC) was awful after about three or four years.

That’s leads to an us versus them mentality which is compounded by the authoritarian nature of what they do. (Someone mentioned the Stanford experiment above....)

Anyway I have no idea how to fix it but if you cannot figure out how to deprogram people and get them to see the best in people as opposed to the worst it is going to be hard.

To be honest, my first thought is always “I’m so glad I’m not black”, then my second thought is pretty much what you said... wish there was more I could do, but what could I possibly do to help? It’s hard to even think of things any of us can do to try and make things better...

I just came from the protest in Minneapolis. Honestly I just feel defeated right now. We elect progressive city leadership, have a police chief who’s a POC and committed to reforms, and still stuff like this happens. It’s frustrating to feel so powerless.

It makes me sad. I try to read more about the incidents and especially read opinions of people of color. I do feel a little helpless, and I think being informed is one of the best ways to start helping as an ally. I wish we had more conversations about these topics so everyone could learn.

As a black guy here are some recommendations.

1. Call out your friends and relatives over their bias and racism. If your neighbor is complaining about non issues about the black family while but voicing their concern over the white family whose kids are being a nuisance, call them out over their bias. Also go bring that black family a plate of cookies and invite them over for dinner from time to time. You might just gain a new set of good friends for life or find a new tutor or babysitter for your kids.

2. Look within yourself at your own implicit bias.

3. See the cops pulling over someone, who's a person of color, and you think "I'll just mind my business". Don't. Pull over to stop and pull your phone out to record it.

4. Vote for candidates who have policies that are inclusive of everyone.

I remember marching for Trayvon Martin in college thinking things would change. What's insane to me is how it feels like we have actually regressed. I follow criminal justice reform pretty closely, and I think the two most effective way for systemic change to be enacted would be 1) via intervention by the Justice Dept in police dept training (which was supposed to happen during the Obama years) and 2) local elections (given how little supervision there is for smaller police depts.) I just do not have a lot of faith in our country right now and I am exhausted by the sadness in mourning police brutality which I imagine is felt 10x by black folks in particular.

I think if white people want to really help they need to start using their privilege as a platform. This is more than feeling sorry for the black person that died and it’s more than thoughts and prayers. Speak up and stand up, you have more power than you think

People will always be discriminatory, either by race, gender, religion, or social status. Hate crimes happen all the time, they’re also reported on all the time. It’s just that the stories where a black person is a victim to a white person are the ones more likely to go viral. I think it’s because slavery is a part of America’s history but who knows

I do feel powerless but not in a depressed, lost-all-reason-to-live way, but I feel powerless in that discrimination will always exist and it will
never go away and there’s nothing anyone can do to get rid of it. So I just continue living my life and don’t think about it

I’m not white btw

D5. Why don’t you think this is a systemic bias?

There is amply proof that unconscious bias is not just tolerated but reinforced by police departments. We should have a zero tolerance policy for this.

There is zero evidence that the cop was motivated by race. The same thing happens to white people all the time—the issue is police brutality and reforming their training, not racial discrimination.

This is all very interesting to me. Do you feel like on a daily basis you are somewhat held accountable for what these individuals do? As in, do you feel it reflects badly on white people in general? I’m from Africa and we get embarrassed when a black person does something stupid and we feel like they it reflects badly on us. Do you feel that level of collective embarrassment for lack of a better word?

pretty much the same as when I read about *insert societal ill here*.... I feel sad that humanity can do such things and sometimes feel discouraged about the enormity of the problem. Then I realize that I can only impact my sphere of influence, and that although I don't see my personal mission being associated with fighting it, I can participate in being part of the solution in smaller ways (making sure I cast a well informed vote and tell others where to do research for example. Actually following "if you see something say sonething". Promoting relationships with a diversity of people. etc)

I quit a hobby that I did for ~20 years over racist comments and actions that became intolerable after the 2016 election. The last exchange was over ‘taking the knee’ during the anthem at football games. After many instances of not taking the bait, I voiced my opinion that protests should be allowed. The white woman told me to go back where I came from. BTW, I am also white.

I feel sad when anyone is killed. However, being from PR, it is definitely bizarre to me in the US that everything is so black and white. Latinos in the US experience a huge amount of racism and discrimination that goes unnoticed largely because some of us are of lighter complexion, so I feel that grouping people together by race does a lot of harm to certain minority groups.

While I’m sure racism is a large part of it, I also think it’s a police/American cultural issue. Plenty of white people also get killed by over aggressive cops. American authoritarian culture. A member of my family is in the British army, he felt like the American soldiers in Afghanistan were way more pumped up to shoot and kill people than the Brits. He told me it felt like it was something they wanted to do, almost a burning desire to prove a point. Also likely linked to gun culture and my suspicion that the police force probably aren’t recruiting the brightest people.

I won’t generalize and say that all white people don’t care. Some do, but do they do anything about it, that’s a different question. And there some who don’t - even in this app, where they are too quick to point the finger back “ that is not the whole story, black people make me feel threatened”. Even this CP incident, I saw some posts where they are accusing the guy for “harassing” Amy Cooper. It’s sad but this is the world
We live on. Until it happens to you, it’s easier to shrug it off.

I usually send my thoughts and prayers that seems to help a lot