RECOGNIZING A HIT PIECE
Obviously, I often see op-eds in the paper with which I disagree, but usually the author uses some set of data or facts to back up their opinion. I may dispute the data, or the conclusion they draw from it, but at least they try to back up their opinion.
A recent Community Voices piece was a glaring exception. Samantha Barnes uses four personal encounters with law enforcement, the final one entailing a dereliction of duty on the part of the officer, and then goes on to allege, without any evidence or substantiation at all, that these encounters would have gone differently had she not been white! I’m surprised The Californian even published such a “hit piece” without a shred of substantiating evidence.
The fact is that she can’t possibly know that — indeed, none of us can know that. As someone who has personally conducted thousands of traffic stops, well over 99 percent of them go just like yours did — even those involving minority drivers. It’s amazing to me that she recounts four incidents with law enforcement that actually went her way, and then uses those to disparage law enforcement in general. A real life “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” predicament.
Certainly, had these officers misbehaved, she would have called them out (and rightfully so). But because they were kind and even overly accommodating, the totally unsupported assumption was because it was only due to her race. Because we all know that law enforcement is incapable of being kind or accommodating to minorities — PLEASE!
The irony here is that if law enforcement really thought Black lives didn’t matter, they wouldn’t stop Black drivers at all. Nor would they police Black neighborhoods or chase down minority suspects. The vast majority of victims of Black crime are other Black people. If cops didn’t care about these communities, they wouldn’t risk their lives protecting them — they’d let them destroy each other.
But this doesn’t matter. No, every slight must be attributed to racial animus and every kindness attributed to racial privilege. Unfortunately, with such narrow thinking, I don’t believe we’ll ever be able to solve the racial issues in this country. — Layne Logan, Bakersfield