Silence of 80% is deafeningBut those who stood up for the actress, make it bearable to watch.
The hypocrite guy was the WORST, and I’m delighted his face is well recognisable, what amazed me is he must have signed a waiver.  

I was thinking about that white guy“Would you have defended me?”
Saying “yes” is good, but also say, “she had to worry about being accused of theft because she was black. When have you been accused of theft beacuse you were white?”
He might then say (to someone, some time later): “Why should it matter why you are accused?”
As I imagined this conversation, I thought: NEED to have an answer prepared.
Perhaps you Blenders can help: why should it matter why you are accused whether it’s because of race or something else?
This is why they don’t believe in hate crime law: why should the reason matter for the crime? Aren’t all crimes crimes?
We/I need some input on responding to this.

It rarely happens to meBut it has happened.
As for the hate crimes question, I think that it goes to the question of motive…and the type of society that you wish to have. Sorta like how we talk about “the n-word nowadays”.
In the 70′s, you could say “nigger” on television and it was used quite frequently. Now you can’t do that.

It’s Not Just White on Black DiscriminationJim and I were recently at a large, discount retailer, to buy my first notebook computer to replace the Dell that finally died.
At the exit, stood an older, African American woman. She was checking to see if each customer had a receipt before they passed through the doors leading out to the parking lot.
I absent-mindedly said to Jim, “Where’s our receipt? We need to show it to get out of here.” Jim said it was in the store bag and he reached in and grabbed it.
We approached the woman and as I always engage older folks with an air of respect (hey, I’m Italian, what can I say?), I smiled and said something like, “Hello, how are you doing Mame?”
She took a look at us and smiled and said, “Have a nice day boys.” She never asked us to produce a store receipt and we had a $500 Acer notebook in the store bag.
Now, I immediately said to Jim, “I wonder why she didn’t ask to see our receipt?” Jim said, “She probably likes the gays.”
Maybe. Or, maybe it had to do with the fact we are two, well dressed, white men, with short, groomed hair and the store didn’t want to tick us off so we wouldn’t shop there again in the future?
Like white people don’t shop lift? Very strange.

White devil’s advocateHypothetical white guy:…
Maybe I don’t want to live in a society where anyone is attacked/harrassed for any reason or in a society where the same attack is valued more or less. All attacks should be treated the same. That is an equal society.

Good story about priveldgeThanks for telling us.

Another thought….could the real rebuttal to this question be something much longer and more complicated than can be explained in an on-the-spot confrontation?

Oh, that would be the perfect ideal, of coursebut that’s not reality. How often are people attacked because they are white or because they are straight?

Oh, Fritz has a good story about thisafter all, blacks profile other blacks in similar situations.
I am one of the geekiest looking mofos you will ever meet, so I have (for the most part) escaped this type of thing. After all…I look like I’m smart and that I wouldn’t do such a thing…
Trust me, by the way, if you and your partner looked like straight up rednecks, she would have stopped you.

AbsolutelyYou just described every shopping experience my husband and I have ever had.  We’re both young, attractive, white, and rich.  It’s unbelievable how we get treated relative to other people.
I had no idea this “privilege” existed until I went to visit my brother (he’s in the military).  He met us at a Neiman Marcus store and he had just left the base so he was dressed down in blue jeans, converse tennis shoes, and a t-shirt.  They watched him all the way through the store to the point he felt so uncomfortable he wanted to leave.  Not one person asked to help him, even though he was there a good twenty minutes before we arrived.  When my husband and I finally met up with him in the china section, there were about 5 staff members around in a matter of moments, asking if we needed any assistance and telling us they could special order any pattern we wanted.  
My brother looked like he was about to cry.  He was really upset for several hours after it happened.  I had no idea, until that moment, how different we were treated because of:
1.) who we are (people around here know our business because it’s somewhat high profile),
2.) how we dress, and
3.) the fact we’re white men.
And the reality is, if we’re in a dangerous situation, we can hide being gay.  Never had to do it, never want to do it, but it’s an option to use the heterosexual privilege card.  

I bet you this had a lot to do with it, christopher

smiled and said something like, “Hello, how are you doing Mame?”

You showed respect for her.

I talk to a friend of mine every now and then about thisHe’s a Libertarian, I’m a liberal. It’s a fair question- is a crime not a crime regardless of the target or intent?
Pretty much, yes.
However, in my experience the law is something that can reinforce morals. Like the video, and others like it on Youtube (I looked at a few, they definitely make me think about this), it’s pointed out that some people are just bound together by a sense of justice. People learn that racism is wrong and it was something that was defeated in a time frame that we see as ‘a long time ago’, so they’re more prone to standing up to it.
As my own personal experience, I knew stealing and vandalism and the works was wrong simply because it was illegal, probably before I developed a moral sense that I was detracting from the life of others if I were to commit those acts.
So in a similar way, hate crime laws can help build on that. Active discouragement of discrimination, codified in law.

BZZZTAll attacks are not the same, so why would we treat them the same? To do so would be biased.
Hate crimes are worse than non-hate crimes because they terrorize AN ENTIRE GROUP OF PEOPLE rather than one individual. They are acts of terrorism.
Crime hurts more than one person = worse = more severely punished.
It’s not rocket surgery. :p

but you’re brother is white also, I presumeso it wasn’t simply your whiteness.

A Few ThoughtsFirst – The example of the shopper being frisked without cause seems rather extreme for an experiment. I would rather they had done something more subtle and more typical of what would happen in every day life (I’m not saying the frisking doesn’t happen in real life). But that probably wouldn’t make the cut for TV (unfortunately). But the problem with such an extreme example, is that some of the other shoppers would think there has to be more to the story which they didn’t see to justify the woman being frisked.
Second – The guy with the “race card” comment was the priceless moment of the whole piece. Being white, I have been exposed to all types of white on black racism expressed openly in all white groups. The same people who I know are racist in private act differently in public – just like the guy in the video. They act in a way which they think is more socially acceptable. They also think that all white people feel the same way they do and are not afraid to make racist comments in all white settings. I’ve seen this hundreds of times. I know it exists.
Third – Some time in the last few years I stopped being one of those people who stand idly by and do nothing. I used to be very timid about calling out discrimination. Now, it actually gives me a sense of empowerment and pride to call out a bigot. If I had been in the store at the time of this experiment, I would have purposefully made a scene , asked all the shoppers to leave and boycott the shop, and flipped over a couple racks of clothes. Good or bad, I have a nasty temperament.
Fourth – As the commenter above said already, silence is deafening. It’s one of the things that is so frustrating about the LGBT civil rights struggle. So many of my straight friends won’t get involved or speak up.

Hard to watchHarder still, I’m sure, to endure.  And as to the question:

If you had a front row seat to this kind of racism, would you take action?

Yes, I would.

John, I get the feelingthat I DO NOT want to make you angry. I wouldn’t like you when you are angry…LOL

You have the concept of Hate Crimes ….WRONGCrimes based on hatred of a victim because of race, religion, orientation, percieved gender, or disability.
Protects Whites if someone would call them slurs and beat them.
Protects straights if someone called them a slur and beat them.
The Blacks, Latin@s, Jews, LGBTs have historicly been sought out as victims, attackers lie in wait outside gay/lesbian bars. The excessive violence of Hate Crimes is appauling, stomping on the faces of someone already knocked unconscious, or kicked to death until the body is unrecognizable to their Mother. The crime is also intended to terrorize the whole community.

A bit off topic but somewhat relatedI was standing on a dark road in Kennebunk after a 12 Step meeting by a church waiting for a ride. It took about an hour for my ride to get there and a police car rode by.
Now here I am, a black man, standing on a dark road in one of the whitest states in the Union. Surely the police car was going to do a U-turn, turn around, and check to see what this was all about. But it didn’t…and I expected that to happen.

I do get uglyand I usually wind up regretting in later. And fot the record, my husband doesn’t like me when I get angry either.

The things like cabs driving passed Blacks, or White women clutching their pursesRarely has anything to do with how well dressed the person is, or neighborhood, or the percieved level what a threat the person poses.
It’s just straight up racist

Oh, the white women clutching their pursesor white folks driving past and all of a sudden they lock their car doors…now I have experienced that quite a bit.
The cab thing…it all depends on where I am in Chicago. In Boystown, I have never had a problem catching a cab. In the Loop, I have horror stories.
And, of course, with cabbies, if you are black, a lot is dependent on where you are going too.

Would I take action if I saw this? Yes, I have and I would againIt is damned scarey to step up as a third party, which I think is why so few people got involved. But I have done it, in a similar situation a few years ago in Visalia, California, a mid size farming town in the Central Valley.
I was in a Hallmark store and watched as a clerk told two Hispanic kids to leave because “their kind” always stole things. I confronted the clerk and asked if these specific people had ever stolen anything and she said “No, but they will if they can.”
I asked to speak with the manager, whom I had seen go into the back office a short time earlier. The clerk refused so I waited for the manager to come back to the front. The clerk got pissy, but I stayed calm and told her that if she would summon the manager so I could talk to her, I would leave.
Finally, she did come out and I told her what happened. The clerk, of course, denied it. I said, “I expect you have security cameras? You may wish to review them from about half an hour ago.”
Two days latter I walked by and saw the manager behind the counter, so I went in to take a look around (you can never have too many blank “Thank You” cards on hand anyway.) The manager recognized me, came over, thanked me for bringing the matter to her attention and said that the clerk had been fired. It turned out that one of the kids chased out had actually come in to submit an application (!) and she was going to be hired as the replacement. The kid was there for at least the rest of the summer that I know of.

Great Storywith a just and happy ending. Love It!!

That depends onhow far you believe Glenn Beck and Carrie Prejean.

It’s the multi-privilege pileup –“Bourgeois white privilege” ends up being more than just white privilege + bourgeois privilege.

Very interesting reply. Thanks, Reiuji.

I got up and left a restaurantI saw a table of Black young men ignored for almost a half hour, after they sat down. Never went back there either.
I can’t recall, but it might have been a suburban Denny’s which I stopped at after bar closing, it was some 24 hour joint.

SighI desire to say yes, but everyday I remember the shame of when I witnessed a white cop beating up an AA suspect at a freeway exit and I just drove on and did nothing.
I can say never again, but I can’t shake how I screwed up that test.

Actually a bad experiment.Since they didn’t show the response that subjects would have had if the the woman was white.
Non-reaction of the other shoppers could have been for various reasons. To automatically assume it was shopping while black really is unjustified.
To really test the theory that it was shopping while black; have Black Clerk White Shopper; White Clerk White Shopper;Black Clerk Black Shopper and White Clerk  Black shopper.
I really suspect that the % of people that choose to involve themselves would be pretty low in all of those situations.

Jeez, the spelling and grammatical errorsin that comment are atrocious…it must be late…

looks like all my comments….must be late here a lot….LOL

women of all stripes tense up As a white man, I get a pass from women during the daytime.  But on the street at night, or in an elevator, the tension quickly mounts.  Not like what black men experience, but it’s there.  My size and sex make me a potential threat.  Skin pigment adds another whole dimension.  I understand the reaction, but it is painful.  We are the violent sex, the perps.  Bleh.  Not only would I never attack anyone, but I discovered in one circumstance that I would defend someone who was attacked.  Wish I could telepath that I’m harmless, gay, a survivor of abuse, and actually an ally that they want on the street beside them.

Don’t just stand by, do something!I am a white guy.  I saw a situation at a Burger King in the Fort Lauderdale, Florida area a year ago or so where an older, wealthy, white woman was yelling and screaming at the young black people who worked there.  The older white woman wasn’t just upset about one thing; it was several little picky things about her food order, and the woman was extremely nasty and verbally abusive about them.  It was a Sunday about noon, and it looked like she had just come from church.
Before I left the Burger King, I stopped by where the older white woman was sitting and I told her, “That’s not right.  You can’t treat people who work here that way.”
I don’t know whether that was a racial thing or whether the older woman was nasty to everyone who works at low paying fast food jobs.  But someone had to tell her that her behavior was inappropriate.
People who live in New York should be shopping at Unpomela, the store where ABC filmed, since they were the only ones with the guts to show what happens when people of color are mistreated.

RightExactly right; I was responding to the earlier commenter’s point that a lot of it comes down to a checklist: white, well dressed, wealthy and saying that they were right on the last two points since it’s already been well established race privilege exists.  (Even ABC realized that; I’m guessing that’s why they also ran scenarios in the video where they had the young woman dresses different ways).  
American society has a sick obession with status (although maybe it’s just human nature – so does Europe and Asia, sometimes far worse than we do).  
My point is that the very nature of privilege is that when you have it, you often don’t realize it.  Sure, I had read about it in textbooks during college.  But it had been an abstract theory; to actually see how it hurt someone else was a defining moment in my life.  It’s what made me realize that race privilege, class privilege, and even male privilege exist and they are powerful.

PrivilegeI think you’re right – there is a cumulative result of privilege.  Am I better off because I’m white and male?  My sisters and mother absolutely maintain male privilege exists.  
(On a side note: In the United States, the combination of bourgeois white privilege has been around for 40+ years = it’s called yuppie.  That’s basically shorthand for a certain “type of person”.  In college, I heard parents use it to describe the type of roommate they wanted for their child.  You knew in your gut what they were saying was basically code for “young, well-off parents, white, drinking $4 lattes.”)
Your comment got me thinking that it’s interesting how privilege is not only cumulative, it’s relative.  Here’s what I mean …
When I went to pick up my niece from a small daycare, the workers there basically backed me into a corner because I was a man.  To be frank, they treated me like a potential pedophile because they had never seen me.
In that situation, female privilege would have existed because there is no way I would have been told to step outside of the room and yelled at the way I was until they verified that I was, in fact, the uncle.
If we were to go back to the French revolution, being well off would have gotten you killed.  
It’s basically a cultural construct and varies across region, time, and demographic.
 

Ah, but now try thisa black business owner employing white, Latino, and and blacks? Which employees are treated the best and which are treated the worst?
Many black people I know (including myself) do not like working for black employers and bosses.

Good point….“I knew stealing and vandalism and the works was wrong simply because it was illegal, probably before I developed a moral sense that I was detracting from the life of others if I were to commit those acts.
So in a similar way, hate crime laws can help build on that. Active discouragement of discrimination, codified in law.”
I know others have a similar development of moral sense. Psychologist Kolbert noted that children learn right and wrong in terms of social convention before they learn it in terms of personal conscience.
Perhaps all this may offer some rebuttal of the idea that hate crime laws are flawed because they won’t teach the bigots anything.

While this thread has dealt with primarily AA’s treated badlyIn Utah it’s Latin@s who are singled out and treated really awful, I’ve seen Native Americans disrespected in stores in AZ too. Here in Louisiana an Asian friend (now a doctor) was yelled at on the street as Chink in his college years.

In this case, your location and the fact that you were alone probably protected youPolice don’t tend to think that a single person hanging out by a church is there to cause trouble. Now, if you had been in a group of black men…whole ‘nother ballgame.

THAT’S a tough oneUnfortunately, with police brutality, there’s no way to really step up safely. You’ll be arrested as well for interfering with the lawful duties of a police officer. The best thing you can do is pull off the road a little ways ahead of them, walk back, start filming the incident, take down the cop car number and narrate the day, time, and location. Then send the footage to the press.
Or you can call the local TV stations with a tip that it’s happening, and they’ll usually send someone to investigate. Cops beating people tends to make for good news, sadly, and if there’s a chance it will lead to a scandal in the police department, they’ll definitely go for it.

Think ’bout it!Setting:  You run a child daycare.
Setup #1:  If 1 in 1,000,000 gays were a pedophile, would you keep an eye on every gay who came in?
Setup #2:  What if 1 in 10,000 gays were a pedophile?
Setup #3:  What if 1 in 10 gays were a pedophile?
Where would YOU draw the line?
Now substitute Black and draw the line;  then check statistics.

lol

my husband doesn’t like me when I get angry either.

Sorry, I have to. Do you turn green and experience massive muscle growth?  

It is human and not just AmericanYou see the exact same things in “classless” societies like the Soviet Union and China. You see the exact same things in most of the rest of the world. Humans are primates, and primate societies are strictly hierarchical: there is always a ladder of people higher than you and lower than you. The only thing that varies is the metric that decides your rung.

I’ve used this scenario effectively before, and I’d like to see what this group thinks:Imagine a person with a mental illness affecting judgement and anger management and violent tendencies (because they don’t go hand in hand) has a bias against the color green.
This person pushes someone off the sidewalk into the street because they’re wearing green. They get hurt, and the person who did the pushing is arrested. Everyone would think it’s bizarre that the person wearing green was targeted, and would think it was an isolated case. And they’d be right – because people wearing green are not generally targeted in our society. There are no stereotypes about people wearing green, that they are potentially dangerous, or taking too much social services, or taking jobs, or immoral. They don’t make others who wear non-green clothes feel inferior or threatened just by existing.
No one would think that the person in green should have acted differently, or must have done something first, or was in the wrong neighborhood or should have known better. And other people wearing green would not feel threatened, once the one pusher is found and locked up. They’d know this was isolated, and that there was no big anti-green bias in society.
Can anyone honestly say that about a real-life minority group, be it for gender, ethnicity/race, orientation, or religous affiliation? Yeah – exactly. That’s why hate crimes legislation is needed: specific groups are targets, in an of themselves.
We’re soaking in a culture riddled with stereotypes and divisions, in which even people who know better have to fight the indoctrinization we’ve all received on a subliminal (and liminal) level. Until that dissipates, we need protections for those special groups as both a deterrant and a message that anti-WEV bias cannot and will not be tolerated.

I have a funny story along those linesI worked for many years in fast food service, in every position from the guy who filters the deep-fat frier to assistant manager. Always, when dealing with the person you described above, I’ve had to remain calm and polite.
So I’m waiting for a bus, and decide to step in to a Taco Bell that was right there to get a drink. As I’m standing in line, a woman storms in, pushes her way to the front of the line, slams down a bag and starts yelling about how she ordered her burritos with green sauce and these had red sauce and what kind of incompetent people worked here and the whole drive-through staff should be fired because no one checked that her order was right and just heaping ten kinds of abuse on the kids behind the counter. When she said, “Every time I come in here, I get crappy service,” I had had enough. I said loudly, “Lady, with an attitude like yours, I can see why you get crappy service every time you’re here.”
THAT shut her up, and several guests in the restaurant clapped. By this time, her order had been fixed; she snatched up the bag and stormed back out. When I got up to the counter, I shrugged and said that I had been on the other side, had faced that kind of abuse and always wanted to tell off a customer like that.
I got my drink free, with the complements of the manager.
And I agree: the store where this was filmed deserves our business.

EXCUSE ME???The problem is that you are saying that being “Black” makes one a potential criminal, when it’s SOCIOECONOMIC LEVEL, EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY, and other things that cause criminal behavior.
And when those stats do dovetail with race, it’s institutional multigenerational racism on a NATIONAL and LOCAL level that is to blame. NOT skin color alone.
Funny, most of the bankers and execs and marketing geniuses who helped collapsed the economy last year, in collusion wtih professional politicians and (non)regulators were: WHITE MEN.
Well, that tears it. I’m not going to ever trust a white man. Because they just might steal my 401(k), cause my local businesses to shut down, raise my credit card interest rate, and make my husband lose his job.
What, you say, only a small fraction of white men are responsible for that? And there were other non-white and non-male people invovled too?
Well… check the statistics.

Thanks for taking the baitNo, my point was that people react to past experiences.  If people who wore green had the same statistics, we’d keep an eye on them.  You can’t rant and rave about something that is a fact.
We’ve been treating the “symptoms” but not the “causes” for way too long.  When you have schools that even the teachers are afraid, how do you expect the kids to react.  When you live in an area with 50% unemployment and you don’t have any marketable skills, you probably will do something bad just to survive (I have).  When you are afraid to even leave your house after dark, there’s a big problem.
Instead of yelling at the people who try to protect themselves, let’s work on the reasons they have to protect themselves.  And pointing fingers never works.

Two follow up links to explore bias and hate crimesScientific America Frontiers had a great show that explored unconscious bias.  
The online video is here-
http://www.pbs.org/saf/1507/vi…
And check out the tests for class and race bias that are posted on the Project Implicit website-
https://implicit.harvard.edu/i…
I can guarantee you that you’ll discover prejudices you never knew you had – and how your bias plays out in the real world.

hmmmmmId like to see them do another LGBT related show – regarding PDA’s again…..the one they did last time- barely stratched the surface of the abuse LGBT citizens PUT UP WITH at the hands of heterosexuals!  

no time for me to explain this nowthere’s truth in what both you and lyonside are saying and add to that keori’s comment about me being alone and unbothered in Kennebunk last night.
I will come back to this!

How often…?Like it doesn’t happen? Frequency is not the issue. Attacking/harassing people on the basis of identity, or perceived identity, is the issue.

Exactly!Hate crimes = terrorism.

Metaphorically SpeakingI turn red and regress into a small child.

So why don’t we treat the “causes?”Because TPTB are STILL the same people who benefit from keeping those causes exactly where they are.
Most fair-minded people know this. But there is little incentive and better yet, the means to change it. Most people are just trying to keep their heads above water.
But how do you fix it? My guess is, not by “baiting” people, and by not giving people a pass just becuase they’re doing what comes naturally (your argument, it seems).
You educate and challenge, not allow their stupidity to continue. I mean really, just because it’s inherently natural doesn’t mean it’s inherently good.

What you saidSo because of their awful background, we should just give them a free pass to commit crime?  Doesn’t sound like a good way to “fix it”.
And ya, I’m still gonna lock my car doors when I drive through the hood.  You’re free to do what you want.

Funny, you say your comment was “bait,” but then follow it with racism.Never said anything about “free pass” for criminal activity, but about generalization. You’re giving bigots a “pass” for behaving “naturally” in discriminating against others based on stereotypes and braod assumptions.
I lock my doors ALL THE TIME, dammit. And in high population areas, I watch my back more. I don’t research crime statistics ebfore deciding whether to watch my back, but neither do I look at skin color on the people around me and decide to substitute that instead.
You drive through “the hood?” (how ’90s). I go to school there. I will probably teach there. And you know what I saw on the corner yesterday at 12th and Lehigh?
A chess game.