This was a wonderfully written piece and a lot of it rings true to me even as a white as you can be person in a smallish state university town in the midwest. But maybe being 6'2" with a big unkempt hobo beard is almost as scary as being black.
I too love walking the streets at night. And I too have to not be myself and behave in very conscious ways to avoid being hassled and detained by the police. Police just assume that if you're out at night you are a criminal.
So much of his descriptions of having to learn to dress a certain way, behave a certain way, and literally go out of my way to avoid scaring people rings true. I get detained by the police a handful of times per year just for walking or being in places at times that most people aren't. I particularly get the police called on me if I walk through in rich neighborhoods. I've had firearms pulled on me just for photographing trees in a public park (at night).
I tried to take up jogging for half a year but I quit and bought a bike after being stopped by police for being suspicious three times in as many months. Apparently jogging while not wearing a joggers uniform means I'm up to no good. No non-criminal jogs in cargo pants and a t-shirt. And that was in the day time. I wouldn't even consider trying it at night.
I'm not trying to marginalize his message that skin color is the cause. But it's certainly not the only cause. The root of the problem lies with the police, and society, villifying anyone who isn't diurnal.
I remember one of those very minor study that had a person trying to dismantle a bike lock in a park. Male with dark skin, male with white skin, female with dark skin and female with white skin.
The man with the dark skin had people tackle him down while calling the police. The other people on the team that was observing had to rush in to disarm the situation. The white man had people stare and point, but nothing dramatic happened. The woman with dark skin was practically ignored by people walking the park. For the white woman several people walked up and offered to help her with the bike.
I am not sure a beard and night time and actually changes this. The assumption about who can and can't be a criminal seems to be based on gender first, race second, and appearance/environment last. Would be very interesting to see a more deep study on that, through I expect they will mirror related studies such as those that look at outcomes from courts and criminal psychology.
What does the raw data about these types of crime say though?
I lived near a university and had multiple bikes stolen. If the data points to a demographic in that area, for example where 0% of bikes are stolen by women, why would people in that area react if a woman is working with her bike?
Raw data may disagree with you, but it's impartial and unbiased. (unless you want to argue the collection and recording of data is biased)
Statistically speaking, if 100% of bike thieves are male (in a certain location) then the inherent, and justifiable, bias from the population would be towards males. No data lookup needed.
But also, I think that it wouldn't matter the race or sex, if someone was in your home who you did not invite, or know them. And based on their behavior, skin color, clothing, would determine if you said "hi, you must be my daughter's friend?" or "What are you doing in my house, I am calling the police!"
But no one wants to admit they make judgements about anything, because that's sexist/racist/something-ist.
How many people in that area know that 100% of bike thieves are male? I sure don't know such statistics for my area. That's the "data lookup" that's needed - to make decisions based on statistics, you have to know the statistics.
I guess nobody knows, but what is the explanation for people's reaction? If the town only had women bike thieves, do you think the experiment would have gone the same?
Being tall is correlated with playing basketball, but you'd have to be pretty dumb to watch a short guy shooting hoops right in front of you and conclude he wasn't playing basketball.
I can't quite figure out the argument you are making. I've had to work on my bike lock because it was "stuck", and it could look like "stealing", but I wasn't. Did I understand you correctly?
If it's the same clip I watched, one of the (white) male passers-by asks what the (young, white) lady is doing and she says outright that she's stealing the bike. He proceeds to offer his help!
I used to take lots of walks at night before I had a full time job and children. I live in Austria and it seems bizarre to me that police officers would check you out just for walking around at night. I never had such an experience whether I was living in Vienna or my small hometown.
What I did see was black men having to show their ID at subway stations, which to me was a very unsettling thing, because it was pretty obvious that they were looking for drug dealers and focusing on a specific race.
I was held up in Croatia and had to show my ID twice. But I was with a group of people in a party area, so that kind of made sense.
Is taking walks maybe an uncommon thing in the USA?
Is taking walks maybe an uncommon thing in the USA?
In many places, yes. But part of the article takes place in New York, where it isn't.
I have lived without a car for over a decade. Almost everyone immediately assumes that I am simply poor and can't afford a car. This happens to also be true, but I wanted to live without a car for a long time, I'm an environmental studies major and I have terrible eyesight problems. I always hated driving.
In over ten years, only one person ever asked why I gave up my car. Everyone else just assumes they know and assumes it is poverty.
In the US, almost everyone drives everywhere to the point of ridiculosity. I gave up my car while living in an apartment complex where people drove their trash to the dumpster and drove to the mailbox. I lived within a 15 minute walk of three shopping centers. Initially, no one walked. The streets were all deserted.
After I gave up my car and began walking everywhere, walking caught on. But before that, people drove their kids to the pool in the apartment complex and really crazy stuff like that.
I find that really interesting. People here start driving their kids to school, which would have been unthinkable when I was a teenager 20 years ago.
Most of my friends who live in Vienna actually don't have a car. It's just so much more of a hassle compared to taking public transport, let alone expensive. Even if they have a car, it's probably parked in some rural area during the week and just used for the weekend when parents are visited, on outings, etc.
I wish I wouldn't have to own a car. That's one of my biggest gripes with living in a suburb.
> Is taking walks maybe an uncommon thing in the USA?
I once got sent to Plano, Texas, for a week. It was a training course for work. After the course, I went for walks in the afternoon / early evening. And it surprised me at just how deserted the streets felt. There were plenty of cars around, but so very few pedestrians. I didn't really feel unsafe, just more out of place.
A friend of mine who worked on a plant site in Alabama for a couple of months told me he would get weird stares from the locals when he was going for runs in the morning/evening.
I never knew whether to believe him, but everything in this thread seems to underpin his story.
In American articles, pro environment types sometimes mock how Americans will drive to the gym, drive home to get ready for work, then drive to work creating extreme time stress. The punchline is usually to the effect of "Why not just bike to work? It would be cheaper, take less time and be better for the environment."
One justification for going to the gym is the poor outdoor air quality in some places. It seems list on a lot of people that driving everywhere is a cause of poor air quality.
In the years I have lived without a car, my example of walking everywhere has tended to popularize walking wherever I lived. (Yes, even when I was homeless.) After seeing an uptick in walking, you could see visible evidence of improved air quality, such as healthier plant life in the area.
Crime also went down. In the apartment complex where I gave up my car, the cops stopped staking out the entrance on weekend evenings. In another city, helicopter manhunts and similar police activity trended down.
> In the years I have lived without a car, my example of walking everywhere has tended to popularize walking wherever I lived. (Yes, even when I was homeless.) After seeing an uptick in walking, you could see visible evidence of improved air quality, such as healthier plant life in the area.
> Crime also went down. In the apartment complex where I gave up my car, the cops stopped staking out the entrance on weekend evenings. In another city, helicopter manhunts and similar police activity trended down.
This is a pretty fantastic, and frankly unbelievable claim.
Perhaps you aren't familiar with Jane Jacobs' work. Her position was that eyes on the street was the key to safety in urban areas. This is that mechanism in action.
> Her position was that eyes on the street was the key to safety in urban areas.
I'm sure that's true. However, the unbelievable part was the influence you ascribe to yourself. I do not believe that you, personally, set in motion a chain of events "wherever [you] live" that "lowers crime" and causes "healthier plant life."
I read 'Notes from a Big Country' by Bill Bryson during my second visit and first road trip in America as a child.
I could entirely believe what he wrote on this topic, which fortunately is extracted here [1]. We covered a huge distance, so understandably my dad didn't really want to drive any further once we had arrived at each day's motel. However, there was rarely any alternative.
There were a couple of occasions where American tourists were part-impressed, part-worried to see children walking. (There's a well-known metamorphosis stage in American teenagers; at 15 they grow legs ready for learning to drive.)
Just another anecdote, but mine is a fully different experience.
As a 6'1 white male, I find that I can walk most anywhere without fear.
I often find that I need to reassess my privileged notion that this is normal when conversing with friends who are shorter, darker or female. They describe a world much like the author of this piece does.
That's not to say I've never had trouble on the street. Years ago I was assaulted randomly by someone bigger than me stumbling out of a bar I was passing by. The difference was made clear though when I reacted by getting up and following at a distance, eventually finding a helpful police officer who never questioned my version of events.
A vastly more common scenario is one where I am never in any fear of any kind, I can easily wave at police, and am never interrogated for simply walking.
I often find that I need to reassess my privileged notion that this is normal when conversing with friends who are shorter, darker or female.
I'm about 5'8" and female.* Except for the phenomenon I mentioned in another comment of being hassled for Walking While Homeless, I feel fairly comfortable walking almost any time, almost anywhere.
I don't have an explanation for that. But it makes me wonder about what all factors into the equation, both from the perspective of how others react and from the perspective of how people experience such things.
* And white, which I didn't state because the default assumption is that if you don't state your race/color, then you are white. But I am adding it as a footnote because I am finding myself uncomfortable with reinforcing an essentially racist cultural practice.
Speaking from my own experience, there's a degree of 'blending in' that is distinct from the more obvious race/gender/affluence 'visible' factors, and more to do with behavior.
I've spent quite a bit of time in various dangerous neighborhoods, cities in general and other parts of the world. In quite a few of these places I should stand out and/or be a target, being a scrawny/weak and very white person.
Yet somehow, I can count on one hand the number of times I've actually run into trouble. What's even stranger is that quite a few of the locals I'd spend time with would be bothered or even robbed during my stay with them.
The only thing I can point to that was different about these locals was that they (understandably) had a bigger fear of 'the streets', were raised in a much more sheltered way than I was, and just stuck out like a sore thumb in the way they carried themselves.
I've experienced a few occasions where, for example, the local's insistence on crossing the street to avoid trouble actually drew attention. Or they'd pull out their fancy phone right in sight of a group of 'loitering youth'. Or stop and act like they didn't know where they were going. Or make (fearful) eye contact. etc.
Could be maybe you're also better at the way you 'carry' yourself, aside from other factors that might make you blend in or stand out?
Could be maybe you're also better at the way you 'carry' yourself
This is possible.
I come from a multicultural background. I never entirely fit in anywhere, so I always feel a little "alien," yet I am not easily intimidated, I generally like people and I am comfortable socializing with all kinds of people. I certainly don't actively broadcast that I'm scared, and I actively downplay any special privilege or assets that I have which might make me a target.
I don't know the PIN for my main credit card. I can use PayWave here in AU for anything under $100. When racking up more than $100, I say "I don't know my PIN. Can we put that through as x purchases instead?" or I make up something about needing to split payments for business receipt purposes.
I've never been asked for ID or had anything other than the staff member accommodate without hesitation. I haven't needed my PIN in years now.
But every time, I think, "I bet I wouldn't get away with this if I wasn't a plain white guy."
I used to walk home from my friends' house to mine when I was at university in New Zealand, often drunk or high.
The police would usually stop and talk to me if they drove past.
I always thought of it as a good thing. I lived in a high burglary area (being a student area), so there were a lot of shady characters walking around at night, especially in the back streets. They never actually detained me or even got out of the car, they'd usually just ask me where I was coming from and where I was going.
I never needed to give them exact details, they were happy with me just telling them the general area.
I guess that's the critical difference though: I was never detained. The police never viewed me through the lens of suspicion, they never talked to me in an accusatory tone. I felt more like they were checking that I was OK, rather than checking that I was a criminal.
> The police never viewed me through the lens of suspicion, they never talked to me in an accusatory tone. I felt more like they were checking that I was OK, rather than checking that I was a criminal.
As a European I wonder if this is "because Freedom", that the state-sceptical tradition laid out by the US constitution has created an expectation that police should never interact with anybody who isn't a criminal. That way, the attempt of making the police nicer has made them less nice, by removing nuance (unless you happen to never fall into the area of uncertainty, where nuance will be missed). Any thoughts on this by Americans?
As a white American, I carefully watch what I say around police and generally do not trust them.
Most police are incentivized to "solve" crimes, not solve crimes. They are exposed to the worst our society has to offer and this takes a toll on them. We as a society also feel that every crime can be solved and that an inability to solve the crime is incompetence.
Sometimes the evidence doesn't quite match the person the police strongly feel committed the crime, so words get twisted, evidence gets adjusted to make things fit a little better.
That conversation you had the other day telling an officer about your vacation in Florida can be turned around and then used as evidence against you in your trial for a murder that took place in the vicinity of the hotel you stayed at.
It doesn't matter that you told the officer you were with your family the entire time, he may not remember that or remember it a bit differently than you. Now it's your word against his in court. Who is a jury going to believe?
Of course, they would have to have other evidence to convict, some of it possibly slightly adjusted also. Even if you are cleared of the charge, that's not something anyone wants to go through. The humiliation, the cost, the damage to your relationships as people start to doubt you.
The less info the police have about me and the less interaction I have with then, the lower the chance my name might pop into their heads when they're looking for a "person of interest."
I'm not saying police want to send innocent people to jail. I'm saying their internal biases and desire to hold someone responsible for a crime causes them to twist the facts to ensure that the person they suspect gets convicted.
If you have the time, you should watch this[1] video. It may provide some insight into the American criminal justice system.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
So, does that imply a skepticism of the state?
Yes and no.
Yes, in that if the police are interacting with you, they should have a reasonable belief about your involvement in a crime or that you have information which could reasonably aid their investigation.
No, because the reality is the vast majority of police interactions in the US are brief, professional, lawful, and friendly.
The police in New Zealand and Australia seem to be a lot less agressive than their American counterparts. I don't ever hear of stories like the original post come from either country.
I'm a cyclist, and one of the big cycle equipment blogs is DCRainmaker.
He ran a story about a run-in with some Australian cops while on a ride that is just mind-blowing in how different it is from similar run-ins with American police.
Great to see some anecdotes to support my gut feelings on this! I am amazed that Americans would consider this pleasant police behaviour. As an Australian, I consider this unnecessary and heavy handed, although it gives me more than a little pride that the cops were able to admit to being wrong.
It's horrifying when you stop to think that any police car going by could end with a bad interaction to some degree, completely depending on how the officer feels about you or in general. Baring extraordinary circumstances, that officer will completely get away with it as well.
Same in Canada (where I live). We have a few higher-crime neighborhoods in my city, mostly occupied by non-white people, and the police don't really patrol around those areas. They come out if you call them.
The police in my city mostly target native americans, which commit the most crime here. But the cops aren't violent or forceful from what I've seen. Most of the time they just come out because someone is drunk and being a nuisance, so they come out and talk to the person/people and get them to move on from the area.
I'm not sure what happens with reserve police. You have to get a warrant to enter reserve property if you are city police or mounted. I think mostly they don't even bother.
Yes. Australian police are racist specifically against indigenous peoples. To even suggest this is really dangerous in Australia, which is why it continues to happen without most people noticing. It's terrible.
>Police just assume that if you're out at night you are a criminal.
No they don't. What they are doing is noticing things that are out of the ordinary. You do the same thing. If everyone is wearing a suit, and one person is wearing shorts, watch all the heads turn. A black man walking through an all white neighborhood late at night will draw attention from any person in that neighborhood. The same is true if a white man was walking through an all black neighborhood. No different. The police would stop him, too.
I was going to work one morning and, as I got into my car, I noticed my wife's tomato plants had some red ones. Leaving my car door open, I walked to the garden to examine them to see if they could be picked. When I turned around, a policeman pulled up in a squad car. He recognized me but said he stopped because he saw a car with its door open making him wonder if it was a break-in. He then saw this poorly dressed guy wandering around the yard. Both out of the ordinary.
When he saw me, he laughed, and drove away.
I own a restaurant. One night, I got a call from the police that they noticed our back door was slightly open. That's different for two o'clock in the morning. They walked in and notice our cash drawer was missing. Patrol cars were dispatched through the neighborhood, a shopping district where there were lots of people walking around, when they found a guy walking with a metal box under his arm at two in the morning. How unusual.
I believe you make a lot of good points, except for one: Walking as a white man through a black neighborhood, the police won't stop you. And even if they did, their attitude would be very different than if it was the other way around.
I have read numerous stories and heard accounts of white people in black neighborhoods who were stopped because it is assumed they are only there to buy drugs. Why would a white person be in such a neighborhood? Sure, there are valid reasons, but it is generally still out of the ordinary.
So your claim of equality is that a black man in a white neighborhood is assumed to be stealing from good (white) people, while a white man in a black neighborhood is assumed to be visiting drug dealers?
This still seems like a problem to me. I agree with your above statement about cops reacting to what isn't "normal", but the problem is that normal and perception of normal are not the same.
This is something that I have experienced. I'm white and I worked summers doing construction-related work. I was often questioned by police if they saw me sitting in my personal vehicle before work started in a black neighborhood.
Actually sorry, scratch that. I was stopped once, when I was moving from one flat to another, and my girlfriend was sick, so I had to walk both our bikes 6 km to a new flat, late evening. They asked if I'm sure I didn't stolen them and we went our ways.
There's something wrong with your cities if police has to check on you for walking at night.
In my country (The Netherlands) police sometimes check all cars passing a temporary checkpoint. They check if you have open fines, paid your taxes etc. When really expensive cars pass those checkpoints they verify that the owner actually has a job to afford cars like these and if the owner doesn't they can impound the car on suspicion of being paid with criminal money.
Statistics have shown that the highest "risk" group of those crime paid cars is with young foreign male drivers.
A few years ago a (black) rap artist was stopped at the side of the road by police and they basically admitted that this was racial profiling.
The artist made some fuss about it on social media, and it appeared in all news broadcasts and talk shows. People were expecting some big commotion about it; but it turns out that the majority of people actually approved of this method.
It wasn't racism at work here, it was statistics and people were fine with it. It is a thin line though, because to the people on the wrong end of the statistics it really can feel like racism. So where should police draw the line?
As a general rule, the variance within a group is almost always larger than the difference between groups. So, if there is statistical evidence of the effectiveness of racial profiling then I'd like to see it.
A few years ago a (black) rap artist was stopped at the side of the
road by police and they basically admitted that this was racial
profiling.
The artist made some fuss about it on social media, and it appeared
in all news broadcasts and talk shows. People were expecting some
big commotion about it; but it turns out that the majority of people
actually approved of this method.
It wasn't racism at work here, it was statistics and people were
fine with it.
Your conclusion is incorrect. Yes it is racism, and furthermore, the majority of people in a society being fine with it is not only irrelevant as to whether it's racism, it is what makes it structural racism. Something that everyone is fine with never seems questionable to members of the set of people who think it's fine.
Now let's explain why it being statistics doesn't mean it can't be racism. I have used this analogy before:
A woman is murdered in her home. Statistics tell us that when a woman is murdered in her home, it is nearly always her partner. So, why don't we merely arrest the partner and march them off to jail without gathering evidence, following pesky rules about having a lawyer involved, or examining the burden of proof?
Statistics, one might say, reverse the burden of proof. Why isn't it up to the partner to prove that they're innocent?
We can A/B test this application of statistics: Let's say that 9/10 times, the partner did it. In test A, we lock 100 partners up without trial. Presto, we have the right person in prison 90 times, and have an innocent person in prison 10 times, but being right 90% of the time feels pretty good, and we saved a lot of money and bother. Everybody who isn't the partner of a murdered woman feels pretty good about test A.
In test B, we arrest 100 partners, but then we gather evidence and have trials, even though "everybody knows the partner did it." Good news! Of the ten partners in test B who didn't do it, nine are set free. One, alas, is wrongfully imprisoned for a crime the did not commit. But one wrongfully imprisoned person is better than ten, right?
Well, it's not so simple. Of the 90 people who did do it in test B, the evidence wasn't always solid. So in ten cases, they cut a deal for a reduced sentence. In six cases, they "beat the rap in court" and were also set free, despite having done it. Three cases didn't even make it to court for some technicality or other.
So test B is much better for the case where someone is innocent: There is only one person wrongfully imprisoned, instead of ten. But it's worse for the case where someone is guilty. Instead of ninety guilty people receiving the full punishment, Only 71 receive the full punishment. Then get a reduced punishment, and nine guilty people walk free!
In pure, bloodless statistics, A is better than B. A is right 90% of the time, B is only right 80% of the time. But if we want to talk about justice, B is better than A. In terms of justice, one person wrongfully imprisoned is worse than 100 guilty people set free. False positives are abhorrent to a just society, and false negatives (not to mention costly trials) are the price society is willing to pay to ensure justice.
So back to statistics and stopping cars. If statistics tell you that black men are more likely to be illegal immigrants, or have unpaid fines, or whatever, and you use that to stop every black man driving a car, but you don't stop white men, that is unjust for the same reason as locking up the partners without trial.
You have imposed a consequence--not being able to drive without being stopped by police--on some number of innocent black men--because they belong to a class of people who statistically are more likely to have done something wrong.
One can argue that being stopped is not the same thing as being jailed without trial. But it is. When travelling, you might be asked if you have ever been detained by police. Same when applying for a job. In some countries (cough, USA, cough) this perspective on statistics starts with stopping cars, and ends in gunfire.
Even in civilised countries, people reason that if it's ok for the police to stop every black man because black men have statistically committed more crimes, it is ok to not rent to black men, or not employ black men. And if asked, they will say, "I'm not a racist, I'm a statistician.". Law enforcement choices send a strong message about "what everyone thinks is ok."
At some point, though, it comes down to justice. Justice is not imposing consequences upon someone without actual, inspectable evidence. Injustice is imposing consequences upon someone because somebody else who has something in common with them broke the law.
And racism is using statistics to impose injustice on someone because of their race. It's that simple.
The partners are always the first SUSPECT and the police do their due diligence to RULE THEM OUT. Even on the 1/10 where the weren't the murderer, the police still intrude on them to try to find the truth. Being a SUSPECT != SENT TO JAIL. The rapper in the story was a SUSPECT, they weren't SENT TO JAIL which makes your analogy not an analogy at all, because well, they aren't anologous. If anything I feel your arguement argues for pulling the rap artist over.
Ah, you are correct that there is a missing element to the analogy, and this is it:
The woman lies dead in the murder case. When the rapper was pulled over, there was no case of a Ferrari stolen by a dark-skinned man. The police were not acting on a tip that the rapper was smuggling narcotics in his car. They stopped him for driving while black.
If we want to add the missing link, we then say that the police, knowing the statistics of men who assault and/or murder their partners, stop men at random in society and ask them to provide evidence that their partners are safe and sound.
When put that way, the case is even stronger against stopping the rapper on a "fishing expedition." If men were stopped at random to check whether they had assaulted their partners, nobody would be shouting that "SUSPECT != SENT TO JAIL."
Society would not stand for the notion that all men are suspect for the actions of a few, whether or not the statistics show that men are disproportionally more likely to kill their partners than women, or that the leading cause of violent death amongst women is men.
The very notion of all men being permanent suspects of a crime would rightly be considered abhorrent. And so it is here with people of colour.
I also think your explanation here isn't exactly what happened, at least from what I gathered. What I read it as whas "We stop all people in expensive cars at this checkpoint and validate their income." So society wasn't ok discriminating against him because he was black, they were ok discriminating against him because he was in a nice car.
Stopping all cars is absolutely a different thing. Of course, if it only happens in certain neighbourhoods, one might pause, but here in Toronto, for example, we have drinking-and-driving sweeps where the police set up checkpoints and stop all cars regardless of occupant or car.
That seems reasonable.
Of course, here in Toronto they also like to "card" people in certain neighbourhoods of certain colours, and there is an ongoing set of protests against how they choose to implement this practice.
But I am personally ok with a certain amount of checkpointing.
That's weird. I'm white, 6'4" with a beard and I have never been stopped by cops while walking at night in my midwestern college town. Maybe because I usually have my backpack with me?
> I'm not trying to marginalize his message that skin color is the cause. But it's certainly not the only cause. The root of the problem lies with the police, and society, villifying anyone who isn't diurnal.
I had similar problems when my hair was long, but I really don't think it's comparable to what black people face. Being white, my problems went away when I cut my hair, nighttime walks or no. And black people get harassed day and night, so I think anti-nocturnalism is a small, small part of the problem, not the root.
Thank you for adding perspective to this issue with police and drawing it out of exclusively-race territory.
I would suggest that perhaps, part of what's happening is that the police are optimizing for a particular metric. We can hope that it's crime reduction, or some number or numbers very close to that.
When you optimize for one metric, other metrics fall.
The police, like most anyone, make errors based on superficial attributes. Even if statistically, arresting tall hobo beard man taking pictures of trees late at night is the best course of action for the police's metrics, you perceive it as a series of stupid errors. This leads to a perception of injustice and harassment.
I'm the kind of person who doesn't mind security check ups and even being stopped by police as long as they are cordial and professional, and, crucially, I understand their reasoning. I recall listening to one black man, I think he was talking to Sam Harris, relating how police would stop black men and grab them. Unprofessional treatment creates a perception of an uncivilized society, and that's unjust.
> When you optimize for one metric, other metrics fall.
This is very true. People often assume that things like machine learning or AI won't have racial biases, but then we find out time and time again that our algorithms are in fact biased. It's not that the bias is intentional (even human bias is rarely intentional), it's that by focusing on metrics, the metric of racial equality often suffers. I'm not sure why you were down voted for pointing this out. This is a key concept to understand if we care about creating a more equal society in an age of big data and machine learning. Google did some research in this area: https://research.google.com/bigpicture/attacking-discriminat... The TL;DR version is that in order to eliminate bias, you have to be aware of biases as metrics and optimize to eliminate them.
Interesting way to frame it. If I could restate in slightly more colloquial terms, the police's goal is typically something like "to protect and serve", where "serve" is
serving the public by upholding public ideals or principles.
Racial profiling might satisfy the "protect" clause, but it fails the "serve" clause, because it fails the portion of the public that is profiled.
I would identify as how the author describes, someone who's slightly nervous at the sight of a black male walking towards him at night. I try to suppress this feeling, and try to act normal, at which point I'm really overthinking. And I'm sorry. I am sorry that this has happened to you and to black people in general, how as a society we have fucked up so much. I am suddenly reminded of the book "The Lathe of Heaven", in which when the protagonist wishes a world without racism, and everyone turns grey-skinned. I wish there were immediate solutions, and a way to not let this drag on for generations.
The fact is, as a black male, I sometimes feel prejudice against black males while walking at night. And I'm someone who is affected by that very same prejudice. I see all the same media as anyone else, which constantly portrays black men as a menace to society.
Is a random black man actually more dangerous than a non-black man, in real life? I have my doubts. But for argument's sake, let's say it's true to a slight extent. That still means a given black man bares very little actual risk. Yet, what sort of psychological damage is done to us by being repeatedly subject to this treatment? It's an invisible tax we pay. I've been fortunate my whole life for so many reasons, but I have my own stories, like most other black men I know.
I feel other types of prejudice too. I think step one is knowing this, step two is empathizing, and step three is advocating.
In the area where I live there aren't very many coloured people. When I (rarely) walk at night I find myself estimating the social category of people. If I see a young man in sweat pants and a baseball cap, I think 'possible Chav' (low class white person here in the UK) and I'm wary. Low income young men are more likely to be a possible source of trouble.
I think in the UK and US since black people are far more likely to be in a low income category than not, race becomes a proxy for that.
Funnily enough, when I see a black person in the street at night here I'm more likely to have a positive attitude. Most of the coloured people living round here do so because they are quite successful. Also because there aren't many black people, such a person is perhaps more likely to feel out of place or potentially feel threatened or need help.
I know the feeling. Where I live (in East Germany), there are now a lot more immigrants/refugees from the Middle East and Africa then there used to be a few years ago. I noticed that when I'm sitting in the tram next to a group of immigrants, my lizard brain evokes a feeling of unease because it's an unfamiliar situation (I don't know any people from this ethnic group in person, I don't understand their language(s), and so on), and I have to make a deliberate effort to override that.
Not that I tolerate it, but I can see why people tend to be resentful against foreigners on a psychological level.
I remember reading an article a few years ago explaining how one's brain tends to react somewhat negatively when hearing somebody speaking a language they don't understand. It's actually "normal" (as in "good luck fighting thousands of years of evolution") to feel unease when around people speaking a language you don't understand.
Funnily, the paper was also mentioning that the same thing happens when hearing somebody talk over the phone. The fact that you can only hear 1/2 of the conversation somehow triggers some defense mechanism in your brain.
I think it's inevitable that people will form snap judgments about others based on appearance. It's human nature. Where we rise above our nature is in making sure we don't act in those judgments to bring harm to others. Suspicion of mysterious (black) man at night, OK. Crossing the street to avoid unpredictable confrontation? Maybe unwarranted, but OK. Preemptively calling the cops on him, not OK. Shooting him first "just in case," not OK.
I've spent time in remote Australian communities, where it's quite common to be peppered with 'white cunt' imprecations if out at night, especially anywhere near the canteen (bar). I found that quite confronting (occasionally frightening) in the moment, but it didn't have a big effect -- the people concerned were usually drunk and in a mess (you'll know what I mean if you've been in such places), I was a kind of foreigner (outback communities are not really 'Australia' in anything other than an bureaucratic sense), and clearly representative (whether fairly or not) of an oppressor. And, importantly, I could leave. A few hours drive, and I'm back in a nation where I'm 'the norm', and the indigenous Australian would be the outsider.
I'm trying to imagine the generalised life trauma that might ensue were I subject to this kind of suspicion and/or hatred all the time, in my own country (I do realise the author of the piece wasn't from the US). Many of course will rise above it more-or-less unscathed, but exceptional individuals are a poor indicator of most people's life chances.
Australia is similar to the US in this respect. Indigenous Australians stand little chance unless they happen to get lucky and land whatever weird combination of genes and upbringing that creates exceptions. In some ways it's worse here, as denial about causes is very close to universal -- there's no real equivalent to the US North/South divide. Our whole nation is locked into a kind of determined fluffy antebellum fantasy, where we didn't have a nation-founding war, but just a kind of sloppy de facto displacement of savages by imported middle-class suburbanites, regrettable certainly, but all too natural (so inevitable).
What a total stuff-up humans have made of everything.
It was more like a genocide. In fact, in many parts of Eastern and Southern Australia, it was a genocide.
>Our whole nation is locked into a kind of determined fluffy antebellum fantasy, where we didn't have a nation-founding war, but just a kind of sloppy de facto displacement of savages by imported middle-class suburbanites, regrettable certainly, but all too natural (so inevitable).
It becomes very obvious whenever someone stirs up the hornet's nest. The last I can think of was when Adam Goodes [0] tried to express his cultural ties.
> more like a genocide. In fact, in many parts of Eastern and Southern Australia, it was a genocide
Certainly. Sports & genocide are Australia's top 2 talents (Tasmania must rank among the world's most classically perfect examples of genocide).
The exact form of the stuff-up varies per domain: genocide here, ecocide there (everywhere). But that humans stuff up everything they touch seems to be a universal. Crap species.
In addition to shedding light on the author's experiences, this is also an excellent piece of writing. It's not what normally shows in HN, but I'm glad it did.
What are peoples thoughts on a guy walking behind a woman. Not intentionally, just it's late and you end up walking up behind a woman on a darkish street.
I always feel I either need to slow right down, so i'm not closing the gap (don't want to speed up as that might seem really dodgy..) Or just cross the road entirely.
I feel we're in this weird place where every guy is perceived as a potential threat, so I understand that I should cross the road or just hang right back from her, but then that makes me feel bad because I'm not a threat to anyone and why should I have to cross the road or change my pace. I just want to get home too.
> I always feel I either need to slow right down, so i'm not closing the gap (don't want to speed up as that might seem really dodgy..) Or just cross the road entirely.
I usually try to overtake them very quickly, so they can see me. It helps that I'm a very fast walker.
I do the same. I walk quickly and as far to the side of them as I can, making a decent amount of noise. That way they can hear my location and be less alarmed.
Yep, I guess that's similar to what's described in the article, although on a vastly different scale - it's a concern to me, but not that often.
Interestingly, this was exacerbated when I was walking with crutches. Even though I was even less of a danger, the ticking sound of the crutches did feel like I was sounding more threatening.
A good but disturbing read. This just stopped me in my (white, European) tracks:
"When he dropped me off and I thanked him for his help, he said, “It’s because you were polite that we let you go. If you were acting up it would have been different.” I nodded and said nothing."
Even the officer who made the effort to be fair, still expected submission.
Isn't that what all police expect, from everyone? Cops here in Ireland are generally friendly, but the best path to a frictionless interaction with them is to demonstrate you already know who's the boss, so they don't feel like they have to demonstrate it to you
edit: Having read now the article, I take that back. You've gotta be submissive with cops everywhere, but what this person describes is pretty extreme
> Isn't that what all police expect, from everyone?
Honestly, I don't know. I've been fortunate to have never had a bad interaction with the police, and when I have had dealings with them they've been helpful and professional. I hope that I know enough about my rights that I would be polite and cooperative but firm if the situation demanded it, but I don't really know whether I could do this in practice.
I live in the UK and we supposedly have "policing by consent" [0] here, but there is abundant evidence that the police tend to exploit the power asymmetry. Armed police who consider themselves "the boss" are one of the reasons I am unlikely to ever visit the US.
>> A lone woman walking in the middle of the night was as common a sight as
Sasquatch; moonlight pedestrianism was too dangerous for her.
Mnyeah. Also known as walking alone while female after nightfall.
I used to do that when I lived in Athens, Greece. There were two distinct
periods of it, because I went through a phase where I had a decidecly
gender-ambiguous appearance (short hair, combat boots, jeans and t-shirt) and
another when I dressed more typically feminine (think your mom when she goes
to the hairdresser's).
When I looked like I could be a boy with weird hair, I thoroughly enjoyed my
nighttime jaunts and I never felt threatened or harrassed. I walked around the
seedier parts of town, where the drug-dealing and the sex-working happened-
because that was the point, to see the night life that crawls out of the
woodwork when all the decent people are safely sleeping at home. Despite all
that I never got into trouble. I guess I looked like a bit of a freak so folks
probably assumed I was out for a fix or something. But who knows?.
When I looked my most femme, the situation was completely reversed, even
though by that time I was bored of the sleaze and stayed firmly in the
better-lit, higher-income parts of town. People would stick their heads out of
moving cars and yell obscenities ("Hey baby, are you making house calls?
MWAHAHAHAHA"). If I stopped, like to sit at a bench for a few minutes, shadows
would detach themselves from the background and slowly amble towards me,
nonchalant like, until I felt insecure enough that I had to get up and march
away. Every single man I met would consider it their obligation to hit on me,
one way or another- tell me how pretty I was (in the dark, sure) offer a ride,
offer to buy me a drink... strangely enough, nobody ever offered to buy me a
souvlaki which is what I actually was after most of the time.
Note that this was Athens city in the period between 2000 and 2005, long
before the immigrants started coming in. I'm just saying. Those people who
made it a pain in the ass for a woman to walk alone at night? Plain,
middle-class white guys in a country with a rate of violent crime among the
lowest in the world.
Well anyway. There you go. It sucks to walk while black, it sucks to walk
while female, also- or at least, while recognisably so.
> (And it is not lost on me that my woman friends are those who best understand my plight; they have developed their own vigilance in an environment where they are constantly treated as targets of sexual attention.)
I can't find it, but I first read a piece about Walking While Black when I was still homeless. It was a different piece, written by a successful American man, a lawyer iirc, whose car broke down not too far from home. So he walked home into his upper middle class neighborhood to his own home and was harassed by the police about it.
I got some very small taste of such treatment while homeless. Walking while homeless is another reason for well off people to call the cops on you or for police to generally assume you must be up to no good.
I don't know how to fix this, but I am glad to see it getting more attention and I am glad to see such compelling writing on the subject.
When I was growing up I remember the pride our educational system tried to instill in us and it seems so fake in retrospect. It's impossible to be proud of a nation that is only a land of opportunity for those who are white and middle class.
Its not that I'm not proud to be an American so much as I don't consider myself one I'm just a person who happens to reside here because I don't have better options.
Middle America is chock full of towns, full of middle class white people who perceive almost zero opportunity.
We have startups, Youtube, online university materials, and enthusiast groups that will assist a motivated, energetic, optimistic person to get ahead.
The second worst thing you can do to a person is tell them not to bother learning a subject because of their skin color.
The worst thing is to add 10 points to each of their test scores, and have them find out.
We've all had people [in grade school] make fun of us for learning computing or frankly being too good at anything. Below average people are always trying to drag us down. But once we get on the other side of a people-filter [such as college or a company] we realize the world is much more egalitarian and full of independent minded people.
Even though there is racial disparity and studies show discrimination in housing, jobs, loans, etc. I wouldn't go so far as to say that only White people can get ahead.
Yes I'm Black, live in the south and think I'm doing pretty well. I have quite a few friends who would also disagree.
I don't think he meant there is no opportunity for black people, but that it's truly a "land of opportunity" only for whites (more specifically white men).
Like, I grew up in a lower-middle class family and flunked out of college due to my f-ups. I squandered a lot of opportunities through my 20s, and yet still ended up in a position where I could teach myself to become a software developer, and make good money today. I got a lot of extra chances, chances that people of color don't necessarily get.
I don't think its true that it only affords opportunity for the white and middle class. I think you would find many Americans who fit into other categories who disagree with you. Not to say cynically that 'if you don't like it leave', but I'm curious when you say you just happen to reside here for lack of better options -- is there a country in the world you consider to be the ideal, a place more just than America? I ask for the sake of discussion, not rhetorically.
Racism in America varies greatly, depending on where you live. The following is the most objective metric I could find for racist tendencies in America:
Looking at the map, the Pacific Northwest is one of the least racist, and the south is one of the most racist. This matches pretty well with what I would have expected. Interestingly, NY state itself ranks pretty highly in racist tendencies, which is a major part of the author's experiences.
From my experience racism is more subtle in those european countries. E.g. you only get disadvantaged in more anonymous situations, but never actively excluded or attacked in person.
I live in Switzerland and noticed that especially when looking for jobs. When I was in middle school we had to look for apprenticeships to do after we finished school. In my class 5 of 20 were foreigners, and only I found a place (after a long struggle).
It wasn't based on grades since we all had equal or better grades than native students, and neither was it based on personality since we didn't even get invited to inverviews at all...
There are people that even legally changed their surname so it doesn't sound too foreign. There is especially strong bias against people from the Balkan region.
I know the situation in the US and here in Germany, and if I had dark skin I'm really not sure which poison I'd choose.
In Germany a Westernized dark-skinned person will feel quite comfortable, but when it comes to things like competing for promotions, investments, capital, heck even flats, and etc. - they will tend to lose out a little too often. People in positions of power, while friendly, have a strong and unexamined tendency to gravitate towards their comfort zone. They're looking for a good gut feeling, for trustworthiness, for what seems like a good match - and, shocker, those feelings are most often produced by upper middle class to rich native-born German men. It's pervasive, and I don't see much talk here about the need to overcome discomfort and implicit bias, at least not among the elites. In fact, any suggestion that they should step outside of their comfort zone produces resentment, more often than not.
So, in Germany, you don't need to worry about the police, or about random aggression all that much. But you'll face a glass ceiling. And while everyday existence for the same person in America may be menacing and emotionally oppressive, America is also the country where 2 of the major tech companies have Indian CEOs, and no one blinks an eye. Germany is still very far from that, unfortunately.
That's more a Silicon Valley culture than an American one. Not to say California isn't part of America, but that same glass ceiling exists in most places in America, and it's probably lower.
Even if you don't feel pride or you don't have better options, one could still have a connection to a place or a sense of familiarity with it. Even though I will never feel as safe or comfortable as a white person, or feel that I belong as much as they do, I still have a connection to where I live merely from living here and walking through it, knowing people, etc. It's best to channel that sense to work to make that place a better place, into something you can be proud of. If I didn't have that sense, and I think if other POC didn't, we'd never get up in the morning.
A lady once said "Still I rise." I think that's the right attitude to have.
I don't mean to be condescending but have you traveled much to other countries? I spent 3 years traveling across South America and most people there just take it as obvious that darker skinned people are lesser humans. I made friends with dark skin people who casually dropped in conversation that they wish they weren't so inferior, that's how internalized the racism is.
Racism is a deeply held in/out-group identifier in humans. Western education tries to confront that and fails in many ways but really you should appreciate your education in a broader context. This isn't just an appeal to whataboutism because the US is actively trying to promote multiculturalism in a way that just doesn't happen in many other countries.
Is that what the educational system does? Maybe during the Cold War. Now, the goal of the educational isn't to install pride in America, the goal is to divide America into camps.
I think you might underestimate how much of American education inflates the idea of America as a land of opportunity for all. Even when it isn't stated explicitly, society and culture communicates that message.
>Even when it isn't stated explicitly, society and culture communicates that message.
You wouldn't guess that from looking at young-people dominated forums (e.g. reddit). The overt message constantly pounded in is that you can't get ahead by trying because everything is rigged (votes are bought, etc).
So if that's what's stated in the school system, it's definitely not sinking in.
This account seems to exists simply to say nasty one liners about politics and race, with a few "normal" posts mixed in that add very little to the conversation
North America is in fact nothing like the Third Reich. These truly incredible, bizarre claims require extraordinary evidence, not a supposed conversation with a random person. The random person's skin color doesn't make it any more or less likely.
'The U.S. (and, today, Churchill) do it too.' I haven't heard that refrain on HN in at least 5 minutes. Apparently people believe they are magic words that can normalize anything, from Hitler to Russia to China. Am I missing anyone? Stalin? Mao?
I'm not sure what point you're communicating or who you're quoting. Initially, you were alleging that my statements were false and not based on facts, but now, you're trying to say that it is commonly stated every 5 minutes? Please try to be clear. I get that these facts are uncomfortable for those of us who have benefited from these things, but the sooner we face them and try to make the world a fairer playing field the better off we will all be.
North America's attitude towards people of colour, absolutely disgusts me. I simply do not understand why that a country that was founded on on the principles of freedom continues to act this way. The fourth amendment clearly states that all citizens should be treated equally if suspected of a crime, yet this simply does not happen.
Yeah, the UK (my homeland) has it's problems, but in the main, racial in-equality is not one of it's major ones. Every country does have 'ghetto' type areas, where things aren't as black and white as they should be (no pun intended) but, come on America, you need to do better than this.
On the article itself:- A well written piece, and an real joy to read despite it's content. Things I had to look up, though:
> North America's attitude towards people of colour, absolutely disgusts me. I simply do not understand why that a country that was founded on on the principles of freedom continues to act this way.
North america isn't a country. And the US wasn't founded on principles of freedom. Slavery existed back then ( slavery brought to the colonies by the british ).
> Yeah, the UK (my homeland) has it's problems, but in the main, racial in-equality is not one of it's major ones
Where minority soccer players get bananas thrown at them. Where masses of white children are raped and police do nothing because of fears of racism. Where a half black woman is paraded around by the british press as some lapdog of your "prince".
No country is perfect so lets stop with the finger wagging. Has the UK ever elected a black leader? Go read about or watch black people's/minorities' recent experiences in europe. They've been spat at, had racial epithets thrown their way, been discriminated against, etc.
So much this. There is a certain kind of European that loves to sneer down their nose at Americans, but show me the European country that has elected a black leader.
I think the point was not that America has solved racism, but that it is a common refrain of some Europeans to point to America's race problems as somehow indicative of the backwardness of Americans, while they smugly pat themselves on the back for being the progressive ideal of tolerance. But European countries have never had the kind of racial divisions that the US has. Until roughly 50 years ago, there was basically no significant non-white population in Europe. The US has had a significant black population for 400 years. And we now have a huge brown population as well. And now that Europe has acquired a significant non-white population, lo and behold, you see a lot of the same racial issues that the US faces.
You should visit Latin America. Everyone is judged by their skin tone. The darker you are, the more you are regarded as "the help." Parents are excited when their children are born with light skin. My in-laws are all Mexican and I can say that they are far more racist than any US citizen I've met.
I'm not even sure it's really "racism." But I do know that it's considered completely normal to think of others this way.
It's completely racism, dark skin color is an indication of non-European (priamrily either African or American indigenous) ancestry, and what you describe is a outgrowth of racism in which Europeans are favorered and the other two groups disfavored.
One of the most interesting conversations I’ve ever been involved with was when I went on a tour of guatemala with a group of med students from California. The kids were almost entirely children of immigrants from Latin America and Asia. They talked about differences in religion, in folklore, in parenting, in language — but one thing they absolutely agreed on was that people with light skin were lucky — and they talked about how to make their skin look lighter, etc.
It was really an eye opening conversation to me — how deep the impact of colonialism has been on those countries and how it even spreads through generations and across boundaries.
This is also true in China, and to varying extents everywhere else in Asia. Dark skin is an indication of low birth, pale creamy skin is considered desirable.
Did you even read the second sentence of the article you opened?
While it might not be happening in the UK so often now, the blatantly racist act — synonymous with treating players as apes or monkeys — endures elsewhere in European stadiums from Spain to Russia.
we actually do have this problem in the UK - for example, with the police targeting black teenagers/young adults for stop-and-searches in London. It seems a lot less pervasive/severe than in the US though.
I remember watching the Metropolitan Police (bringing you Institutional Racism since the 1950s) checkpoints at the 'ring of steel' in the City of London during my smoke breaks - I can't recall any time they stopped anyone white, it was always blacks. The stated purpose of the checkpoints was to prevent IRA terrorism, and young black men have never really been known to be active Irish Republicans and Catholics...
> a country that was founded on on the principles of freedom
The USA, my country, was not founded on the principles of freedom. It was founded on the principles of white supremacy.
Its quite easy to come to this conclusion if we simply look at the US Constitution, which has a clause stating that the Black slaves brought to this country for a single purpose, that of chattel slavery, were to be counted as 3/5ths of a person in order to determine the makeup of congress. That is directly against any "principles of freedom" I can come up with.
Because the Constitution doesn't mention race. It merely states that a non-free individual was counted as 3/5 of a free individual for purposes of the population census, which was used to determine proportionate representation in Congress. Native Americans were excluded from the census entirely if they weren't tax paying residents of a state.
This country was also founded on the principles of race-based slavery. Attempts to suppress the deep-seated racism of the US have not been completely successful.
So the societal patterns this article describes are true, and they are not acceptable. As a white male who lives in this society, I have one question: What can I do to help change this?
This is a common question, but as a person of color, I would push back on it - this question has the effect of adding more work on the backs of the marginalized, underrepresented, and oppressed to educate you.
My personal answer would be to ask that you read, make it a habit to educate yourself before relying on the labor of people of color, and keep an open mind whenever you have kneejerk responses to anything racially charged.
I acknowledge your point. And yet, I would suggest you should reconsider, for two reasons:
First, it feels (to me, at least) like someone is genuinely wanting to be helpful, and you throw it back in their face. Your point is valid, but you could be turning away potential allies.
Second, you are opening the door to people thinking, "Right, we white people will figure out how to solve all the black peoples' problems" - with all the paternalism that implies. I recognize that you are very much not saying that. But it seems likely that someone will take it that way, either because of malice or just because they are bent toward taking it that way.
I will not reconsider telling people that they're asking victims for additional emotional labor. The very attitude is poisonous. Instead of "take over and solve the peoples' problems" it is, like UX research, mostly an act of listening to people of color, not of declaring themselves the arbiters of the solutions.
All it takes is letting go of one's ego to center the conversation around listening to people of color instead of deciding to take control of the conversation or of their "salvation."
The article and this thread explicitly call out racism. The terms race or racism show up a dozen times (now more), but sexism only appears once.
In terms of criminal justice, men are treated significantly more harshly. The man's sex seems at least as important as his race, but it seems we don't see or talk about that bias as much.
Are we blind to sexism when it hurts men? How can we do anything about it if we don't talk about it?
Unlike you, I found that the author discussed many instances of hacking in the article. He hacked social conventions in order to walk freely in places where otherwise it could be dangerous for him to walk. Social engineering is a very appropriate topic for Hacker News.
The Y Combinator application form famously has this question on it: "Please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage." A case of social engineering would certainly be a valid response
I'm a flaming flaggot around here (I truly thought I just coined that expression, but [1]). I almost flagged this one, but a black friend of mine recently had Walking While Black story of his own, so I read it. Lo and behold, the story covered his scenario, waving to a cop, first thing. I hear about things like this all the time online; from rappers and comedians; occasional news story; once in a great while, a first-person story from a colored friend. I usually rationalize it away thinking: "That's really only a problem in backwoods towns, far, far from here. Here you get the obligatory asshole cop every now and then, of course, but it's not the norm." This story made me realize A) it doesn't have to be the norm, it just has to be enough to cause someone to ALWAYS be on alert, to be a life altering problem B) No matter how quick I get at dismissing the instinctual thought pattern "different person is scary", the fact remains, I have those thoughts and they likely affect my actions in a way noticeable to other humans. Neither of those realizations are a surprise to me, but this story convinced me I haven't thought critically enough about them. Getting this stubborn old mind to reconsider it's position is an epic hack.
That goes for plenty of articles here, I’ve always felt that Hacker News was for any articles that people in tech might find interesting. I thought this was a great piece, and really well written, I’m glad it was posted here.
They'd have to prove marketplace confusion -- that an ordinary consumer might buy some LitHub services and believe them to be GitHub services.
If GitLabs changed their name to 'GitHlub', they'd be too close. But a shipping company named GIT-HUB might be totally ok if their logos and ads were distinct.
As per the HN guidelines, on topic posts = "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity". Maybe it doesn't qualify as news but the writing is fantastic & it certainly satisfied my intellect! I'm happy to see this here.
I too love walking the streets at night. And I too have to not be myself and behave in very conscious ways to avoid being hassled and detained by the police. Police just assume that if you're out at night you are a criminal.
So much of his descriptions of having to learn to dress a certain way, behave a certain way, and literally go out of my way to avoid scaring people rings true. I get detained by the police a handful of times per year just for walking or being in places at times that most people aren't. I particularly get the police called on me if I walk through in rich neighborhoods. I've had firearms pulled on me just for photographing trees in a public park (at night).
I tried to take up jogging for half a year but I quit and bought a bike after being stopped by police for being suspicious three times in as many months. Apparently jogging while not wearing a joggers uniform means I'm up to no good. No non-criminal jogs in cargo pants and a t-shirt. And that was in the day time. I wouldn't even consider trying it at night.
I'm not trying to marginalize his message that skin color is the cause. But it's certainly not the only cause. The root of the problem lies with the police, and society, villifying anyone who isn't diurnal.