The Privilege of 911
White people should call the police less. Minorities should be able to call them more.
By HENRY GRABAR and MARK JOSEPH STERN
On Tuesday, a white graduate student at Yale called the police to report that one of her black classmates was napping in a dorm common area. The ensuing encounter between the police and the student, Lolade Siyonbola, who is getting a master’s degree in African studies, was captured in a video that has drawn national attention to the case.
It’s the latest in a string of recent incidents in which white Americans have called the police on their black neighbors for nothing at all: In Philadelphia, it was Starbucks while black. In Rialto, California, Airbnb while black. And in New Haven, Connecticut, trying to pull an all-nighter while black.
At the core of each incident is white Americans’ deep suspicion and mistrust of their black neighbors. The most infamous example of this dynamic occurred in Sanford, Florida, in February 2012, when neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman called the police on 17-year-old Trayvon Martin before stalking him, confronting him, and killing him. (The Sanford Police Department told Zimmerman not to follow Martin; Zimmerman was ultimately acquitted on charges of second-degree murder.) But more mundane displays of this regularly play out on forums like NextDoor, a website for neighborhood news and activism where interest gravitates, tabloid-style, towards perceived disorder and its perpetrators.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/05/in-america-calling-911-is-still-a-privilege-of-being-white.html
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