From "The World Expects Black Men to Make Themselves Smaller. My Brother Never Did" by Roxane Gay (NYT).
September 30, 2021
"Whenever Joel moved to a new city, he introduced himself and his son to the local police. 'This is my child; take a good look at him,' he would say..."
"... trying to ensure that the officers would see my nephew, this young Black man, as a human being rather than a target. He told them the makes and models of the cars that he and his son drove.
It is not likely that these gestures could prevent the tragedies he feared most — tragedies that happen daily in America, even if they don’t make headlines — but I think my brother needed to feel a semblance of control in a world where so much was beyond his control.
He never made himself smaller in the ways the world expected him to. But he needed to believe that he and his child were not trapped in an impossible place."
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I’m presently rather puzzled as to what America “wants White Men to do” but the way people in media and politics talk it ain’t good. Writing “the world expects” in a non-satirical way makes me laugh at this writer. WTF. Who, what actual people or entities have that expectation, and show how that scales up to The World as a whole.
If I was a cop Joel talked to, I would have said: "Thank you for the information, and welcome to your new residence. I would also recommend that you introduce yourself and your son to our local gangs, of which there are many, because you and your son are hundreds of times more likely to be murdered by them than by a police officer. Thank you and have a nice day."
"... trying to ensure that the officers would see my nephew, this young Black man, as a human being rather than a target."
From the news reports I've read, it might have been more productive to have introduced him to the local black criminals. Or maybe not.
Too big a target.
That was Ashli Babbitt's mistake too.
I wonder if Joel also took the time to introduce himself and his son to the local gangbangers. Did Joel say "This is my child; take a good look at him. Although it will be so much easier and socially accepted to pretend that my son might suffer at the hands of the local police, we know the truth is that if he dies young it will be at the hands of another young black man". Doubt it, of course. There's no political capital in that truth.
I'm charitably assuming this story is true in essence, but I'm having trouble figuring out how it would work. Did he take his son down to the police station and introduce him to the desk sergeant? Did he walk around the neighborhood introducing his son to every beat cop they met? Did he hang around the local precinct, accosting every cop that came and went?
The New York Times is becoming more and more a platform for Black whining.
I haven't read the article, but I see that it is about a Black man who moves into a town and introduces his son to the local police and point out his car to the local police. I suppose he does these weird actions so that the local police would not shoot him or his son.
And the son was supposed to "make himself smaller", but did not do so.
And then something bad happened to the son, because the son is Black.
The New York Times prints weird, whining tripe like this practically every day.
“This is my child; take a good look at him.” I think introducing one's kid to the police might be a really good idea, if it is done in a positive way. Like bring the kids for a tour of the police station.
But that phrasing sounds purely negative, even paranoid. The kind of pathology that we want to grow out of.
The story itself is very strange. Google his name, you find multiple claims that he was 38, others that his sister says he was 43. No one seems to know the cause of death of quite a young man.
This is something that came up in the Glenn Loury podcast too. Bari tried to sympathize with black people who get caught up in the Narrative because she's never had a bad cop interaction. Loury kind of called her on it. I wonder how many other people aren't always on edge around cops? I am. My family always has been; both males and females. Perhaps being lower class is more of an issue than skin color...
The tragedies happen just as frequently among white boys, when the data is corrected for engaging in criminal behavior. The continual selling of the idea that Black youths face an unfair level of scrutiny is necessary for some people's political career, but the data is not there. Therefore, it contributes to hatred and division. How are the police supposed to fix something that isn't broken?
trying to ensure that the officers would see my nephew, this young Black man, as a human being rather than a target.
The poor guy is clueless, so let's write an article about him!
"There are about 7,300 Black homicide victims a year. The 14 unarmed victims in fatal police shootings [in 2019] would comprise only 0.2% of that total."
tragedies that happen daily in America, even if they don’t make headlines
The 14 or so police shootings per year certainly do make headlines, but since they do generate headline and they're also far to rare to "happen daily in America", she's probably referring to the 7,300 black murders, which do happen daily in America and which would generate about 20 headlines per day.
"Tragedies that happen daily" links to the Washington Post chronicle of fatal police shootings. Is every fatal shooting by a police officer a "tragedy?" When such a shooting saves an innocent person's life, is that a tragedy? I guess in the classical sense it is, since the community benefits (innocent life is protected) through an individual's loss of life. Inserting this into an article about black men suggests that those individuals are overwhelmingly and disproportionately black males, which they're not. Can we put this lie away once and for all? Yes, police officers shoot people, usually fatally. But in all but a tiny fraction of cases, the people they shoot need to be shot. That's not a daily tragedy.
The author tries hard to connect her brother's untimely death to the plight of the black man in the inner city and to police violence directed at them. She doesn't say anything about the cause of death, but if he was murdered by a cop I'm assuming she would have mentioned it.
More racialist garbage from the NYT.
I can’t read this, since it’s behind the paywall, but I have to ask: why do these people do this to themselves? A prison of their own making. Attributing motives and racial bias to the world (painting all “others” with the same brush).
First, I don’t believe this guy actually did this “this is my child take a good look at him” BS. Did he maybe introduce his kid to the local beat cops who might encounter him? Maybe, and I might too if I had concerns. But that’s just the meet and greet and then continue to be nice to each other niceties that neighbors should do anyway. Not just with cops and not just in such a racial/fearful way.
But “take a good look at him”? No fucking way. That’s so loaded and accusatory, it defeats the purpose. If he did that he’s an asshole and it probably backfired.
Can’t wait til this “racial” wave is over and replaced with the next latest greatest BS lib wave…
The chances of a young black man being killed by another young black man are several orders of magnitude greater than the chances of his being killed by a policeman.
WTF?
How has Obama made himself smaller?
How has LeBron made himself smaller?
How has Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton made themselves smaller?
We live in a culture the glorifies the angry aggressive Black man.
When I moved from Atlanta to Baltimore, my Army-veteran, older brother gave me a KBAR knife to keep in my car, for poking at any people who wanted to perpetrate criminal violence upon me. The movie Crocodile Dundee was indeed popular at the time. I kept the knife in a sock drawer at home, for use on camping trips, and relied on the much more legally defensible two foot length of iron gas pipe as a defensive car weapon. And never had to use that, anyway.
Race of potential perpetrators wasn't even mentioned, not at all, as the Army taught my brother that people of any skin color, any color at all, might want to rob or kill. Despite being a NC redneck by heritage, environment and choice, my older brother was an equal opportunity hater.
So is everybody else subscribing to the NYTimes so they can read past the big wall? Maybe we're getting a look at what blogs have to do to survive now.
Hmmm...I think Althouse plucked a weird paragraph out of a loving sister's tribute to her 43 year-old deceased brother. Althouse's choice makes it sound like brother Joel was killed by the cops. But nothing else in the story or on the internet confirms that idea. There is a scattered amount of pure speculation on the internet--including speculation that Joel was younger than 43. He was 43. His sister says so in the Times and in her tweets. He died. That is very sad. His son is 26. The son was raised by Joel, a single father, who appears to have had a successful business career.
I would say that the writer, Roxane Gay, is trying to make it sound like society killed her brother and wants us to believe that her happy, vital, extroverted brother, who refused to make himself small, was trembling inside. And then he died.
Well, I, an essentially optimistic white male, was just joking at lunch today about the existential crisis implied by shouting into the void when your microphone is turned off in a conference call. Maybe I am trembling inside, too.
There was a saying when I was growing up that was universal in application. "Fuck with a bull, sometimes you get the horns". Works everywhere.
Incidentally, for those who don't trust the Manhattan Institute because of its conservative orientation, here is Mother Jones on the same topic. https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/06/raw-data-police-shootings-of-unarmed-men/
Now this is one of these statements that seems obvious to NYT writers, but isn't at all so to me:
"The World Expects Black Men to Make Themselves Smaller."
Maybe I'm a little out of step with the world around me. I usually am. Or maybe it's that awful white privilege talking again, and black men are absolutely expected to make themselves smaller but I'm so inured to it I don't even notice.
Or maybe I've never seen a black man make himself smaller, never expected one to, and it wouldn't occur to me to want him to. Then again, most blacks I know, I know through the Army.
Anyway, her brother sounds like a neat guy and I'm sorry for her loss.
The drama and virtue signaling is powerful and best suited for either the Lifetime Movie Network or the Hallmark Channel.
He was smart to approach the police in that way. Her essay about him is eloquent, touching, and strangely silent on how her wildly successful brother died suddenly at only 43. None of my business, certainly, and yet she wants his death to be my business, but only in an abstract way, as an example of 'the fragility of black life.'
Meh, sounds fishy to me. I think Roxanne made it up.
14 deaths area tragedy
7300 are a statistic
Responding to DAN, I think it was someone here who commented that it was possible to bypass pay walls in links by repeatedly hitting refresh followed by stop, until the article shows in its entirety. Usually works for me. Wish I remember who gave this advice, I'd like to thank them. I've used it often.
According to LeBron James, he fears when his kids leave the house because White cops are out hunting for him. Michelle Obama said pretty much the same thing.
Isn't all the racial healing great?
My oldest back when he was 19 was pulled over for being visibly young and driving a brand new car more than 20 miles from where it registered after mid. The excuse was “Obstructed Vision “. He had his high school tassel hanging from his rear view mirror. The overzealous cop seeing the car was indeed registered to him gave him a ticket. Took two trips to court to get it dismissed.
As an old white guy I am frequently pulled over. I commute home between midnight and 1 AM. Conversation normally goes “Do you know why I pulled you over?” “The usual excuse is a bulb is out. What’s yours?” Why I replaced my license plate bulbs with LEDs. They’re performing random drunk checks, but it’s unlawful to do that… Haven’t had a nuisance ticket for years now. To clear a bulb ticket you replace the bulb and get another cop to sign the ticket within 24 hours.
Regardless of color or age- the key to a peaceful police stop is be polite to the officer and preferably have all your papers in hand before he gets to your window.
FrontPage Magazine has an article today, Black Lives Matter Killed 2,000 Black People, https://tinyurl.com/n9x2duap
3,595 black people were murdered in 2019;
5,839 black people were murdered in 2020.
That's an additional 2,244 black people killed, a 62% increase
56% of all murder victims of 2020 were black.
In contrast,
3,060 White and Latino people were killed in 2019,
4,167 White and Latino people were killed in 2020, a 36% increase
Is there anything Roxanne Gay doesn’t lie about? Look at real crime statistics. Her brother should have taken his son around the the local gangbangers and introduced themselves as non-threatening non-snitches.
Most of the police in my Atlanta neighborhood were black. We got on fine. No defense attorney would dare live where I lived, nor where I did social work. Bunch of ponytailed pussies.
I’m sorry I’ve been such an ass lately on social media. My Kia ate the dust that all Kia engines eventually eat, three ironic days after I paid it off; I had really bad medical news about myself and my brother, and it’s also probably just hormonal.
Good thing I’m not in a foxhole or running a nuclear submarine, as Newt Gingrich might say. I will limit my own access to weapons, particularly words.
So...am I supposed to know how he died?
Or does that not matter?
I mean, the setup suggests a driving while Black killing by a cop...
"It is not likely that these gestures could prevent the tragedies he feared most — tragedies that happen daily in America, even if they don’t make headlines "
Ah, you mean the murder of young black men by other young black men?
Since that's the only one they really have to worry about
Gospace said...
Regardless of color or age- the key to a peaceful police stop is be polite to the officer and preferably have all your papers in hand before he gets to your window.
No, just sit there with your hands nicely visible on the steering wheel.
Roll down your window and the passenger side window, then just sit their with your hands visible, obviously not a threat.
The chance of a cop getting killed in a traffic stop is far greater than the chance of an unarmed black male getting killed by a cop. Don't scare them, and most things will go better
Perhaps dad wanted to be sure that if the worst happened, no random commenter would ever say, "You should have preemptively gone to the police to familiarize them with your son and family."
Nor would he blame himself for not doing so. He is on the record.
"unarmed" is not a synonym for "harmless". Cops don't "fight". They are restricted to various forms of grabbing. No thumb in the eye, knee to the crotch. Meantime, they're trying not to let the other guy get hold of the pistol.
Did judo in college. Then I got the Infantry stuff. Big difference. Cops are restricted to something like judo without the chokes.
DAN said...
"So is everybody else subscribing to the NYTimes so they can read past the big wall? Maybe we're getting a look at what blogs have to do to survive now."
I can't speak for others, but I copied the URL of the article (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/29/opinion/Roxane-Gay-Pass-Over.html?smid=url-share), and cut off the extraneous stuff at the end (?smid=url-share), leaving the working URL. Then I plugged that into archive.is, and up popped two saved versions of the article. Click, read.
Over at the Wayback machine, the URL showed six saves. There are other web archiving sites that you can find via a websearch, but those two do for me.
I refuse to spend money on #MSM sites that hate me.
That is an interesting article Ms. Gay wrote.
She starts out talking about a play, which apparently has something to do with the allegedly awful state of black life in the U.S., but she doesn't really tell us about it.
She then switches to the subject of her brother's death, or rather, about her reaction to her brother's death. I was immedately struck by the fact that she didn't mention the cause of death. A quick websearch reveals said brother was fairly young, but no mention of the cause of death in any obituary, although one said his death was "unexpected." All this suggests to me that the cause is something the family is ashamed of. I wonder why.
And I wonder what the play has to do with anything about Joel.
We seem to be living in a time when the most important subjects can't be discussed straightforwardly. I wonder why that is too.
Is it really worth pointing out that “The World Expects Black Men to Make Themselves Smaller” is a non-falsifiable assertion? How would/could anyone actually test whether this assertion is in any way true? Why does the author think “the world expected him[the author’s brother] to,” because her gut tells her so?
Yet this article makes no sense at all unless one accepts the assertion as true. Is it perhaps good enough if the person making the assertion just sort of, y’know, feels that, surely it is true?
Why would anyone care about someone's private, non-verifiable “truth”?
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