AndyC wrote:He recalled his own experiences before becoming a nationally-recognized politician, noting, “There are very few African- American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me, at least before I was a senator. There are very few African-Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off.”
Um... there are very few MEN who haven't had that experience!
I know I have a face that could stop a clock - although admittedly perhaps not quite as quickly as PawPaw's when he pulls that famous expression of his - but this dork needs to realize that women are wary of ALL MEN - period.
As reluctant as I am to bring race into the issue, he opened the door - so let's go there.
After researching the FBI numbers for "Suicide of a Superpower," this writer concluded: "An analysis of 'single offender victimization figures' from the FBI for 2007 finds blacks committed 433,934 crimes against whites, eight times the 55,685 whites committed against blacks. Interracial rape is almost exclusively black on white — with 14,000 assaults on white women by African Americans in 2007. Not one case of a white sexual assault on a black female was found in the FBI study."
Though blacks are outnumbered 5-to-1 in the population by whites, they commit eight times as many crimes against whites as the reverse. By those 2007 numbers, a black male was 40 times as likely to assault a white person as the reverse.
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For me a lot of this discussion misses the point. Please indulge me a tangent to make it.
I ride my bike 12 miles 3 times per week in public parks and a designated bike path for cardio exercise. I've been bitten by dogs while doing it. Seldom does a week pass when I'm not chased by dogs. As a result of my experiences, I profile dogs.
1. Large dogs get more scrutiny than small dogs. With the exception of a blue healer that can outrun the fastest that I can make my bike go, if I see a small or medium sized dog in enough time, it cannot catch me. I pay more attention where there is more risk to me.
2. Young dogs are more aggressive than older ones. I've been riding 7 years and have yet to have an older dog chase me, let alone confront me. So if the distance is closing between a dog and I, I assess its age and act accordingly. Most of the time, it is the difference between condition yellow and condition orange, older versus younger regarding my actions.
Among people, I do much the same thing. Someone who is bigger than I am is going to get greater scrutiny. Why? Because they don't know that I have a size equalizer on my hip. Before I had a CHL, I was accosted several times on public streets. The perps were always big guys. Youth will always get a lot more of my attention. Mostly, that is because far too many of them are reckless and inconsiderate. On my bike, older people always seem to want to stay out of my way while younger people seem to dismiss my presence to the point of moving directly into my path when other options where available to them.
In 7 years of riding, I've come off the bike exactly once. I mis-judged a lady walking her small dog and talking on a cell phone. She was paying no attention and she and the dog suddenly wondered completely off the pavement onto the surrounding area where I had gone to avoid them. I've updated my profiling to include anyone who is talking on a cell phone as a result of that incident.
My point is that I don't need statistics to confirm my threat assessments. I, too, have my own set of experiences. Youth will always get more scrutiny and caution. I may be surprised some day when granny sticks a gun in my face but I'll accept the risk of not watching her like a hawk as I would ANY teenaged male.
Animals do this all the time. I can walk right up to the rabbit in our back yard. I can get to within 5 feet of it. It will never let my dog that close. As soon as the rabbit sees my dog, it bolts. I'm not a threat - my dog is. It seems so simple, so natural and, like so many other things in our world today, I'm told that I'm a bad person if I don't ignore my instincts. I'm not going to. It is a survival skill.
