would you help this white lady at Ihop

[Ubuntu1]

Are you really from Canada?

Yes.

Just asking because I don't know how things are over there.

I don't think white Canadians are any more or less racist than white Americans are. I only lived in the U.S (Michigan) for a year so beyond my exposure to the media and online interaction, I may not have the right basis for comparison. Police brutality is probably much less of an issue but there have been some fatal incidents (not so long ago I read about an anti-police brutality march in Hamilton, I think it was inspired by what happened to Walter Scott or some other U.S case). Certain regions of the U.S are probably more similar to certain regions of Canada than they are to other American regions (ie. New York is probably more similar to Toronto than it is to Montgomery or Jackson or any other Southern city).

To the letter of the law yes we have the same rights and privileges but the law isn't always enforced equally among blacks and whites hence the reason we have statistics showing that white people are just as likely to use and sell drugs as black people but we're disproportionately targeted by the criminal justice system, the former sentencing disparity between crack and cocaine with the one being used more by black people vs white people carrying a higher jail sentence, and the prison industrial complex that's disproportionately filled with black people. A black person would have had that same sense of entitlement talking to a police officer if black people didn't have a history of police brutality in this country tracing back to the civil rights era.

I won't dismiss that, I don't know about those statistics or whether or not they can be put into context, but I disagree with some people who believe there is legal systematic racism against black people in the U.S ('systematic' would have to be legal but some people who acknowledge that whites and people of color are 'technically' equal under the law still think there is organized 'systematic' racism against people of color in the U.S - the closest thing, to me, not that I know what U.S government policy toward indigenous nations are, might be against Native Americans on reservations because Native Americans are a colonized people, in my mind ). Even if it wouldn't be smart or prudential, there have to be some black people in the U.S who would talk to a police officer like that and not all police officers are racist and/or unnecessarily violent /authoritarian. Unless you think that a black person behaving the same way would have been just as wrong, I don't understand criticizing her for her sense of entitlement if you think that she really was or should have been entitled to behave in that way. It might not be fair that a white person (especially a white woman) is more likely to get away with talking to a police officer like that than a man and/or black person would be but it's not her fault that a racist or 'chivalrous' police officer is more lenient with her than he would be with a black male. It being unfair that some people who should have X privilege don't have it doesn't justify resenting the people who do have it and if you don't think that anyone should have X privilege, again, even if it would be contrary to their own interests there are some black people who would feel entitled to talk to a police officer like that. Some scrawny guys will challenge the biggest, strongest man in the room knowing that he'll probably get his ass kicked because he doesn't care.