Let’s play “erase the face”.
Long-time readers know this game. It is when you take an incident, remove race as an issue, and see if the outcome is the same or different. If it is different, you logically conclude that race plays a part, and if it is the same, you logically conclude it does not.
First, let me show you a key excerpt from Melissa Caen’s article for KPIX, the CBS affiliate in San Francisco:
SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX) — In the last three months, there have been at least three robberies on BART involving groups of teenagers.
April 22: Forty to sixty kids boarded a train at the Coliseum stop and robbed seven passengers, beating up two;
June 28: A group of four kids assaulted a passenger and made off with a cell phone at Dublin; and
June 30: A woman on a train with about a dozen teenagers had her phone snatched by one them before the group got off at the Coliseum stop. Thankfully, a good Samaritan was on hand to retrieve the phone.
So far, BART has refused to turn over surveillance video for any of these incidents.
Allen told us the agency issued an explanation for why it is being tight-lipped about the thefts.
“To release these videos would create a high level of racially insensitive commentary toward the district,” she was told. “And in addition it would create a racial bias in the riders against minorities on the trains.”
Although not stated in so many words, this suggests pretty clearly that the perpetrators in these three incidents are Black. But, truth be told, it doesn’t matter which race they are, the same rules apply. So let’s play erase the face.
Suppose the perpetrators in each case wore red hats. Nothing racial at all, just red hats.
Do you think BART would have no problem releasing those surveillance tapes?
Do you think people using BART would be upset if they refused, on the grounds that if people committing crimes seemed, over and over again, to have some identifying element they would want to know that element was so they could be more careful when they saw it?
If the answer to both questions is “yes” – and I’m betting it is” – then refusing to identify the red-hatted perpetrators would be intentionally endangering the public, by not advising them of when they potentially were in greater jeopardy.
Well, that’s what BART is doing by not releasing the surveillance tapes.
If, again and again, perpetrators come from a particular community, whether Black, Latino, Asian or White, the public must be made AWARE of it for their own safety — which means that, by not doing so, it is BART who, despite its presumably good intentions, is perpetrating the racism it tells us it is trying to avoid.
And, ironically, withholding the tapes endangers people of the same community every bit as much as others.
If you were, say, a Black woman riding the train and there were a spate of incidents all involving Black teens, wouldn’t you want to know as much so if you saw a group of Black teens you would be more aware/more careful?
Don’t these geniuses realize that suppressing such information puts innocent people of the same race in jeopardy too?
Release the tapes. Let people know what is going on. Protect the public -ALL the public – instead of intentionally endangering them by bowing the unholy – and, in this case, racist – god of PC.
Enough is enough.
