Iâm not saying that police donât disproportionately mistreat blacks and other non-whites, but try to realize that the poor and the powerless, regardless of ethnicity or color, are considerably more at risk for police brutality than are middle and/or upper-class whites. Many working-class whites, too, have begun to refuse to comply with the police with this sort of 'yes-sir or yes-maâam" attitude. It began back in the late 1960âs/1970âs. I know that when the disastrous Federal Court-mandated, cross-city, large-scale school busing edict took Boston by storm beginning in the mid-1970âs, many white-working-class Bostonians, especially in Southie and Charlestown, became quite hostile towards the police, despite the fact that many members of Bostonâs TPF (the now-disbanded Tactical Patrol Force) actually hailed from those white working-class ethnic Boston neighborhoods. Many of the whites didnât want the cops around, but, had the cops not been around, there wouldâve been more mayhem and bloodshed.
Both blacks and working-class whites eventually did come to dislike and distrust the police, even though they were actually pitted against each other, as well.
Hereâs another thing, zuzupetals: You said that you were confident that, since youâre a white middle-class woman, the cops would never throw you to the ground, beat, shoot, or arrest you, or, if you were arrested, youâd be released on a less stiff bail. Let me say this, zuzupetals: If you were a poor white, youâd probably not be that lucky. Chances are that youâd get some pretty similar treatment meted out to you by the cops, and, if you did survive the ordeal, youâd be permanently crippled, which would hardly be any better. I read about somebody (a white guy), who has a friend (also white), who has a bullet permanently lodged in his brain, courtesy of a white Boston cop. So, donât get feeling too smug or virtuous, because thereâs no telling what a cop might or might not do to you if you got pulled over. It could also depend on the individual cop, or what kind of a state of mind that the cop in question was in that day.
Iâll also add that plenty of whites have gone to jail for physically assaulting a cop, which is no picnic, either.