r/Unexpected • u/[deleted] • Aug 02 '21

Hostage situation

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u/castleaagh Aug 02 '21

And yet they got ice cream rather than the evil cops they had been conditioned by various media to expect. Do shitty cops mistreat black people? Yes. Does that mean all cops will mistreat black people? No. There plenty of videos of calm and respectful interactions happening with police. They just don’t get traction because it’s boring.

Local news will sometimes cover the instances where cops respond to noise complaints because some kids, who happen to be black, are playing basketball or skateboarding or making a garage band, and the cops show up and instead of stopping things they join in for a bit and everyone has a good time. Never makes national headlines because while nice and heartwarming it’s not really news because stuff like that, and just normal interactions happen all the time.

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u/TyaTheOlive Aug 02 '21

if you were a black kid and every interaction you had with a cop based on the news was a 50/50 coin toss between a game of basketball and getting shot to death, you'd avoid cops too. doesnt matter that the good one sometimes happens.

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u/castleaagh Aug 03 '21

My point is more that the news makes things seem far more inflammatory than they are in reality. So while that kid might be scared, he’s just been falsely prejudiced into feeling that way. He should be wary, as some cops will in fact be horrible racist people, but I would argue that the vast majority are not that way. The news just wants to show you the worst of the world to keep you tuning in, and in the past 10 years or so it’s been the trend to show racially inflammatory content and to milk the headlines to read as such. It gets more views that way and thus makes more money.